Jeff Wheeler does it again! Like the Kingfountain series, this one also introduces child protagonists, going back and forth between Cettie, a little orphan girl who grew up in the "fells" (or the bottom rung of society,) and Sera, daughter of the emperor and destined to be the empress herself--at ...
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I was surprised by how engaging this was. The story went back and forth in time, following first Marisol, the granddaughter of a wealthy Cuban refugee who fled from Cuba right after Batista was ousted and Castro took over, and her grandmother Elisa in real time as that was happening. It wasn't a ...
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I listened to the full cast version on audio, and I could hardly put it down. The characterization was just incredible... and while it bothered me that Ender was 6 when the story began and only 11 when it ended, it didn't bother me as much as it did the first time I read it. He's described as being ...
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I last read this in high school, but then got it as a freebie on Audible. I was at first rather confused, as it seemed like a cautionary fable against socialism, and yet both the good and the bad characters appeared to be socialist. When I read commentary afterwards, this made sense: Orwell ...
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This was a fun audible original! A very short middle-grade read about an 11-year old boy named Jackson who doesn't want to grow up, and who makes a wish (but more importantly he later realizes, whose grandfather makes a wish for him) that he would always stay 11. He gets the wish, but (in "It's a ...
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These are the best fairy tale retellings I think I've ever read. They are not cheesy (it itself a feat!), well written, and are so loosely based on the original tale that I never quite know what's about to happen, even though I do know the story upon which it's based. For "Goldheart," that's ...
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This story had one of the best relationships I've read in a long time! I'm fascinated by the story of Anastasia Romanov, particularly since the musical "Anastasia" is one of my favorites (the music is just. Amazing.) I picked this one up on an Audible daily deal, since it was a retelling of ...
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The whole way through this series this time through, I've been trying to decide which book is my favorite. I think it might have to be this one. Only three of the seven books are overt biblical allegories. The Magician's Nephew is an allegory of the creation story of Genesis, The Lion, The Witch, ...
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I love that I always know what I'm getting with a Rhys Bowen novel. They're character-heavy slow boils, always set in Victorian England. The main character is usually obsessed with some kind of craft (herbs, gardening, cooking), and we're treated to an in-depth description of her occupation, but ...
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This was probably the book I remembered least of the Chronicles of Narnia, but man, every one of these books is just so amazing, for the same three reasons. First, it's not just the creativity, but the whimsy that makes Narnia a world I long to escape into. Second, C.S. Lewis is incredibly astute ...
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