Found Not Lost

“Our birth, our life, our death, all tied into a single package that we spend our time on this earth unwrapping.”

- King of Silver RiverThis is what I am reading at the moment. I bought the book because the it had a pretty cover and it caught my attention. Yes, I do judge books by their cover at times If you like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, you would probably like this book also. It is The Voyage of Jerle Shannara - Book One, Ilse Witch.

The voyage has just begun. The last Druid is off to find the treasure from the castaway’s map. The castaway, the elves’ heir apparent, was found on the verge of death by a wing rider floating on the river. His eyes have been gouged out and his tongue ripped out. The Ilse Witch gets to the castaway before his brother, the King of Elves or the Druid could get to him, and she literally sucks the life out of him and puts him out of his misery. Now it is a race between the druid and the witch to see who gets to the treasure first.

This past Thanksgiving weekend, I decided to tackle the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was such a relaxing way to relax and spend the weekend. Harry has grown to be a typical, surly teenager and undegoes some of the more mundane angsts of growing up aside from battling Voltemort and learning new spells. He goes on his first date, after finally mustering the courage to ask Cho out. But the girl is also a teenage twit, so things don’t go too well for them. Now I am assuming since I am two years late reading this book, that everyone else has read it, and won’t mind then if I reveal some of the more important plots here. For one, Harry’s godfather dies in this volume. He gets killed by Voltemort while he is trying to save Harry from getting himself killed, all because Harry decides in this volume to be headstrong and not listen to instructions. Wha’d I tell ya, typical teenager! But dumb of Dumbledore not to tell Harry the truth in the first place. It was a lot of fun reading about Fred and George’s, the Weasley Twins, antics though. That evil inquisitor lady deserved what she got.

Well, it was a thick book, but every page was highly entertaining. I love being able to go through an 800 page book in a couple of days. This only happens to me when something is really interesting, and keeps me turning pages. Most often though, I have to force myself to keep going to see if anything interesting is going to happen. Jade and I have a running joke that I judge books by their cover. If they have a well designed jacket, I may just buy it and start reading it. This is how I end up having pretty books, but hard to get through. Oh well, at least once in a while I run into a Harry Potter or Ann Rice book. Now those keep me turning pages! Sometimes sappy romance novels do the trick too