The Magician's Nephew

I am sure that when I was young I read through this series. I intended to read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe before going to see the movie, but that didn't work out too well. We gave Daniel a book about Narnia, mostly pictures and descriptions of the creatures and characters, and he was very interested. Suzy gave me the set for Christmas and so I decided to read the first in the series to see if it would be appropriate for Daniel to read.
So far, so good. It has been so long since I read any of the books it is certainly like reading them for the first time. The Magician's Nephew starts the series much as the Bible starts, with the story of creation. We are introduced to Aslan, Digory, Polly, the Witch, and the land of Narnia. C.S. Lewis does a great job creating his vision of Creation. His characters are compelling and interesting, and the visualization of the Creation story is very well done. I even had a 'laugh out loud' moment in reading last night.
I am still a little leery of reading it to Daniel, not because of content, but I don't know if it will hold his interest. One way to find out, right?

There Are More Crows on the Way

A Feast of Crows ended well, with a bit of surprise after the book finished. The author, George R. R. Martin, added a brief note at the end explaining the conspicuous absence of some of the expected characters. It seems that his book just got too long, so he split it off into two separate books, the next will come out in about a year. For those of you who were looking forward to learning more about the Imp, Dragon Queen or The Wall, you will just have to wait a little longer! I am going to give this one 3.5 stars. I considered four, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Definitely a very good book though. The caveat with that is you will be pretty lost without having read the previous books in the series. Actually there were times when I was lost anyway.

A Feast for Crows

This has been a pretty good series so far, so when Suzy got me the next in line for Christmas I was pleasantly surprised. A Feast for Crows is the fourth in the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series written by George R.R. Martin. One thing that I have particularly enjoyed about this author is his penchant for knocking off characters. I am paraphrasing poorly, but when Joss Whedon said that if no one dies it doesn't mean anything that really struck a cord with me. Martin may be taking that tenet to its extreme as the characters who started the series and are still alive are few and far between.

The series is a fantasy one, but not over the top about it. Very little occurs that is 'un-natural'. 99% of the story could easily have taken place in human kind's past. With the occasional dragon sighting thrown it for good measure. The basic premise is that the king has died, and there are doubts about the succession. These doubts lead to many vying for the throne, or a piece of it, and what results is what you would expect, death, chaos and misery. Martin does a good job with his character development, they are generally complex, the 'bad' ones generally have some good, the 'good' ones have some bad. I found myself feeling not quite affection, but not certainly not hatred, towards some rather unsavory characters. One other point about the characters, there are so many that are developed over the course of the series that he can hop around from one character's perspective (which is how he tells the story) to another without even touching on some for the whole book. Some characters which had fairly major roles in previous installments of the series have barely been touched in the first four hundred or so pages of this one.

If you like fantasy, and don't mind long series with pretty adult subject matter at times, this is a good series, and so far I have definitely enjoyed A Feast of Crows. I am looking forward to learning how well and upon what the crows continue to feast.