Review: Dragon Age: The Silent Grove

Dragon Age: The Silent Grove by David Gaider

Publish Date: 25th July 2012

Publisher: Dark Horse

Page Count: 82

Synopsis: Dragon Age #1–#6, previously available only on the Dark Horse digital store! It's unusual for a king to embark on a dangerous quest himself rather than send emissaries, but King Alistair Theirin has caught wind of a rumor big enough, and personal enough, that he is compelled to investigate. With the deadly pirate Isabela and underworld merchant Varric Tethras by his side, Alistair travels to Antiva - the nation of assassins - to learn the fate of his long-lost father, King Maric. There, they will engineer a prison break, battle an assassin prince, encounter the mysterious Witch of the Wilds, and uncover the secret history of dragons!
Review: I received a digital copy of this graphic novel from netgalley and whilst I had a few troubles as mentioned in other graphic novels read this way I didn't have so many this time because most of the font was large enough to not be over pixelated. Any how obviously I'm a fan of Dragon Age and even though I didn't complete the game (it's not my fault, I'm a hoarder, it's a disease!) I had played enough to let my inner nerd completely devour this book page by page and end up pretty wowed by it all. The art work is also beautiful and its a lovely touch that it was in colour - a lot these days go for a black and white theme so this was a refreshing change - especially because the colours were so bright and vibrant, even for the darker characters. This graphic novel follows King Alistair on a long and dangerous quest to find the answers of his fathers disappearance, I guess its also to find some inner peace as he's only King because there is no one else left, I loved this story as we got to see a few different settings each one more beautiful than the last, and of course a wonderful dragon that was breath taking. At 82 pages this book is a little on the short side for me BUT it is only part one, I hope to stick around for the sequel because its certainly set up a great adventure to follow with many questions that I want answered too!
Recommend: As with every graphic novel I review my answer is the same - Do you like graphic novels? Do you enjoy Dragon Age or simialr games? If yes, read it.

GR

Amazon: UK | US

David Gaider: GR | Wiki

Bought, Borrowed & Bagged (11)

Bought, Borrowed and Bagged is a weekly event hosted by Talk Supe where you can share the books you have bought, borrowed or bagged (won) plus a recap of the previous week's reviews, upcoming reviews and on going events.
(P.S. click the image to go to its Goodreads page)

Bought (paperback):
Torn by Erica O'Rouke


Dancergirl by Carol M. Tanzman


Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs


Bagged (RAK):
Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Thank you Ciska


Bagged (Won):
Starters by Lissa Price
Thank you Kate


The Strangers Outside by Vanessa Morgan

I Actually yet again have bought nothing. I have received a few books from NetGalley but I'm only going to post those when I have enough time to read them, because at the moment that's something I'm really lacking.

Hopefully it should improve once summer starts and I'll have enough money to buy all the books I want :D

This week on Northern Plunder:
Review: Rivers of London

June: Warp Up & RAK (Lauren)

Wishlist Wednesday

Q&A (Award Time)

Follow Friday

Review: Bloodlines

This week Lauren read/is reading:
Zelah Green
Paper Towns

This week Nia read/is reading:

Wuthering Heights
The Paladin Prophecy

In Other News:
Next week you can expect Dragon Age and Pushing the Limits reviews and a few others things. I went to an open day this week for University and wow it was amazing and tiring which is why I was unable to do a vlog for Fanatical About Fiction, I might try and get one up late if the girls don't mind. Heh. - Lauren

Review: Bloodlines

Bloodlines by Richelle Mead

Published: August 2011
Publisher: Razorbill
Page Count: 421
Series: Bloodlines #1
Synopsis: Sydney protects vampire secrets - and human lives. Sydney belongs to a secret group who dabble in magic and serve to bridge the world of humans and vampires. But when Sydney is torn from her bed in the middle of the night, she fears she's still being punished for her complicated alliance with dhampir Rose Hathaway. What unfolds is far worse. The sister of Moroi queen Lissa Dragomir is in mortal danger, and goes into hiding. Now Sydney must act as her protector. The last thing Sydney wants is to be accused of sympathizing with vampires. And now she has to live with one...

Review: After seeing a lot of fuss over The Golden Lily I decided to find out what it was about and found out Bloodlines was the first of the series. Also the word vampires jumped out at me so I figured I'd read it eventually, that eventually turned out to be a lot sooner than imagined as I popped into my local library not expecting to find anything really as its super tiny but low and behold here was Bloodlines. It was until I started reading it that someone asked me if I liked Vampire Academy ...oops, I guess I hadn't done enough research, this series is a spin off series. At first I felt a little thrown off with them throwing words like dhampir, Moroi and alchemists at me because obviously without reading the previous series I wasn't exactly sure what they meant in this world, luckily the book didn't take too long to explain it all to me so the blanks all got filled in. Once Sydney and her "family" arrived to the Boarding School things started to get a little interesting, until a few too many hints were made at certain happenings to the extent that at page 168 I had figured out more or less what was going to happen, though at the time I wasn't sure it was going to happen it was just a guess but it did so I was suddenly very disappointed with the book or myself for not turning my brain off! Adrian grew on me a lot, I didn't understand at first why everyone was raving about him but he was so hilarious! He's definitely the kind of Vampire I'd love to spend the evening with and what he did for Rose without a seconds thought *gushes*. The other characters I didn't really feel that much of a pull towards them, there wasn't much happening other than day to day school life and how do we keep Rose from the danger of dating so it pretty much left me with a neautral feelings because at the end of the day, thats what it was... neutral, average and predictable. Or was it? Well yes... Kind of. I mean what I figured out on page 168, Sydney figured out on 330 so that part was predictable, but what followed (you know the capture and fight scenes) they were pretty great, I liked those a lot and the description put into them, I just wish there had been more moments like that because even though I didn't like that character and felt a little off towards him, I did not expect him to turn on Sydney like he did. In short the last 63 pages were to die for and the rest was a-ok. 

Recommend? I guess it depends on how the sequel is BUT if you are able to switch your brain off unlike me then go ahead.

GR
Amazon: UK | US
Richelle Mead: GR | Website | Twitter | Facebook | LJ

Follow Friday (15)

Q: What drove you to start book blogging in the first place?

Lauren: I've hopped in and out of having various blogs on tumblr, the only one that stuck other than my own messy one was a book one. When I realised how much I loved it and wanted to expand it to be much easier to follow the reviews I was starting to post I then moved here and it continued to grow! I honestly didn't expect to love being here as much as I do, I've met so many amazing people through this blog and they've made the experience that more enjoyable! They've also helped me widen my taste of books because I used to be pretty much stuck as to what I wanted to read next as I had a fear of picking up authors I hadn't previously read or heard of. So thank you to each and everyone of you and to me I guess for sticking at it even when real life likes to butt in.
Nia has been super busy with real life so I'm going to take this moment to answer for her as I know how it all happened. She had her own vlog channel and when I perchance asked her friend to help me start up a book vlogging channel her friend suggested Nia so I got in contact with her and she agreed, shortly afterwards she expressed a want to book blog to - she actually set up her own blog - and I then asked her if she'd like to co-host Northern Plunder with me so she didn't have to go through all the usual tricky things we all face at the beginning and she happily accepted :D
Ah this is pretty much it and unfortunately I have been sooo busy but school finishes soon so it should get better. Many apologies for the lateness :)