Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, written by Grace Lin, is a fantasy novel inspired by Chinese mythology and folklore. The book follows Minli, a young girl who lives in the Village of Fruitless Mountain, working hard and farming despite the terrible land of the Fruitless Mountain. Her father tells her stories and she wishes to have an adventure of her own. One day, she uses her money to buy a goldfish, and it turns out that the goldfish can talk.
Fire and Heist is a novel about sixteen-year-old Sky Hawkins, who is a wyvern: a human that has the ability to transform into a dragon. Unfortunately, most wyverns nowadays have lost that ability. What they haven’t lost, however, is their culture of stealing—in wyvern society, leading your first heist is the most important milestone of your life, and it determines everything about where you belong in the wyvern social order.
The fifth book in George R.R. Martin’s famous A Song of Ice and Fire series was just okay. This novel is essentially a repeat of the events from A Feast for Crows but from different characters’ perspectives. I was excited to revisit some of my favorite characters that I didn’t get to hear from in the last book, but they didn’t really add anything to the story. Daenerys had the most exciting scenes, in my opinion, but even she didn’t further the storyline; basically, in over 1,000 pages, nothing was accomplished.
Dragonslayer follows the story of three children and their experiences with dragons in the land of Pyrrhia. Wren was left by her village as a sacrifice for the dragons. She runs away and finds a lost dragon, and the two of them travel the world together. Leaf is distraught by her sister being eaten by dragons, and swears revenge against them. He sets out to become a dragonslayer and protect humans from what happened to his sister. Ivy thinks her father, Dragonslayer, is not trustworthy.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le. Guin is the classic tale of how Ged, a young wizard, comes into his powers and repairs the mistakes of his youth, restoring balance to the land of Earthsea. Along the way he attends a school of magic, battles a dragon, and faces true evil. I really wanted to love this book. It’s high fantasy with a cult following and I wanted it to capture my heart the way that it has for so many people over the years.
