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Best Buddies: What's in a Name?
Best Buddies: What's in a Name?
Mother Melania | 2022 | Children
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Are you looking for a cute picture book for your child or children? I may have found one on a homeless person and a little dog. It is called Best Buddies: What's in a Name? It is a short introduction about a homeless person and finding a stray dog. What will they become as they start to bond? Bob decides on a name to call the dog he encounters.

This dog has found a Bob. What is the name for naming a dog? Will he be called Rover or Scruffy or something completely different? You will need to read the book to find out what the name of the dog will be called. Bob seems to struggle one naming his new cute homeless dog.

Children will learn about homelessness and caring for a dog in this sweet, adorable introduction to this book. The pictures are done quite well and are colorful. It is more of an introduction to the series of the main two characters than anything. We are introduced to Bob briefly and to Luke, but this book deals with figuring out what to name the cute little homeless dog Bob found.

What adventures will it hold for them as the stories go on? Children will find this book easy to read and understand as well. Parents will enjoy seeing their children learn about homelessness and other teachable moments. Children may even learn about kindness as well.
  
CB
Crimson Bound
9
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Amazing worldbuilding (0 more)
Well, Rosamund Hodge has done it again. I think this one was actually better than Cruel Beauty, and about on par with Bright Smoke, Cold Fire. Crimson Bound is billed as Cruel Beauty #2, but it doesn't actually seem to take place in the same world. They're only connected in that they're both dark fantasy retellings of fairy tales. Crimson Bound is loosely (VERY loosely!) based on Little Red Riding Hood. It's amazing.

In Rachelle's world, The Forest is the dominating theme - it encroaches on villages and towns, sending "woodspawn" to attack people, and Forestborn to turn more humans into bloodbound and ultimately Forestborn. Humans are sheep to The Forest; prey to the Forestborn. Once a Forestborn has marked a human, they have three days to kill someone or they will die. If they kill someone, they become bloodbound - an intermediary step before they become completely Forestborn. Bloodbound have increased strength, resilience, and fighting skills, so the King has extended an offer to Bloodbound - even though they are known murderers, since they had to have killed someone to gain their powers - he will grant them clemency in exchange for their service to the realm. Guard the people from the woodspawn, the mindless monsters the Forest sends to attack people, and he'll let you live.

So Rachelle is a Bloodbound, bound to the King. Unlike most, though, she still believes in some of the old pagan stories about The Forest and the Devourer - the ancient evil driving the Forest's predatory ways. The book is about her quest to stop it from coming through into their world and destroying everything. There are twists and reveals that I cannot mention here, but it is an AMAZING piece of world-building and myth and I LOVED IT.

I also discovered she has several short stories post on her website so I'll be binge-reading those for a while!

This book - and anything by Rosamund Hodge - is pure magic. If you like dark fairy tales, you can't do better than this.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
  
BB
By Blood We Live
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This thing is an <b>enormous</b> tome! I don't know if it has been released in hardback or not, but if it has, that version has to be anchor-worthy. I requested it from the library because Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette had stories in it, and I'll read pretty much anything either of those worthies publish. I didn't expect to care for most of the rest, and didn't plan to do much more than flip through them.

As it happens, I read most of the other stories, and there were many surprises. I did skip some of the reprints, such as the Anne Rice story (I wouldn't have read it the first time it was published, and I wasn't about to read it simply because she was in good company now). I had read Carrie Vaughn's "Life Is the Teacher" before, but for some reason my eyes just fell into reading it again, and I felt well rewarded for doing so. On the other hand, while I had enjoyed "Twilight" by Kelley Armstrong the first time I read it a few years back, I wasn't moved to repeat the experience.

I believe my favorite story may have been "Finders, Keepers" by L.A. Banks, as I still remember it clearly and with pleasure. I've only read one of Banks' Vampire Huntress novels and didn't find it interesting at all, so I haven't read any more of her work, but I may seek out more of her short fiction in the future.

"Mama Gone" by Jane Yolen felt fresh, as Yolen's work so often does. Garth Nix's contribution, "Infestation," was a little bit predictable, but that may be due to overexposure to the genre.

I found myself returning to the cover art by David Palumbo again and again, intrigued by the fascinating faces he gave the figures there. They aren't classically alluring, and most aren't hideous&mdash;most would look perfectly at home on any street. But they also have that, that something, an element you can't quite put your finger on, an element of the other. Take a look and I believe you'll see what I mean.

Have fun!
  
Let it Snow
Let it Snow
6
6.9 (9 Ratings)
Book Rating
The first story is really good (7-8/10) (0 more)
The last story was quite shoddy (4/10) (1 more)
The patron saint of pigs
A mixed bag of stories.
Contains spoilers, click to show
I had to read this at Christmas time, there is no other way, and at first I really quite enjoyed it, the first story The Jubilee Express was really quite something, I loved jubilee's character and her situation with her parents in prison and being shipped off to Florida. At this point Jeb who she meets on the train seems like a really 2D character (and will co time to be for the entire book) I was dissapointed in Jeb's character as there was a lot more potential there but no purpose from the 3 authors. However Jubilee I loved her motives and personality was great and the way that the story flowed from the train into the waffle house and meeting Stuart was great. The Jubilee Express was filled with weird and wonderful characters and a beautiful ending.

It goes down hill from here.

I've never read anything by John Green but I was dissapointed by his segment. The love between Tobin and The Duke is rushed and fake as hell. It didn't feel realistic in any sense of the word, the love in Twilight was better written. The adventure we follow with Tobin is good and enjoyable but the love aspect is not at all. I wanted this segment over with ASAP.

Then the patron saint of pigs, god. I despised Addie. I get that this short story was meant to be a moral story on being selfless etc etc but I got to the end of the story and again was drowned in superficial love that holds no weight or realism. In the end Addie is just forgiven for all that she has done in the past but we see no real change in her thinking. By the end she still constantly acts in her own interests, she only picks up the pig to prove to her friends that she isn't selfish and self absorbed. However the atmosphere of this last story was nice seeing all the stories fully converge.

However I only truly loved The Jubilee Express.
The rest felt heartless and 2D.
  
The End of the Ocean
The End of the Ocean
Maja Lunde | 2019 | Dystopia, Fiction & Poetry
8
8.3 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde is Climate Fiction (Cli-Fi) at its best and most stark. At its best, because everything that happens feels as though they are the reasonable consequences of what we are predicted now; most stark, because this is truly a terrible version of the future.

In the present day(2019), 69 year old environmental activist Signe discovers that her home town, and in particular her ex-boyfriend, is responsible for cutting up and shipping off ice from their glacier to sell to the rich, so that they can have glacial ice in their expensive cocktails. She decides to sabotage the shipment, and steals some of it - or what she can carry in her boat. She sails her ship through a terrible storm with the intention of taking it to the person responsible.

In 2041, David and his daughter Lou, arrive at a refugee camp after escaping from war and fire in their French home. There is little water and food, but David is hopeful that his wife and infant son (who they’ve been separated from) will be there or arrive soon.

The two stories are linked when David and Lou find Signe’s boat in the garden of one of the abandoned houses.

This is such a powerful book. It takes current scientific research and arrives at the extreme end of its prediction: drought, famine and war. I had to read it in short chunks, because I found the story so moving and intensely depressing, to be honest. It doesn’t feel exaggerated: I didn’t read it thinking “Well that would NEVER happen”. It’s all too plausible, in fact. I really liked how the two stories ran parallel to one another and joined up in the latter half of the book, with the boat as some sort of symbol of hope.

It’s not all depressing though. There is an element of hope, and we see the enduring strength of the human spirit. I have The History of Bees on my bookshelf, which I will read now - and I’ll definitely look out for the third in this quartet of books.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster UK for my copy of this book.
  
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