One of my favorite Child Ballads is The Two Sisters, a story about jealousy that ends in one sister murdering the other and subsequently getting busted by a harp made from her sister’s bones. (No, really.) The Great Hunt is very loosely based on the dude version of this ballad, and the two stories are […]
Format: Audiobook
Ex Libris Audio: Strange The Dreamer
I was so, so ready to jump into another world created by the talented and amazing Laini Taylor. The beginning of Strange the Dreamer might seem a bit slow, but I urge you to hang on because everything you read builds and builds and there is not one part of the story that I would […]
Ex Libris Audio: Seraphina
Before I decided to listen to Seraphina I had it in my mind that I would be head over heels for this story. It is a unique setting and a well-built world, with a richly built society where dragons and humans live in an uneasy peace. Seraphina is a musician in the palace and when […]
Ex Libris Audio: A Conjuring Of Light
It’s always difficult to adequately review the last book in a series. I decided to listen to it rather than read because it always seems to make it last a little longer, and I’m glad that I did. A Conjuring of Light is the story that the first two books in this series have been […]
Ex Libris Audio: The Last Of August
The first book in this series was more about how Watson and Holmes were as individuals, both dealing with the notoriety of their families and how they struggled against those expectations and history. In The Last of August, I felt like it was more about how they interacted as a team and possibly as a […]
Ex Libris Audio: Three Dark Crowns
I loved the world of Three Dark Crowns. The island where this story takes place is so isolated that the outside world doesn’t really know much about them and they don’t know much about the outside world. The three sisters live in this brutal microcosm where they know that their gifts are their weapon and […]
Ex Libris Audio: Sword and Verse
Sword and Verse has been on my reading list for a long time, so I decided to gibe it a listen. The story was a good one, all in all, but in many ways it was not original. Raisa is an orphan and a slave who is picked to be a royal tutor. Her lineage, […]
Ex Libris Audio: Crooked Kingdom
I put this book off for little but because I didn’t want it to end. But it was too temping after a while, and it was every bit as amazing as I thought it would be. Leigh Bardugo’s beautiful writing brings Ketterdam back to life and she somehow manages to cram even more intrigue, mystery, […]
Ex Libris Audio: The Serpent King
Having grown up in a small town, I tend to gravitate toward stories set there and The Serpent Kind definitely captured both the comfort and the frustration of living in a small community. All three characters have lives that do not go unexamined by the local townspeople, but I would say that the focus of […]
Ex Libris Audio: The Fiery Trial
As a set-up for The Dark Artifices series, the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy work well. In The Fiery Trial, we see Emma and Julian, who will be main character in the aforementioned series. However, I would say that this is really a Simon and Clary story (yay!) and I was glad to get a […]