A blog of my running thoughts while reading. *Warning: Spoilers*
Endings Found = 18
Deaths = 8
Undead = 1
Training = 5
Punished = 4
Outlaws/Army = 2
I joined the outlaws and earned acclaim and honor as an army page twice. I also found more ways to die and an ending where I was convicted of helping an innkeeper and his wife will people and turn their bodies into dumplings and fertilizer. It was a random Sweeney Todd ending out of the blue!
This was a marvelous book! The characters were wonderful and the story was intriguing. Why does Antimony see the things she does and why is she so at ease with ghosts and such? There must be a story or an explanation for that. And what happened with her parents? Her mother and James seem to have had a pretty serious thing, yet he’s not her father, so what happened there? It’s very curious.
Endings Found = 13
Deaths = 6
Undead = 1
Training = 5
Punished = 3
Hm… I’m not doing very well here. I’ve gotten my mother killed and made an invalid for the rest of her life and captured by bandits. I’ve also gotten myself killed quite a few times! The snake was totally a no-win situation, though, which sucks. The Black Serpents are serious cheaters!
Wow. This is incredibly intriguing and keeps introducing new mysteries! I really want to know what’s on the other side of the bridge and what else is going on at the school and so many other things! Are there really faeries in the school in new bodies? Do they know that they’re faeries? And why did Shadow 2 want to go back to the school after wanting so badly to escape? More and more mysteries!
Endings Found = 8
Deaths = 3
Undead = 1
Training = 4
Punished = 2
I really like the woman I got to be my teacher, but some of her friends are definitely not to be trusted! I hope that I get to learn more about each one of them, though, since they all seem interesting. At this point, I’ve learned at least a little about everyone except for Lim Likjau.
I’m enjoying this a lot so far. Antimony is amusing and the humor is just right. There’s enough mystery about the school to keep things interesting. I really want to know what else is going on at the school and more about Antimony’s mother (since there has to be a story there). I’m looking forward to reading more of this!
The “Peek into the Past” section here was pretty good and did an adequate job of getting across how different one-room prairie schoolhouses were from most modern schools. The descriptions of how students practiced their lessons and what their school schedule was like were clear and interesting. I especially appreciated the illustrations showing what pages from readers looked like!
Endings Found = 3
Deaths = 2
Turned Undead = 1
Earned Training = 1
What just happened? How did I turn into a zombie? Are my parents evil and creating zombies with herbs and tea or was I scratched by a zombie cat? Either way, this is very weird. Seriously, this had better be explained somewhere in this book! I have to admit, though, that ending definitely did surprise me!
I liked Robin winning the archery contest and not getting caught, it was a great way to show he could truly outsmart the sheriff. The backmatter wasn’t especially exciting, but I’m really glad to see that they included the Errol Flynn movie among the list of “Further Reading, Websites and Movies”. This was a fun version of this story and I’m glad that I read it!
I liked how Miss Winston used Kirsten’s own experiences to find her a poem that she could learn. I also liked that Kirsten learned that the Native Americans are not scary and about how they were running out of food, but I’m not sure how realistic her meetings with Singing Bird were. “Pretty” does not seem like a word that would easily translate with no context. Still, I enjoyed this story a good deal and look forward to the next one.