You ask the librarian to hold a book for you that they just took out of circulation so that you could buy it before someone else does.

You name your stuffed animals after book characters…

(yes, when I was about eight… my stuffed animals’ names changed about weekly. )

Sacred Trust by Hannah Alexander – 346 pages
A Solemn Oath by Hannah Alexander – 351 pages
A Silent Pledge by Hannah Alexander – 349 pages
Oksana by Susan K. Downs & Susan May Warren – 286 pages
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – 203 pages
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle – 211 pages
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle – 278 pages
Eragon by Christopher Paolini – 503 pages
Eldest by Christopher Paolini – 681 pages
Brisingr by Christopher Paolini – 763 pages
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke – 534 pages
Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn – 361 pages

Total: 11579 pages

Hannah Alexander books
I really enjoyed these books. The ending of bk3 was a little forced and obviously was intended to get the characters out of a sticky moral dilemma that they had accidentally gotten themselves into, but overall, I liked them. The style of the author is very good, and the medical problems are handled delicately. Even when a girl has been abused, the author never goes into detail, and instead focuses on the emotional problems that such a victim has. The author has a great sensitivity for ethical and moral dilemmas in the hospital workplace, and I appreciated the strength of the characters to always wish to do the right thing for their patients – even when the laws make life difficult.

Oksana
So-so. Nothing wrong with it but not really stellar. A historical love story; wish it had spent more time on the historicalness and less time on the romance. Would’ve been interesting to hear a little more about the Bolsheivik Revolution than just the slight mentions here and there.

Madeleine L’Engle books
These are fascinating, despite some theological problems (mainly that L’Engle seems to be an Universalist). At times the stories were so deep that I couldn’t make out what the author was getting at; I’ll have to read again later. Particularly, I liked the theme of that every choice you make matters – you can’t just do whatever you want because it could have cosmic consequences. I also liked the characters and writing style; there seemed to be poetry embedded in prose, which was odd, but flowed very nicely.  I very well may dig up a few more of her books to read, though I will not buy them to keep due to theological issues.

Eragon books
Reviewed in my Buzz feed as well as on a thread here on Incredibooks

Inkheart
After my mom enjoyed the film, I decided to read the books. I like Inkheart somewhat – it has a very good premise, development, and payoff – but…. Meggie (MC) lies a lot without even the narrator clarifying that it is definitely wrong, her aunt swears, and there is a lot of sneaking that I just do not like. Plus, there are no real character arcs as far as I can tell, which as a writer, annoys me. I am questioning whether or not I’ll read the other two books in the series that I checked out from the library.

Heir to the Empire
Ha, my first Star Wars EU book. Not intending to read any more except the rest in the series. This is a good clean action story – not much more. Any character development is apparently going to be slow over the course of the trilogy (I see the act one and part of act 2 of a character arc for Luke at the least)…sadly, my library doesn’t have the other two, so I’m stuck.

You can’t compare this to the original trilogy, of course. Han continues to quote himself from the films (even lines that rely on Harrison Ford’s acting to actually sound anything but dumb or OTN), Leia’s voice escapes my imagination when reading her dialogue (and I’ll never be able to imagine her with a lightsaber, particularly after the way she used it in this book), and the introduction of alien creatures that provide “Force fields” to protect villains from Jedi doesn’t have near the effect that could be desired. (Mara Jade taunts Luke by asking what it feels like to be stripped of the power that made him special: neither Luke nor the narrator answers the question and Luke eventually escapes through a combination of Skywalker luck and quick thinking) On top of that, the conflict of Mara Jade against Luke, while deep, just can’t match the primal conflict between father and son of the films. (‘Luke, I am your father’ is so much better than ‘Luke, you killed my Emperor’…)

On the plus side, the character of Luke (and Artoo!) matched that of the films very well, the plot was interesting, I didn’t get lost in all the story threads (mimicking the multiple-thread style of the films very well!), the conflict between Mara and Luke was quite well-done (particularly when Luke wasn’t in the scene and other characters made observances of her character), pretty much all surviving original trilogy characters and many original locations put in an appearance (even characters which were never named in the films…lol), and we finally find out more details on hyperspace and long space trips.

Ultimately, I’m pretty positive about this book, but I’d take The Empire Strikes Back any day over Heir to the Empire. Even so, I’ll probably go back for another 360 pages of re-reading.

I just finished the three books.

My assessment:
By the time Paolini gets around to releasing the fourth book, the little bit of me that wants to know how it ends won’t care anymore.

Other than that, it’s rather violent, doesn’t provide answers to some moral questions regarding warfare that it raises to the characters, has some highly suspicious scenes that crossed the line of ‘kinda-okay’ to ‘not-okay’ that I skimmed over, and Paolini can’t seem to decide whether to believe in monotheism, panthiesm, atheism, or polytheism.

Add that to the Star Wars/LotR borrowings throughout all the books (haha, they even have two different variants of the “Luke, I am your father” moment in the books), the fact that I cared more about Murtagh than our MC Eragon, and the way the plot kept pausing to talk about random customs of elves and dwarves and riders…. meh, the only thing I really want to know about the last book is whether Eragon will share Frodo’s fate and cross the sea which apparently the elves have been across at some point.

Final word:
Star Wars in Middle-earth, without the historical royal magnificence of those who followed Feanor or the strong, decisive, identifiable moral struggles of the Skywalker family.

Not going to be a re-read.

For the record, I think Dragonspell is a Christianized Eragon, but that’s my take after only one Dragonkeeper book…

They’re cool and I like them but I only buy maybe one tshirt a year. If you had them, I’d tell my grandparents that I wanted one for Christmas, but that’s not necessarily a yes.

Maybe if you don’t put the year on it, then it’d be good for every year, not just 2010?