Book Challenge Update: Five Odd Honors

I finished a book for the One, Two, Theme! Challenge and of course the Series Challenge.  Five Odd Honors by Jane Lindskold is for the Mah-jongg challenge in particular.  (In a bit of crossover blogging I bought and read it on my new Kindle, which was a very nice experience). This gives me two of the tree books I need for this level of the challenge.  Overall, this challenge is going pretty well!

Five Odd Honors is the third book in the Breaking the Wall series, which I love love love.  To say I was excited to read this book would be an understatement.  It is a great series, start at the beginning.  I'm going to review it, but not say much about the plot as well if you haven't read any of it yet it is very very spoilery.  The series is Urban fantasy (don't worry not the glittery vampire and angsty girl kind).  It is about a group of magical people who's cool form of chinese type magic is linked to the chinese zodiac.  And Mah-jongg was created to help them remember and write spells.  These people's ancestors were exiles and they are trying to get back/make piece with the lands they came from.

As I mentioned I loved the first two books.  While I liked this book, I was a touch disappointing.  The characters were all scattered about and doing their own thing . . . what I like about the characters (well, what I like the most) is how they interact with each other.  So, I found this disappointing.  Particularly because the characters who's interactions are the more fun to read were not together.  Not a lot of deep character stuff happened, which also disappointed me.  The action was good and it was way more gory and violent then the previous books (not actually a problem for me). In essence it was good, but not great.  The first two are great (in my opinion).  The book felt a lot like a place holder.  Away to finish up the first series (3 book) story arch and then move to the next arch.  I hate that.

The result.  I'm desperately waiting to see when (if?) the next book comes out.  I have faith.  I love the series.  It can recover from this, my not so favorite book.  Jane Linskold tends toward the long series or the stand alone.  So, I'm hoping for another.

Book Challenge Update: The Great Mahjong Book

I have completed another challenge component for my One, Two, Theme Challenge.  I'm quite enjoying the challenge.  Is nice to be compelled to read some non-fiction I normally wouldn't.  For this entry I read The Great Mahjong Book: History, Lore, and Play by Jelte Rep.  Jelte Rep is not Chinese.  He is from the Netherlands, but has a deep (its obvious from the book) love of Mahjong.  I became interested in Mahjong from the book "Thirteen Orphans" by Jane Lindskold. The title is actually a Mahjong hand and the magic in the book is all visualized using Mahjong.  Anyway its a fun book (I recommend it) and got me interested in Mahjong.

The Great Mahjong Book contains both history and how to play the game.


HOW TO PLAY THE GAME:

Thirteen Orphans

 I must say I don't think I could just pick up and play Mahjong right this minute.  If I had both the book and a Mahjong set I think I would have a fighting chance. The book has beautiful color pictures of different hands and the rules from all different Mahjong variants.  It also provides great tables on how to score etc.  If I was really committed to learning Mahjong I would buy both a mahjong set and this book.  I think they would work great together.  It also provides so many variants that you could get people play what seems to be a wide range of playing styles all on the same page.

HISTORY OF MAHJONG:

lots of tiles . . .

The history sections are mixed in with the game variants.  So, each countries version comes with the history of Mahjong in that region.  This both works and doesn't work.  It becomes a bit spotty to read.  I would have preferred a book with two halves.  One half history (and more of it because its super interesting) and one half how to play the game (wherever you might be).

OVERVIEW:

Full sets come in cool boxes!

Overall the book was interesting and pretty fun to read.  I don't think Mahjong will stick in my head, but it is clearly a good companion to have for playing the game.  If you want to know more about Mahjong I would suggest this book.  The tone is light and easy to read . . . plus its interesting.