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The Bookish Owl – The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins

I know it’s been a while, but I’m back with new Bookish Owl posts, and today’s book is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins!

I’m so sorry for being absent lately and not keeping up with replying to comments or staying in touch with my blogger friends. It’s just been crazy lately (you might have noticed I recently published a new book), and it’s been all I could do just to remember to do basic things such as eating…

I hope you haven’t all given up on me!

But seeing as I’m 18 books behind, I better get on with the book stuff. As mentioned above, the featured book in this post is ‘The Hunger Games’. I first read this many years ago and while I remember liking it well enough, it didn’t really drive me to rush out to get the next book in the series, and in the end I never got around to it at all. However, after rereading it, I absolutely loved it!

I think the reason I didn’t really love it the first time around was because I found it a bit far-fetched. But now, after America got a reality star who have dick competitions with dictators as President, somehow I can TOTALLY imagine a government turning kids into celebrities before throwing them into an arena to kill each other.

It’s a slightly depressing reason for changing your mind about a book, isn’t it…?


The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins

WINNING MEANS FAME AND FORTUNE.
LOSING MEANS CERTAIN DEATH.
THE HUNGER GAMES HAVE BEGUN. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and once girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love.


The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins

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The Bookish Owl – Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett

Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett

Time to shoot some aliens, with Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett.

This is the first book in the Johnny Maxwell trilogy.

It might not have aged as well as Pratchett’s other books, but the overall message about how we’re numb to the horrors of war fits as well today as it must have done in the 90s. In the book it’s the Gulf War they’re referring to, but it might as well have been any of the wars over the last thirty years.

But despite the timeless morale, I think kids today would have a really hard time relating to this book, considering they have never known a time where space invader games were ‘cutting edge’…


Only You Can Save Mankind
by Terry Pratchett

It’s just a game . . . isn’t it?

The alien spaceship is in his sights. His finger is on the Fire button. Johnny Maxwell is about to set the new high score on the computer game Only You Can Save Mankind.

Suddenly, a message appears:
We wish to talk. We surrender.

But the aliens aren’t supposed to surrender—they’re supposed to die!


Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett

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The Bookish Owl – The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

It’s time for The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo.

This is a collection of fairy tales set in the Grishaverse and they are all wonderfully dark. We’re talking far more Grimm than Disney here… and then a tad darker than that.

The book itself is absolutely gorgeous, both inside and out. It’s a beautiful hardcover book and each page inside is illustrated. At first I thought that every page in a specific story had the same illustration, but if you pay attention, you can see that it changes subtly for every page and the changes actually provides ominous hints to what’s to come later in the story. It’s genius.

As I said, the stories are set in the Grishaverse (which consists of books like the Shadow and Bone trilogy and King of Scars), but they can easily be read without having read any of the other books. I would recommend The Language of Thorns to anyone who enjoys dark fairy tales!


The Language of Thorns
by Leigh Bardugo

Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns.

Travel to a world of dark bargains struck by moonlight, of haunted towns and hungry woods, of talking beasts and gingerbread golems, where a young mermaid’s voice can summon deadly storms and where a river might do a lovestruck boy’s bidding but only for a terrible price.


The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

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The Bookish Owl – Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne by David Gaider

Dragon Age The Stolen Throne

Here be dragons! Just in case the ‘dragon’ in Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne by David Gaider didn’t clue you in…

The Stolen Throne is the prequel to Dragon Age: Origins, the first game in one of my all-time favorite video game franchises. And it follows Prince Maric, the father of my all-time favorite character Alistair, during his rebellion against the Orlesian usurper of the Fereldan throne. You also get to see a lot of Loghain, Jackass Supreme in Origins, but very nearly likable in this book.

Though still a jackass.

While The Stolen Throne is a good and well-written book, I think I had expected a bit more from something written by David Gaider, who was the lead writer for Dragon Age: Origins. The thing about the Dragon Age games is that they have characters you can’t help falling in love with, but the characters in this book didn’t make much of an impact on me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked them well enough and I enjoyed the book… but it just didn’t have that special something I get from the games.


If you’re a fan of the Dragon Age games as well, check out my rambling post on my favorite DA companions! Or wait around for my future Bookish Owl post on Hard in Hightown by Varric Tethras…


Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne
by David Gaider

After his mother, the beloved Rebel Queen, is betrayed and murdered by her own faithless lords, young Maric becomes the leader of a rebel army attempting to free his nation from the control of a foreign tyrant.

His countrymen live in fear; his commanders consider him untested; and his only allies are Loghain, a brash young outlaw who saved his life, and Rowan, the beautiful warrior maiden promised to him since birth. Surrounded by spies and traitors, Maric must find a way to not only survive but achieve his ultimate destiny: Ferelden’s freedom and the return of his line to the stolen throne. 


Dragon Age The Stolen Throne

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The Bookish Owl – Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

Lights! Camera! Action! It’s Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett.

This has always been my least favorite Discworld book, but I did like it a little better upon rereading it. I do, however, think it could have been vastly improved by more scenes with the wizards. Especially since this is the book that introduces Archchancellor Ridcully, my favorite wizard and nightmare boss. But then again, there’s only so many times the poor Bursar can be nearly shot by his new boss before he loses it, and he did deserve to keep his sanity, at least until the end of the book…

But the mental image of most of Unseen University’s faculty clinging to to Windle Poon’s racing wheelchair while screaming their heads off was amazing, and I could have used more of that. Compared to that, Victor just wasn’t that interesting a main character.


Moving Pictures
by Terry Pratchett

‘Holy wood is a different sort of place. People act differently here. Everywhere else the most important things are gods or money or cattle. Here, the most important thing is to be important.’

People might say that reality is a quality that things possess in the same way that they possess weight. Sadly alchemists never really held with such a quaint notion. They think that they can change reality, shape it to their own purpose. Imagine then the damage that could be wrought if they get their hands on the ultimate alchemy: the invention of motion pictures, the greatest making of illusions. It may be a triumph of universe-shaking proportions. It’s either that or they’re about to unlock the dark terrible secret of the Holy Wood hills – by mistake…


Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett