Reviews

I can’t take this novel seriously. I’m sorry, I just can’t. Seeing all my friends raving about The Scorpio Races makes me laugh out loud. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bad novel, not at all. I enjoyed it immensely and had a lot of fun with it, some of it unintentional. Because it is, and there’s no way to sugar-coat it, a horse novel to a T. It’s so cliché, it can’t get any more cliché …

Meh. When I first read Dream On, I had no recollection of the events of this book one week after finishing it. This time around – listening to the audio book – it was almost worse and I really have to strain to remember in order to write this review. That’s how forgettable this book is. It’s not bad per se, especially if you like that kind of irrelevant fluff that is Liv’s everyday life and oh, all the relationship drama. Unfortunately, there’s just not much dream demon stuff going on …

Jenny Hughes is one of the PonyClub regulars. I really adore her older books but I’m not really into her newer novels, although there has been an exception. This one, unfortunately, was the weakest of her books I read so far …

Wicked Saints is certainly not for everyone but it’s 100% for me! It’s been a while since any book had me this much on edge, this excited: There’s the Eastern European inspired world (always there for that!), a complicated inscrutable magic system (I like puzzling over that stuff!), a gripping dark and desolate atmosphere (gets me every time!), intriguing characters (hello, dark-and-mysterious-more-or-less-evil guy!), and an ending that left me quite devastated (gimme that second book already!) …

Although Fairest is set before The Lunar Chronicles, I highly recommend reading the books in publication order. Many of the characters we came to know and love throughout the first three novels are mentioned here and since they appear in the context of their backstory, it might spoil the revelations in the series. Furthermore, I don’t know whether skipping is a good idea because it contains Winter’s backstory and gives an insight into her relationship with her cousin, which appears to be an important point, hinted at when reading the first three chapters of Winter …

Third time’s a charm? In this case, not really. With each read, I’m deducting one star from the rating: the first time, I giggled myself through an otherwise sleepless, anxiety-ridden night; the second time, I still enjoyed it, but it lost a little; the third time – this time – I listened to the audiobook and was almost a little disappointed. It might not hold up for me, but if you’re looking for a fun fluffy contemporary fantasy read with a very chaste dash of horror, this might just be it – but don’t expect this one to be big on character development and thrill …

I’ve read about 600 horse novels so far, but except for the novelisation of Hidalgo (I love that film!) and a Mustang Mountain volume I more or less consider western riding, this is the first proper novel about endurance I ever read – at least as far as I remember. It’s a shame, really, because this makes for a rather interesting and hardly touched upon topic. I liked it so much I even gave the novel another star …