Today was a good, if boring day. My second snow day, so I got to just laze around. I read a lot of Stephen King (The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla) and some of the late-but-great Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time, Book One: The Eye of the World). I also wrote a whole ton of my book, so that makes me feel I actually accomplished something. I finished my fifteenth chapter, and am now 236 pages and 64,000 words in.

As you'll see below, I've organized the list of book reviews into the series they're from, as opposed to the order I reviewed them in, which will hopefully make it less confusing. I also cut down on a bunch of clarifications I put into the titles (book the first, bookone, part one, etc).My decisions on the PS3 games I want are still in the order of highest rating between Gamespot and IGN, so those still might look a bit weird.

I realize(partially because of the re-organizing of the list) that I've basically been reviewing eight authors works. Therefore, if you actually take the time to read these, you guys can vote on which book series below you'd like me to review:

More Stephen King books outside of The Dark Tower
The Dan Brown books (Digital Fortress, Deception Point, Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol)
The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix(Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen)
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Last Battle)
The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron (The Lost Years of Merlin, The Seven Songs of Merlin, The Fires of Merlin, The Mirror of Merlin, The Wings of Merlin)
The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind (Wizard's First Rule and sequels, that's the only one I've read as of now)
The Shannara saga by Terry Brooks (The Sword of Shannara and sequels/prequels, that's the only I've read)
The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson (I'm reading book one, TheEye of the World, as said)

Your call if there are any in particular you'd like my 2 cents on! Otherwise... Enjoy this one!

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: 10
Grand Theft Auto IV: 10
LittleBigPlanet: 9.5
BioShock: 9.5
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: 9.5
inFamous: 9.0
Killzone 2: 9.0
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: 9.0
Dead Space: 9.0
Resident Evil 5: 8.5
Valkyria Chronicles: 8.5

Resistance: Fall of Man: 8.5
Resistance 2: 9.0
Batman: Arkham Asylum: 9.0

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling: 9.0
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling: 9.0
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling: 10
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling: 9.5
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien: 8.5
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: 9.0
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien: 10
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien: 10
Eragon by Christopher Paolini: 8.5
Eldest by Christopher Paolini: 9.0
Brisingr by Christopher Paolini: 9.0
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger by Stephen King: 8.0
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King: 9.5
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands by Stephen King: 9.5
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: 9.0
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman: 9.5
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman: 10
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer: 8.5
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer: 8.0
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer: 9.0
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket: 7.0
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket: 7.5
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket: 7.5
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket: 7.0
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket: 8.0
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket: 8.5
The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud: 9.0

The Golem's Eye is the second book in The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. After the fun, funny, action-packed, riotous first book, The Amulet of Samarkand, I was expecting great things. What I got was a longer book (the longest in the series, while book one is the shortest), a book with a bigger focus on a character mentioned briefly in book one named Kitty, and frankly, a lot less fun.

Book one was all about one of the two main characters, Nathaniel, training to be a magician. However, becoming a magician in this series is a different story from becoming a magician in any other story. Magicians are the government in this interpretation of old-school England because, obviously, they're so much stronger than the common humans. Therefore, they tend to be on the evil, or at least cruel, side. They're tyrannical rulers, and yet Nathaniel is a pretty nice kid. He isn't rude to others or anything, although he seeks revenge on another magician that humiliates him in front of a bunch of people. To do so, he summons a djinni far more powerful than he should be able to control at his age named Bartimaeus, and things get hectic.

Bartimaeus is the other main character. While Nathaniel deals with things at home, and both of the characters have to uncover a plot to take control of the government by Simon (the guy who humiliated Nathaniel), Bartimaeus is much, much more fun than the other characters. For one thing, Nathaniel's story is told from third person, while Bartimaeus's is told from first, with snide, hilarious footnotes spread liberally throughout his part of the story. Plus, because a magician's form of magic is controlling djinn and such, he tends to be in all of the action scenes.

With book two, Nathaniel has gone into the government, and is one of the higher-ups because he became a hero in one. This means he's much more compotent as a magician, but he's become corrupted by power, as Bartimaeus warned him he would be when Nathaniel let him go back to rest in the spirit netherworld place he usually lives in.This means I still cared for Nathaniel a lot and liked his story,which made it all the more heartbreaking seeing how he treats people.He's out to uncover a plot by a rebel faction among the commoners, and this is where things kick into gear on his side of the story.

Kitty is one of these rebels who are able to fight the magicians because they have a sort of resilience to their magic. It's interesting seeing these characters interact with magicians, but there really isn't much of it, and there isn't much magician versus magician either (at least, in the beginning). It seems that in this book, Stroud is attempting to put all of the rebels and magicians in place to set up the conclusion, instead of making a good story out of it. This is partly understandable because you do want to end a book series with a bang, butbook two's own story, while good, is actually pretty small. What takes up most of this book is basically the design of book three, and that's on the boring side (not that book three's boring, but that's for another time).

In this book, things are completely the opposite of what one would want: Kitty's story, the most boring, is predominant; Nathaniel's is there, but not much (which at least has some interesting political fun); and Bartimaeus's is nearly nonexistent. Since Kitty's story is the most boring and this is the longest book anyway, I really wish that Stroud had split it up a bit better and put part of it into the first book. Besides, some of the story does happen before the main timeline ofbook two, so that would've enhanced the flow of the story a lot.

Kitty's story does get fun toward the end, not to worry, but Nathaniel's is constantly at least interesting and Bartimaeus's is awesome every time he shows up. The reason for the boredom toward the beginning of Kitty's is hearing about her childhood, which is sad because the magicians keep being jerks to the commoners, but not particularly thrilling. Once we get into what the rebels do to try and bring down the government, we get some much more intense moments. When we hear a bit about Nathaniel's reaction to these attacks, he summons Bartimaeus again to help him, and that's when things REALLY get interesting.

Stroud's writing is still very strong, as is his plot, which is why I'm not ruining it for you. It's just his planning ahead wasn't fantastic. ButI'm not saying this is a bad book; far from it. What I'm saying is that the background of Kitty was all forced into one big section of book two, when things are supposed to heat up. If they'd been spread apart a bit better, using book one to shift aroundthe uninteresting bits (in other words, if Stroud had planned out the pacing more), this one would be fantastic, and book one would probably still have gotten its 9.0 from me. Heck, I might have even liked it more if he'd ended without explaining what the point of Kitty's story is, so I'd want to read more to figure out why it's there at all.

The beginning, in other words, is a bit slow. There tend to be large chunks of Kitty's story split up every once in awhile by Nathaniel or Bartimaeus's story (although Bartimaeus only shows up about halfway through the book). We get a big portion of backstory, followed by some political fights and attacks on government buildings (which are what kept me moving through the story), then some more backstory... And it goes on. Actually, once Kitty's story has caught up to Nathaniel and Bartimaeus's story, it's pretty damn good. But until then, I found myself flipping through the chapters to hunt down when I got to read more about Nathaniel.

The other bit that kept me moving, as said, is Stroud's powerful writing. Even through the dull parts, he manipulates things better than most authors, so it goes by faster than most would get it finished. However, his writing is all the more powerful, funny, and intriguing when he's writing from Bartimaeus's perspective and cracking jokes at his own story. When it was Kitty's story, I'd read the book willingly. When it was Nathaniel's I'd read at least that chapter. When it was Bartimaeus's, I didn't put the book down.

As said, this is the longest, and, sadly, worst book in the series, That's saying something for the trilogy though, because outside of Kitty's backstory, the book moves at the same incredible pace the first book did, with thorough-yet-not-dragged-out descriptions of the action scenes that keep the reader enthralled. I was always glad to get another helping of Bartimaeus and even Nathaniel, and I got pretty excited once Kitty's story got back up to speed. This happens in the second half of the story, so that half was much better than the first, and mostly made up for it.

Now, to be a bit more positive about things. Once in awhile we'd see Kitty actually get attacked by a magician in her backstory, which comes as a bit of a surprise every time it happens, and kept me coming back for more. Meanwhile, some of Kitty's present-day story (as of book two) cuts in there, and we see the rebels burning down buildings or attacking people, causing hell for Nathaniel. Then we'd get Nathaniel back, dealing with his political opponents (more interesting than expected), and taking down these rebels. Then we get Bartimaeus taking down some ancient evils that are accidentally released by the rebels, and we get some scenes that stick out as some of the best action scenes I've read.

Yes, it has a lot of fantastic scenes, and the second half of the book felt almost as fast and awesome as book one. There are just a couple chunks that drag it down. Nevertheless, I liked the book a lot, and was more than willing to finish the trilogy, which, I promise you, is worth it in the end.

8.0 out of 10: Great