Diary of Ellen Rimbauer

So in the middle of the second book to the Belgariad series I took a break and read The Diary Ellen Rimbauer Life: My Life at Rose Red is a 2001 novel by Ridley Pearson. The book is written as nonfiction accompaniment to the movie Rose Red.  Whereas the movie concentrates on the happenings of a group of psychics assembled by Dr. Joyce Reardon, the book is a editted copy of Ellen Rimbauer's diary which fuels Dr. Reardon's desire to enter Rose Red.  It answered a few questions I had when watching the movie and is an interesting read.  It definitely lacks the signature of Stephen King and noone who reads King and has read the Diary would be fooled into thinking King or his wife had anything to do with writing the novel itself.  The excerpts edited from the book by Dr. Reardon were indicated on being on the university website that Dr. Reardon worked but this also is a fictional website and no longer exists and those edited pages can no longer be viewed.  This is a bummer as I would have liked to read a few of those pages if for nothing more than interest at what they held. 

Pawn of Prophecy - The Belgariad - David Eddings

     So I started to reread The Belgariad by David Eddings.  I love this series of books and it generally keeps me busy for a few weeks since it doesn't keep me awake when I read in bed at night since I have read it so many times I could probably recite it.

     In this book Garion finds himself swept up in events that make no sense to him and his whole world is turned upside down with the knowledge that his Aunt, who raised him, isn't really his Aunt.  This is further exasperated by the fact that everyone around him seems to not only know things he doesn't know but also be someone that Garion didn't know.  The journey starts off when the old storyteller, who frequented the farm where Garion grew up on, shows up and whisks his Aunt, himself, and the blacksmith away to chase after a thief of a valuable object.  Noone talks about the object or the thief in this book.

     They are joined by a small man named Silk, and a rather large man named Barak.  They are attacked several times in their journey and eventually captured and delivered to the king of Sendaria.  There Garion learns the true identity of his companions including his Aunt who is not his Aunt Pol who he thought but actually Polgara who is a sorceress who has lived thousands of years and is only outlived by her father Belgarth who happens to be the old storyteller, whom Garion has been calling Mister Wolf.  Silk turns out to be the nephew of the king of Drasnia and called Prince Kheldar and Barak happens to be the Earl of Trellheim.  The king of Sendaria transports them to Cherek to meet with the kings of Aloria.  Once there Garion thwarts an assassination on the king of Cherek and gets a strange greeting by an old blind seer.  Aunt Pol shows her power for the first time producing a rose for the queen of Cherek and again when she restores the old blind seers' eyes.  This only further worries Garion that his Aunt may not be related to him which would make him alone in the world.

     Once the visit to Cherek is over the companions go on their way back to chasing the thief.  The books ends on the boat with Mister Wolf explaining the complex relationship to his Aunt and himself.  Garion is astonded to learn Mister Wolf is actually his grandfather and relieved his Aunt is really his Aunt, although several greats added on for both). This comforts him and then asks about his parents.  Belgarth explains they were murdered by an old enemy of Garion's family and Garion then swears revenge. Here the book closes and moves onto book two: Queen of Sorcery.  

His Dark Materials

So I just finished His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman.  It is a trilogy consisting of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. 

  I watched the movie The Golden Compass and because of the way they ended it, the movie always left me wanting to know what happened next so I decided to pick up the books.  Book number one went pretty good and gave me a bit more insight than the movie did.  One of the biggest things I found I had a hard time reconciling is Mrs Coulter's hair.  Belief it or not, the book was dark while Nicole Kidman's is almost a platinum blonde.  There were long periods of time where nothing interesting happened and I can not believe Mr Pullman put in so much dead space in his books.  He obviously saw how it all went together but I found alot of information that had really no purpose except word count.  As I moved into book two, The Subtle Knife, things got even more confusing and there were a bunch more places where I just could not see why he even put such a thing into his book.  At the end of book two, we had been introduced to three different worlds and many new things and still most did not seem to even connect to each other.  I mean, what is Mary Malone's purpose?  To be the snake?  I get the reference but really, did she really NEED to be in the book?  Or Citigaze, why do we need to go through Citigaze to get between Lyra's world and Will's world?  What is the purpose of that?  The biggest WTF moments was when John Parry died. What was the purpose of actually having a scorned witch lover murder him just as his son and him find each other?  Did it really need to happen so Will found him in the World of the Dead?  Moving onto Book three, The Amber Spyglass, what exactly is the reason Mary Malone fell into the world of these strange creatures called mulefa. Did she really need to understand the way Dust worked? Book three gave me all those "Aha" moments I was looking for to make all the odds and ends make sense but there were a few I still didn't understand.  What was the purpose of Father Gomez?  He ultimately did nothing to the story and speaking of wasteful purposes, how did Mary 'tempt' Lyra?  These books left me with more questions than explanations.  While it was very noble that Lyra's parents eventually learned love for not only themselves but for their only daughter it was way too late and by the end of the book did almost nothing obvious to help Lyra.  How was the death of Metatron helpful?  And, really why leave the book were it ended?  You had only one or two moments of love between children and they figured out how to fix the Dust issue.  There was a whole lot of crap in between and then the children live forever after apart.  There is no hope for love with them.  The books left me ultimately disappointed and I will not be reading them again anytime soon.  His Dark Materials by Pullman, Philip [Boxed Set] [3 Units] (Google Affiliate Ad)

Welcome to the Blog

Hey there! This is Raven. I'll be collaborating with my mom on this wonderful little blog, posting book reviews from a teenager's point of view. I hope you'll enjoy!

Welcome!

I am so happy you have found us here.  Here I will write up my opinions about the various books I read after I have read them.  Hopefully my beautiful daughter Raven will join me here and we together can create a wonderful book review site.  Stick around and read up!!