Review - The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, Part 2

I went to Paris for a few days and ended up not finishing or posting this review so I've decided to do two posts this week. One today and one on Thursday, which is my usual blogging day. I'm sorry it took so long for me to get this post written up and posted. I really need to start keeping on top of my blog posts. Hopefully you will enjoy my personal ramblings about this book and feel free to tell me your thoughts about it in the comments section.

Personal Ramblings :-

*SPOILER ALERT*

Don't read this part unless you've read the book.

"It's too much like [insert book name here]" :-

After finishing this book, I snooped around the internet to see what other people thought of it and found out that quite a few people felt like it was a rip off of Harry Potter. This is mostly because Cassie Clare started out writing H. Potter fan-fiction. I, on the other hand, don't feel this way. Yeah, there were a few similarities like the fact that it was centered around a young boy who was starting at a new "high school" where he didn't know anyone and ended up making friends with a guy and a girl, but I'm sure that was only for some variety. There were loads of differences, like the fact Call may possibly have died as a child and Constantine may have placed his soul inside Calls body. Whoa! And who saw Drew's betrayal coming? Not I! I honestly believed Drew was so innocent. Let's face it, the "magic" part of the story was different too, H.P uses wands and Latin words where as The Magisterium Series uses feelings and the magic comes from with-in them. The story may have been based on the idea of Harry Potter but the authors have made it their own.

Personal Predictions :-

Personally, I kind of hope that Call and Jasper become friends and all the students end up banding together to defeat whoever the villainous character is because a sense of teamwork is always nice to read about in a book. It's quite obvious that something important is going to happen with certain characters as their names are mentioned quite a lot. For example, Call, Aaron and Tamara are the main trio so they're going to be brought up a lot in the books. Jasper is supposedly Call's arch-enemy, the none-main-character student that belittles the supposedly-heroic main character, he's brought up enough to make him seem like he's going to be quite important to this story. There's also Celia, who we get glimpses of, she seems to be fond of Call and talks to him in quite a few parts of the story. It is quite clear why Drew is constantly mentioned from the ending of the book, as he turns out to be one of the bad guys.
At the moment, it is quite unclear who the villainous character is because Constantine's soul is apparently inside Call. There's the possibility that Call could end up becoming the villain which would be interesting to read about. An innocent, to-himself child turning into a rule defying villain because he has a villainous soul inside him. On the other hand, maybe it will be Call's life lessons and his own personality that rules his actions which makes him into the hero. Who knows? There's also the possibility that the villains are going to be Constantine's followers, as with this first book. It seems that maybe they'll try to persuade Call to become like Constantine was. Another theory would be that one of Constantine's followers knew how to shift souls from one body to another and takes Constantine's soul out of Call to put back into his original body. I have no idea and my thoughts are running away with me!

Overall, as I said in my other review, I'm quite intrigued to find out what happens in the next book and will certainly be buying it as soon as it comes out.

Happy Reading
:)
xx

Review - My True Love Gave To Me by Various Authors, Part 2

*This review contains spoilers*

Here is Part 2 of the My True Love Gave To Me review. I have decided to do these reviews in three separate parts because otherwise this post would end up being really long.

It's A Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown by Stephanie Perkins

This was another story that I thoroughly enjoyed. It drew me in from the first page because it was so well-written. I felt that this story worked well as a 35 paged short story because there was still some character development involved. There was also a lot of information revealed in a clever way through Marigold's and North's conversations with each other. The setting of the Christmas tree lot gave the story a warm yet wintry feeling. I thought it was cute that Marigold found North's voice intriguing and wanted to use it for her project. This then unfolded to them getting to know each other quite well and realizing that they weren't that different from each other.

"I've always felt lucky to live someplace where snow is rare, you know? It's the rareness that makes it so special." - North

Rating :- ★★★★

Your Temporary Santa by David Levithan



Personally, I thought this story was alright. but not fantastic. It was mostly written from the unnamed protagonist's thoughts which I found interesting. It seems the protagonist was having a bit of a conflict in his head about whether or not he belonged with Connor and his family. It also touched on the idea that a relationship can be kind of easy, as in sometimes it is enough just to be able to hold hands or cuddle that special someone. I got the feeling that the protagonist deeply cared about his boyfriend, Connor, from the fact he dressed up as Santa to surprise Connor's little sister, Riley and to help keep that spark that Santa exists alive for her.

"Our world within this world."

Rating :- ★★★

Krampuslauf by Holly Black

Oh, Holly Black, I love how your mind works! First of all, I'd never even heard of Krampuslauf until I read this story so it was quite nice to read about something different which still had a Christmas element to it. Secondly, I was quite surprised at first that there was no mythological/fantasy element to this story seeing as I know Holly Black is well known for writing stories about mythological/fantasy creatures. After getting to near the end though, that changed when it was revealed that the Krampus was real instead of a boy in a costume. Another element that I enjoyed about this story is that the characters were written in such a way that their different personalities reflected through their speech.

"Maybe it was okay to imagine greater things." - Hanna

Rating :- ★★★★★

Happy Reading
:)
xx