Monday, January 02, 2012

Happy New Year & Patricia Wrede's "The Thirteenth Child"

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season! I spent time with family, had a few cocktails, did a lot of reading and made a significant dent in the backlog of e-mails. I'm hoping to clear the rest of it in the next two weeks.

Here are some thoughts on one of the books I inhaled. :-)

I don't tend to read a lot of Young Adult (YA) fiction, but I was given Patricia C. Wrede's The Thirteenth Child as a gift, and really enjoyed it.

It's not a romance but a fantasy that deals with the main character, Eff's, journey from child to woman - and the development of her magic. As the 13th child in her family, she's said to be bad luck and sure to turn evil. Meanwhile, her twin, Lan, is the 7th son of a 7th son, said to be very lucky and with great magic.

The book is set in the wild West, when people are just starting to move out into the frontier - except it's a wild West complete with mammoths, steam dragons, saber-tooth cats and more.

I loved going on the journey with Eff, Lan, their friend, William, and all the other characters, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend the book to anyone who enjoys a good fantasy. Link to excerpt on Patricia C. Wrede's website.

So, what did you get up to in the break?

5 comments :

Saiqa said...

Hi Nalini,
First of all I really missed you and your blog! My holidays werent much fun apart from the work christmas party.I spent most of them cleaning my new house and looking at washing machines and fridges in the sales! In fact thats what I'm going to be doing today too. Theres nothing as boring as shopping for a washing machine! Especially when you've never devoted much time to thinking about washing machines before. I have been too tired to read. Am going to try and read something tonight, probably my favourite bits of Kaleb and Judd!

Kathy Martin said...

Now you will have to look for Across the Great Barrier for Eff's continuing adventures. It will be the end of August before we get the final book in Eff's story. I can't wait for The Far West! I love Wrede's novels and her blog and posts about writing are also interesting and informative to this non-writer.

Callista said...

Christmas was great.Had some leisure time...was re-reading Harry Potter.Ah,good times :)

Diane said...

Had a great relaxing Christmas and New Year!

orannia said...

Happy holiday season to you too Nalini! I'm currently on holiday and working my way through the spring cleaning (I never knew I had so many boxes to go through) with lashing of eBooks :)

Here's to a wonderful 2012 for all!