J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

This is on my Best 100 list of children's books to read.

I read the first three books in the Harry Potter series at least once a year. They're part of my comfort-books collection - the books I read when I am ill or unhappy or just suffering from an overload of world misery. I keep it to the first three because nothing really bad happens in them. My favourite characters aren't culled from the plot and the stories are more about fun than saving the world.

I love the imagination that went into creating the wizard world - pumpkin juice, butter beer, every flavour beans, pictures that move and owl's delivering mail. I know there are similarities between this series and Jill Murphy's The Worst Witch, but it doesn't make their world's any less enjoyable. I love them both.

In this book Harry Potter learns he's a wizard, gets sent off to Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, makes friends, eats lots of good food, makes enemies, flies on a broom and encounters a misunderstood villian who really just wants to be loved - Voldemort. Fun.

Faith Hunter - Skinwalker (2009)

This is the first book in the Jane Yellowrock series. The story was interesting and the characters were good, but the description was overly verbose and relentless. I felt like some parts went on forever without remorse. It got irritating.

Regardless all that would merely make it an okay book with too much description, if the description wasn't frightening and stomach-turning.

The author had a child tied up by a skinwalker who ate the child alive. The child asphyxiated on her own vomit as her liver was being eaten. I feel revolted just thinking about it.

Is this a good series? I won't be reading any more of them. I won't be able to ever forget that imagery and I resent the author for putting it in my head. The book didn't have any warnings that it was going to get perverted. It should have. I think all books should come with warnings just like films. Authors shouldn't be allowed to get away with the kind of deviance that a film would get slapped for.

That wasn't the only demented aspect of the narrative, just the one that swirls through my head the most. I do wonder about authors who are able to write things like this. What goes through their minds when they look at the people around them?? I don't think murdering a child so graphically was necessary for the narrative progression. It has turned me off this author completely.