Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull | Book Review

Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was really fun. I thought the characters, magic, traps, and challenges faced were creative, fun, and a bit more intense than the last book. I really liked how the story didn't start right back at Fablehaven but gave us a little glimpse into the ordinary lives of the two sibling main characters. Then it was all go from there with lots of fun, adventure, and more of the story world and how it works revealed. I look forward to reading the next one. It's been fun to read this alongside my 10 year old and talk about it.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha ChristieBook Review

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While it seemed like a bit of a mix between the Great Gastby and a Sherlock Holmes novel, I wouldn't say that's a bad thing. Just as I felt the book was becoming a bit dry the murder happened, and no that's not a spoiler if you know this genre. I must say I actually don't know the mystery genre well but have always wanted to get into it, thus my reading of this book. I have read one other of her books a few years ago, "And Then There Were None," which I quite enjoyed and rated four out of five stars. It was an interesting thing to find that the narrator in this story was interested in becoming a detective, yet it was another character, Poirot, who does the investigation. I was expecting it to be the narrator character, but then it was like duh the series is named after Poirot. I’m just saying that’s the way the story led me at first. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me, as it's a lot like Sherlock Holmes, and even the Great Gatsby, where the protagonist is not really the narrator or main character. I'm sure varying definitions of those terms would lead to disagreements with how I worded that, but I'd wager you understand what I mean. I quite enjoyed Poirot's interviews with people. I liked how he differed a bit as a detective from Sherlock Holmes, he has perhaps less powers of deduction and more a talent for thourough investigation where he follows his process and finds things out in that manner. I never disliked Homles's amazing deductions, but it was cool to see Poirot go to work in action rather than puffing on a pipe to solve the case almost exclusively with his mind. EDIT upon futher reading I saw Poirot use great powers of deduction to help him solve the case, and much like Sherlock Holmes he definitely reveals all in a huge avalanche of information at the end. Here's maybe the difference though, while Poirot is sharp, he is also surprised by things and must work them out as he finds new evidence. We get the sense that Poirot is making some amazing deductions as the story progresses, and while he may have solid conclusions, he continues to work on the case. I liked that sense of movement. It is very similar to Sherlock Holmes, but also he does it in his own way with his method. It is heavily inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's writings but has a different flavor. I really like the character of Poirot too, as he is described as a small man. He seems not to be physically imposing, but his demeaner still is one of confidence and assuredness. He's a cool character. I look forward to more books with him in them. I enjoyed the narrator, Mr. Hastings's, observations about how the characters handled the death. Richard Armitage did a great job narrating this book. His variation for the different characters brought a lot of life to the dialogue, and there was a lot of dialogue so he was a great choice for this book. It cracked me up how Mr. Hastings would get annoyed with Poirot and his elusive knowledge of the crime that Mr. Hastings couldn't guess at. Overall I enjoyed it.

double Dutch | Vocab Words

Ever since my A.P. English class, in which my excellent teacher gave us a new word of the day, I have grown very fond of learning new words and their meanings. I used to carry around a monstrously tall stack of index cards with words on one side and definitions on the other. Just about all of these words were ones I had never even read or heard of before, let alone knew the definitions for. My vocabulary expanded like crazy that school year. Now, whenever I'm reading a book and come across a word I don't know, I stop and look up its meaning. This is a great way to learn new words, by reading! Below what you'll find is less a word than a slang phrase. I heard it while listening to the audiobook "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," the first in the Hercule Poirot mystery series of books. I hope to start including this phrase "double Dutch" in my diction.

double Dutch

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noun Slang.

unintelligible or garbled speech or language:She could have been talking double Dutch for all we understood of it.

I Can Fly | A Serial Story

I'm writing an ongoing serialized story for the new platform Kindle Vella. If you haven't heard of that, it's Amazon's way to publish serialized stories. Serialized is where instead of a complete novel, it's more like episodes and seasons - like many TV shows. So the first few episodes of my story, "I Can Fly" are setting up the characters and the world. Once that's done, each episode will be it's own self contained story. I'm excited about this because my schedule has been pretty nuts lately, which has lead to me simply not having time to write fiction. I did start an unofficial Minecraft novel, but after getting a couple chapters in, I haven't worked on it more. This project is a great outlet for me to write tons of short stories, and they'll all be building on each other, but also each will be self contained so it's a project I can actually make progress on. I think this will be a great way for me to write fiction again, even though I'm super busy with becoming a pastor. When I feel like the season is coming to an end I can plan some wrap up episodes and then it might be long enough to be a book. For now though, it's a really fun new way to write in a serialized way. The first two chapters are live and I hope to be posting more soon. Check it out here:

 I Can Fly | Kindle Vella (amazon.com)