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These are such comforting and nostalgic reads and it is always surprising how many things I forgot about considering this was like the only thing I read when I was little. I can't wait to continue on the series and see what the five get up to next.

In what universe the parents of a kidnapped child would let her sleep on the island she was held captive with some people she just met after being found, I do not know but it was sweet how much she was excited by this. I love being with the five on their adventures.

I dunno I guess reading this as an adult Edgar doesn't seem so much one of the bad guys as he might have when I was younger. It was still lovely that the five managed to rescue the little girl though and it all being revealed at the police station in front of Uncle Quentin was quite funny.

I did actually start to feel sorry for him though when I picked the book up to finish it and the five were being horrid to him. I know his parents deserved having him locked in the dungeons but I did feel a bit bad for him as he was also only a kid. The sticks were literally helping in a kidnapping though so they really did get what was coming for them.

The five mooing at Edgar is one of the most memorable aspects of the entire series for me. I particularly enjoyed the first part actually when they were planning the escape to the island. Mr Stick was an absolutely horrible man, Mrs Stick was slightly more bearable as she at least cared about her child. I didn't like Edgar at the beginning because he was just being annoying.

I have been reading this for an absurd amount of time considering how long it is. That isn't because I didn't enjoy it, just because I have had so much other stuff I needed to read for uni that I kind of abandoned what I was reading before. This book very much lives up to the first two and I loved the whole adventure with the sticks.

I must say I was pleased of a short thing to read after Paradise Lost though and the rhyming couplets throughout did make it quite pleasant (it was interesting to find later that the first line builds up heroic expectations with the second dashing them). Overall, the entire thing was very forgettable and I felt like I was just trying to get through it when I was reading it

When analysing it closely I can see there are definitely interesting aspects but the entire thing was not what I expected from the title. The fact that it was literally about a piece of hair being cut off was slightly ridiculous (I know that is the point). I can't even remember the names of any of the characters. It just went by very quickly and I didn't connect with or really understand much of it on my first read.

I really don't know how I feel about this. It was so short and I basically read the entire thing without really knowing what was going on. Obviously because it is a mock-epic it was slightly confusing when card games were being described as battles etc. Some of the content and lectures on it within my course was quite interesting but I really took absolutely nothing from my initial reading.

I just feel like it really said, she would not have been capable of saving herself and so she had to die. Slitting her throat was a bit unnecessarily violent as well. It felt like he was killed by those with power over him and she was killed by, yes her lover, but a man with power over her. I dunno. I just didn't have the funnest time reading this. It just felt very very mid and forgettable.

Also him killing Imoinda at the end did make sense and kind of showed love for her but then also it would have been a bit of a Romeo & Juliet sweet moment if he had killed himself too but instead he went out for revenge and was mutilated himself. It was also a bit odd as she was pregnant with his child, it does show the desperation of these people though.

I understand that he was a prince and everything so that makes it make sense a bit more but also I was thinking I was missing bits as he was never shown actually working in the fields despite the book focusing on that time period.

I was able to get back into it towards the end and so understood when he was renamed, she became pregnant and the rebellion against their enslavers started. I have never read something about the slave trade so that was interesting (there was definitely a lot of context I learnt) but also Oroonoko didn't actually do that much work compared to what I am sure the people actually had to struggle through.

This was another book I read for my uni course and one I really don't have many strong feelings about. It was just very meh. The first bit was mildly interesting seeing the love grow between Oroonoko and Imoinda and then in the middle I completely lost track of what was going on, maybe because I was tired or because it was just boring and slightly hard to follow (not as bad as some I have read though).

I dunno, I guess it was just a bit mid - some parts I enjoyed and I quite liked my reading experience, other parts were just strange.