Elizabeth Peters - The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog (1992)

This is the seventh book in the Amelia Peabody series.

The Emersons are back in Egypt, having left Ramses and their adopted daughter Nefret at home in England. Unfortunately, even though they told no-one of their find, someone knows about the lost living Meroitic civilisation they discovered on their last excavation and they're determined to get the precise location. But, a mysterious stranger is equally determined to protect Peabody, although not so Emerson, who is abducted and later found with amnesia. This leads the group to Amarna, where Emerson thinks he's on the dig in 1884, before he ever met Peabody.

I didn't like the killing of the dog. It had been tortured and was terrified - they didn't need to beat it to death.

Other than that, the book was good, but not my favourite. I found Emerson to be much worse to Peabody than he was in the first book, he was very rough and often cruel. I kept hoping Amelia would give up on him and run off to someone nicer - I'm really not sure that Emerson is worth all the love and loyalty Amelia gives him when he does remember who she is. It was fun to have Sethos back. He's such an interesting character. I hope he has a larger role as himself in a later book - no, I don't believe the ending at all.

Isobelle Carmody - The Gathering

I really LOATHE this book.

Did the author REALLY need to BURN A DOG TO DEATH to enhance the story line? NO!

That was just sick. Having kids burn another child's dog to death. Disgusting.

Absolutely avoid this author. No-one who can do something so awful should be writing books for children.

I cannot believe she's in the top 50 Australian authors & this book is in the high school curriculum. What were they thinking???

I've had nightmares about this book. It was beyond appalling. I'm almost speechless at the horror it left in my mind. I know I'll never forget it & I really would like to.

Sick. Just sick. It was a recipient of the Children's Peace Literature Award too. That's just nuts. It's like giving America the Nobel Peace Prize for dropping bombs on Hiroshima. How much bullying & animal cruelty has this book inspired??!

The author should be ashamed of herself. No children's book should contain anything like this.

Holly Black - Valiant (2005)

I really didn't like this book. It started out interesting, but it quickly slid into depravity and cruelty. It's a teen book, but it reads like the senseless horror of the worst of depraved reality that fills many adult books. It made me sad. Sad when the main character, Valerie, ran away from home. Sad when she began injecting faerie drugs. Sad when she forced herself into a home and tormented a strange family. Sad when she was cruel to strangers she'd pass on the street. Sad when her friend threw a kitten under a train and she did nothing but shrug. I don't like this book at all. I'm going to wrap it in red electrical tape and put it backwards on my shelf so I remember to never read anything from this author ever again.

It was full of so many dark things. Valerie's mother sleeping with her boyfriend. Valerie's anger and need to destroy. The homeless friends she makes who are lost and cruel. Their world that she willingly joins. The Fae who die, the Fae who revenge, the Fae who bind her to them. The whole book is full of dark deeds done by creatures who obviously have no conscience or feel no remorse. It was a tiring read. I kept going because I hoped that it would end happily or that some sort of good would come out of so much bad. But nothing came of it. Nothing at all.

It's a pity. The book had so much potential to be an interesting story before the plot suddenly changed and everything went black. The author calls Valerie an "angry angsty girl", but she was more than that. She was lost and cruel and hurtful. Valerie wasn't a character I could ever even slightly like. If you sit back and allow something cruel to happen you're just as much to blame as the person who commits the cruelty.

Not Valiant at all, Betrayal would have been a better title.