A Handmaid's Tale

Rating: Four stars

It turns out that I have an emerging love for dystopian novels, and I could not get enough of this book.  Atwood's tale was totally believable, totally horrifying, and extremely creative.  Imagine if the most right-wing extremist Christian sect you can think of took over the U.S. government in one fell swoop, relegated women to "their place", and on top of everything, there was a global fertility problem.  The solution being for the few fertile women that existed to be made Handmaids, and  given to the leaders and their wives.  My overly succinct summary does not do it justice!  I promise it's worth reading.

A Clash of Kings

Rating: Four Stars

I really liked this second book in Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series.  I have to say I didn't love it quite as much as the first one...there was a lot of setup and not as much action, which isn't always bad, but for a book this long I felt like there needed to be a little more balance of that.  That said, the action that WAS there was beyond stellar (the ships on the river and the hellfire!), and of course the character development is beyond compare.  I also like the bits of fantasy he weaves in, it is still so lightly dealt with, I am interested to see if the fantasy (magic) becomes a bigger deal as I keep reading.  Because keep reading I most definitely will - though I will take these in stride as they are all epic tomes!