Years ago, as a teenager I took the Raven Ring out of the public library, and instantly devoured it. Twice. Before Katniss Everdeen and Hermione Granger, I had Eleret, a mountain warrior woman who couldn’t grasp city mannerisms, but who could memorize anything spoken to her and throw knives with the best of them. I loved that book so much that my friend almost stole it from the library because even 13 years ago, the book wasn’t easy to find. However, one of the great things about e-readers is that rare-ish books that are hard to find are suddenly just a few clicks away, and it only took about 5 minutes between reminiscing about this book to figuring out it was actually part of a series to starting the first of the Lyra novels on my kindle. Yes, I feel some crippling guilt about how much less I support independent bookshops, but I’ll say this for my kindle: it gives me access to books that I would otherwise have to spend months tracking down, or trying to convince someone to special order for me.
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