A Delightful Tale About Power
935582
Life is diferent for some people, and our main male  character is a model saught by many. He comes across a woman at one of his clubs, and the desireand attraction he feels is near magical. The rest of the story fills my imagination warmly! This is an enjoyable read.
2108586
A delightful story about the clash between civilized expectations and the wild in each of us. I particularly liked getting bits of the various animal's points of view, and the author's obvious familiarity with the part of the country that she describes. Although told with a sparse poet's touch, this tale leaves room for wry observations about love, life and road repair. It's not a story without sorrow, but in the end it offers a hopeful message about the places where humans and the rest of the world meet.
838755
A wonderful tale that sparkles with charm and wit.  Absolutely delightful.
1664357
A beautifully written tale. The characters were well developed and the plot flowed smoothly. The plot twists were well formed and it was a thoroughly enjoyable read that had me pondering the plot when I couldn't be actively reading. My only suggestion would be to establish the setting a bit more. While the idea was eventually fairly plain, parts of it seemed lacking.

Complex, multilayered, with significant twist magnified by expert characterization and an excellent grasp of politics, both personal and otherwise. NOT A PSEUDO-EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL FANTASY SETTING, I AM DEAD OF JOY. Ponong is an island nation of serpent-people, conquered by a quasi-European power of water-based shapeshifters and afflicted with a criminal element made up mostly of werewolves. The setting is thoroughly later Age of Empires, an excellent time period generally neglected by fantasy writers, and the place itself is strongly flavored with Polynesian/Pacific Islander myths and magic. Characterization is uniformly complex and excellent -- all of the major characters are multi-dimensional, by turns sympathetic and detestable, believably motivated and just as believably flawed. Lush and sensual. I really, really enjoyed this authors turns of phrase, her elegant descriptive passages, the way she maintained totally committed to the voice of both her characters and her setting.

The amazing and unusual worldbuilding gave this story every advantage, and the author didn't waste that promise but crafted a riveting and entertaining story.

I truly found this to be a well layered, complex book with well timed intrigue and plot twists. I feel that it was well executed and a unique concept.
1147201
What a charming little tale that encourages young women to worry about more than how to get some guy.  Princess Olive is a strong, amazing woman whose focus from a very young age is on service to those around her.  The Winnowwood curse makes her uglier each time she uses her powers, but that doesn't even phase her from doing what she can to help all the creatures around her, including her hateful father and shallow, self-centered sister (both almost comically exaggerated in their opposition to Olive).  Along the way to save her family and her world, Olive meets some interesting characters (human and animal) and shows her true colors over and over.  Beyond a morality tale, The Ugly Princess is a delightful read in its own right.  I must say, I was pleasantly surprised.  I have many, many books sitting around less than a quarter read, but this one I couldn't put down until the last page was done.
430562
I love action novels but they don't usually help us understand the deeper natures and limitations of our current society.  Pope Annalisa is a dynamic story that reveals the arrogance and egos of the patriarchal world we live in and why it isn't working so well.  This book illustrates the power that female energy can bring to solve world crises.  Thank you Peter Canova for bringing us a tale that gives us hope for a heroine who can transform human consciousness.
2081813
Crownless: Tales of the Banished is a sweet, imaginative tale that takes the reader into a new world: one with princesses, quests, adventures, and enchanting creatures. The main character is a fun "damsel in the distress," who is befriended by a mythical Panther-like keeper of The Wilds (the primary setting of the novel). She realizes she is not really in distress; rather, she is up for new challenges that take the reader on an interesting journey through a beautiful world. The bond she develops with her guardian, Thera, and the stories she recounts about other minor characters she meets along the way, are warm and memorable.

I recommend this title for readers who enjoy fantasy, young adult,and books about nature.
1908468
I could write A LOT of great things about this book, but I'll just keep it simple:
Wether you think you're interested in power or not, you have to read this book.
Because from the moment you begin to read it, you'll (a) have your mind blow and (b) begin to truly understand what motivates people.
Some of the rules will seem natural to you (i.e. Don't bite the hand that feeds), but others are far more eloquent.
If you learn these lessons - truly learn them - you will avoid countless problems, and will come out the winner in a power struggle. Hands down.
4188884
I really enjoyed this book. The writing is done well. There is a surprising political undertone to the book about how power is so easily gained.
3289534
Delightfully told ...a quick read and charming style
2558038
This is a great example of absolute power corrupting absolutely. I recommend this as a study in human nature. Few people can handle power and this book demonstrates how quickly it destroys. It is a well crafted story and very imaginative. I highly recommend it.
2168922
Lovely book. Except for two brief shifts in narrative viewpoint, the story is told in a very simple, almost naive way. But that simplicity hides great richness.
The story is about the power of dreams, imagination, fables, and the dangers they bring. The Cultural Revolution had forced two teenagers, the narrator and his friend, to relocate to a tiny mountainside village. And though these two young men are hardly shining lamps of erudition and culture, they manage to excite the imagination of their neighbors. Their violin (poorly played) charms the headmaster into accepting them into the village. The headmaster becomes enthralled, almost hypnotized with a clock with a rooster on the face, and its hold over him helps the two boys cope with farmwork. When the headmaster discovers the two can retell movies skillfully, they are sent to the larger village down th mountain expressly to watch films and retell them when they return. These things help them endure the rigors of Mao's reeducation. The story creates for them a kind of tiny paradise.
When they find (steal) a chest full of forbidden western classics, they are ecstatic. The stories are themselves dangerous, in Mao's paranoid, anti-intellectual, anti-western culture, where everyone was an informer and the crimes were not defined. But the stories are also dangerous for their exploration of the passions, for their power to excite the imagination, for their sheer craft and knowledge of the human heart. The narrator's friend begins to use Balzac's stories to woo a lovely seamstress.
In the very briefest, most evocative possible way, Dai shows how the books bring hints of conflict and danger into this little village. The narrator finds he is jealous of his friend and the seamstress. More disturbingly, he finds he thinks of things as his and mine, where before he never thought to distinguish.
Contrary to another reviewer, I find the story doesn't patronize or belittle the seamstress at all. In fact, that is one of the key ironies of the book, that the boy had tried to win her heart, and then make her a sophisticate, with Balzac, and had in fact succeeded. But the stories are the very thing that drive her away to make her own life in the city. They freed her, in fact.
Contrary to a reviewer below, the story feels Chinese to me. It has that exuberant, slightly coarse humor and that feeling of localness, like everything is taking place in a minature landscape: mountain, fields, a town (the big one) that consists of two buildings.
Dai himself endured "re-education," and it must have been a horrific experience. That he can write such a sunny, yet subtle and resonant work about the period is another proof of the power of literature and the imagination.
3438260
This is a great adventure story in the line of the best magical and delightful tales (The Phantom Tollbooth, the Lemony Snicket stories, etc.). Kids would love it, but it's one of those stories that reveals more with time...the story will grow with re-reading!

Especial loves:

*tips'o'the hat to mythmakers like Tolkein, Lewis Carroll, Jonathan Swift, G.K. Chesterton, and more.

* I love an adventure story (a pretty simple and clear storyline: hero goes on a quest, at bottom line) that is not simplisticly told. The story is delightful in its telling as well as for it's own merits.

*vocabulary! I don't teach anymore, but as a teacher I would have loved the prospect of vocabulary lists from the story: *meddlesome* *haberdasher* and *pandemonium*. Wordplay is also rampant with "the Just Deserts" and other literary hijinks.

*Characters that are both familiar to fiction in this genre and unique to this story. The characters feel true to the world in which they are set.

*Narration. It isn't fashionable to like narration, but as with Kate DiCamillo's 'A Tale of Despereaux', here it works admirably and the Narrator adds a sense of fun and harks to the adventure-legend sensibility.

*Illustrations. The author was able to illustrate the small chapter heading sketches, and I love the slight illumination this gives to the tale.
4692779
Like "The Prince", this book is about acquiring and obtaining power. The book takes the form of an entertaining narrative of one man's search for power. Along the way, he meets Caracalla, a CEO who teases and tantalises him with glimpses of the knowledge he seeks.
The book is very well structured and easy to read. It extracts the main principles of "The Prince" and divides them into the "Principles of Power". The book itself has very little resemblance to "The Prince" and I'm very impressed by Demack's insightful analysis of the original text. Some of the tenets of the book are controversial, but upon reflection they do make sense for someone seeking to acquire power.
The book has some very powerful lessons to offer and I believe it is applicable to many areas of life. The book is not just for power hungry moguls, it will almost certainly have some contribution to your day to day life.
890384
The evil stepmom is a storytelling trope that has roots in reality. In times and places where resources were scarce and women often died (usually of childbirth-related complaints) by early middle adulthood, a new wife who had children of her own looked out for the best interests of her offspring above any others. The most famous literary example of a wicked stepmother? Probably Cinderella. It's a story that's remarkably common around the world: China has a version. Iran has a version. And of course, there's the European takes on the tale that inspired the brothers Grimm. It's this familiar territory that Katherine Arden mines for her debut novel, The Bear and the Nightingale.

Arden gives us as our heroine Vasilisa, the youngest child of Pyotr and Marina. Vasya grows up with her four older siblings in a small village in Russia, bordering the kind of large and dark wood that a good fairy tale needs. After Marina dies in childbirth, the girl grows up half-wild, listening to old Slavic folk tales at the feet of her elderly nurse. But to Vasya, they're not just folk tales. She can see them, the spirits that populate Slavic mythology, and talk to them too. It's a trait she shares with her stepmother-to-be, Anna. But while rural-dwelling Vasya accepts this about herself, Anna, as a member of the urban nobility, is a devout Christian and thinks herself tormented by devils. Once she moves to the countryside after her marriage to Pyotr, the only place she can find peace is the church. She becomes obsessed with the handsome and vain priest, Father Konstantin, who is just as obsessed in turn with rooting out the local superstitions. There's a tinge of American Gods here, because the fading belief saps the strength of the spirits just when they're most needed in a battle brewing between the larger and more powerful forces of evil and of justice.

The characters that populate The Bear and the Nightingale are wonderful. Vasya is a delightfully high-spirited heroine, but what I enjoyed even more was that Arden didn't make Anna a simple bad stepmom. Instead, she's presented as scared, and her behavior towards Vasya is obviously rooted more in this fear than spitefulness. And even though the father in Cinderella stories often comes off as neglectful, Pyotr is a loving parent who has a hard time dealing with his first wife's death, his second wife's obvious mental health issues, and a daughter he doesn't know how to raise. And the world that Arden creates is rich and vivid. It's the first first-in-a-series that I've read in quite a while that's made me actually Google when the next entry is coming out because I want to continue along in the story Arden is beginning to unfold. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it!
2101639
Frogkisser! by Garth Nix is a fun tale full of re-imagined versions of your typical fairy-tale happenings such as princesses stuck with evil step-parents (or in this case, step-step-parents), princes turned to frogs, talking dogs, and even an appearance by Snow White and the Seven Dwarves though not in the way you might expect.

The action in this humorous tale kicks off quite early, and the pace ticks along nicely for the rest of the story. I thought the plot was well realized with plenty of depth to make the world feel immersive. It sucked me right in and I could see Mr Nixs world unfolding clearly in my mind.

Princess Anyas (no, not that one) life is in immediate danger thanks to evil machinations of her step-step-father who wants to rule the kingdom through wicked sorcery. Her sister and heir to the throne is easily distracted by the songs of a handsome prince, but Anya is made of stronger stuff.

The evil sorcerer, her step-step-father plans to kill her, so Anya is forced to flee the home she knows and loves with only a stalwart talking dog, Ardent, and a frog (transformed prince) for company. This begins her quest where shell stumble upon a giant, a good wizard, and various other fairy-tale creatures along with an ever increasing number of quests all in order to save the her sister and the citizens of the land.

Plenty of good character growth along the way, and full of twists and turns that kept me engrossed to the end. As I read I found myself picturing this as a book that could be easily adapted as a movie and was rather pleased to find out its going to be. Picked up by Fox to be a live action + CG animated movie, one Ill be happy to see once it hits the cinemas. It has the hallmarks of being an instant classic.
3009327
In this tale, a smart, nerdy, somewhat introverted princess married off to a foreign prince finds herself falling for the tomboyish, somewhat rebellious sister of her betrothed. There is action, intrigue, and adventure, with a lot of the subplots you'd expect from a fairy tale about nobles in a pseudo-medieval world, but with the subversion of a lot of tropes, too. The story also explores how one defines one's culture, religion, duty, and sense of self, which was interesting and thought-provoking.

There is relatively little problem with any character being interested in a member of the same-sex (with perhaps one exception), but instead there is a lot of discrimination against people born with magic skills. With the issues faced by magic users in the story, the author successfully weaves a parallel to the discrimination many LGBTQIA+ people face in the real world, past and present, but without being too "in your face" about it.

I really enjoyed the development of the two main characters, as individuals and as a couple. I also want to applaud the author for crafting a beautiful platonic friendship between one of the leading ladies and an ex-boyfriend, which is something you don't see very often in these kinds of books.