Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Children of a Broken Sky by Adam J Nicolai. Self-published, with a number of issues that come with that, but overall I enjoyed it.

Plot, short version: Church bad. Kids must defeat it and save the world. (Yeah, not exactly the most original idea ever.)

Plot, longer version: Set on a fantasy world, years ago there was a great storm which changed a lot of basic things (such as the direction the sun rose). The church claimed it was the start of the end of the world.

There's magic in the world. If you're a member of the church and use magic, it's good (considered a miracle). If you're not a member and use magic, you're a witch and will be burned at the stake.

There are five main characters, four of which have magic, two of which previously were closely associated with the church before both were basically kicked out. While five POV characters were a lot, it did set up interesting intra-group conflict.

Most of the plot was the kids running across their country, trying to escape the church while trying to also get enough food and not freeze to death.

Issues, technical: The biggest issue was that twice in the book there was a production(? right term?) issue. In the first third, almost 50 pages were repeated. In the final third, most of a whole chapter was missing.

Issues, plot: Five POVs were too many, especially since the kids were together nearly the entire book. The story repeatedly moved to the past, before the storm; I would have rather seen that condensed into a brief flashback. The adult characters were too often useless. The bad guys were mustache-twirling bad.

I'd like to read the second book, but it's $6 on Amazon (or I guess I can sign up for the free trial of Kindle Unlimited and read it that way). $6 is more than I like to pay for a self-published book (unless I know the author). I think I'll wait for now.

The Magnificent 12 by Michael Grant. Michael Grant, one half of the husband and wife team who wrote Animorphs, can do no wrong. I've loved all of his books. Unfortunately this one just wasn't a good match for me. I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but not to continue with the series.

One of the reasons I love Grant is that he writes some wonderfully dark stories; even though his books are all MG/YA, his writing can be chilling! But Magnificent 12 is a funny book (and I did find it funny, unlike every other self-claimed funny one). It just turns out that funny books don't work for me.

The plot is that there's an immortal evil witch, and each generation twelve 12 year olds are born with magic and have to defeat her. The main character (and first of the twelve to be discovered) is afraid of everything.

The plot was kind of light, but the humor wasn't. I got a few snickers, a bunch of smiles, and a lot of amused snorts while reading. But, for me, humor hurts my enjoyment of the story: When things are getting serious, I don't want to laugh.

This wasn't at all a bad book. Grant is a great writer and he succeeded at being funny. I just wasn't the right reader for this book.