By Tamora Pierce [LibraryThing – Goodreads]
Beka Cooper has just buried her fiancé when she’s called in on a Hunt that threatens the royal family – and the safety of Tortall itself. Along with her partner Tunstall and her loyal scent hound Achoo, Beka must travel far outside of her comfort zone and untangle a conspiracy involving some of the most wealthy and powerful people in the kingdom – while she’s forced to question exactly who she can trust.
By Janice Hardy [Librarything -- GoodReads]
In the final book in the Healing Wars trilogy, all Nya wants is to search for her missing sister — until she learns that her home city of Geveg has rebelled against the Duke. Now the Duke is bringing his whole army to Geveg to retake control, or destroy it entirely. Seeing no other choice, Nya takes off to warn her people, only to quickly become embroiled in the rebellion itself. But is she really a symbol of hope, or is she only a pawn? And can she manage to be a hero?
General spoilers for the series after the cut:
By Cinda Williams Chima [LibraryThing – Goodreads]
After a perilous journey back to her homeland, Princess Raisa of the Fells must reclaim the throne that is hers by birthright. But her political opponents want her dead and her more malleable younger sister on the throne, and the Clans are ready to go to war to prevent that from happening. Raisa must figure out a way to live long enough to be crowned, quell civil war, and protect her queendom from the war that is raging just outside her borders.
Meanwhile, ex-thief-turned-wizard Hanson Allister has just learned that the girl he knew – and loved – as Rebecca is the princess he is sworn to protect…and the daughter of the queen he blames for the death of his family. It’s his job to keep her alive, but he’s no longer sure he even wants to.
By Cinda Williams Chima [LibraryThing - Goodreads]
In order to escape being forced into a politically and emotionally disastrous marriage, Princess Raisa flees her queendom and enrolls in Oden’s Ford, a school that caters neutrally to all of the Seven Realms, under an assumed name. Meanwhile, ex-thief Hanson Allister, having discovered that he is a wizard, also travels to Oden’s Ford to learn the magic he’ll need to protect the clans, the closest thing to a family he has left. When they meet, the attraction that sparked between them once before becomes a relationship, but conspiracy gathers around each of them, and they’ll be lucky to make it out of Oden’s Ford alive, let alone together.
[Brian Jacques at LibraryThing - Brian Jacques at Goodreads]
One day in fifth grade when I’d exhausted all of the skinny, middle-grade books in our classroom library, my teacher handed me something much thicker, with a smaller font and harder words and a heavier subject matter. “Try this,” she said. It was Brian Jacques’s Mossflower.
I admit I struggled through the first half. There was a lot of plodding through deep snow, a lot of British dialects, a lot of long descriptive passages where not much happened – hard for a hyper kid to sit through. But the more I read, the more engaged I became, and the easier the reading went. It took me months to finish Mossflower. It took me days to finish the other four books in the series.
By Carolyn Q. Ebbitt [LibraryThing - Goodreads]
Amelia, princess of Gossling, is nothing like her three older sisters. While they are all beautiful, graceful, clever, and talented, she is awkward, stubborn, and a terrible student. But when the king and queen fall victim of a plague and the girls’ cruel uncle, Count Raven, attempts to seize power, Amelia is the only princess to escape the clutches of his magic. Now she must free her sisters from Count Raven’s spell and rally the people of Gossling to fight back before it’s too late.
[Behemoth: Librarything - Goodreads | Blue Fire: Librarything - Goodreads]
These two books don’t actually have much in common, but I’m killing two birds with one stone here because they’re both sequels to books I really enjoyed, and while I liked both books, I don’t have a heck of a lot to say about either one.
By Megan Whalen Turner [LibraryThing -- GoodReads]
After Gen’s bragging lands him in the king’s prison, the chances of escape look slim. Then the king’s scholar, the magus, needs the thief’s skill for a seemingly impossible task — to steal a hidden treasure from another land.
To the magus, Gen is just a tool. But Gen is a trickster and a survivor with a plan of his own.
By Cressida Cowell [LibraryThing - Goodreads]
Even though Hiccup is the son of the Viking chief, he’s scrawny and not much good at Viking-type things. All the youths in the village have to catch dragons to train, but Hiccup only manages to get a tiny one, which he accurately names Toothless. Though Hiccup has taught himself to speak Dragonese, Toothless refuses to obey him, and eventually gets Hiccup and all the other boys banished from the village. That’s when they realize a monstrous Sea Dragon has washed up on their shore. It’s up to Hiccup and Toothless to defeat the Sea Dragon, save the village, and get themselves reinstated in the village, if they can only get along long enough to do it.
By Susan Cooper [LibraryThing]
On his 11th birthday, Will Stanton learns that he not merely human; he is the last of the immortal Old Ones, destined to protect the world from those that would destroy it. Since time immemorial there has been a constant struggle between the forces of the Light and those of the Dark. Now the Dark is rising, gathering for a final push, and the chances of stopping it for once and for all rest with a small group of children: Will, youngest of the Old Ones; Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew, powerless but clever and resourceful; and Bran Davies the Raven Boy, with a secret magical heritage of his own.