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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2510 KP) rated Legacy in Books

Dec 31, 2019

Legacy

Shannon Messenger | 2019 | Children, Science Fiction/Fantasy

10.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

Sophie’s Journey Continues – Now with Twice the Alicorn Cuteness

This book opens nine days after the previous book ends. Sophie is finally able to talk to Mr. Forkle, one of the leaders of the Black Swan. However, he is most interested in discussing the most likely target for the Neverseen’s next attack instead of answering Sophie’s questions. His theory makes sense, but can Sophie and her friends figure out a way to stop them? Meanwhile, the Council has a surprising and game changing offer for Sophie. Will she take it?

Naturally, that just scratches the surface of this book since it is almost 800 pages. But it is worth it to watch the plots and sub-plots unfold. Sophie is on quite a journey, and this is another large step forward since we get some twists and revelations in this book. Obviously, I don’t recommend starting here. There’s been a lot of world building in the previous seven books, and that’s always important in a fantasy series. Plus, because the books build on each other, there are major spoilers for events in the earlier books. The characters and their relationships continue to grow, and I loved watching that. Plus there’s plenty of humor and alicorn cuteness. The target middle grade audience will love it, as will anyone who enjoys fantasy. The pages flew by as I got lost in the story. Just be ready for that cliffhanger.

Kudos

Deborah (162 KP) rated The Children of Henry VIII in Books

Dec 21, 2018

I was surprised to see that this book, covering a fair subject - the four known children of Henry VIII - had only about 200 pages of actual text. A rather different prospect to Guy's weighty biography of Mary Queen of Scots. As reams of paper and oceans of ink of already been expended on the Tudors, I'm not sure quite what the impetus behind this book was. It's not that it wasn't well written, because it was, but that I felt that it offered up almost nothing new. As an introduction to the subject to a reader new to the period I think I would recommend it, but to someone for whom this is already an area of interest, you've probably heard it all before.

The one new point that Guy does bring up, is the theory that Henry VIII belonged to a rare blood group, which resulted in problems with offspring surviving. We can see that no one woman appears to have more than one surviving child by him, but I would have liked a little more detail to support this - how did Henry come by his rare blood group? He was one of several siblings who survived infancy and his surviving sisters themselves had more than one surviving child.

A good brief guide to the subject, probably more suited to a reader fairly new to the subject. I felt disappointed as there was nothing new in here for me.