I realize I haven’t posted about my 50 books challenge in forever, but I have been reading!

Eldest, Christopher Paolini : The focus of this book was half on Eragon, studying dragon lore in an elven city copied off Lothlorien, and half on his cousin Roran, leading his fellow villagers away from their threatened home to a safe haven. As for the first volume, the parts that involve Eragon feel like they were scavenged out of whatever Paolini's favourite fantasy books are (The Empire Straikes Back and Lord of the Rings are my guesses there), but at least they are entertaining. Or they might be for kids, anyway. Roran, on the other hand, has got to be the Most Boring Character in the World. I didn’t care at all about him, no matter what Paolini put him through. Definitely not reading any more of these books.

Mulengro, Charles de Lint : Okay, I really don’t think that horror is de Lint’s forte. Mulengro had a lot in common with another horror book he wrote, From a Whisper to a Scream, and I found that there were a lot of structural similarities between the two novels, so that once you work out the pattern it’s almost easy to see how the story will unfold. This said, I don’t think he has any other books focusing on gypsies, and in fact I don’t think there are many books that have “real” gypsy characters at all out there. The foray in Roma culture, the language, the expressions, the traditions, was something I really enjoyed about the book.  But please, stick to urban fantasy.

Stormchaser, Chris Riddell: This is the second book in the Edge Chronicles, a series of children's books that follow the adventures of Twig as he leaves his native Deepwoods and becomes a sky pirate. This book has more of a plot than the previous, which went more along the lines of, Twig wanders around the Deepwoods and encounters a creature! Twig wanders farther into the Deepwoods and encounters another creature! And so on. Stormchaser is really very imaginative, and the twisting, intelligent plot is riveting. When I have kids, they will most definitely be given these books to read, in their original English or the French translation - I read them in French and it is one of the most flawless translations I have ever had the pleasure to read. I want to translate kids' books too! Also the illustrations, seamlessly integrated to the text,  really add to the book. I want to illustrate kids' books too!

The Children of Hurin, J.R.R. Tolkien: Tolkien revisists part of the Silmarillion, taking the time to explore the lives of cursed Hurin and his children in greater detail than the Silmarillion's archaic narration permitted. This seemed like a big book, but once you take out the rather
lenghty preface it is actually quite short. The story is rather quite bleak, but if you've read the Silmarillion, you'll know that it's fitting.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley: A classic which I had never read before. Probably everyone knows about this book, so I'll just say that Huxley's world is meticulously crafted, and that I found it a highly interesting exploration of the future, and a good critic of our society, as any good dystopian fiction should be.

Last Chance to See..., Douglas Adams, Mark Carwadine: Very interesting book, chronicling the author's adventures around the globe as they try to catch a glimpse of some of the world's rarest animals. It has Douglas Adams' stamp all over it, and it is funny more than moralizing, which is probably a better way to attract people's attention to the cause of endangered animals. The information is outdated (the information dates back to the late 90's) but that only makes its message more poignant - some species mentionned in the book are actually extinct now.

Wicked, Gregory Maguire: I was incredibly surprised by this book, and if any of you ever read it before, why did you never tell me about it?! I hadn't expected much, knowing about the musical and expecting something light and fluffy. Was I ever wrong! This is an alternative, very adult retelling of the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West: how she grew from a green baby into a solitary schoolgirl into a politically-involved young woman into a grieving lover, and how she was eventually killed by Dorothy. Never quite fitting in even with her school friends, always on the edge and never in the middle of the action where she should have been and had a right to be, Elphaba is later described as being "fierce and futile in everything she attempted". I really, really recommend this book to everyone.

Son of a Witch, Gregory Maguire: The follow-up to Wicked, the quality of the writing is still excellent and I'm looking forward to other books by Maguire, whether they are set in his Oz universe or not. Liir, introduced in Wicked, decides to search for the kidnapped girl Nor, who may or may not be his half-sister. Actually Liir's parentage was never really a question for me, but his quest to find out about his family never bored me; it's about the character development more than the story, although the story itself is very rich. As for Wicked, the book seems to be split in two parts, with a major crippling event in the middle, which the protagonist (Liir this time, who is more successful that Elphaba before him) then takes the remainder of the book to recover from. A highly-recommended read as well.