Because of Ursula leGuin's reputation as an excellent writer of fantasy and science fiction, I eagerly started her historical/mythological fantasy, Lavinia. At the beginning, I was not disappointed.

Lavinia's character as a young princess in the household of a pre-Roman city-state is well drawn. She is independent, curious, and intent on having her own way with her life.

As stated above, Lavinia has only a line or so of mention in Vergil's Aeniad and so leGuin uses her full imaginative powers to create her personality.

However, once the plot is set in motion I found the book less exciting than I had hoped. The battle scenes seemed to drag on rather than being the page turners that are found elsewhere. A lack of familiarity with all of the characters in the Aeniad made their success or death in battle less than intriguing.

I would recommend the book to readers who are familiar with greco-roman history and mythology and enjoy novels on the subject. It is not a book for everyone, thus only a 4 in my rating.

This is another interesting and fun book to read from Lisa See - author of "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," Like that book, "Peony in Love" goes into the history and culture of China while also presenting characters that are well developed and worth knowing. "Peony" offers a somewhat different perspective on the life of women in dynasty China - I don't want to spoil the novel by giving away too much information. It would be an excellent choice for any reader who has enjoyed her other books or other Chinese historical novels - i.e. those of Pearl Buck, Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston.

I found The Children's Blizzard to be written in a very poor style. While Laskin has a lot of interesting information, he strings it together like a poorly written term paper. He gives a great many unnecessary details - such as the hair style and eye color of Signal Corps members, which just detracts from the main points of the book. His jumping around in both topics and time sequence make the book dull and hard to read. Toward the end, when he gets to the parts about what happened to various individuals, he does draw the reader in - but I felt it was a bit too late. Lastly, as the descendant of Scandinavian/German settlers in North Dakota, I find his summary declaring the settlement of the plains as a failure, to be insulting to the hard work and fortitude of those sod-hut dwellers.