Best Fantasy Books of 2013 by Goodreads Choice Awards 2013

As of 2013, Goodreads have announced the books who made it to their Choice Awards as accordance to their category and genre. And here are the top ten books that made it to the Goodreads Choice Awards - Best Fantasy Books of 2013 and their sypnoses/summaries.

• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

• A Memory of Light (Wheel of Time, #14) by Robert Jordan

Since 1990, when Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time® burst on the world with its first book, The Eye of the World, readers have been anticipating the final scenes of this extraordinary saga, which has sold over forty million copies in over thirty languages.

When Robert Jordan died in 2007, all feared that these concluding scenes would never be written. But working from notes and partials left by Jordan, established fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson stepped in to complete the masterwork. With The Gathering Storm (Book 12) and Towers of Midnight (Book 13) behind him, both of which were # 1 New York Times hardcover bestsellers, Sanderson now re-creates the vision that Robert Jordan left behind.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass.

What was, what will be, and what is,

may yet fall under the Shadow.

Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.

• The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master, the husband who commissioned her, dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York in 1899. 

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop. Though he is no longer imprisoned, Ahmad is not entirely free – an unbreakable band of iron binds him to the physical world. 

The Golem and the Jinni is their magical, unforgettable story; unlikely friends whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures – until the night a terrifying incident drives them back into their separate worlds. But a powerful threat will soon bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.

• The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard, #3) by Scott Lynch

With what should have been the greatest heist of their career gone spectacularly sour, Locke and his trusted partner, Jean, have barely escaped with their lives. Or at least Jean has. But Locke is slowly succumbing to a deadly poison that no alchemist or physiker can cure. Yet just as the end is near, a mysterious Bondsmage offers Locke an opportunity that will either save him or finish him off once and for all.

Magi political elections are imminent, and the factions are in need of a pawn. If Locke agrees to play the role, sorcery will be used to purge the venom from his body - though the process will be so excruciating he may well wish for death. Locke is opposed, but two factors cause his will to crumble: Jean's imploring - and the Bondsmage's mention of a woman from Locke's past: Sabetha. She is the love of his life, his equal in skill and wit, and now, his greatest rival. 

Locke was smitten with Sabetha from his first glimpse of her as a young fellow orphan and thief-in-training. But after a tumultuous courtship, Sabetha broke away. Now they will reunite in yet another clash of wills. For faced with his one and only match in both love and trickery, Locke must choose whether to fight Sabetha - or to woo her. It is a decision on which both their lives may depend.

Most Unforgettable Lines in the Fault in Our Stars

Well, since I'm sulking up with the whole movie "The Fault in Our Stars" to be shown in June rather than in February to be my Valentine Movie, I couldn't help but to reminisce and remember the whole story as I had read it last year. And believe me, this book has the greatest lines in most of YA romantic books you can find in the mall and here are some of my favorites that I'd like to share with you.

I hope you can find the feelings in them as I have and stir up emotions you never thought words can bring you.

• "Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful." - Hazel Grace

• "It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you." - Augustus Waters

• "I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you." - Augustus Waters

• "And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone." - Hazel Grace

June is Such a Long Time to Wait for The Fault in Our Stars Movie

"A one sick love story," and a one sick of a long time we all have to wait before The Fault in Our Stars hit the big screen. As expected, the movie which is based on the best-selling book which goes by the same title, had garnered a large fan base on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Showing on June 6, 2014, readers couldn't help not to be excited to watch their favorite characters come to life through Shailene Woodley as Hazel Grace Lancaster (which will also portray Beatrice in Divergent) and Ansel Elgort as Augustus Waters.

The filming had started last year on August 26 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and finished around October. The writer, John Green (bless you for your creative mind and passion for tragedy) was on set for the whole filming and even made video blogs during production of the film chronicling his artistic journey in watching his creation be brought to life on a movie screen. And just this last month, January 29, 2014, everyone finally had a sneakpeek of the movie through its trailer which gained over 3 million views in less than 24 hours after its release.

See it for yourself:

For me, The Fault in Our Stars is indeed the "Romeo & Juliet" of our time, the plot and the feelings it gives are entirely priceless. And though, the story may leave you crying and sulking up, the journey of these two beautiful people as they find love and fight their fears will entirely leave a mark on your heart. It's a masterpiece which Time Magazine called "damn near genius" and described by Booklist as "Green’s best and most ambitious novel to date. In its every aspect, The Fault in Our Stars is a triumph."