Truckers (Bromeliad Trilogy #1) by Terry Pratchett

I know ... I almost always give anything Terry Pratchett a 4 if not a 5. I haven't read all his works but I think I only gave two of them a 3. Couldn't help it. Even though I didn't laugh out loud at this book like the others, I chuckled at a lot of it. I was trying to read another fantasy/satire the same time as this but I couldn't ... grasp ... the humor. I get what it was trying to say and why it was supposed to be funny but ... I think what I'm trying to say is I think Terry Pratchett is still the best fantasy/satire writer there is. 

Story-wise, although Truckers doesn't leave you hanging, it's a bit open-ended. I'm actually glad the trilogy was already published when I started reading. So off to the next book.

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

I'm liking Granny Weatherwax better in every Witches novel I read. She really grows on you. Or me. Not that I didn't like her before. I did. It's just out of the all the Discworld series my favorite were the Watch novels with Rincewind coming to a second close. The rest, I see as equal. This, however, made me want to read her more than Rincewind.  Yeah ... girl power and all. Lol. 

This third installment of the Witches novels is all about making your own destiny and all that shizz. It makes a great deal about how stories and the Grimm's fairy tales so everyone should be able to relate to the humor. I might have said it before but I'll say it again, Terry Pratchett writes the best satire-fantasy novels. I don't think I'll ever write reviews good enough to give this series justice.

Physik (Septimus Heap Book Three) by Angie Sage

Allow me to read between the lines. Or too much into the story. 

Somehow I liked this book better than the first two. Although the characters are slowly growing up and we see more "evil" in the new antagonists rather than the comical characters of DomDaniel and Simon (I mean, who's gonna take a character named DomDaniel seriously? Okay maybe Simon but that's beside the point. Heh.), it's still too much of a children's book in a way that it's a bit predictable. Except what happened to Nicko and Snorri in the end, that kind of surprised me.

Physik is the first one that made me accept the fact that the series is named after Septimus Heap. Septimus is starting to be the 7th son of a 7th son. I now see the potential. Lol. I think that was why I didn't rave for Magyk and Flyte. It made him just "one of those" characters and I needed to feel something great from a main character to be able to love them.

The one thing I REALLY liked about this book, however, is the satire-ish instances. Kinda reminds me of what characters represent in the Discworld series. Thinking back, there's a satirical side to the series ever since, but it wasn't as pronounced for me. Here's a few I can think off of the top of my head.

The Rat Stranglers could be a group of people taking action about things they don't understand. They choose to blame something else (that they don't understand as well). It makes people feel better that they're trying to do something, even though it's obvious it's not solving anything. It was funny, too, how they had some sort of a mob song that didn't make sense. Just a lot of kill, kill, kill and splat, splat, splat in it. Silas Heap and Gringe is another example. Here are two men who hated each other's guts from the time they saw each other but somehow manage to set their differences aside for the love of sports. Well, a board game but you get the drift. Silas is also one of those men who we're all so familiar with from movies or TV shows. A man who has a wife who has a lot of money so he stops working and writes a book that no one knows about or if it will be published (in this case, this is a man who has an adoptive daughter who turned out to be the princess and ends up pursuing his hobbies rather than providing for the family. Don't get me wrong, I love Silas.). Oh and Stanley and Dawnie? Don't even get me started on them. Lol.

I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert

Very funny though not for the faint-hearted, conservatives, easily piqued and those who take things too seriously. I especially liked his chapter on religion although I'm not sure I agree when he said all Protestants had to do was say a few Hail Mary's and feel guilty a lot ... I thought it was the Roman Catholics who do that? Lol. Four stars only 'cause it's really not something I haven't heard before. He just has a different tone of saying things. It's like he has his own version of sarcastic (and I love sarcasm). I'm also rating the audiobook (narrated by himself) so I thought it was more fun and would probably give only a three if I was just reading it.