When reading a hardcover book that is covered by a good ole dust jacket, have you ever peeked at the actual cover of that book? Not the flashy art that was designed to pull you in, but the part that is actually attached to the pages. I'd say that the majority of the time it is disappointing or nothing stunning. Sometimes though, sometimes there is a hidden secret hiding under the dust jacket. Today, I've compiled a bunch of pictures of the hardcovers that I own and their secret or less seen artwork. As I've said before, while the content of a book is what makes me love it, I am also enamored with physically pretty books. Without further ado, please enjoy the lovely artwork of these books! Monday with a Mad Genius - Mary Pope Osborne The only reason I still have this on my shelf even though the rest of my Magic Tree House books have moved out of my room is because this one is signed. I won it from an SRP a long time ago. Isn't the little golden flying guy cool? The Fairy's Mistake - Gail Carson Levine Apart from the prettiness of the green inside cover, I also love the size of this book and the rest of the books in the series. They are so cute and tiny! Heartless - Marissa Meyer Ah! I love this one so much! Look at that inside cover! I love that they put so much effort into the appearance of this book! The cover is awesome and the inside is awesome and the story is fantastic! Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll At this point in my little photo session my cat, Angel, decided she was very interested in the cloth background I was using and decided to investigate: She decided to nap right next to the books after that, but at least she didn't steal my backdrop. Alanna: The First Adventure - Tamora Pierce It's got a butterfly!!!!!! Black Widow: Forever Red - Margaret Stohl This is the book I'm currently reading. The inside cover looks more orange here than it is in real life, but you can still see the awesome Black Widow symbol! A Thousand Nights - E.K. Johnston I cannot stop raving about both the outside and inside covers of this book! I love the stars so much and the colors and everything about it! Venice - John H. Davis This is just a coffee table sized book that I picked up when a school library was getting rid of it because I love Venice. I also love the golden gondola silhouette on the inside cover. A Midsummer Night's Scream - R.L. Stine Regardless of how I feel about this book (and I'm in the process of writing a review for it so you'll get to read all about it soon), I love the two little theatre masks on the inside cover. They add a nice sense of mystery to the book design. Fairest and Stars Above - Marissa Meyer I should have shown a picture of the front of the inside cover too because it has a cool little crescent moon design on it, but I thought the spines were really cool too so I wanted to show you that. I think the design on Fairest is meant to be Levana's crown. Caraval - Stephanie Garber I really need to do a review for Caraval sometime soon because it was a really exciting read. Plus, that cover art is swoon worthy. And I think the blue tear drop on the inside cover is a neat addition to the inner cover. A Curse Dark as Gold - Elizabeth C. Bunce This is another one I really need to write a review for soon because it was a creepy and fascinating story. Apart from that, I love the gold threads they incorporated into the design of the inside cover because it is relevant to the plot. (Don't mind the two scuff marks that are from me not so carefully removing tape from the book.) John Kent's Venice - John Kent Finally, I've got another book about Venice, which has lots of fun maps inside and historical information about Venice. Unfortunately, the picture of the inside cover turned out kind of terrible, but I think you can still get an idea of the winged lion.
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Personal Rating: 4.5 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.66 Stars Lo-Melkhiin killed three hundred girls before he came to her village, looking for a wife. When she sees the dust cloud on the horizon, she knows he has arrived. She knows he will want the loveliest girl: her sister. She vows she will not let her be next. And so she is taken in her sister’s place, and she believes death will soon follow. Lo-Melkhiin’s court is a dangerous palace filled with pretty things: intricate statues with wretched eyes, exquisite threads to weave the most beautiful garments. She sees everything as if for the last time. But the first sun rises and sets, and she is not dead. Night after night, Lo-Melkhiin comes to her and listens to the stories she tells, and day after day she is awoken by the sunrise. Exploring the palace, she begins to unlock years of fear that have tormented and silenced a kingdom. Lo-Melkhiin was not always a cruel ruler. Something went wrong. Far away, in their village, her sister is mourning. Through her pain, she calls upon the desert winds, conjuring a subtle unseen magic, and something besides death stirs the air. Back at the palace, the words she speaks to Lo-Melkhiin every night are given a strange life of their own. Little things, at first: a dress from home, a vision of her sister. With each tale she spins, her power grows. Soon she dreams of bigger, more terrible magic: power enough to save a king, if she can put an end to the rule of a monster. (goodreads.com) You ought to know by this point what a sucker I am for pretty books. Before I get started explaining what I like and dislike about this book I need to take a moment to make sure you appreciate how pretty this cover is. LOOK AT IT. It’s even prettier when you’re holding it in your hand and feeling the matte dust jacket. Plus, when you look at the cover under the dust jacket it is just as pretty if not prettier. Lemme show you: Less than stellar picture quality, I know, but LOOK AT THAT GORGEOUSNESS! Golden sparkly stars all over the place and IT’S SO PRETTY! I love it so, so, so much. Seriously, it is a striking book in person and there are few earthly things that make my heart as happy as a beautiful book. Okay, now let’s get down to brass tacks: does this book have a story to match it’s cover? Heck yes (pardon my language). If you read the description then you’ve probably guessed that this is sort of a retelling of 1001 Arabian Nights or at the very least a take on the story of Shahrazad (or Sheherazade or Scheherazade or whatever you want to call her). To be honest, beyond a few key facts, I don’t know that much about these stories, but I’m pretty sure this differs a lot from the story of Shahrazad and her murderous husband. From what I’ve heard, I prefer this version. And I think it does a good job of preserving the integrity of the tale and maintaining Shahrazad’s cleverness. One thing you should know if you intend to read this story is that very few of the characters actually get names. The main girl does not, though I am pretty sure that she is Shahrazad. From the other reviews I was reading on Goodreads it would seem that many people think that the lack of names leads people to think there is a lack of characterization. I may be wrong, but I don’t think this is the case. I think it is more of a challenge for an author to characterize without the help of connotations that come with names, but I think that E.K. Johnston did a really good job. In addition to that, I think it made the story feel more like a fable or a campfire story to keep the characters nameless, which I liked. The main character, the girl, may not look like much to someone who is used to reading about heroines who start rebellions and don’t take crap (pardon my language) from anyone. She seems to go along with her situation without much struggle, she obeys the villain, and she prevents fighting, even if the fighting would make her personal situation and the lives of a few others better. Just because she comes off as demure does not mean that she is a weak female character. Personally, I think she is a lot stronger than a character who kicks tush just to be seen as strong. She has quiet strength and she is a wise character. She doesn’t have all the answers, but she bides her time while she gets them and when the time is right she stands up for her family and for herself. The villain of this story, Lo-Melkhiin, is one of the few characters with a name. I kind of like that the bad guy gets a name even though the main character does not. There’s something poetic about it, ya know? Lo-Melkiin is a pretty standard bad guy when it comes to the way he treats the MC, but what makes him interesting is that he is actually a good ruler of the lands he controls. It gives him some depth beyond big, mean, and scary. There are many other characters that I really liked in this story. Her father, her mother, her sister, her mother-in-law, the sculptor, the henna artist, the women of the palace - the list goes on. Personally, I think this story is full of rich characters who all move the story along in an interesting and unique way. I think a lot of the time a person’s reaction to a story depends on what kind of story they are in the mood to read. A lot of the time I’m ready to read cookie cutter YA novels with tough, witty, strong, righteously angry protagonists, but sometimes I just want a beautiful story with some meat to it, something that makes me think. When I picked up this book that was the reading mood I was in. I have been in a bit of a reading slump lately and none of the thrilling YA novels that I normally gobble up have been tempting me. I started A Thousand Nights yesterday and I could scarcely put it down. It’s a good read for a dark night when you can revel in the mysteriousness of the plot and the weirdness of it all. Speaking of weirdness… this book has a lot of it. Or maybe not weirdness, but foreignness. The characters had a very established religion in the world that the story takes place in, which I struggled reading about personally. It definitely does not fit anywhere alongside or close to Christian beliefs. They also messed around with dark powers, which made me wary of reading, but the story was ultimately really good. The writing was what you might call “flowery”. Why use three words when you can use, like, fifteen? Sometimes I don’t have the patience for floral language, but it just helped weave the magicalness of this story. It just had a feeling of a classic. It feels less commercialized and extremely out of the ordinary. Part of that might be because it is a stand alone (though I hear there is a companion novel). I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but in recent years I’ve become enamored with stand alones because they leave you feeling like you’ve accomplished something or that the story is really, sincerely done and that’s okay. Not that I don’t love a good series, it’s just nice to be without the commitment sometimes. As far as maturity rating (which I feel all books should come with, just like movies) I’m going to have to say a light PG-13. While nothing explicit happens in the book, they reference stuff a lot throughout the book and there is some pretty intense violence. I’m not sure if I will read the companion novel to this story, since I enjoy it by itself so much, but if I do I’m sure it will be interesting (and it has a pretty cover too…). As you can probably tell, I enjoyed this book and I’m happy it got me out of my reading slump. NOT TO MENTION IT’S BEAUTIFUL. I think I used the word “beautiful” a few too many times in this review, but whatever. You can just deal with it because it is the best word I know to describe A Thousand Nights. Thanks for reading, I’d best go tend to the sheep (jk, I don’t own any sheep). Image source:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21524446-a-thousand-nights So do you remember a long time ago in December of 2016 when I wrote a story beginning but never followed up with it? Well, I have written a short bit of what comes next. To read the first part you can click here if you want to. It's the prologue and even though this part is short, we're going to call it Chapter 1. I'm not sure how much of this story I'm going to write, although ideally I'll finish it, edit it, get it published by a huge publishing company and then make millions off of it, but let's just start with the first chapter and see where we go from there. Someday in the future, I might assemble the entirety of the story onto an online publishing format such as Fictionpress or Wattpad or whatever the youngsters are into these days. If I do that I'll be sure to let you all know so that you can view it wherever it ends up and you can enjoy it or hate it there. So without further ado and blabbering I present to you: Chapter 1. “Oh dear, oh me, oh my! This is not good, this curse isn’t working like it should!”
The king and queen of the kingdom rolled their eyes at the palace wizard’s instant rhyming. The fellow, who’s name was Breck, thought it made him sound mystical and mysterious, but he wasn’t good at coming up with rhymes on the spot so it really just slowed down the pace at which he spoke. This was fine when he was giving the daily weather forecast, and it didn’t bother anyone when he was making potions or doing simple spells, but it could be quite the nuisance when you actually wanted him to tell you something important. Like this particular occasion. The moment that the fairy Chanter the Terrible had cursed the two day old princess the king had ordered the christening party to be shut down. They politely waved goodbye to all of their guests and then rushed the baby off to the wizard, who never attended parties because in his words: “there are people there”. “What do you mean it’s not working like it should?” The queen asked grouchily, holding her baby in a manner that spoke to the fact that she’d never before held a baby. Of course, you couldn’t expect her to have given she was raised as pampered gentility and was only eighteen years old. She’d had an epic quest at seventeen, saved the kingdom while falling in love with the king, who was in disguise as a soldier, learned a few life lessons, and then married the king and was following up with her happily ever after. She’d never considered that there might be more problems after she got married and had kids. That simply didn’t happen to you once you were in your epilogue years. “It is incredibly odd, my queen, a thing like this I have never seen.” “And what exactly is this?” “This fairy generally does nasty deeds, but if her instructions one does heed, then one shouldn’t see the need to get worked up or cancel sup.” The king and queen took a moment to puzzle out that the wizard was saying that the fairy did lots of mean things, but if you followed her instructions then you could break the curse without much difficulty. This seemed to placate the queen. If the spell was easy to break then she wouldn’t have to worry too much about it and they could continue with their happily ever after and raise a perfect child who would never do any wrong. There would be some minor questing or a party of princes needed, but it shouldn’t be difficult. “I fear, however, that this spell won’t be happy ever.” “What.” “You said that her spells were easy to get rid of!” The king roared, hand naturally going to his sword belt in his agitation. “That I did, my kindly king, but I’m afraid this is a different thing. When you met the fairy, Chanter, I think you should have engaged in banter, for now she’s forgotten to add a clause and the princess will always have her flaws. It can’t be escaped, it can’t be undone, you might as well sign this girl up to be a nun.” “So the fairy didn’t add a clause? Meaning there was no caveat - the spell can’t be broken by eating a magic fruit or drinking water from the home of the elves or anything like that? She is stuck this way for the rest of her life?” “And with her condition no one will want her to wife,” The wizard replied in a sassy tone, which caused the king to smack the back of his graying head. “There is absolutely nothing that we can do? Nothing at all?” “Can’t we hunt down that fairy and make her take it back? Torture her until she does so? Toss her in the dungeon for the rest of her days?” The queen’s hand went to where she normally wore her own sword - a habit she developed when fighting evil trolls alongside the king. It was irritating to her to not have the blade on due to her party dress. “No, my lady, you cannot. An evil fairy can’t be fought. And if she could, it’d do no good. Chanter seldon can recall what she’s done before nightfall. A fairy of the dark she is, and will forget this awful biz. When the moon is up her mind empties like a cup.” Frustrated both with the situation and the wizard’s increasingly terrible rhymes, the queen shoved her child into her husband’s hands and flipped a table. She turned to the wizard and grabbed his throat. “Listen here, Wizard Breck, I have plans to break your neck, unless you do a double check and find a way or some new tech that will save my daughter’s neck. I mean, c’mon, what the heck?!” The queen sneered at him, “Now we’ll leave you be and give you a sec but mark my words if you don’t find a way then I’m going to throw you in the dungeon and leave you there until everyone has forgotten you.” “That didn’t rhyme!” The wizard wheezed. The queen threw him angrily at a bookshelf and then grabbed her child back from her husband and turned to go with a majestic sweep of her skirt. “Maybe I don’t have the time.” The king shrugged at the wizard and rushed after his wife and baby. |
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