Obert Skye

I love Obert Skye. He combines humor, adventure, imagination into excellent stories.

I finally finished reading the Pillagy or the Pillage Trilogy in which Beck Phillips moves to the small town of Kingsplot to live with a strange relative. In Pillage (which I read a few years ago), Beck discovers he has a gift for making things grow, and this includes dragons. Beck's family is both gifted and cursed much to the detriment of the people and buildings of Kingsplot. In Choke, not having learned his lesson, Beck grows a dragon queen, whom he names Lizzy. It's amazing at first, but once Lizzy gets a taste for pillaging, there is only one way to stop her. In Ambush, the plants around Kingsplot appear to be in open rebellion against Beck. Between pressure from them and his father, who is locked up in a mental hospital, Beck decides to plant the last stone which he knows will hatch a dragon king. Beck lies to his friends and is gradually descending into the madness that afflicts all the men in his family. Can Beck overcome the family curse? Can he save his father, his friends and himself?

These are fun books. Skye is good at mixing intensity with humor. It's enjoyable to see how Beck's character changes over the course of this series. These books involve a lot of pillaging and dragon death, so beware.

Beyond Foo

These books pick up where the Leven Thumps series (which was awesome) left off. You don't really need to have read Leven Thumps to enjoy these books, but you'll appreciate the characters more if you do. The first is Geth and the Return of the Lithens. Geth (a lithen) and Clover (a Sycophant whose job it is to ease the transition of humans who've been snatched into Foo) are kidnapped and taken across the hidden border from Foo to Zendor. And evil human named Payt has taken over and terrorized Zendor by controlling its inhabitants (mostly dreams that have come to life) with the sound of his voice. Geth and Clover are trying to help the people of Zendor fight the tyranny of Payt, even though the people have given up hope. Along the way they save Geth's brother Zale and Clover tames a Tangle. The second book is Geth and the Deception of Dreams. Geth and Clover and their new allies in Zendor search for the wise man Lars who is supposed to be able to help them defeat Payt. As usual, things don't work out like they're supposed to. Among other amusing things in the books is that Geth is really good looking and all the women are constantly trying to get close to him. It made me chuckle a few times.

I guess this series is a trilogy, and book three isn't out yet. Bummer. I enjoyed the stories, but they really felt like parts of one book rather than separate books in a series. I was really annoyed at where the first book ended, but I was much more satisfied at the cliffhanger ending the second. And it looks like were're going to see Leven and Winter and Lilly and Phoebe from the Leven Thumps books. I'm looking forward to it.