3 Books In 1 Blog

What's up everybody?I am back again today with a couple of book reviews.I have read three books since my last book review, but haven't really felt like making a blog for each book I've read because I have been reading a lot these past few weeks.I have averaged reading a book just about every 3 or 4 days!I also read a book of short stories, but will not review that collection since most of them are set in different series of books, many of which I have never read any of the novels in the respective series.I just do not think it is fair to get a review on books which may be in the middle of a series that I know absolutely nothing about and therefore may not understand which could result in a negative review.

This blog will probably be a little shorter than my normal blog posts because instead of devoting an entire blog to just one subject matter, I am condensing 3 reviews on 3 completely different books and genres into one normal sized blog...for me.So while the blog length will be about the same length, the review per subject will not be as long as they normally are.Look at my "Butch Blog" and you will get an idea as to how this will go.There will be about a paragraph for each book with a decent description for each.The three books I am reviewing in this blog are New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and Homeland by R.A. Salvatore.

The first book I will be reviewing is New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.It is the 2nd novel in her Twilight saga, and soon to be a major motion picture.As you may recall, I reviewed Twilight and thoroughly enjoyed the book, but was very disappointed in the film adaptation of it.I was really looking forward to reading New Moon since I finished up with Twilight.I know it is hard for a sequel to live up to the hype and expectations that the original created, but I thought that Meyer did a fabulous job of continuing the series.This novel starts off very fast with a major surprise happening almost immediately in the first few chapters.Like I have stated many times, I will try not to spoil anything, so I will leave it at that.Shortly after the surprise, Jacob Black becomes a very good friend to Bella, much to the delight of their parents.He helps Bella by fixing up some motorcycles that she picked up and teaches her how to ride.Meanwhile, a bunch of mysterious sighting have been occuring and the towns have been having many wild animal attacks and disappearances.Jacob and Bella spot this "gang" of townspeople near where Jacob and Bella ride their bikes and he tells her his opinion of them.He seems to be the only person who dislikes them in his town, but nothing he says matters to his father Billy.With time Jacob and Bella get closer romantically, but Bella still loves Edward...leading to her giving off mixed signs and feeling bad.This little love triangle will set up the next two books nicely, leading eventually to a confrontation between the two.I will not go into much more about the book because I will not give away too much about it for the people who may read this and haven't read the book.This book is essentially the building block for the rest of the series to build off of.Meyer created Bella into the confused girl caught between two men who both love her, and as I stated earlier, the battle between Jacob and Edward over her affections.Many other things happen in the novel that are noteworthy, but it would spoil a fantastic book that sends your emotions on a rollercoaster trip of love, despair, agony and confliction.I view this book as better than Twilight and hope that the movie can surpass the underwhelming experience the Twilight movie gave me.I will rate the book a 8.0 out of 10.

The 2nd book being reviewed today is Dan Brown hit novel The Da Vinci Code.This novel is a sequel to Angels & Demons, although Da Vinci did far better and was created into a movie a few years before the prequel.For the past few years I have heard a ton of stuff regarding this novel and have anxiously awaited reading the book to see what all the buzz is about.I was highly impressed with Brown's previous book and had very high hopes for this book.The book once again stars Robert Langdon, this time in France.We start the book off in a very familiar way for fans of A&D with Robert sleeping and being abruptly awakened with an urgent call.No this isn't the same book, it just starts off almost identically.This time he is asked to help assist helping uncover the murderer and the motives behind the murder of the renowned curator of the Louvre Museum, Jacques Sauniere.The man who is at the helm of solving the murder mystery is Bezu Fache, Captain of France's Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire (DCPJ).He believes that Langdon may have killed Sauniere ishopes to get Langdon to admit to it because Langdon was supposed to meet with Sauniere the night of the murder.Sauniere's body was found in an awkward position (identicle to Da Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man drawing...hence the title of the book comes into play) with writing and a pentacle surrounding his body and Fache believes Langdon can decipher the meaning behind the writing in hopes that Robert will make a mistake and he will be proved guilty.Sopie Neveu is a French National Police cryptographer iivolved in the novel who knows Fache's plans against Langdon, therefore decides to help Robert escape from the Louvre in order to help solve the crime.We later find out that she is personally attached to the crime, because Sauniere was her grandfather.She believes in Langdon's innocence and feels he is the only one who can help sort out this strange murder and help her uncover some hidden secrets her grandfather hid from her, which led to her estrangement form him 10 years ago.The story continues with Fache trying to locate them and put both behind bars, as the real killer is in search of the legendary Holy Grail.The book is a great read for both historians, conspiracy theory buffs and the normal reader who wants to be entertained.Once again, like with A&D, there are many biblical beliefs and conspiracies that some overly fanatical religious people may not like, but like I wrote in my A&D blog, if you can get passed that and have an open mind, you will most likely enjoy it.The movie, which was released in 2006, from what I heard was not as good as it was hyped up to be.I personally have not seen and therefore cannot give my opinion on it, but will hopefully get to see that and A&D in the near future after Sarah reads them.I did not think Da Vinci Code was a bad book by any means, but considering how much hype surrounded it, I do not think it was as good as A&D.It still gets a high rating from me, but I think A&D was the better book and yet Da Vinci Code is the more well known book of the two.I will rate it a 7.5 out of 10 because there were many parts in the book where it mirrored A&D too much and was kinda predictable in some ways.I definately reccomend reading both books and will probably purchase Dan Brown's other two books, Digital Fortress, Deception Point and his future Robert Langdon novels.

The third and final review for today is the beginning of R.A. Salvatore's epic Legend of Drizzt story.I will first tell you a little bit about how I first of Drizzt Do'Urden.My friend Larry and I are huge fantasy and video game geeks.He got me into Marvel Comics, Final Fantasy, role-playing games, and various card games such as Spellfire, Magic:The Gathering, Pokemon, and the Marvel Comics superhero game (not quite sure what the name was).We used to play video games ALL THE FUCKING TIME.In fact we beat Final Fantasy VII's legendary monster Emerald WEAPON...but somebody, I'm not saying who decided to go fight the other legendary monster Ruby WEAPON.He thought he saved, I wasn't sure, so I told him to do it just to make sure...he was positive he saved.Anyways to make a depressing story short, Ruby WEAPON fucked him like a $2.00 whore and it wasn't saved.We both remember that moment very vividly and get a sick feeling when it is brought up.Needless to say, we are fantasy freaks.I bought a ps2 game called Baldur's Gate:Dark Alliance and we absofuckinglutely loved it and it's sequel and spin-off Champions of Norrath and Champions:Return to Arms.In one of those games you can unlock Drizzt as a playable character, and that was how I came to love him.I bought the first set of books in a huge volume with all three books in 1.I had previously read the first book Homeland sometime in 2004 or 2005 and loved it, but lost the book for many years.Once found, it has been sitting in my bookshelf awaiting my pending reading.It took me awhile to read it because I prefer reading smaller paperback books, and this is hardcover size and with all three novels from The Dark Elf Trilogy in it, it is intimidating to look at, much less read.What I was doing was grabbing the smaller paperback version of Homeland and reading a few chapters everytime I went to Barnes & Noble.With my recent knee injury, I hate leaving the house because I take a long time to get ready and then it takes a lot out of me physically and mentally the next few days.Because I am not getting out much, it has led to my increased reading and blogging.To start off my review I will go on the record and say that Drizzt Do'Urden is a very loving and personable character with very good morals and values.He is a drow (dark elf), and lives in the Menzoberranzan, which is a city filled with tracherous drow families in the Underdark, away from the blinding sunlight and their mortal enemies such as the elves, dwarves, and humans.The class structure in Menzoberranzan is based on which drow house is higher up in standing.The top 8 houses are on like a city government committee and are considered the "ruling houses".Each drow family/house is matriarchial and the woman have all the power in the family, and get to treat the males like slaves.The houses...and the people within the families of each house are constantly at battle with each other.The belief system is based on a spider god called Lolth, and the families will do anything to please Lolth to gain her favor...including sacrifices.The book starts off with Matron Malice and Do'Urden house attacking House Devir because it had fallen out of grace with the spider god, and they viewed it as a perfect oppurtunity to attack and destroy the house and move up to the 9th House.Malice is pregnant with what turns out to be the third son in her family.The belief is that if a Matron Mother gives birth to a male child, and two are already living, they sacrifice the third son to Lolth.The third son, Drizzt was about to be sacrificed, when news of the defeat of House Devir comes and even more shocking news comes when the 2nd child of House Do'Urden Dinnin killed his older brother Nalfein to advance in ranking in the heirarcy of his house, thus preserving Drizzt's young life.During the attack however, one of the Devir family members, Alton Devir lived, but got horribly scarred with some chemicals that were in the house.They were for one of the teachers at the drow school for mages and he then took over his identity, with only one person truly knowing his identity...Masoj Hunnett of House Hunnett.The book centers primarily around Drizzt and his early years of training with his sister Vierna, who like all female drows are far superior to the males in standing, but also shows a softness towards him due to the fact that they share the same parents including the house weaponmaster Zaknafein who hates the idea of murdering innocent lives and the drow rules of life.Zak convinces Matron Malice to let him train Drizzt in weaponry as to try and instill his beliefs in him.When the time comes for Drizzt to go to school...one which brainwashes all the drow into believing they are killing machines because all the other races are evil murders, which is exactly what the drow are.Drizzt is top of his class which was to be expected with the amount of training he recieved with Zak.Drizzt becomes unsure as to what to believe in life and what to do about it because of his morals, and that is the dilema he faces throughout the story and probably the entire series.Drizzt's morals and beliefs vs the beliefs of his drow nature and society.Will he do as Zak did and become the innate killer that courses through the drows and let their society brainwash their minds?Will Drizzt escape and live under his own rules along with Zak?Will either of them even survive the violent and deceptive nature of the drow houses?R.A. Salvatore answers these questions with answers and many intense battle sequences which he has become famous for writing.Salvatore's creation of Drizzt is very cliche in the good person in a bad setting and the troubles and personal soul searching that he does, but has enough action and suspense to keep the reader entertained.I will rate this book a 6.5 out of 10 because it is very cliche and predictable at times.I am not saying it is bad by any means because I love it and can't wait to read the other books in the Legend of Drizzt series.I am just saying that if a reader picks it up expecting something new, they may not enjoy it because they may be able to guess the story outcome before it becomes apparant, but it is also only the first book in I think close to 20 books about him, so they had to just give the bare basics of the story for new readers.

Now that the blog is finished, and I am all up to date with my reviews, I can slow down my reading pace.I promise I will try to only include one book at a time because I know it is a lot to read all at once.I am planning on reading the next two Drizzt books followed by the third book in the Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer afterwards.I will try and keep the blog to a one subject minimun because between the Butch blog and this blog, I am exhausted.I hope you enjoyed.-James