Author: William Ritter
Narrator: Nicola Barber
Publisher: Recorded Books, 2017
Format: 7 compact discs, approximately 8 hours
Genre: YA Fantasy
Obtained: library
Summary: This is the conclusion to the Jackaby series in which Jackaby, supernatural private detective and his assistant Abigal Rook, along with their colleagues, must save not one world, but two, from a powerful, evil enemy.
Thoughts: I guess I wasn't paying attention when I picked up this book on compact discs from the library because I should have gotten Ghostly Echoes, the third book in the Jackaby series, first. I wanted a story for a long car ride with my family and didn't have time to make an exchange, so listened to it anyway. Luckily, I still enjoyed it, but will definitely go back and listen to Ghostly Echoes, especially for Jenny's story.
I love the narrator who does fantastic voices and really gets into the characters and story, showing emotions and reading at a wonderful pace. The only thing that was annoying was that every once in a while it would sound like she took a sharp intake of breath and it was clearly not part of the story. This was distracting. I didn't notice this in the first two books.
The author created a magical world with fantastical characters. The characters are my favorite part of the series. They are developed and seem real even though most of them are not even human. It takes a gift to make characters like this work. In this fourth book, the author brings back the characters I loved in the previous books, but also adds some new ones. He continues to use humor in his writing, along with having some great lines in his dialogue that I sometimes read twice because they were just perfect. In The Dire King, the author has Jackaby talk about "people" referring to all the fantastical beings in the book, and how they are being discriminated against because they are being locked up since they are not human. I loved this! Also, the author showed how diversity is a wonderful thing that makes life full, interesting, and colorful. So, for a light book it covers some heavy topics. Everything is wrapped up at the end and this book definitely finishes with the biggest culmination of the series. There were also some unexpected surprises.
William Ritter is a clever, entertaining author with a wonderful imagination. If you like magical mysteries, the whole series is a must read. I would definitely start from the beginning if you think you might read them all, but it is not really necessary. Just a warning that this is a YA book. Even though it has really cool characters that young children would love, it has a couple of bad words in it and some violence- and this book has a bit more of both than at least the first two. My ten year old listened along, which was a mistake. I would say this is more appropriate for those aged 12 and older.
Tea: Raspberry Revitalizer Lemon Mate
Obtained: free sample with tea of the month club
Today I tried Raspberyy Revitalizer Lemon Mate from Plum Deluxe. I received this as a free sample with my July tea of the month club tea. The raspberries in my garden just started ripening, so I felt like this tea sample came at the perfect time. This is an organic tea containing caffeine and is made up of green mate, lemongrass, lemon peel, rose hips, hibiscus, apple pieces, and raspberry essence. The loose tea was very pretty with red and yellow chunks, light grassy leaves and small dark leaf pieces, and had a faint raspberry scent. I poured eight ounces of boiling water over one teaspoon of leaves. I let this steep for three minutes. The liquid was a pale pink with a raspberry scent that was barely there. The taste was a delicious, delicate raspberry lemon with a floral background- the perfect tea for summer and spring afternoons.
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