For December we picked two short books, and since it's the holidays we decided one of them would be The Chimes by Charles Dickens. I had never read it, and overall I find Dickens can be tedious to read, even though I've enjoyed movie adaptations of several of his books, but I wanted to give this one a try. This story felt similar to A Christmas Carol in some ways, so it was inevitable that the two would be compared. While The Chimes is about the new year with resolutions and change being the major themes of the story, there are the sequences where the main character sees what the future could be like for his loved ones, and that reminded me a lot of A Christmas Carol. It's not a pretty picture, but of course I wasn't expecting it to be, this is Dickens after all. This story is more heavy handed and dreary feeling than A Christmas Carol and I did not enjoy it as much, but the overall theme and message was a good one that I could appreciate.
The other book we chose was a fun comedic fantasy, Another Fine Myth by Robert Asprin. This is the first book in a whole series of adventures. It was quite funny at times, and overall I liked it, but it does unfortunately have a very dated looking cover. If you are looking for a humorous type fantasy, maybe in the vein of Discworld, then give this series a try. It has everything that makes for a good humorous fantasy story, including puns, characters that are absurdly silly, and situations that will make you laugh.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Classics
Content: Clean
Charles Dickens 1844 novella that concerns the disillusionment of Toby "Trotty" Veck, a poor working-class man. When Trotty has lost his faith in Humanity and believes that his poverty is the result of his unworthiness he is visited on New Year's Eve by spirits to help restore his faith and show him that nobody is born evil, but rather that crime and poverty are things created by man.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Clean
Skeeve is a magician’s apprentice (and a wanna-be thief) until an assassin’s bolt kills his master, Garkin. Along with Aahz, the green-scaled, purple-tongued demon and master magician summoned by Garkin, he sets out on a quest to get even. The road to vengeance is bound to prove rocky, however, because Skeeve can barely light a candle with his beginning magic, and Aahz has lost his own considerable magical abilities as a consequence of Garkin’s summoning spell. Before they can confront the power-mad wizard who ordered Garkin’s assassination, they must survive a trip to a weird alternate dimension, encounters with Impish hit-men and a somewhat dull but persistent demon hunter who rides a friendly war unicorn, outwit a sharp-dealing Deevel, and deal with other uncanny enemies and even stranger friends ... all without killing each other in the process!
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