N. S.

Engaging YA

Reviewed: 11-23-24

Fun story, nothing too surprising. The “I must save everyone by myself” troupe does wear a little thin, but the characters were interesting and layered. I’ll read the next one :)

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A reasonable distraction but meh

Reviewed: 02-07-24

The storyline was a stretch in many places and felt a little silly. Not terrible, but not convincing. The nasal voicing of some of the characters was painful. I liked the back and forth voices of the protagonists between chapters.

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Weir loves a good twist!

Reviewed: 12-21-23

Fun short story collection. Creative and clever, nice brain ticklers when wanting a shorter listen.

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Fun fantasy, dissatisfying ending

Reviewed: 06-07-23

The strength of this book is that the characters are complex, and there are many twists and turns. Unfortunately, I felt the twists and turns were too severe to be believable. It’s easy to lose track of the number of betrayals, and the story lost me when a couple of especially terrible events were seemingly skimmed over as if they had little to no effect on characters we know well. The ending was frustrating: there is a sense that the story has been building to something, but in the end, we still don’t know what. It feels like the author needed to hurry up and finish the book instead of go back and do the needed edits. I’m glad I finished it because it’s hard to not finish a series, but I wish more care had been given to this summation, so that it didn’t feel so crowded and leave so many loose ends.

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Young adult doesn’t mean childish

Reviewed: 12-04-22

The performance of the kids voices makes them sound like they’re in preschool. They remind me of muppet voices. 12-14 year olds are junior high kids — cool, trendy if a bit dorky— not preschoolers on a Barney caper. The dynamic of the bad guys reminds me of Home Alone on a space ship.

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Not “Cinder”

Reviewed: 08-27-22

A creative new twist on the big bad wolf and Little Red, but often falls into being pretty corny. The inconsistent European accents are pretty painful.

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Fun fantasy for late grade school or middle school

Reviewed: 04-05-21

Fun fantasy for late grade school or early middle school readers. Good, clean fun. The story tends drag a little, you can tell right away that this is a series :-) The reader is young, and does a really good job. A young voice can grate on me after awhile but she is expressive and keeps and nice pace. The mispronunciation of possessives (adding an extra “es” sound at the end of names) is something the editor should have caught for her.

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Fun sci-fi

Reviewed: 07-24-19

I read a lot of books in order to expand my 7/8 grade classroom library, and I need to offer a few more sci fi titles. This will get added to my shelves for students and I’d recommend for adults as well. It’s a fun combination of space journey and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory lucky ticket / America’s got Talent type competition, complete with some good humored nods to current space exploration. The story clips right along and doesn’t get bogged down in theory and detailed explanations, the focus is on the story not on theoretical science (which I appreciate) but there are times when it does seem to take on too many storylines and things get rushed. This is an expansive ride complete in one book. There are a few references to sex but zero details, and some minor profanity, making it suitable for teen students. Some of the story line is a bit of a stretch, but who can fault sci fi for this? :) That’s half the fun.

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1 person found this helpful

Fun read, excellent reader, too much like Potter

Reviewed: 06-27-19

The reader is excellent and the voices really make the story come alive. I will recommend it to my middle school students as it’s pretty well written and a fun story with lots of interesting characters and action. The parallels with HP are obvious and disappointing. But decent series otherwise.

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1 person found this helpful

Entertaining as *#%+?

Reviewed: 12-25-17

A fun distraction, space fantasy caper on the moon. The struggling protagonist is an interesting character, complex, foolish, independent and interesting but her constant f*^% profanity wears thin. Overall I enjoyed the book (not as much as The Martian) but found the ending to be unsatisfying and was unable to maintain buy-in to the storyline. It was too big of a stretch, even for fantasy. The reader was fantastic and added a great depth and expression. It's worth a listen.

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