Lit Literature Gang

By Kate A The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge is a Victorian murder mystery that takes place on a fictional island called Vane. Faith Sunderly and her family, which consists of her brother, her parents, and her Uncle Miles, are leaving England temporarily so her father can join an excavation on Vane. Her father,  Erasmus Sunderly, is a well-known natural scientist, but there are some rumors in England that he has committed fraud. After a few days on Vane, it becomes clear by the way the locals are treating the Sunderlys that the rumors about Mr. Sunderly have spread to the island. Many people seem to despise her father and the rest of the Sunderly family. When her father turns up dead, she suspects that he was murdered by someone on the island and is determined to prove it. After her father's death, Faith comes across one of her father's journals that explains one of his specimens, which he calls the Lie Tree. When a lie is whispered to the tree, it bears a fruit that, when e...

When I began reading  Magisterium  by Cassandra Clare and Holly Black with  The Iron Trial , I thought that I was going to experience a  Harry Potter  knock-off. While the basic premise of  Magisterium  sounds similar to  Harry Potter , what with the story revolving around three friends that go to a magic school unknown to ordinary humans as they conquer their fears, go on adventures, etc., it is definitely a series,  Iron Trial  in particular, that has some of its own unique moments. The Iron Trial  Callum Hunt is a 12-year-old without any knowledge of the existence of magic. He has a whole family of mages, but his father wants to protect him from the various dangers of the magic world. His mother died before he ever got to know her. Call lives a normal life that is changed one day when he receives an invitation to attend the trials of Magisterium, the secret underground mage school where his father and mother went. Call d...

  The Scorch Trials is a sequel to The Maze Runner, which makes it the second book in the Maze Runner series. The book follows Thomas and the Gladers --his group of friends from the Maze-- after they finally found a way to get out of that treacherous place. When they get out, there are people on the outside of the Maze who say that they want to help, and Thomas and his friends agree. They are taken on a Bus, when they discover Cranks. Cranks are crazy people who have been affected by the Flare disease, which makes them go crazy. (This is important for the next book in the series) They are split up from the group of girls, which was a group that was put in another Maze by WICKED. They discover that they have been led into a trap when a person they call the Rat Man shows up and tells them that it was a trap, and WICKED, the group that organised them to be in the maze, was still doing tests. He tells them that their next test is to get out of a dessert and reach a safe haven within tw...

By Marlow Tracy The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco, about a young girl named Tea who finds out that she is a special type of witch that can raise the dead, looked like an interesting book to read from the start. Judging the book by its cover and the inside flap, it seemed like a fun, detailed fantasy novel full of witches and character/world development, so I checked it out and began to read. Warning: prepare to be disappointed. The book started out confusing, and I found it hard to keep track of the events that were occurring as well as all of the characters and different cultural elements, but I kept reading because most books tend to start out with a lot of information that is later clarified. The very beginning held a common fantasy trope: a vague prologue written in all italics that didn’t really give away any information. I read through it but skipped over most of the boring description. As I continued reading into the chapter, I noticed that the writing style was quite j...

By Kate A      The Secrets of Gaslight Lane by M.R.C Kasasian is the fourth book in the Gower St. Detective series. It takes place in London in 1883. The book is about a young woman named March Middleton, who is the assistant to Sidney Grice, a private investigator that is also March's godfather. Mr. Grice became March's guardian after her father died at the beginning of the series, and she has been living with him ever since. March and Mr. Grice are asked by a woman named Charity Mortlock to solve the murder of her father, Nathan Mortlock, who owned a mansion on Gaslight Lane. While they are investigating this murder, the two detectives also uncover clues about the murder of the Garstang household that occurred in the same house about ten years earlier.        I read this book without reading the first three books in the series, so I might have enjoyed the book more if I had read them. Since I didn't read the first books, not every asp...