"House of many ways" by Diana Wynne Jones

"House of many ways" is the sequel to "Howls moving castle". It's a kids book at it's good enough for children I guess.

I was however quite disappointed with this book. I enjoyed "Howls moving castle" very much which is why I got the sequel in the first place. But "House of many ways" didn't have the same charms as Howl did.

First of all the main characters in Howl became secondary characters and news characters were introduced. I had been looking forward to seeing the old characters so this was quite disappointing I have to say.

Then there's the fact that I found the story to be paced far too fast. There was no time to digest any of the information before brand new information was thrown at your face.

And last of all the plot wasn't as interesting as the plot in Howl, and the magic in it wasn't half as charming and as lovely to imagine.

So all in all the plot wasn't a bad plot, and the story wasn't a bad story, it's just that "House of many ways" didn't live up to its predecessor.

I didn't hate this book. But I didn't love it or enjoy it all that much either. I much preferred "Howl's moving castle".

"The Host" by Stephenie Meyer

I didn't want to read "the Host" at first because the Twilight Saga hadn't impressed me all that much. Not that I hated it, because I didn't. I say this because Twilight is one of those books that people either hate or love. I didn't hate Twilight, but I didn't love it either. There, now that that's out of the way...

"The Host" was lent to me by a friend who convinced me to read it. And I was pleasantly surprised because I enjoyed very much. I found it interesting and quite sweet. Also the concept of the alien life forms invading earth was really cool here. Not cheesy as most alien invasions are, at least in my eyes.

In this case the aliens are actually these parasite type creatures who take over the bodies of the life forms occupying the invaded planet. And they're very peaceful creatures who don't like conflict or war or any of that stuff. So obviously they invade us. Which isn't conflictual or warish at all, no, no...

Anyway, what happens usually when the aliens take over the host body is that the previous consciousness of the human is erased. But this is the story of a girl who resists the invasion of her own body. So the alien (named wanderer) and the girl (Melanie) kind of have to learn to live with one another, seeing as they have to share a body.

It's also a love story. Melanie is in love with a man named Jared, and Wanderer feels Melanie's emotions and so falls in love with him too. And then madness ensues...

It's a good story. I definitely would recommend.

"The Age of Miracles" by Karen Thompson Walker

My auntie lent me this book on the condition that I read it in a day, because my cousin was also reading it. So it wasn't really lent to me. I guess i was pretty much ordered to plow through the thing because my auntie had liked it and thought I would too.

I read it in under five hours to my cousins shock. I don't think she expected I could read that fast. But hey! I was under pressure.

This is a story about the end of the world. But it's the slowest end of the world I've ever read about.

Basically the world starts to spin slower and slower, and so days start to get longer and longer. Days go from 24 hours long, to 26.5 hours, to 34 hours, and so on.

No one knows why this is happening. At first no one even noticed. But once they did the problems just flowed in and they didn't stop coming.

The story is told from the point of view of an eleven year old girl named Julia, who watches the world fall apart right in front of her. She explains to the reader how everything that was taken for granted in the world can no longer be relied on.

The entire world just implodes. Plants and animals start to die out, people panic and start running even though there is no where to run to, people start getting sick, crops die...

And all this happens very slowly, Julia only tells us how the world survived the first year of this disaster. She tells us about how people reacted, how some panicked completely, and how some just acted as if nothing was wrong.

An interesting and quite read. If you're interested in apocalyptic stories I do recommend this book. It's terrifyingly realistic.