Review| Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring

I started my magical quest with a friend. Over our shared love of the LOTR movies (and yes even the Hobbit movies) we decided to pick up these books and read together. Mostly curious to learn a little more about the world, and compare the differences to the movies.

HUGE DISCLAIMER : This means my review is pretty heavily skewed by comparing it to the movie. Spoiler for the end of the review, however, we liked the movie better.

My biggest problem when reading the books is emotion. As I read I felt like Tolkien didn't write alot of emotion into this book. Actions and moments that happened, quite brilliantly in hindsight, in the film came across flat in the book. Some of my favorites were:
Gandalfs line , "We only choose what to do with the time that is given to us."
When Bilbo leaves and comes up with an ending to his book.
I felt these fell so flat in the book and made me yearn to re watch the beautiful moments of emotion in the film.

Secondly the characters came off a bit strange. Sam comes off as a complete dopey idiot. In the movie its quite endearing, the book hes too in servitude toward Frodo. Dont even get started on Bill the pony! Even if this was Sam's original intention and purpose, watching the movie and seeing the difference cant be unseen.

Lets get to the good!! Its still a wonderful magical world and I loved learning more about it! The part in Lothlorien is a particular favorite! Some of the added details of places is interesting. Pippin and Merry are more competent and interesting in the books which I enjoyed! Where they seem whiny and dumb in the movie (more so pippin than Merry) they are intelligent and helpful in the book. Although I do like their mischievous ways in the movie!
To further add to that point is the bond between them. I liked how Merry and Pippin were Frodos really good friends and helped him.  Lastly my friend and I were shocked to find out how much time passes, where it seems like a week in the movie MANY years have passed in the books.

The book definitly felt slow, a lot of it dragged and sometimes explained too much of what was happening. The final conclusion my friend and I made was how impressed were for Peter Jackson to create what he did out of this book. We're excited to get to the second and third book though where I hear it picks up and there's more action. Plus the bonds between the characters get more focus!

Review | Heir of Ra

Heir of Ra was pretty good. Id say a solid novel, but not spectacular. Id give it three stars for not adding anything too interesting.
The Good: Alyssa is a good competent protagonist. I didnt mind following her and being in her head. The scenes with the back story were well written. She doesn't have flowery writing but the way she describes scenes and actions were top notch!

The Bad: Theres not alot for Egyptian Mythology fans. Although the civilization is talked about and experienced its not very detailed which is what I was hoping for with a book of this cover and title. The second thing that mainly bothered me is one of the side characters, Paul. He sort of just comes out of nowhere and risks his job and life for a girl he just met. Its pretty hard to believe and every scene hes in and does something showing great sacrifice or emotion for Alyssa just feels odd.
Spoiler Like for instance literally jumping in front of a blade for her and be stabbed.

 Whats kind of ridiculous and could have easily fixed this is there is a character at the beginning of the book, Jake, and he easily could have replaced Paul. He is an already established as knowing her and would be more believed to have the deep connection. Lastly is the bad guys, I honestly cant remember the difference between all the bad guys except the female who has purple eyes.

Some last minute thoughts| The TombRaider-lite feel is pretty neat, and it will definitely remind you, or make you want to play Assassin Creed while reading because it can be heavily compared to that series. (A person using her heritage to see visions of the past)

Spoilers for the Ending Twist:
I kinda wasn't feeling the twist. First off shes just announced as a "Daughter of Ra" by one of the random scientist. I dont know why he would know what she is, I dont know why they specify Ra, if Im not mistaken I think Ra is the grandfather of Horus so maybe thats why?(I didnt care to reread to check) Regardless she still wouldn't be the Daughter of Ra then but as the book is titled just an heir of Ra...
Set is randomly in the middle of the book, who is a God himself so I dont know why he was draining other Halfbreeds unless he wasnt one himself..but that wasnt clear.
Lastly they made it clear (I thought) that they needed to CONSTANTLY feed off half breeds blood to stay alive from the curse, but now Alyssas dad is permanently healed? (Im assuming from gene slicing or w/e but I dont know)
Lastly Part 2 | Alyssa basically immediately leaves her dad to go on another adventure even though he almost just died and hasnt even left the hospital yet and she spent the whole book trying to heal him. -_-

Dragon Pearl | Review

This one took me a while to get through. It wasn't too bad but the middle and end dragged so much it really was hard to finish. I liked the often use of her powers and how she used them. Its pretty rare that magical powers are used alot. I just finished a book last month where the main character had illusion powers and she barely used them. It made the book all the more irritating, but Dragon Pearl definitely avoided that.

There are some discussions to have on the book, like how selfish Min was, and how she really had no consequences for any decisions or actions she made. I felt like it could have spent more time on the morality of her choices or how her people were treated. I suppose it is geared more for kids, but to be honest I dont think enough exciting things even happened to recommend to a kid.

Lastly Ill touch on the end, which is really thrown in very quickly. I would say Im dissapointed that there wasnt much elaborated on in the end, but I think I was just happy for it to be over. I would have edited out the middle section and had her rewrite the end.

Id recommend to anyone who has an itch for Chinese mythology and a fan of Riordans books. I gave it 3 stars.