"Minecraft: The Mountain" by Max Brooks

As you may have guessed, this is the sequel to Minecraft: The Island. Unlike with that book, though, this one has two sapient characters.

I don't have tons to say here. The isekai version of Minecraft updates a couple times; specifically, it gets Update Aquatic and the Nether Update. It's nice having a Minecraft book that's not just set in World of Color Update Java Edition or Better Together Update Bedrock; they've added some pretty cool stuff since then! 

I especially liked how the characters got to see the world updating, with things reshaping themselves and fish-as-mobs (Update aquatic hallmark) suddenly showing up.

Anyway, I was annoyed with Summer (the other sapient character; the first one is our main character from Minecraft: The Island) for a lot of the book. However, when |the Nether Update caught them unawares in the Nether|, I started liking her a lot better, because she and the main character had to work together to |survive all the stuff that came with the changes|.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+, just like Minecraft.

4 stars. Had I not started liking Summer, it probably would have gotten 3, but the author did a good job with her.

(Endnote: Reading through the update archives, I've placed our original acquisition of Minecraft at somewhere around the Friendly Update or Boss Update, so June-October 2016. I placed it there because I remember playing around with all the new blocks and things during the Ender Update .)

 

EDIT: Changed all the wiki links to the new Minecraft wiki.

"A Breath of Mischief" by MarcyKate Connolly

As far as I can tell, the title of this book has nothing to do with the content of this book. Of all the words that could be used to describe the story, "mischief" isn't one of them.

 

It's about Aria, a random kid who was adopted by the elemental Wind, and her quest to free it from an evil alchemist who's trying to gather up all the elements and use them to |replicate the Philosopher's Stone|. Never mind that |manufacturing gold on any significant scale| would crash the world economy for a week and rapidly devalue |the metal|, and not give le alchemist unlimited power. Dude should take a crash course on economics before he goes about |turning random crap into gold|.

Anyway, Aria goes on an epic quest to get him to put the Wind back, by obtaining three magic talisman things for him. Naturally, these prove to be |the keys to imprisoning the other three elements|. I saw that coming the moment le alchemist told Aria to go find them.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E or a soft E10+. In the right hands, it could make a decent game.

3 stars. It wasn't lame, exactly, but it also wasn't terribly enthralling.

(Endnote: All the giant alchemy machine seems to do is |turn stuff into gold|. Now, if it could |turn stuff into gold and then turn gold into stuff| instead, for example potato soup, that would be much more useful. Or if it |gave you eternal life as well, like the original Philosopher's Stone|.)

"The Fowl Twins" by Eoin Colfer

Just so you know, that guy's tie is a fish.

 

Yeah, that cover is a pretty good representation of the entire book. I can see why people like Artemis Fowl.

This one is about two twins, Beckett (the guy whose tie is a fish) and Myles (the guy whose tie isn't a fish) Fowl. They're the younger brothers of Artemis Fowl, presumably of Artemis Fowl fame. 

 

It's also pretty funny, mostly based in taking itself seriously.

For some reason, even though I really want to review this book, I'm hitting a wall of writer's block whenever I try to say anything about it. It's one of those books that's too aggressively itself for me to really describe.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for cartoon violence.

I'm giving The Fowl Twins 4 stars. No, I'm not giving Beckett and Myles two stars each.

Favorite lines:

    As it turned out, Lord Bleedham-Drye did find the fountain of youth, but it was not a fountain in the traditional sense of the word, as the life-giving liquid was contained in the venom of a mythological creature. And the family he would possibly have to murder to access it was none other than the Fowls of Dublin, Ireland, who were not overly fond of being murdered.

    Page 6.

    Beckett bowed and said, "I respect you, Mr. Oberon."

    Which was not an accurate statement, as the man's real name was Phil and Beckett didn't actually respect him.

    Page 123.

    Artemis had built a laser pointer into Myles's spectacles, but the presentation tool was not of industrial strength, as he did not consider death lasers suitable add-ons to an eleven-year-old's eyewear.

      Page 185.

(Endnote: Not the entire book is like the selections I provided, but those are examples of the humor contained therein.)

"Shadow Magic" by Joshua Khan

"I defy you not to love this story."

    -Rick Riordan

"Ok"

    -Sam Mouse

 

Yep, another instance of me being annoyed at/by front quotes. Actually, Unseen Magic's Margaret Peterson Haddix quote didn't bug me. Maybe because that's just saying she found it "enchanting" and not anything very strong? I don't know what it is, but something about this quote and Jed and the Junkyard War's quote got on my nerves.

Y'know, this might be related to my reflexive/instinctive/adjective dislike of books that are recommended to me. Having someone say "I liked this book", like with the quote on Unseen Magic, is fine and I don't mind it; it might even influence me to try the book. Having someone say "You will like this book", like with the quote on this, annoys me and will probably influence me not to try the book. (Didn't with this one, though. Or at least not hard enough to stop me.)

Now that we've got that out of the way, I'll talk some about the actual book. It's the most Kittens thing I've read in a while; Kittens (not the actual name, for obvious reasons) is one of my relatives, who likes to read edgy fantasy books about people with sad backstories.

(I'm kidding about the "edgy" thing, Kittens. Mostly.)

 

Basically, some kid gets sold into slavery and goes to the kingdom of darkness. And there are other plot lines, but I'm not going to bother with them.

Also, there's a giant bat! His name is Hades, and he's awesome. The main character rides around on him at times. 

Unfortunately for him, Rick Riordan defied me unsuccessfully. I did not love this story. (I did really like Hades the giant bat, though.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft T for horror elements like zombies.

Now, I will acknowledge that my dislike of being told I will like things, which I mentioned earlier, might be biasing my decision. The decision in question being to rate this 3 stars.

Favorite lines:

 

    Bad things didn't happen to Tyburn. Bad things happened because of Tyburn.

    Page 39.

(Endnote: I can always tell when I've been reading a lot of my mom's blog(s), because her voice starts to creep into mine.)

"Jed and the Junkyard War" by Steven Bohls

"Highly original, with humor and adventure, readers will fall in love with Jed."

    -James Dashner, author of the New York Times #1 bestselling Maze Runner series

"Yeah not really"

    -Me, author of this blog

I sometimes make fun of promotional quotes people put on the front of their book covers. Like, yeah, I get that you're stoked someone cool likes your book, but it seems kind of pretentious to have it on the front cover.

Anyway, this is one of those books where I got annoyed by the lack of closure at the end and then realized it has a sequel. Unlike with Under Their Skin, though, I'm not sure if I liked this enough to read the sequel.

The premise is cool; a giant junkyard with people living in it, who survive by scavenging canned food and bottled water. Also flying ships, and "junkstorms" which add new junk to the junkyard. 

And the dread, which are weird, evil cyborg things. The Copper-aligned people and the Iron-aligned people are fighting over something allegedly uncovered by some Rust-aligned people and maybe stolen from the dread; Copper and Iron are basically nations, with the Rust just trying to hare off on their own. (We have 4 of the 5 D&D alignment components here; dread are evil, Rust are neutral, Copper are chaotic, and Iron are lawful. We just need a good-aligned faction, then we're set. Actually, the lack of a good-aligned faction might have something to do with my discontent about this book.)

It was kind of ironic when |one side character kept accusing Jed of being a dread. Turns out, Jed is a dread. He's just a really advanced one and doesn't know it yet.|

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+. Violence and creepy descriptions of dread.

I didn't exactly care for this book, though it was a decent adventure. I definitely did not fall in love with it, like the promotional quote said. (Although I just realized, writing this, that the quote's not explicitly a universal statement. It could be taken as "some readers", not "all readers".) Anyway, it gets three stars, for being okay.

(Endnote: Turns out nobody knows how to cook in the uber-junkyard. I guess they don't get a lot of flammable stuff?)

"Joshua Dread" by Lee Bacon

The only way this book could get any cheesier is if I spread some actual cheese on it.

I mean, it's about an eleven-year-old whose parents are supervillains and who gets the power to make things randomly explode. Can you smell the cheese from here?

But, as with many thoroughly cheesy things, it was also fairly fun. If you like cheese, that is. I don't have much to say about this book, honestly; big smoke monster things start attacking random supervillains.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for cartoon violence. Definitely cartoon violence.

I'll give Joshua Dread 4 stars. (Maybe I should just tell you when I don't give something 4 stars, and spare myself the trouble of coming up with creative ways to say "so yeah this one is rated 4 stars too".)

Favorite lines:

    "I'm afraid your arsenal of badly named hologram weapons won't work," said Vex.

    Page 203.

(Endnote: Wouldn't it be cool to have the last name Bacon?)

"Gussy" by Jimmy Cajoleas

Full disclosure: I picked this book because it had a cool cover, and am therefore guilty of judging a book by its cover, even though its title sucks. Oh well.

It's about a girl who lives in a town, same as a lot of books out there. Except that the Great Doom is annoyed with the town, so she and one old dude are in charge of warding it off by doing weird rituals at it. But the old dude gets called away by a bunch of other people in charge of warding danger off towns by doing weird rituals at them, so the girl (named Gussy, short for Gustavina; it's a lame name) is in charge of warding the Great Doom off the town by doing weird rituals at it.

And so, of course, she messes up, and the Great Doom gets into the town anyway. (This is all in the cover blurb, by the way, so I'm not bothering with spoiler tags.) Most of the book is occupied with chasing it out again. Also, there's the lingering question of where the main character came from, and what the heck this Great Doom is anyway.

It was a thoroughly interesting book. Also, it's heavily implied that God exists in this world, but we've forgotten a lot about Him. They have "the One Who Listens," and you pray to him and stuff... yeah, it's God all right. Or else cribbed from Him. I'm not sure how that would fit in with the magic and the Great Doom and stuff, but we don't get a lot of exposition here.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E. Nothing objectionable, although parents of young children might not want them seeing all the weird rituals that the main characters do at the Great Doom.

This book gets 4 stars, because while it was good, I didn't like it well enough to give it 5. Like I said in my review of Unseen Magic, it was good, but not stellar.

Favorite lines:

    "New is often dangerous, Gustavina," he said. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

    "Nope," I said.

    Page 274.

(Endnote: The warding rituals aren't actually that weird. They're not evil or Satanic or anything; they're calling upon the power of the off-brand God, the One Who Listens, to keep out the power of the off-brand Devil, the Great Doom.)

"Found Things" by Marilyn Hilton

I'm just going to say up front that this isn't a bad book, though I disliked it.

In fact, I DNF'd it, because it annoyed me. This is mostly due to the fact that the author tried to give the main character a unique speaking voice, but it ended up seeming like she didn't understand how verbs work.

Or maybe the main character didn't understand how verbs work.

The story wasn't intriguing enough for me to keep reading despite not liking something about the book, unlike with Riley's Ghost, where the content level annoyed me but I read through it anyway because I wanted to know what happened. However, if a book annoys me and I don't actually care enough about what's happening to wade through it... recipe for a DNF.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+, for some tense bits involving a |car crash|. 

I am afraid this book gets 2 stars. If the main character had understood verbs, I might have finished it, and it might have gotten more. Buuuuuuuuut... no.

(Endnote: The problem with verbs was mostly her using the first person present tense on every verb, regardless of who's doing it and when. But only sometimes. It flickered on and off. Actually, if she'd only ever used the first person present tense, that wouldn't have bothered me, because I'd have gotten used to it. It was the inconsistency that made it annoying.)

"Riley's Ghost" by John David Anderson

DISAPPROVE.

I'm serious, this should be a YA book set in high school, not a middle-grade fiction book set in middle school. CONTENT, Mr. Anderson. You need to learn the difference between a middle-grade fiction level of content and a YA level of content.

Actually, come to think of it, I've never read a YA book with higher content levels than this. Closest I've come is Goodbye, Mr. Terupt. I... can't say I want to read YA fiction, if it's like this.

 

Now, the story wasn't terrible, once you strip away the lame parts. But it wasn't good enough for me to give it a better rating; I have a special dislike for books with content like this being stashed in the junior fiction section at the library. As I said at the top of the post, I DISAPPROVE.

So if you like mildly scary and tense ghost stories, and don't mind swearing and random sprinkles of T15+ content... go ahead, read it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for swearing, mostly profanity, mostly by the main character. Also for some suggestive-ish content. Not a book I'll be rereading. Non est liber bonus. It's not a good book.

This book gets 1 star, joining only Time Cat and Dungeon Academy: No Humans Allowed in receiving that pointless trophy of shame.

(Endnote: It did name-check those Indian ghosts with the backwards feet, though.)

"In Over Their Heads" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

This book went a lot faster than its predecessor. I feel like they could have been one long book, but the author had it as two instead. Maybe she thought fusing them would make it too long? Maybe she had plans for a series but then this one wrapped up too neatly for that? Maybe she wrote the first one with a sequel planned but didn't have quite enough material for the sequel? That last guess seems most likely, but I don't really know.

In Over Their Heads picks up where Under Their Skin left off, at |Mammoth Cave. Except that it's discovered there are other people living here. The plotting is messier than the first book, honestly, with half of it being about Jackson the illegal robot kid and his dad, and half of it about everyone else. Actually, that might be why I think it's both messy and short; the plots don't really tie together, and they're both individually too short for my taste.|

Now, don't get me wrong, I did like the book. Especially the part at the end where |(ENDING SPOILERS HERE) robot police show up and try to kill/arrest/otherwise inconvenience the protagonists, discover a bunch of illegally-not-decommissioned robot kids, aaaaaand... are promptly wrecked by a bunch of leftover war robots. (Granted, the leftover war robots don't actually turn out to be on the side of the protagonists, and they do turn out to be very insane, like, megalomaniac kills-for-the-fun-of-it cartoon villain insane. But it turns out fine and some of them do turn into good guys.)| Major moment of awesome there.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+, probably, since |all the characters KNOW everyone's a robot, and the descriptions of them revealing their inner machine side aren't played for creepy factor|.

I'll give this one 4 stars, like its predecessor, despite having messier plotting and feeling a lot shorter.

(Endnote: The funniest bit in the entire book was |one of the reformed war robots deciding his name was Ralph. It was just so random|.)