Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Book Lovers Unite

Well, so much for trying to get some things done on this blog lately.  We have had quite the past couple of months and heading into the holiday season leaves little room for blogging, but I saw something today that I had to pass along to all our book loving readers. 

One Kings Lane (an entirely outrageous mostly home decor vendor) has a deal on books every once and again.  For the next 24 hours they are running a sale on Random House Classic Book Sets.  They have a lot of great book sets at decent discounts. 

If you are interested in checking out more of this sale, you have to sign up to receive their emails.  But wait, if you sign up under our account, you get $25 to spend however you like.  Please leave a comment (with a way to contact you through email) and I will send in a request for you to sign up and you will get $25! 

These are great gift ideas for the holiday season, if you can handle giving them away.

-L

Sunday, November 28, 2010

the Icewind Dale Trilogy - oldie but goodie 2

Here we are, about December, and still a massive amount of reading to be done. I think it's achievable if I set my sights a little lower. I've been doing so the last few books - sticking with 300 pages rather than talking the big guys. Problem is, the next Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson book has hit the shelves. If you haven't purchased it yet, head on over to Amazon and pick it up - Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time). Let's just say that I'm almost 300 pages into that one so far. Fortunately, I've done some reading prior that I haven't blogged about.

The Icewind Dale Trilogy happens to be the books prior to my last blog in publication date, but happen after the timeline of Drizzt's beginnings. They follow Drizzt and his few friends through a few adventures starting with a barbarian raid. After that it continues down a path of remembrance and new challenges. It's pretty much the same writing that you would expect from R.A. Salvatore, but maybe a little more green. In the previous trilogy he was able to massage a character's back story to help give you an idea of how he got to where he is in this story. It doesn't all line up though. There are a few areas where you can tell that the books need to be edited to match with The Dark Elf trilogies origin stories. 

I was telling my wife that I consider this smut fantasy..... which makes it sound horribly gross and me incredibly creepy. These are fantasy books, without the copious descriptions of lust like a Fabio covered novel, and it's smut b/c it's just an easy-to-read good versus bad story. You aren't expecting a hundred twist and turns. The characters go through a few different tales, but you expect the same from them. It's a nice book to pick up when you're wanting to get lost, but only for a little while. 

Rating: 6 CBs... it's still a "D" favourite even though I have found better authors since then. I also don't think I have the time or the patience to read through every Drizzt story. I am sure there are 15+ at the moment. You can also pick these up pretty cheap through a used book store. They've been around for a long while.

-D