Bookroll

100 Cupboards series

2012-01-10T09:45:00.003-05:00

I wish I had heard of these books by N. D. Wilson a little sooner. They tell, in charming fashion, the tale of Henry York (and his family), from Henry, Kansas to an ancient city by the sea and from learning to pitch a baseball to dealing with typewriter-obsessed faeren and undying evil. The characters are distinctly themselves, the plot is solid, and the ending is quite satisfying. What more can I say? Wilson uses English in a surprising, humorous way that I've only seen from a few other writers. Check them out.

The books are 100 Cupboards, Dandelion Fire, and The Chestnut King.

Brief Open Letter to Authors

2011-09-25T09:20:00.004-04:00

Dear authors,

Please write some more books where lying doesn't solve any problems. I'd love to recommend smart, funny books like Dull Boy (just to pick one example of many) with a whole heart but just can't because of the way the main characters lie, especially to their parents but also to others.

Yours truly...

P.S. If you can recommend any books like this feel free to let me know!

Nancy Farmer's Trolls series

2010-06-29T18:54:00.002-04:00

Being The Sea of Trolls, The Land of the Silver Apples, and The Islands of the Blessed.

Oh, Thorgil.

These books actually remind me of Juliet Marillier's in atmosphere, but are somewhat cheerier and quite a bit more action driven. I was actually surprised when I got to the end that Farmer fit so many different episodes into three books, though some of them are just that: episodes that may add a little to the world-building but not so much to the plot or character development. (The chapter "The Sacrificial Stone" comes to mind; creepy, but no further relevance except so far as it reflects the overall theme. It actually stands out because she does such a good job of making other seemingly unimportant details tie in to the plot later.)

I admit, a bit before the ending I thought to myself "This is Norse-inspired, it's not going to end well, is it?" and was (bittersweetly) surprised. (IMPORTANT NOTE, avoid Farmer's blog if you don't like spoilers; she answers a question about what actually happened at the end although I find myself disagreeing with her interpretation.)

So why did I love these books? Honestly, by the end of the first book (which is a pretty good adventure in itself; in fact, all three books could probably stand on their own, but will spoil events from previous books), Thorgil had stolen my heart. The story is nominally about Jack, a young Saxon, who is apprenticed to a Bard who showed up in his village several years before the story begins and started giving orders. As often happens in stories, Things Go Wrong. Jack is kidnapped by Northman berserkers, ends up on a quest, and so on. Along the way he meets Thorgil, a "wannabe berserker" (description straight from the cast of characters) around his age who hates Jack but is also straightforward, loyal and even kind, as long as no one is watching. The wicked sense of humor doesn't hurt, either.

The thing I found most troubling is the statement (and what happens in the plot backs it up) that you get the afterlife you expect. Berserkers end up in Valhalla, druids and heroes to the Islands of the Blessed, Christians in heaven, and so on. There's also a lot of "Christian magic" which, of course, is not much different from any other magic. (The book credits this mostly to Sts. Patrick, Columba and so on who, we're told, were also druids.)

Still, I'd love to see the further adventures of these characters. Whether it will happen is anyone's guess (the third book isn't selling too well, apparently) but even without a continuation these three make up quite a good adventure with deeper themes, history, well-done humor (it relieves tense moments without making them seem frivolous or unimportant) and great characters. There are a few plot holes (the beginning of the second book rather jars with the character development at the end of the first) but it's a lot of fun.

Up and Foreshadowing

2010-05-01T07:43:00.001-04:00

I saw Pixar's Up for the first time last night. I think it's a pretty good example of using foreshadowing (and repetition) without destroying tension.

Stop reading now if you want to avoid spoilers; I'm going to go through some of my observations about it.

First, my expectations worked against me at the beginning with the short black and white film. I've seen a number of Pixar's other films in the past (I think the only one I've missed is Cars) and most or all of them are packaged with a short film that precedes the main feature. So, I watched this one without expecting it to be connected to the main story until it transitioned abruptly into color.

I also noticed how many important things are repeated, setting up a rhythm and an expectation of rhythm.

1. At the end of the short film, the narrator states that the hunter promised to return. The hunter then immediately repeats that promise in his own words. You expect him to be back.

2. Carl appears with a balloon in hand, setting up the element of balloons.

I thought Carl and Ellie's story was a great example of economical storytelling. No shot is wasted and there are very few words.

3. The leaf blower and retirement home brochure shows up. By this point you might have started expecting the things that show up to show up again...

4. The scout kid shows up, repeatedly, and is summarily dismissed to look for a legendary bird.

5. The retirement home shows up again...

6. ... and the balloons.

7. Once Carl was in the air, I asked, "But where's the kid?" He shows up, of course, and his entrance is later repeated by another character.

8. The GPS had to go as soon as the kid said "With this, we'll never be lost!" This doesn't show up again, unlike most of the other things in the movie. The kid never uses his trumpet or half of his other scout stuff, either.

9. The kid finds the legendary bird (or it finds him).

10. When dogs show up, you know for sure the hunter is still around, and stubborn and creepy to boot. (Who gives dogs collars that let them talk, especially such a large pack of dogs? The way they serve him later, it's like they take the place of people in his life. Given their slavish obedience to their master, it's no wonder he's grown (more) deranged.)

11. The squirrel gag is important later.

12. The hunter is back. I think one of the dogs in the crowd even said "You're our guests now, temporarily!"

13. The cone of shame. Funny thing about the dogs' collars: they seemed to have GPS on them. Did the hunter occasionally leave to buy more current technology, or did he have those 50-70 years ago? (Considering GPS didn't exist back then, this may be a little plot hole.) On the other hand, he was established as a genius (or thief) already for inventing the talking collars, so he could have invented his own version of the technology.

14. The hall of trophies. The bird has a good reason to dislike the hunter.

15. Another throwaway remark, as far as I could tell: the hunter says those who go into the labyrinth that is the bird's home never return. I wasn't sure if he was talking about people or dogs but I thought this was more a statement on unknown dangers there than foreshadowing of his own character, who shortly proceeds to death threats. It doesn't seem to fit by the end of the movie unless we take it that way, though.

16. I don't remember whether this is before or after the hunter, but Carl's hope that the scout kid won't notice the bird is gone, and said scout IMMEDIATELY waking up and saying "Where's the bird? Oh no, he's lost," etc.

17. They get the house to Paradise Falls, positioned exactly where it was in Ellie's picture.

18. The leaf blower returns!

19. The biplane as they're entering the airship the second time is shown for maybe 5 seconds, but I expected it to play a role.

I don't have many ideas about the fight scene. Maybe it's just a fight scene? It is pretty funny when Carl spits out his dentures on command.

20. The cone of shame returns.

21. Carl's house is ditched the same way his possessions were. (From the end of the movie, it seems it ended up next to Paradise Falls again; I'm not sure how, with the airship traveling fairly quickly.)

22. Carl gets the blimp. Didn't Ellie make him promise to bring her in one at the beginning?

23. The scout kid ends up on the curb eating ice cream and watching cars with Carl in place of the kid's dad.

When the scout kid initially showed up, I thought the guy who wanted to buy Carl's house had sent him or maybe even was his dad, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of a connection there.

Thoughts?

Sneak preview?

2010-01-20T21:09:00.003-05:00

In case I don't muster up a respectable post later, or feel differently...

Right now (~1/3 of the way through with some skipping of awkward bits that I should go back and read) I love this book:

Why?

1. Romance. Chapter 1 is great if you've read the previous book (Spell Hunter aka Knife).

2. Adventure and excitement! Or, if you prefer, you get to read about other people suffering adventure and excitement while you are cozily reading.

3. A certain scene with a gun.

4. Characters with real faith and real doubts.

5. So far the main characters complement each other very well: they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. This is a big relief from certain other popular books where there's been a huge imbalance of power. And it looks from a distance like they might be just friends instead of a romantic pairing. I love reading about good friendships and people who don't need to fill up silence with words, because they're comfortable with each other.

6. I have a reasonable guess about who the bad guy is and can still happily assume I'm wrong, because I was so wrong in the first book. Whether my guess is right or wrong, either way it's a surprise.

7. The cover is a beautiful shade of reddish orange at the right angle. I don't think I quite got it in my photo.

Gone away

2009-11-11T21:38:00.002-05:00

Books just aren't grabbing me the same way anymore. I end up regretting half the ones I read now. The other half I don't have much to say about. (In the last two months I've read Silksinger, Forest Born, Ice, Liar, Fire, The Maze Runner, Nation, Good Girls, Warbreaker, The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, Donut Days, Secrets of Truth and Beauty, and Philippa Fisher's Fairy Godsister, and reread Blackbringer (which I still thought was good)). I guess this is a drawn-out way to say not to expect much more here, not that you do.

I spent some time in Bangladesh recently and it's safe to say my perspective has shifted. There's so many real and eternal things to invest in that losing myself in a fantasy doesn't appeal much anymore. I think the right kind of book can shed light on this world (I recognized many of my emotions in the main character of Forest Born, for example) but others, the kind that focus on shock and horror and other evils, have lost their attraction.

I may post here again if I find a book particularly worth mentioning, or I might turn it into a more general blog. Not sure yet.

Here's a quick run-down of the books mentioned:

Silksinger. I loved Whisper's power and the adventure was exciting but it kept getting darker and by the end I felt like I had been drinking poison.

Forest Born. I didn't exactly love it but I want to read it again: it's a quiet kind of book that I think will grow on me some more.

Ice. This is the last one I read. I was extremely impressed by the pacing: Durst drops new revelations at exactly the right times near the beginning, and it only speeds up from there. It also has a pretty good mix of fairy tale atmosphere and modern sensibility (the main character is the daughter of an Arctic researcher).

Liar. The craft this book must have taken is impressive but in the end, it feels like you know less than you did when you started. I knew enough to expect it going in, but maybe I'm cynical.

Fire. Don't know if I'll read another book by her. A third with a main character like the ones in her first two would be too much for me. This one also seems darker than the first.

The Maze Runner. Very like The Hunger Games in terms of excitement but I thought it took too long for the eventual payoff ("End of book one" and very few answers) and was darker than justified. "Dark, edgy and realistic" must be in these days.

Nation. Oooh... I liked this one quite a lot, except for the ending. Pratchett's humor works places other than the Discworld, but in this one it acts as leavening instead of being the main course.

Good Girls. Yuck.

Warbreaker. Some interesting ideas and exciting action sequences, but the characters didn't stand out a lot.

The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. I don't remember Changeling very well but I think this was a little more of the same: Neef and co. managing geniuses. (She makes friends at the changeling school, including Tiffany (later known as Woolworth).)

Donut Days. I'm not sure I read the whole thing but if I did, I barely remember it. Controversy erupts over a prophecy and the main character's mother preaching. I liked the bikers a bit.

Secrets of Truth and Beauty. I blogged about this already.

Philippa Fisher's Fairy Godsister. Impulse read! I saw this at the bookstore, picked it up at the library, and enjoyed it a bit, but it's a very light read. Take it with a big grain of salt.

Blackbringer. I already blogged this one, too.

The Dubious Hills questions

2009-09-13T06:54:00.003-04:00

I was rereading The Dubious Hills (again) last night and wondered about some things I hadn't noticed before. I still think it's a really good book with a bittersweet (but open) ending.

These questions of mine are bound to be at least a little spoilery.

1. Why does Mally seem to give Arry particularly useless answers when everyone else seems to know what she says about everyone else? Does Mally think (know) it's better for Arry's character for her to search on her own, even though she never finds the answers, or is she just teasing her? Or are the questions Arry asks truly outside of Mally's province?

2. I noticed, perhaps for the first time, Halver's line about the intelligence being unable to make a choice. Every other time I've read the book I thought that Arry had good reasons for wanting to stay the way she was, but now I wonder how much truth was in what Halver said. Even the choice Arry makes at the end doesn't seem directly related to the choice Halver wanted her to make. On the other hand, it seems Halver made the choice he wants everyone else to make, so what he said can't be entirely true. What do the spells really do?

3. Presumably some explanation will be in the sequel (coming out sometime), but why did Arry's parents leave her? I really noticed this time, despite the way she sees herself (or at least the calm, in-control impression she gives from her narrative voice), she really seems to be only barely managing to take care of her little brother and sister.

4. Why is the doubt worse in the morning?

Quickies

2009-09-06T17:41:00.004-04:00

Eyes Like Stars, by Lisa Mantchev. This is just about like R. J. Anderson says; Bertie has to come up with a reason she should be allowed to stay at the theater that's become her home (literally). There is some crude humor but not much that's truly objectionable (the hot tub scene probably crosses the line) and the book is funny despite it. I'll accept a lot if it's funny. Despite the first chapter (which I read online and said "meh" to) the book takes off quickly. One aspect to note is the dreamlike feel: one can accept the oddities of players but the motivations and actions of certain characters (particularly the Theater Manager) make less sense by the end of the book than they did at the beginning. Maybe this will be rectified in acts two and three.

Secrets of Truth and Beauty, by Megan Frazer. This is more a coming of age story than anything. Dara is pulled out of school by her parents over a misinterpreted English project (although who misinterpreted it is in question) and feels pushed to the breaking point. She decides to meet up with the sister she's never met. Goats ensue. (I am not kidding.) Also the usual working through difficult relationship issues with other people stuff. Dara has a lot of things going for her (boldness, persistence, long-ago dance lessons, a great singing voice) but really doesn't know how to deal with her parents or her sister. The book does have an emphasis on homosexuality (in other characters) which, although I liked the characters for other reasons, might be offensive.

Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Super intense, maybe supernatural, maybe not. It's indisputable that Lia has an eating problem. This is a gripping read but not light reading.

The Princess and the Bear, by Mette Ivie Harrison. I liked this better than The Princess and the Hound (I think there was more character stupidity in that one), probably because of the romantic aspect, but the prose still felt clumsy at times. You don't really have to have read the other to enjoy this although a basic idea of what happened might be useful.

Do Hard Things, by Alex and Brett Harris. I just started reading this but so far I agree with it to a remarkable degree. The basic idea is that teens fulfill expectations. Since we don't expect much of them in our culture, most waste incredible potential in their teen years which could be used to set a direction for the rest of their lives. I've thought for a long time that people should grow up (I would say sooner, but I think there are some who never grow up), myself included. The rest of the book is apparently (not having read it yet) a roadmap to doing hard things.

Prospero Lost

2009-08-14T17:22:00.001-04:00

By L. Jagi Lamplighter.

So Miranda Prospero, daughter of Prospero, Dread Magician (you know the one), is sitting in her study, minding her own business, when she receives a message from her father saying that her whole family is in great danger and that she should warn her brothers (and sister). Well, actually, she's not really minding her own business since she finds the message in one of her father's journals.

I think this is a very well written book, not only because of the descriptions and characters and pacing, but because of how it works on multiple levels. Superficially, it's a combination adventure-mystery with Miranda working to find her siblings and figure out what's going on. At a deeper level, it would be very hard to miss the theme of slavery and freedom. Not only is her father responsible for keeping an entire race in slavery, Miranda herself is extraordinarily obedient to his wishes, though whether supernaturally so is up for debate. (Barely. Several characters suggest the latter, and she does at least one thing which is extremely hard to accept otherwise.) While most of the characters are not exactly well-rounded, this seems to be more a family flaw than anything else: it is readily apparent to this reader, though perhaps not to Miranda, that her family's troubles have been building for several hundred years.

To put it plainly, they are deeply twisted. Mephisto is mad (maybe), Theo is sad and the rest are like selfish children. Despite Miranda's age, neither she nor the rest seem to have grown up much. She herself doesn't recognize empathy when it hits her (several times: "How strange! I had never before made the error of mistaking another person for myself" -- or words to that effect). Not that she's wicked, but naive and devoted to her family, and callous towards people she doesn't know, at least initially.

I wish I could say I loved it but since this is only the first part of three, I'm afraid of how the trilogy will end. This book certainly didn't end how I hoped it would, although the ending it does have seems strangely inevitable in retrospect. In addition, Miranda's world (or at least her own beliefs) seem to be Gnostic in nature, which I found quite disturbing when touted as truth -- at least the truth of her world.

I really did enjoy this story but it does end on a suspended note and has some disturbing elements. That said, I still think it has quite a bit of merit and I recommend it pending the release of the second and third volumes. And Mab is a great character.

Doomsday Book

2009-07-20T21:33:00.002-04:00

By Connie Willis.

I should probably say up front that I liked Eifelheim better. More about that in a bit.

This book is about a determined young student who manages to convince... someone... that she should be allowed to travel to the 14th century. Of course, you know from the beginning that it can only go downhill from there...

What I liked: As a disaster story, it's not much good if you don't care about the characters. The problem is that I didn't care much about the modern characters, only the medieval ones (and Kivrin and maybe Mr. Dunworthy). Despite all the things I didn't like, it's quite readable. You get history as part of the deal.

What I didn't like: It's a disaster story, and it's depressing. The end isn't any kind of triumph, just survival. Too many characters are introduced too quickly which makes it a little hard to keep track of who's who and who's important. The Middle English dialogue is just short of impenetrable but fortunately you get to read it in translation after a little while. The theology is heretical or worse (Dunworthy thinks that God wouldn't have sent his son if he had known what would happen, and that he didn't stop it because he couldn't). On the trivial side, the phones seem very dated next to a future that has time travel and (kind of) advanced medicine.

It's inevitable that Eifelheim is compared to this book. They both involve parallel stories between the present (or future) and the Middle Ages. There is also a priest in both who turns out to be a good guy (the one in Doomsday Book isn't nearly as intellectual but he has a servant's heart). Eifelheim, though, seems to go somewhere with the story, while the characters in Doomsday Book end up almost where they started, perhaps slightly wiser, but really just alive. (Except for the ones who die.)

Wings

2009-07-18T10:39:00.003-04:00

By Aprilynne Pike.

The first time I picked this book up, I put it down again because of the uninspiring description, which ended: "... everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever." I figured if the book was really special, they would have been able to highlight something more intriguing than that vague promise.

The second time, I decided to give it a chance and started reading. I enjoyed seeing the little mysteries surrounding Laurel and was particularly amused by her brand of denial. I also liked how she develops friendships, with her friends helping to draw her out of seclusion.

You should be able to guess what I didn't like. (Ask if you want to know.) It also seemed to force the plot slightly, answering some questions in an entirely unsatisfactory manner. I also didn't like the name dropping scene near the middle: it wasn't nearly as convincing as the process of discovery Laurel goes through before and after that point.

Overall? I ended up enjoying this quite a bit more than I expected when I first saw it, but will still be hesitant about picking up the sequels. (Four books are planned for the series.)

And now a plug for the 2009 Debutantes: As you may have noticed, quite a few of the books I've read this year have been gleaned from this LiveJournal community for debut young adult and middle grade authors. Not only is it a great way to find new authors (there's also a 2010 community), these books often lack many of the elements I find unpalatable in "adult" books. The downside is that, being debuts, you generally have to wait a year to read another book by any of them. Take a look at their books.

Dull Boy

2009-06-06T07:00:00.000-04:00

By Sarah Cross.

Avery is a super-powered teen struggling to fit in and avoid the dissection table.

What I liked: The plot is not really the strong point here. The strong points are the characters and humor. This book is hilarious. The interaction between Avery, Darla and Catherine is golden and the other characters are pretty good too.

What I didn't like: I was laughing too hard to care much at the time, but all the parents in this book look stupid or abusive or both. There's definitely a sense of isolation forced on the characters: parents are not sympathetic; Avery has non-super "friends" but they never even make an appearance; almost everyone either has no siblings or is distant from them. It helps to force the characters together as a group but, as with the parents, it doesn't really seem likely that no one "outside" would ever catch on. (There are, admittedly, suggestions that the story could go this way if there's ever a sequel.)

There is also a lot of lying on the part of the protagonists and some strong language.

I'd definitely recommend this for the humor but take the morals with a grain of salt.

Reading between the lines

2009-06-03T17:16:00.004-04:00

Ambiguity. Some books have it, others don't. There are places where something is omitted but you can easily fill in what happened, and there are others where you can't be as sure. Some examples (these may contain mild spoilers):

"The Lady or the Tiger?" If you haven't read this, go do it now. It ends with a classic cliffhanger. This is the type where you have to decide what happened yourself.

Alphabet of Thorn (Patricia McKillip). Nepenthe*'s real name is important to the plot, but the book never spells out what her name actually is. For that reason this is the first and last McKillip book my sister read; she couldn't stand not having every detail revealed. Almost every book has some loose threads, but not usually something that says so clearly, "I will never tell you."

Laurie King's Mary Russell books**. Aside from plot points, there's a stylistic technique here where one character has a long paragraph of dialogue and you have to fill in other characters' responses from what the single character says. This is usually fine and cuts down on tedium when you know what the responses are, but sometimes it leaves you wondering.

So: what are your favorite examples? When does the art of omission drive you crazy, and when does it make a book (nearly) perfect?

* Nepenthe is related somehow to opium, I believe.

** These are strangely addictive: I'm in the middle of my fifth one and I couldn't tell you why I keep reading them, except that for some reason I really want to find out what happens.

Childbook Reading, part 3

2009-05-25T09:21:00.004-04:00

If you happen to know or suspect what any of the unnamed books in this post are or who they're by, I would love to know.

The Hardy Boys. I read far too many of these, along with some Nancy Drew and Tom Swift, before realizing a deadly secret: they're all the same.

Pineapple Place. I remember little about this other than the name. When I checked recently, only the sequel was still in the library system.

Those Morgana books. I don't remember the title or author, but some children stumble upon a house full of mirrors. When a spell involving moonlight is worked, the mirrors became portals to another world, with the nice touch that on the other side you would appear however your reflection did here. Magic, originally contained in gemstones (if I recall), had been divided up into staffs of different ranks. There was a nasty game of questions in a dark basement. Someone is killed by shattering a mirror as he was passing through it. And one of the girls becomes Morgana's apprentice.

These books were really quite dark. I suspect I stopped reading them more or less intentionally, which is probably why I can't find them again now. Do I really want to? (This was probably somewhere between 3rd and 5th grade.)

Goosebumps. I also consider this wasted time now, although I suppose I know I don't like horror. I had a friend in second grade who had practically all of them and lent them to me.

Asimov, Norby and sequels. Who can forget this cute barrel shaped robot, hyperspace, ancient aliens named after Renaissance painters, and alternate universes? Probably my first sci fi.

Another unnamed book about a girl who was turned to stone either at the beginning or end. I think she was accepting of it which made it merely melancholy instead of terrible. There may have been a smog monster involved but I suspect I got it confused with another book.

Another unnamed book about some kids who fight aliens who have no creativity. There's a magic remote and Baba Yaga, too! I think the title was an acronym but I'm not sure exactly what it was. Something about geeks or nerds saving earth? The aliens may have been shaped like trash cans but that doesn't seem quite right.

The Falcon and the Serpent, by Cheryl A. Smith. Someone is stealing the souls of a kingdom's children: they go to sleep and never wake up. I particularly remember the trap set for the protagonist: he must choose to die for what he believes or, avoiding death, spurn his beliefs. From what I recall, this book had enough threads in the background that there could easily have been more set in this world, but Google finds nothing.

The Hunger Games

2009-05-24T19:28:00.003-04:00

By Suzanne Collins.

Probably anyone reading this has already heard of this book, but just in case: Katniss is a girl (17) struggling to feed her family in a world dominated by televised atrocities. This is reality TV turned into a weapon: Every year, 12 of the 13 Districts outlying the Capitol of Panem (the remains of North America, we are told) are forced to send two of its children to compete in a fight to the death. As you may have guessed, Katniss is one of those sent.

The outstanding characteristic of this book is tension. Good or bad, this is an intense story, at least until suspension of disbelief fails. (In particular, I'm dubious about the speed with which a certain poison acts.)

What I liked: I must admit, tension made the book an incredible pageturner, even after I skipped to the end and started reading backwards. I also liked the suggestion of hidden mysteries, Cinna and the anonymous redhead in particular. It took me a while to realize what went along with the numerous Roman names in the story. (I wonder how significant the names are: there are several characters I would have placed on the "bad" side who don't have Roman names, and one who has a plant name. What might the redhead's name reveal?)

What I didn't like: The ending seemed contrived. Also, I didn't like Katniss very much: she thinks she understands the Games since she's seen them all her life, but she is naive about people. The real problem might be that her tough act seems too real. The Games themselves are a little too evil. Is there really no one who would refuse to participate, even if it means dying? (A comparison to the Roman colosseum is inevitable. Actually, reading that article shows even more parallels than I thought.)

In the end? Often horrifying, but certainly not dull.

Half Magic

2009-05-19T18:39:00.003-04:00

By Edward Eager.

I'd better write something about this right now, or I'll never get to it.

First off: I wish I hadn't read the back cover before starting this. You find out what's going on so quickly anyway that I think it would have been more fun to guess it.

This is quite a fun story overall: four siblings find something magic, and growth results. I laughed at quite a few things that I'm sure I would have missed when I was younger. (I don't remember reading this at all before so I probably didn't. But then again, I remember reading Nesbit even though I can no longer recall anything that happened.) The prose isn't flowery but it gets the job done quite well enough.

The one really jarring note was when the children felt it would be somehow wrong to do magic on Sunday, and proceeded to play the rest of the day. No mention was made of church, or the Lord's day, or even a day of rest. Did they intuit some moral subconsciously? I'm having a hard time thinking of other reasons it could have been wrong.

Overall, this was quite a clever, if light, read.

Childhood Reading, part 2

2009-05-16T16:05:00.001-04:00

Stephen Lawhead, The Warlords of Nin. This book was a big influence on me: it put me off mass-market paperbacks forever. Here's why:

That's right, the cover came off, probably the second time I read it. (Note that it may have been read before I had it; it may have come from a garage sale.) Other than that? Bad guys with magic (or fate on their side?), good guys without it (except for the magic sword), necromancy, and a hidden monotheism. (Hidden in that most people in the book are unaware of it, although it is a big part of Quentin's story.) Also the smith they ask to make the sword (in the second or third book, I think) doesn't want to touch the ore they use because it has the power to heal. Comfortable with his deformity? At least he has a hunchback instead of a lame leg... I think.

Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician. I must have found this in my grandmother's basement and read it in ninth grade, because I remember giving a book report about it where the teacher had to tell me that no, actually, Taylor Caldwell is a woman. I'm pretty sure I loved it at the time (it gave me the word "pusillanimous", after all) but I'm more skeptical now. It had mysticism and hypnotism (I'm starting to see a pattern here) and the master and his maidservant waiting until their respective spouses had died (of old age or fever or something) to marry? Seriously? Not that I think it was wrong to wait; I agree 100% with that. What I think might be wrong is that they had each other lined up already. It also had martial arts and a smart, skeptical main character: Luke the physician, if you didn't know. As a boy and a young man. Also a romance that doesn't go anywhere (I'm not sure how to describe it without saying what happened) although I don't think I cared much at the age when I read it.

The Bible. I'm a little hesitant to include this here, but why not? In tenth grade or so, I went to an Acquire the Fire conference where we were encouraged to complete a year-long Bible reading plan. I did read it (at least, I checked off all the boxes... in pencil in case I wanted to do it again) but I didn't remember much of it afterwards. I don't think it was worthwhile. Forcing yourself to get up at 6:00 to spend 10 minutes reading a couple chapters you won't remember by the end of the day is not a good way to study the Bible. I think now you really need to have a hunger to glean meaning from it, but at the time I'm pretty sure I was just doing it because I was told I should. Reading it now in a much more ad hoc fashion, I find all sorts of things that I don't remember one bit from that read-through.

Childhood Reading part 1

2009-05-15T20:31:00.002-04:00

Most of these are books that I read as a child and haven't read again since. With some of them I am in the odd position of knowing more about them from what other people have said than from what I remember of reading them. (Exceptions to the rereading: I recently reread Laurence Yep's Dragon series and I've reread a few of Dianna Wynne Jones' books more recently.) These will generally be in no particular order, just as I think of them, and until I get bored.

C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia. I actually read these several times but don't remember a lot of the things that people talk about. Instead, I remember: the stars, Turkish delight, Tashlan, the lion attack, those who disappear into Aslan's shadow, the blind dwarves, the ruined world the Witch comes from, green and gold rings, Puddleglum and giants; were there monopods, too? A pool that gives death (more about this in the next one). Eustace the dragon.

John White, The Archives of Anthropos. These owe an awful lot to Narnia and the Bible, although I only read the first five. I remember picking them out starting with The Sword Bearer at the Christian bookstore. Is it sad that I only just realized John the Sword Bearer might be intended to parallel John the Baptist? He starts in Canada (with pea soup fog) but escapes through the basement of a bookstore to find himself in another land. I read a review in the last several years that said the writing was bland but I have a lot of great memories: Wisdom's house, flat on the outside and huge on the inside; the wine of free pardon; Gaal trees; a valley of dry bones that come to life (also with a pool that gives death! Why did I only just realize this parallel with Narnia?); an unlikely dragon named Pontificator (Ponty for short); the Lord of snow and ice ("Tell them that I am"); and the bad guys: Lord Lunacy; a nasty sorcerer whose name I can't recall though he's trapped in his own portrait for thousands of years; an evil witch; and Nicholas Slapfoot, who chases John from Canada to Anthropos, and keeps on chasing him. Also fun? One of the books is basically the journey of the three wise men, at least one or two of whom are somewhat skeptical. Has anyone else heard of these?

Thomas Locke, the Spectrum Chronicles. I only read the first four and I can barely remember the first one, which I lost shortly after reading it, although I do recall that it was about a different character and set (mostly) in a different world than the others. Books 2 through 4 are about Consuela, the scared girl under the table in the first book (which is almost the entirety of what I remember from that book) and Wander. Thinking back, these are a combination of true love and adventure in space. Consuela is somehow translated from Earth to a foreign world, where she meets Wander and turns out to have a great Talent like his: a psychic ability needed to safely guide starships between the stars. It is so rare, however, that the nameless diplomat (they give up their names when they take office) who takes him away for the Hegemony's use dismisses her as worthless. Unlikely? Sure. But nostalgia is a powerful thing.

Sigmund Brouwer, Magnus. For some reason I read the first part of this as a separate book which had some sections that were in the complete book cut out. I was very surprised to find different details when I read the whole thing. This is the story of (whistles, goes to look up the name) Thomas, a young man who inherits a magnificent treasure: a chest of books (in the twelfth century?). He goes on to take over an impregnable fortress, and that's only the beginning. I will say that he gets yanked around a lot and there is a subplot reminiscent of Poison Study. There's also hypnotism (which I hate) and some guy who's killed by dumping honey in his ear, followed by maggot eggs. Was this detail included just for the yuck effect? (It is part of a story related to the main character by someone else.) I do have some nostalgia but I freely admit that parts of this book are disturbing. And I looked carefully at my bed for a while after reading about assassination by snake under the covers.

Kathy Tyers, Firebird and the rest of the trilogy. Pre-Messianic space opera? Firebird is a talented musician and composer, but as a spare child grows up knowing she is destined to die young, preferably in service to her planet. She really, truly tries very hard to do so: first by ramming her fighter into a planet, then by taking poison, then by provoking her captors to kill her... fortunately for the reader, she is prevented by a top-notch intelligence officer serving the other side. Also fortunately, he is extremely moral. Unfortunately, he is also extremely psychic. I also have a soft spot in my heart for these books, despite the number of gruesome ways there are to die: poison, of course; disintegration rifles (they handcuff the hands behind a steel pole to retain proof of decease); sonic weapons that implode the brain cavity; poison gas; being psychicly commanded to kill yourself (of course the good guys never do this); being smashed into a crater by telekinesis; photo weapons (possibly nuclear or hydrogen bombs, I was never quite sure); at the end of that list, rifle slugs with timed explosives sound almost tame. Would I read it again? I want to...

The Great Divorce: A Dream

2009-05-11T19:27:00.003-04:00

By C. S. Lewis.

I should change my blog name to "Reads Too Fast"; (little) brother's recent comment on Spell Hunter was "Is she in love with him or something?" "Why do you think that?" "Every time they talk about humans it stings her a little." I need to learn some patience in reading and in a way, that's why I started this blog. I would probably enjoy good books more if I did that. It's hard, though, because for a lot of books I'm not sure if they're good until I finish them. Once in a while, though, there's a book that you know is going to be good after the first page, so you can settle in and enjoy the ride.

Despite that digression, I'm not about to say that about The Great Divorce. In the spirit of omitting needless words, I'm tempted to say that it's unorthodox and leave it at that. This book is a sort of essay presented as a dream of a journey to Hell and to Heaven; the real focus for me was what makes people lost, the things they hold onto that drag them down, which fits in with Lewis's introduction and thesis: the things of Heaven are completely incompatible with those of Hell. You can't hold onto just a little sin, or a tiny selfishness, or even a natural love, and know divine love: they must be surrendered and put to death absolutely.

As a story, this (quite short) book perhaps lacks something; but as a stimulus to thought I'd say it succeeds quite well.

The White Darkness

2009-05-10T14:52:00.003-04:00

By Geraldine McCaughrean.

For some reason this book reminds me of Flannery O'Connor: there's a crooked Bible salesman who takes advantage of naivety, a girl doing home study for her doctorate in micropettiness, and some crutches. Oh yes, and a surprise vacation to Antarctica. Can't imagine how I forgot that little detail.

None of the details above are actually true but there is a resemblance.

Symone Wates is obsessed with Titus Oates and his doomed 1911 Antarctic expedition. Now that he's dead, he doesn't have any pressing commitments in his schedule, so he's free to follow her around -- or so she imagines, anyway. She has a very active imagination. So when her uncle (really a family ... acquaintance) takes her on a weekend holiday to Paris and then announces a spontaneous trip to Antarctica, she imagines nothing is wrong. The trip that follows contains increasingly disturbing revelations.

What I liked: The first thing that really struck me was the early scene in the diner where Sym discloses a certain fact about herself. The book also covers a lot of information about the Antarctic without infodumping (much). Sym's voice is very well done and highly readable. The tension is pretty high throughout the book without becoming unbearable. (Since she's the narrator, we can assume she survives unless the author pulls a Lovely Bones-style* trick, right?)

What I didn't like: Sym's naivety is incredible. When people in the Antarctic base camp get sick and she doesn't, she dismisses it as adjustment problems. When the plane that would have brought them home explodes, she dismisses it as a fuel leak or insulation problem. This is a survival novel but although she has to survive the Antarctic, the real challenge is surviving her uncle. The problem is that she doesn't realize that for a long time. Also, she is the only character who is really likable (Titus Oates is too, but mostly he's her).

This has a great narrator in Sym, incredibly creepy family dynamics, and a high-tension trek through the Antarctic (to say wasteland is a redundancy, although it is beautiful, like many deadly things) with a madman. I doubt I would read it again but I might read another book about Sym if any were published.

* Disclaimer: I haven't actually read Lovely Bones but am pretty sure it has a dead narrator.

Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter

2009-05-02T15:50:00.005-04:00

Also known as Knife in the U.K., which I prefer. By R. J. Anderson.

Disclaimer: I've been following the author's blog since around the end of 2006 and eagerly awaiting this book since at least last year; I was actually hesitant to read it, lest I be disappointed. I am also hesitant to write this post, lest the author be disappointed. (Hi there.)

Well.

My actual reaction is more complicated. This book is actually haunting me (where haunting is a sophisticated literary term that means I woke up thinking about it). When I finished it yesterday I was somewhat nonplussed, thinking "Okay, that's nice enough, but I don't love it", but the romance grew on me over the next several hours.

Today I realized what really creeps me out about it. It's a zombie book! (to put it facetiously*)

The story: Knife is a precocious young faery whose colony has been Sundered from its magic and the outside world since long before her birth. Only the (secretive, Machiavellian) Queen retains the ability to control magic, although all faeries had it once. As the Queen's Hunter, Knife decides to take matters into her own hands, find out why the magic has been lost, and try to fix it...

What I liked: The characters are almost all very well done. (Paul's father doesn't seem to get much attention, though.) The little touches that come from this being a faery story: Knife hides in a basket filled with crumpled paper, but doesn't know what it is. The chuckle I got from her pride in being a whole fly's length taller than everyone else. The deft reminders of, for example, the importance of names: they are only briefly mentioned, but in such a way as to make the reader remember. The tight prose. The descriptions are striking: this is a well-detailed world. The sweet, innocent romance. The references to a gardener (possibly this one?).

What I didn't like: This is very much Knife's story, which is fine, but her world doesn't seem very large; it's almost as if it ends beyond the house and grounds where she lives (with one exception). No one outside that radius seems to play an important part. Even inside, the unnamed faeries in the colony (there seem to be 50 or more) seem to be a sort of shadowy, amorphous cloud, playing as extras in crowd scenes. There are no chance encounters with someone unnamed that turn out to be important later, as far as I recall. (My recollection may be poor; I'll admit to misreading Bryony's name as Byrony until I tried to look it up and couldn't find it.) What really bothers me, however, is the way magic is used to change minds and wills, just as in Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely. It seems to me that a general rule of fairy tales is that the characters should have to make choices that lead to their downfalls; stories where free will is taken away by magic tend to bother me a lot. Physical coercion is one thing, but being able to change someone else's essence is another.

In the end? There's much to like about this book; the ending is quite good, open without being unresolved. There are some hints of Christian themes but not as much as I had hoped. I do hope to read more from the author. But I remain disturbed by the magic, as explained above. (I could also just be in a bad mood since the mirror scene with Magpie in Blackbringer was similarly awful but didn't have such a lasting effect on my impression of the book.)

* I am thinking of these zombies. Maybe it doesn't really fit?

The Everlasting Man

2009-05-02T06:06:00.003-04:00

By G. K. Chesterton.

This is my second time trying to read this book. This time I actually finished, although I am sure that in rereading it (eventually) I would glean more.

The sum of Chesterton's argument is encapsulated in the several page "SUMMARY OF THIS BOOK" which appears at the end; it might not be a bad idea to read this first. He contends that man and the Church are both things unique, strikingly so when considered on a level with other things purportedly of their kind. If man is an animal, he is the only animal capable of claiming so; if the Church is a mythology or philosophy, it is the only one which unites the intellect and the spirit of romance, not to mention unabashed hope for things to come. (Chesterton makes a point of distinguishing between pessimism and optimism, which are to him types of fatalism, and hope, which allows for free will.) It is the only with a Gospel, good news that must be spread. It is, as he says, the Church Militant, of which Islam is a later and paler imitator.

Many of his arguments are surprisingly simple, but that does not mean you do not have to read carefully: they may be gone before you realize he is making them. One of the striking ones in my memory is that the doctrine that God is Love and the doctrine of the trinity are nearly the same thing; Chesterton says:

For if there be a being without beginning, existing before all things, was He loving when there was nothing to be loved? If through that unthinkable eternity He is lonely, what is the meaning of saying He is love? The only justification of such a mystery is the mystical conception that in His own nature there was something analogous to self-expression; something of what begets and beholds what it has begotten.

Certainly this book is a weighty slog; it is probably unreasonable on my part to expect light reading on weighty matters. But there are also thought-provoking nuggets together with some humour (for instance in the obversation that no mortal power can prevent the poet from contemplating the skylark in spring). Is this book worth reading? Probably, but only if you take it seriously.

An addendum: I read the Ignatius Press reprint, but this book and many others by Chesterton are in the public domain and available online.

Timothy and the Dragon's Gate

2009-04-15T06:27:00.003-04:00

By Adrienne Kress.

When world-weary eleven-something Timothy Freshwater finds himself in possession of an ancient Chinese dragon, he also finds himself on the run from dangerous black cabs, a ninja with something to prove to her parents, et al. Watch in excitement as Timothy learns the true power of ~~sarcasm~~friendship, or whatever.

What I liked: This book was extremely readable and, in my opinion, had more consistent plot and humor than the first in the series while retaining (slightly subdued) randomness. Also, it isn't really necessary to have read the first (Alex and the Ironic Gentleman) to enjoy this one.

What I disliked: The prose remains extremely conversational and a bit choppy in the way the narrator jumps from topic to topic. Also, Timothy is maybe too hateful through most of the book.

Definitely light, entertaining reading. One of my brothers is reading it now.

Princess of the Midnight Ball

2009-03-30T20:28:00.003-04:00

By Jessica Day George.

This is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses: their dancing slippers are in shreds every morning despite being replaced every day, and eventually the king decides to offer a reward to whoever can discover the cause. Wikipedia has more.

What I liked: I'm not sure. I think this novel hit the sweet spot with its mixture of charm and humor, although it may have fallen short on suspense. Despite being familiar with the general plot (I've read Robin McKinley's short story from The Door in the Hedge, Wildwood Dancing, and most recently The Phoenix Dance), this book didn't disappoint. I also liked the atmosphere and (pseudo-) historical detail: the book takes place in an almost-Europe, complete with a Roman church.

What I didn't like: Despite the "distinguishing" characteristics, only about half the princesses stood out as individuals. (The author stated in an interview that she came up with one distinguishing characteristic for each in order to set them apart. Hyacinth, for example, is religious.) Also, although the church wasn't portrayed in an entirely negative light, I had to wonder: the characters openly believe in God, but he seems to have no bearing on the mess of curses and spells they find themselves in. Galen relies on his own wits and the advice of his friends, and the princesses themselves are disappointingly passive (although witty), perhaps due to the spell.

Overall? I recommend this as a strong retelling, fleshed out with a lot of detail and the charm that made me like (I want to say love, but I haven't reread it yet) Dragon Slippers.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

2009-03-23T18:48:00.002-04:00

By Carrie Ryan.

I've been trying to avoid reviewing books that I don't like, but I dislike this one in such specific ways that I think it might be worth it.

The premise: Mary is in a village surrounded by a fence surrounded by zombies, many years after the so-called Return. Mary does not want to be there but she doesn't realize it yet.

What I liked: Clever naming (Mary and Gabrielle; also Mary's dog Argos). Strong descriptions. The characters also stand out as individuals but I only really liked Gabrielle. At least a mention of both sides of some issues but see below.

What I disliked: Zombies, lack of humor, and, crucially, the main character, Mary. She angsts about marriage and death and who she should marry and whether zombies feel anything and who she loves. Notice anything repetitive about that list? The official position of the village leadership is that marriage is about commitment, not love; Mary says it should be about love and then worries about who she actually loves. (In the end, the answer seems to be "herself.") I don't have a lot of sympathy for her position in that regard, believing that if she started with commitment she would grow into love. Oh, well; at least the other side is mentioned.

As mentioned, there is precious little humor in this book (or I missed it) and there are also zombies. I found them creepy but I don't really enjoy being creeped out so I don't think that's a good thing.

Bottom line? You will probably like this book if you like zombies or possibly post-apocalyptic fiction. I probably won't bother with a sequel, if there is one (the ending is wide open), though.

The Bones of Faerie

2009-03-18T06:17:00.002-04:00

By Janni Lee Simner.

Quick summary: When Liza's sister dies and her mother disappears, she sets out on a quest to find her in a world devastated 20 years ago by a war with Faerie.

What I liked: This book has noticeably tight prose. (It might not be a good thing that it stood out so strongly to me, but surely tight prose is good?) The idea is original (at least it's not nuclear winter, again) and the characterization of the main three characters is pretty good.

What I disliked: The world seems very shallow, as though Liza's town and the towns around it are all that's left. Surely at least one metropolis and some infrastructure (power, water, communications) must have survived? Also, the book seems short and really only deals with Liza's problems. Some of the world details aren't very convincing (they feel out of place or inconsistent with the rest of the world, e.g., the episode with the Mississippi) and a couple characters seem to act strangely for the sake of plot. (Their actions may be in line with their characters but I don't feel like I saw enough of their characters to feel that way.)

Overall: Short, enjoyable read, but it could be better.

The False House

2009-02-01T15:11:00.003-05:00

By James Stoddard.

A lot like the first book (which I didn't review because I wasn't sure what to say about it) but better, I think. Both of these books concern a house called Evenmere, which somehow contains all of Creation: the Lamp-lighter keeps the lamps of the universe lit, the immortal Windkeep keeps time going, and the Master of the House defends it from the Society of Anarchists and others who would destroy it or its people.

Also, the Last Dinosaur (in pre-scientific times, he was called "Dragon") lives in exile in the Attic, truthful but vicious.

In both books, you know who's good and bad without much ambiguity. The first is fun to read as a pretty clean (though violent) adventure story, but the voice seems somehow detached from the internal lives of the characters. They have challenges, issues trusting each other, but the suspense never seems that high. The anarchists are mostly cookie-cutter soldiers and, despite claiming to want a better universe, are willing to murder millions of people to get there. On the good (plus dinosaur) side, the characters are more individual, with distinct speech patterns, but they all seem extremely competent.

The second book adds some elements of romance, but it is mostly perfunctory, along the lines of "He spent several weeks visiting her, and then asked her to marry him." And then he leaves her at home to worry. The sensibility is definitely that of an older time, although these books were published in 1998 and 2000.

What else can I say? Apparently these books are full of allusions to older fantasy; there's a web site with a catalog of references. Chant often quotes poetry, and the second book quotes Wuthering Heights numerous times, at the same time condemning it, "a book of unrequited love and dark despair." (At least, I assume it does from context.) And there are Christian themes: the House is said to have been built by God, there are numerous depictions of angels and at least one Biblical scene (in the second book), the characters discuss faith and hope, and so on; but there is still a lot of killing of anarchists.

In the end? Quite enjoyable. I have to join others in wondering why these aren't better known and why no more books by Stoddard have been released.

Also, remember that guy John C. Wright? He's said repeatedly in interviews that he takes ideas from other people, a comment I took as humorous. But The False House does contain a girl who can create secret passages at will...

The Order of Odd-Fish

2009-01-26T19:55:00.003-05:00

By James Kennedy.

A wonderfully absurd, funny book, albeit with hints of darkness. I want to tell you more about it — there are many great moments — but most of them are spoilers.

Part of the greatness is the setting, reminiscent of the Half-Continent in depth but more modern in atmosphere: a huge, decaying city on a tropical island with giant cockroach butlers and centipede newspapermen, who perhaps serve the human population, or are perhaps admired by them. Colorful and solemn festivals alternate as Jo Larouche, shot down along with her aunt, an elderly Russian colonel and a three foot cockroach off the coast of California, discovers why her past has brought her to this place and struggles to avert the future others want to use her for... (Yes, the previous sentence has terrible structure.)

There are, however, grotesque moments and hints of the unsavory. The opening chapters contain some innuendo (although to what, exactly, is not entirely clear, which I guess is what "innuendo" means anyway) and I dimly recall wondering about some other lines.

Overall, however, I found this to be a quite enjoyable book. One wonders whether there will be a sequel.

Incarceron

2009-01-03T08:45:00.003-05:00

By Catherine Fisher.

I've had this book sitting around since June at least, and I only just read it. It's a weird hybrid of a spy thriller, adventure story, political intrigue, etc.: Finn lives inside Incarceron, an entire world built to be a perfect prison and lift its prisoners to moral perfection and happiness. The Warden of Incarceron lives outside in an enforced Era of technological poverty, while his daughter Claudia searches for the location of Incarceron and tries to plumb his other secrets.

What I liked:

Strong adventure
Cool gadgets
Characters aren't stupid
Possibly Christian themes: Incarceron failed as a utopia because men cannot escape the evil within themselves; forgiveness; loyalty.

What I disliked:

This story starts off looking like (soft) science fiction but at a certain point became completely incredible to me as anything other than a fantasy.
By the end almost nothing was resolved.

What I wasn't sure about:

I guessed almost every plot twist far ahead of time, if things so apparent can even be called twists. On the one hand, it makes me feel smart; on the other hand, maybe they were supposed to be so apparent. Or maybe I've read too many books of this sort.

In the end: A pretty good adventure story (complete with sailing ship sequence), but you'll probably want to have the second one (Sapphique) on hand when you finish. (You might want to keep in mind that these books are imports, not actually published in the U.S., but you can get them through Amazon.)

The City in the Lake

2009-01-03T08:30:00.003-05:00

By Rachel Neumeier.

A girl trained as a mage heads off to the City at the center of her Kingdom after various calamities strike her village (i.e., babies are all born dead).

This book is written in a style similar to Patricia McKillip's, although it lacks some of the vivid and startling language McKillip uses, at least in her later books. This may intentionally reflect the gravity of most of the characters but likely it's just the author of a first novel developing her craft.

Most of the characters have an overabundance of self-control; although they seem more solid than cardboard, most are in no danger of being overwhelmed by emotion, either.

The atmosphere is very much that of a fairy tale: Timou lives in a Kingdom with a Forest and a City, courtiers are shocked at the suggestion that they might pluck out the jeweled eyeballs of any lizard they found by the pool where the Prince disappeared, and Timou's quest is a matter of perception and careful choices rather than the application of force.

In the end, I think this book shows quite a bit of promise, and anyone who enjoys McKillip will probably want to check it out. Also, the book stands alone in a way that makes me guess there won't be a sequel.

The Cabinet of Wonders

2008-12-25T14:59:00.002-05:00

By Marie Rutkoski.

A fun adventure story, tight prose, strong characters, creative worldbuilding. Basically, I think the writing is pretty strong, and refers to some important truths about relationships (mothers and friends) without getting bogged down in angst. Petra is an impulsive, get-up-and-go kind of person, but it seems her heart is in the right place. The characters are unique, possibly larger-than-life, and even the (obvious) villain seems more heartless than evil. (I also want to say that Dr. John Dee is creepier in this book than in any other book I've read where he appears, and certainly doesn't match the gentle incarnation in Midnight Never Come.)

My chief concern about this book is that I'm not finding that much to think about after finishing it. This might be because of quibble #1: the book ends in a place that looks sort of like a happy ending, but is really just a stopping point if you think about it. It's clear that there will be Consequences in future books, and the author mentions at least 3 more planned on her site.

My second quibble is that this book is set in medieval Bohemia, and there's no mention of the church, God, or religion that I can recall. (Upon skimming through again, I found one reference to an angel figure in the clock, and there might be more.) There's even a story about the woman who halted the burning of magicians 800 years previous, but no explanation of why they were burning them in the first place. I don't know much about Bohemian history, but it struck me as an odd omission especially when discoveries such as heliocentrism are included in the story.

Overall, a fun story that isn't completely unrealistic; I'd recommend it.

E-mails lost

2008-12-14T15:54:00.002-05:00

FYI: If anyone tried to send me an e-mail since Thursday night, it is most likely lost due to the power outages up here.

Octavian Nothing, volume 2

2008-11-28T11:43:00.002-05:00

By M. T. Anderson. The full title is The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves.

As indicated, a review of the second volume.

My initial reaction is disappointment; the resolution of Octavian's childhood, and ending of the book, though open, is less optimistic than I hoped. In a book about slavery and freedom, war and death, however gilded in flights of philosophy, this is perhaps no more should be expected, but as a reader I prefer less dismal endings.

The theme is one of hypocrisy; the surface never matches what is underneath, even in Octavian's own case (to the reader's bitter surprise on his behalf, although his own emotion is better concealed). Both the British governors and the rebels speak of liberty to all, but care only for their own.

The historical detail continues to provide fascinating insight into the uncertainty of the rebellion and the British army's plight stranded months from home. I suspect this perspective will prove the most lasting element of the book in my memory; I did not often hear about American atrocities in high school history, except in the treatment of Native Americans. These revelations point to my own hypocrisy, which continues to trouble me.

I also admit to appreciating the spiritual matters touched on; Octavian is Christian to some extent, and even the atheist Dr. Trefusis's casual blasphemy near the end of his life tells of a serious concern for what may come after.

Overall, not a cheerful book, but neither is it frivolous: the attention to history cannot help but highlight questions about the present.

Octavian Nothing volume 1 redux

2008-11-23T10:16:00.002-05:00

I have only finished rereading the first part of four in this volume, and already I am newly eager to discover what happens in the second volume.

The writing in this book is wonderful, and is reminding me of the difference a
strong voice can make in a story.

I believe I mentioned the first time the sense of the fantastic that is drawn out of natural events. Octavian opens:

I was raised in a gaunt house with a garden; my earliest recollections are of floating lights in the apple-trees. [...]

The men who raised me were lords of matter, and in the dim chambers I watched as they traced the spinning of bodies celestial in vast, iron courses, and bid sparks to dance upon their hands; they read the bodies of fish as if each dying trout or shad was a fresh Biblical Testament, the wet and twiching volume of a new-born Pentateuch. They burned holes in the air, wrote poems of love, sucked the venom from sores, painted landscapes of gloom, and made metal sing; they dissected fire like newts.

We go on to meet the larger-than-life characters of Octavian's childhood: his mother, whose royal dignity never falters despite her chains; his tutors, who sardonically comment on the times while doing little to change them; the passionless man who owns him, and Octavian, whose presence is always felt, even when off-stage.

On rereading it, I am also picking up more subtle threads: Octavian's mother cannot be as happy as she appears; does her hand betray delight, as Octavian takes it, or fear for her son, the chain by which she is bound?

I hope to have more to say after volume 2.

Graceling

2008-11-04T19:08:00.004-05:00

By Kristin Cashore.

This is the first book I've really, really enjoyed in quite a while. The quotes on the back are all just about right, though I found it interesting that all the quotees were women.

Unlike the usual "girl dresses up as a boy and proves herself as a fighter" story (ahem) Katsa has no need to prove herself. She's unnaturally gifted—Graced— in the fighting arts. One of the things I like so much about this story is that her real struggle is to be able to control herself, her anger, and her pride, and that she realizes her need to do so.

The humor is also the way I like it, as she wrestles a mountain lion ("That thing could have killed me!") and considers the creature a gift.

What I disliked (and what perhaps reminded me of Fire Study, along with the incredibly gifted protagonist) were the vague but steamy love scenes. I kept looking at the "14 and up" on the back cover (well, only twice).

In the end—it was quite enjoyable and, despite the promise of further books on Cashore's blog, feels like a complete story by itself.

Feed

2008-10-21T21:29:00.006-04:00

By M. T. Anderson.

So there's like, this kid, and he goes to, like, the moon, and has a really unmeg time except that he meets this girl—

I'm already tired of that. This world in this book is definitely a dystopia and I saw the ending coming a long way off, despite hope that I would be wrong. I suppose the interesting thing about it is how you say "That would never happen"—and then have to ask yourself how much of it could actually happen. (Like a caricature, it stretches real concerns into grotesque shapes while leaving them recognizable.)

The teen characters are too much like some teens, which is to say, kind of boring and obsessed with their feeds. (How many people do you know who check MySpace or Facebook constantly? The feed is the same thing, brought to you by a chip in your head.)

As far as being a tragedy, I think it lacked some of the beauty other tragedies have, although it seemed just as inevitable. It reminded me of The Wreck of the River of Stars, with both the inevitability and the flawed characters creating their own doom. Unfortunately, here the characters (except for Violet and her dad, and sometimes Titus) aren't even interesting. There are hints of a larger plot going on in the world but the story never seems to follow up. (Perhaps there's a sequel?)

Despite a couple moments that made me gasp out loud (and the question Violet wants the answer to) I didn't enjoy this book that much. But I suspect that wasn't the point, anyway.

Apologies for the rambling review; I'm a bit out of practice and don't feel like proofreading right now. I'm still looking forward to Octavian Nothing Vol. 2 (came out a week ago).

On recommendations

2008-09-10T06:35:00.002-04:00

There are sure to be spoilers for Agyar within this post.

I've withdrawn my post on Agyar for now. Here is the reason:

Despite the amazing transformation Agyar's character goes through by the end of the book, I am troubled by the amount of violence I let slip through with the words "not for children." In the case of Agyar I did and do think the book is brilliant on a human level, but right now I don't trust my judgment. The truth is, Agyar is a callous murderer who has very little qualms about most of what he does, considering "most" humans cattle who exist to feed him.

I think I've gone too far over the line towards accepting books that make some good point on the basis that the ends justify the means. The trouble is, I don't know where this line should be. I've become desensitized to violence and sex in books, to the point where I read a line in a different book last night that should have been shocking but I instead felt nothing about—except concern that I should have been shocked and revolted.

That's why I am withdrawing that post, and probably should withdraw many of the others I've made: I don't trust the judgment that led to them.

Daggerspell

2008-09-07T10:05:00.004-04:00

By Katherine Kerr. Found via Kate Elliot, called it Kerr's "fabulous Deverry series."

Of course, I've only read the first book, so that's all I can talk about. (Right?)

This strikes me as a trashy sword-and-sorcery page-turner.

The sword-and-sorcery part should be obvious: there are swords and there's sorcery.

The trashy? For one thing, the story centers around a group of characters who are being repeatedly reincarnated and brought together to remedy the wrongs they've done to each other in past lives. (Supposedly, everyone is reincarnated, but the vast majority of people who must exist to support these central characters in their quests are mostly invisible as far as the story goes.) For another, the sorcery is of the sort that makes me more suspicious of the "good" guys than the bad ones (I had a similar reaction to Melanie Rawn's book Exiles, and never read the second in that trilogy). For a third, there is a not insignificant emphasis on lust (Kerr uses the word many times) and incest, even imaginary incest. While this isn't an automatic negative, I dislike the way she handles it.

The dialog is often either wooden or incredible, in the sense of being too corny to believe.

But for some reason, I kept reading. Some of her characters (well, Cullyn and Jill) are decent enough that I wanted to find out what happened to them. Sadly, others (including ones she tried to portray as decent) are less sympathetic. They are also, arguably, so different between reincarnations that you can see this as the author punishing the sons for the sins of the fathers: they often seem to be fundamentally different, with only one or two traits in common with their past selves. In fact, while reading, I toyed with the idea of interpreting it as Nevyn being deluded and looking to redeem his past mistakes with people who had nothing to do with them, but this is not the obvious interpretation.

So: recommended? Not really. Despite the pageturner factor, there are so many other good books to read that I don't think this one is worth the trash. It also worries me that it's the first book in a fifteen book series, although I believe not all the books directly concern these characters.

Random Acts of Senseless Violence (not a review)

2008-09-02T21:53:00.005-04:00

This is not really a review, but I just finished this book by Jack Womack and it's eerily similar to current events. I'm finding it a little bit hard to keep them in separate categories.

The book itself? Masterfully written, but definitely not happy. "Violent" and "chilling" are probably more appropriate words. Not for kids even though the narrator (really a diarist) is a 12-year-old girl, and I doubt I'll ever suggest it to anyone who doesn't specifically ask for this kind of book. The cruelty isn't even as twisted as possible, unlike some other books I've read; it's scary because it seems to result from people just not caring anymore.

The Explosionist

2008-08-22T10:33:00.002-04:00

By Jenny Davidson. Found via Justine Larbalestier.

This alternate history starts off unexceptionally, but a little over 100 pages in becomes engaging and completely horrifying. The year is 1938 and Sophie Hunter is a 15-year-old student in a Scotland preparing for war. The twist (highlight it if you want to know what makes this an alternate history) is that this Scotland is part of the Hanseatic League, whose control over munition production is the only thing guaranteeing their freedom from the united Europe Napoleon's victory at Waterloo created.

This book is a disturbing juxtaposition of the normal (Sophie's friendships with her classmates and others) and the extraordinary (secret pscyhological experiments, hypnotism, ghosts and mediums, eugenics). Sophie's placid acceptance of some of these horrors only makes it worse.

I'm ambivalent about recommending this. On one hand, it's effective and well-written: it's amazing and thought-provoking how different the world Sophie lives in is. On the other hand, I don't believe the spiritual aspects (seances, mediums, automatic writing, astral projection, hypnotism) are good, although Sophie, though initially reluctant, seems to embrace them. This book seems to be one where I greatly enjoyed the writing (and the suspense) and detested some of the content.

The author is apparently planning a sequel, titled The Snow Queen, and possibly a third book as well.

A Posse of Princesses

2008-08-17T08:43:00.002-04:00

By Sherwood Smith.

Somehow charming despite some infelicities of language and description, especially noticeable early on.* Parts of the plot were also a little transparent, although I didn't guess what was going on immediately, but for some reason, I ended up liking it. I suspect my inner critic may have been turned off when I read most of it so that I just ended up enjoying the romance.

While fairly light reading, Rhis also grows personally during the course of things. (Others, perhaps, not so much.)

In the end? I think this is pretty good light entertainment, not very challenging—maybe good for a "rainy day" read—but not completely fluff either.**

* What is a "dining room built on two or three levels?" Is it on two levels in some places and three in others, or is the viewpoint character not sure? To be fair this line is probably what bugged me most about the entire book, although the word "nacky" comes in second and the fact that everyone of importance is a prince, princess or other peer third.

** The other thing, which the author may or may not have control over, is that $22.95 seems too much to pay for a 300 page YA book, even if it is hardcover and printed on very nice paper. Maybe it's intended to be a library edition? The paperback looks to be a more reasonable price.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

2008-08-12T07:28:00.004-04:00

By Mary E. Pearson. Found via Laini Taylor.

This is a book that focuses on a single sci-fi conceit (or maybe one and a half, depending on how you count them) and tells a highly emotional, disturbing story. Honestly, though, I was more disturbed by the ending's moral implications (even in a non-SF world) than by what the technology made possible. This is a book that I will probably keep thinking about for a while (where "a while" is probably the next few days :). Story-wise, it seems pretty tight, although the semi-poetic interludes on the gray pages were a little weird.

Don't read the copyright page Library of Congress summary or find out what book it reminded me of unless you want to be somewhat spoiled.

In the end, I'm somewhat ambivalent about recommending it because of the moral spookiness. There isn't a whole lot of plot: it's all about Jenna's recovery and discovery of herself after an accident her parents won't tell her much about. If you like that kind of very focused story with few characters (and even fewer that matter), then you might like this.

[ot] Comic: Afterlife Blues

2008-08-09T14:45:00.002-04:00

OK, this is less off-topic but still somewhat so: Afterlife Blues finally started! Yay! (It's by the same authors as the smart and funny sci-fi comic A Miracle of Science, which has been finished, i.e., complete, for a couple years.)

[ot] Tomatoes

2008-08-09T12:23:00.003-04:00

This has nothing to do with books (I refer to Google and experienced relatives for information on gardening), but:

There are 12 plants there, in case it's hard to tell. :) (Next year I am definitely planting them further apart, if I get a chance to keep gardening, and I may plant fewer and try growing some other things besides... tomatoes. FYI, this is my first year gardening.) I planted the seedlings early June, but so far only two tomatoes have actually ripened... and I had to cut away something like 2/3 of each because they had gone bad. Ugh. Another one is visibly ripening now, but who knows about the rest?

I haven't pruned them much at all either, and the stakes are obviously somewhat impromptu. If I do this again I will probably get cages for all of them and put them on much earlier: even the ones with cages on them now are falling over. Because of the tangle of leaves it's hard to see why, but they are really not stable at all, and I seem to have to push them back towards upright every morning when I water the plants.

I may start another blog if I keep wanting to do off-topic posts like this one, since my other (non-Blogger) blog is so dead. I'm not sure what I would call it, though... (I'm tempted to try myotherblog.blogspot.com but it's probably taken.)

Millicent Min, Girl Genius

2008-08-08T20:17:00.003-04:00

By Lisa Yee.

Witty, funny, sweet and poignant, err, pungent, sniff—sorry, it must be my allergies. Millicent is an 11-year-old genius who doesn't know it. Well, she knows very well that she's a genius; what she doesn't seem to realize is that she's only 11 years old (emotionally and socially*) and, you know, not exactly ready to choose the life of solitude that she seems to be headed for. So it must be a good thing that her mother just signed her up for volleyball and tutoring in addition to the college class on poetry that she really wants to take... right?

Great book. I must admit, having just looked it up on Amazon to double-check the spelling of the title, I am a bit disappointed that there appear to be sequels, because they might not live up to this standard.

For comparison: It reminds me most strongly of Hilary McKay's Casson family series.

* Paraphrasing: "How could you be alone when you didn't leave time for aloneness in your schedule?"

The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History

2008-08-06T13:24:00.003-04:00

By Katherine Ashenburg, and non-fiction (an exception for me!). Found via Stephanie Burgis.

Basically a light, easy to read history about the Western theory and practice of cleanliness over the last 2,500 years or so. Entertaining and even funny to read (though perhaps the humor comes from awkwardness regarding the subject), though I had my doubts as to whether the strength of a few assertions was supported by the source material. (I didn't actually check, of course—that would be work.)

A pretty good light read, and probably shorter than it looks: the margins are fairly generous.

Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper

2008-08-01T17:46:00.004-04:00

By Michael Reisman. Found via Sara Beth Durst of the great Into the Wild, who liked this book a bunch more than I did.

Cute and somewhat funny by the end, but the humor in the beginning seems to fall flat in the face of pedantic language and a lackluster narrative voice. It's possible that someone less familiar with science or science fiction might find the infodumps more tolerable, but that person isn't me (and my little brother's comment was "Not as good as I expected", so I wasn't the only one).

The basic story: Simon Bloom discovers a magical forest, and no sooner has he gotten to the center than a grimoire drops from thin air onto his head and knocks him out. Only it's labeled "Physics, Teacher's Edition" or some-such. This may be magic with a science twist (perhaps science fantasy would be a good label), but, despite what Simon thinks, it still looks like magic to me. Various adventures involving a cloaked figure, a mysterious new principal with a hair-do that might be alive, and puns with more setup than punchline ensue.

In the end, this book wasn't too bad (and it looks like there's plenty of room for sequels), but it seemed a little too simple and bland for my taste, although it does pick up some close to the end.

Eiden Myr trilogy

2008-07-26T22:01:00.001-04:00

By Terry McGarry, and consisting of Illumination, The Binder's Road, and Triad.

As it turns out, that story "Kazhe's Blade" that I liked from Sword and Sorceress XXI was an excerpt from the second book in this trilogy. "Trilogy" is a loose word here, because while all three books are about the same place, the first and second concern only slightly overlapping groups of characters. (The third brings the two together.)

Illumination is largely the story of Liath, an illuminator, whose powers fail her shortly after she successfully passes her trial. She heads off to see the Ennead, nine mages who loosely govern the land, in hopes that they can help her, but she's not the only person experiencing disaster. Blah blah blah, and she goes off on a quest.

This book has the not uncommon problem where the main character gets herself into trouble when she should have known better, although in this case Liath is a true idealist who simply can't bring herself to believe that people would be evil. Of course, Bad Things Happen.

While parts of the worldbuilding are very strong—the culture of the island is based on farmers, wrights, smiths, and other necessary laborers—the history behind it all is a bit fuzzy for my liking, in all three books. I'd like to see books about the world Eiden Myr exists in: what happened to it when all the magic effectively withdrew to a private island? Did they develop science and industry? Do they remember the mages? Or did the world plummet into a dark age and never recover, as is weakly implied?

The Binder's Road takes place six years after the events of Illumination, but doesn't mention Liath's name at all. (Liath is mentioned a few times, just not by name—I thought it was funny how the author did that...) Three sisters take center stage here, with powers stranger than magecraft: they can shape wood, hear ghosts, heal wounds with a touch, but as orphans they have to hide their powers from exploitation.

This book is of a similar style, but not a direct sequel to Illumination, which was disappointing until I got to like the new characters. I thought the ending should have been a chapter sooner than it was, but perhaps the author avoided that because that ending would only have been meaningful to people who had read the first book. (In the foreword for Triad, the third book, the author explains that she wanted readers to be able to pick up the story anywhere.)

Triad is the third book, and starts off with a bang: for three years, superior forces have been bombarding the island. (This is twelve years after the second book.) Their origin and motivation is unclear to the defenders, who are barely holding on, and have been exiled to the coast for their willingness to shed blood in order to defend others, a strange way to reward soldiers for sure.

Honestly, I was disappointed with much of the second half of this book: I didn't like where it was going. The tail end was good but the major decisions leading up to it I didn't like so much. Oh well.

The books have some sex, ~~although it's pretty easy to skip over~~. (Whenever it's that easy to skip something, it makes me wonder why it was added. Of course, someone I know skips imagery of all types whenever possible, i.e., whenever it doesn't pertain to the actual plot.) The spiritual aspects of it are also pretty odd, with some supposed gods being named but never actually playing a role in a plot that makes strong use of ghosts and the afterlife, at least in the second and third books.

Edited to add 7/27: Actually, the details of sex are easy to skip over (I added the strikethrough above on this edit), but it's impossible to pretend it doesn't happen. Magic is used for contraception, with the so-called "first freedom" applied to women when they reach sexual maturity, and homosexual and polygamous "pledges" (marriages) are, if not common, unavoidable in this story. One of my complaints about the worldbuilding is that, SPOILER, when magic is lost in events leading up to the second book, some of its artifacts are left behind (the triskeles marking trained mages) while some are swept away (the sterility spells on women). At the end of the first book, I was anticipating the threat of extinction due to an entire generation of sterile women, although that wouldn't really have happened since the existing children would eventually mature. End of added section.

Overall: pretty good soft fantasy*, but long (requires a significant time investment) and not really superb.

* Soft being somewhat derogative in that I don't think, even assuming that the magic described existed, a world could ever work the way it does in these books. That is, the society described here is not the logical result of the postulated world-structure, but instead a sort of feel-good utopia which has just incidentally been taken advantage of by evil people. You see the problem? Where do the evil people come from if their civilization is so great, and by the way completely sealed off from the outside world?

The Spell Book of Listen Taylor

2008-07-19T09:30:00.002-04:00

By Jaclyn Moriarty.

This book is not at all what I was expecting from the title and the cover. Yes, there is a spell book, but it seems very much an authorial trick to hold the narrative together—otherwise you might find yourself asking (at least for the first 150 pages) what all these people have to do with each other.

The Zing family has a secret. This is not an ordinary secret, but a Secret that requires them to meet in the garden shed every Friday night. What is it? That you don't find out until nearly half way through.

In the meantime, we are treated to the lives of seventh grader Listen Taylor, second grade teacher Cath Murphy, adult Zing daughters Fancy and Marbie, second grader Cassie Zing, and seemingly unconnected interludes about balloonists. I was more or less bored for the first 150 pages or so.

Affairs. The book is shelved in YA (at least in the library here), but there are so many (uninteresting) affairs going on that it made me feel like this was really an adult book that somehow got accidentally sold to a YA publisher.

The book is funny at points, but the spots of humor fall flat until the pace picks up partway through. Even then, much of the humor is dark: "My wife can't make it. Two of her clients called to say they had made a suicide pact and couldn't figure out the catch on the gun."

The narrative organization is also confusing, with the same period of time often being reiterated from different viewpoints with no indication that time hasn't passed until we come to one of Listen's spells, which apparently took effect before she actually cast it.

That's not to say the book wasn't memorable: the Secret, when we finally get to it, is a good one, and ties together many of the previous events. But the book as a whole wasn't really my cup of tea.

Sword and Sorceress XXI

2008-07-05T19:07:00.004-04:00

Marion Zimmer Bradley started the series, but she's dead now, so Diana L. Paxson edited this one.

Usually I have trouble reading anthologies straight through; the constant ending of stories and the need to meet a new set of circumstances and characters makes it rough to go straight from one story to the next. For some reason, I found this anthology easier in that respect than many others: either the editor did a marvelous job of selecting stories that fit together thematically and otherwise, or the ideas and worldbuilding are bland and don't require any great effort to adjust to: perhaps it's nothing I haven't seen before...

Since I am inclined to check out further works by some of the authors in here, I'd like to think it's the first, but there is some truth to the claim that readers want to read what they're familiar with.

Some of these stories ended sadly, and some were horrifying ("Red Caramae" blatantly so, "Oulu" more subtly). They are almost all set in historical or pseudo-historical milieus, many of them vague. (Admittedly, it's hard to describe an entire world in 15 pages or less.) The resolutions were often very sudden or seemingly too simplistic. Others made me want to check out further works by the author ("Kazhe's Blade", "Necessity and The Mother", "Step By Step", "Favor of the Goddess", possibly "Rose in Winter", "Ursa", and "Journey's End").

Conclusion: Good place to look for new authors if the particular type of story you like happens to involve women and the supernatural in a non-modern setting. (The magic involved was often very different and wasn't always due to the agency of the protagonist.)

Into the Wild

2008-06-25T12:48:00.006-04:00

By Sarah Beth Durst.

Great fun. Fairy tale references all over the place, and there are frequent laughs. It also doesn't suffer from the problems other books of this type tend to have, like unbearable corniness or having the characters leap into trouble for no good reason. Julie has a good reason.

The story? Julie is a junior high student living with her hairdresser mom Zel. Or, well, Zel is a hairdresser now—but her hair points to her past as a princess locked in a tower in a fairy tale. How she escaped is a secret no one seems to know, even though Zel rescued other characters from their own stories in the process, ending the Middle Ages. The Wild now lives under Julie's bed and likes to eat shoes. But somehow, it escapes...

Though some of the side characters seem a little flat (and it could be blamed on the nature of the Wild's fairy tales), Julie and her family are all lively and well portrayed. (Julie's grandmother, the former wicked witch (and still a witch), even turns the talking frog she gave Julie for her fifth birthday back into the mailman—eventually.) The plot segues from one fairy tale to another at a dizzying pace, although it isn't really disjointed: it feels more like a dream trying to make sense out of disconnected events. And the ending is quite clever.

Definitely recommended.

how i live now

2008-06-24T16:30:00.003-04:00

By Meg Rosoff. Found via RJA and sea heidi.

Great voice. The lack of quotation marks was very noticeable, but their return took me a few chapters to twig on to. This is one of those coming-of-age stories that have been done so many times (in the most general sense), but it stands out. I don't know why I like these kinds of stories.

Starts off strange with a 15-year-old anorexic (but she doesn't like to talk about it) living with her (telepathic) English (first) cousins and falling in love with one of them. That part is weird and sex is pretty unambiguously involved. Then the war (or is it an evolved terrorism?) that's been going on encroaches on their idyllic country lives and in due time Daisy discovers the horrors of war.

As I said, great voice throughout, Daisy comes off as very direct even though she avoids some topics. What actually goes on with the war is somewhat misty, but that doesn't seem unusual considering (1) her age and (2) the nature of war. The falling-in-love with her cousin is kind of weird, and so is the telepathy. (It doesn't really impinge on the larger plot except that Piper is very good with her sheepdog but it is clear that Daisy's cousins, particularly Edmond, can read minds to a greater or lesser degree, or at least hers.) The book is certainly enjoyable, though.

A random thought

2008-06-24T09:37:00.002-04:00

This thought is inspired by a frank child: What if True Thomas went around telling people "I can see your underwear"? How much more unfortunately honest could you be in this day and age? (Wikipedia does not appear to mention it, but one version I remember included the curse that he would always be right and never be believed.)

Black Juice

2008-06-22T13:01:00.003-04:00

By Margo Lanagan.

This is an anthology of 10 fairly short stories, but it still took a while for me to read. Like dark chocolate, they're rich but I could only take one or two a day. Most involve dark moments, often juxtaposed with incongruously light elements: a young boy sings at his sister's execution, an assassin kills clowns in a world ruled by clowns, a woman at her grandmother's funeral lives in a world filled with pollution, an "angel" (with horns, red skin, and leathery wings) presides at a grandmother's death, a girl's love is spurned; others, like "Wooden Bride", "My Lord's Man", "Little Pippit" and "The Rite of Spring" were not so dark (unlike the Stravinsky ballet).

My favorite passage is in "My Lord's Man":

I wait to speak, until I know my voice will not shake with anger. "Mullord sees something in you," I finally say, "beyond your beauty and beyond your rage at the world. If he sees it, I believe it must be there."

[...]

"My lord sees something in me, you say. But does Berry see?" She's not jesting; she's asking me for a piece of myself, without telling me how she'll use it: whether she'll toss it away, and Berry with it, or hold it in her heart to fester and poison my life with.

"Why, I see the rage, as we all do. And I see the beauty, for no one could miss that either. [...] But the other thing—I cannot lie to you, Mistress. I do not see it."

We wait at the bottom of the path. The sun creaks a little higher at the edge of the world, and I can see the mistress's face composed, raised to the scrubby hillside, her beauty no less for the absence of its usual color, for the shadows exhaustion has painted around her eyes.

"I will tell you, Berry," she says, her voice broken to a croak, "I cannot see that other thing either."

List: Upcoming books

2008-06-21T14:37:00.004-04:00

Here are some works-in-progress or upcoming books I'm looking forward to, some of them of a more speculative (i.e., unfinished or possibly even only rumored) nature than others. They are mostly in order by expected release date. Some of them I am looking forward to because I have read previous books by the author, and some because I have read the author's blog or heard mentions of them here and there (interviews, perhaps?)

Notice the absence of non-speculative fiction. (I was going to say complete absence, but I guess Octavian Nothing and Elizabeth Wein's work don't quite count as fantasy if you look at them the right way. I guess it must be vivid books that tend to attract me.)

Shannon Hale's graphic novel Rapunzel's Revenge (August) and novel Bayern 4 (in progress, possibly for 2009).
Justine Larbalestier's How to Ditch Your Fairy (September).
Patricia McKillip's The Bell at Sealey Head (September; I haven't heard anything concrete but the form of the title suggests a sequel to The Tower at Stony Wood; there is a reading available at this fine link which I also haven't listened to).
Cornelia Funke's Inkdeath (October).
M. T. Anderson's Octavian Nothing: Volume 2 (October).
Brandon Sanderson's The Hero of Ages (Mistborn book 3; October) and Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones (November).
Juliet Marillier's Heir to Sevenwaters (November).
Jane Lindskold's Thirteen Orphans, first in a series. (November)
Bujold's Sharing Knife book 4 (January 2009) and any possible additions to the Chalion series (there should be 2 according to the series structure, but I have heard nothing concrete).
R. J. Anderson's book Knife, the Hunter (2009) and book Touching Indigo (nowhere near finished).
Laini Taylor's Silksinger (in revision; hopefully for 2009).
Pamela Dean's Going North (in revisions; 2009? to be split into two books).
Marie Brennan's And Ashes Lie (in progress; 2009?)
D. M. Cornish's Factotum (in progress; 2009?).
Jane Yolen's graphic novel Foiled (possibly not final title; no idea about a release date).
L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero's Children (haven't heard anything about a release date).
The rest of Rosemary Kirstein's continuing Steerswomans series. (Book 5 is currently in progress, book 6 mostly finished from what I've heard which isn't much.)
John Wright's next "book", Count to a Trillion (scare quoted because of his habit of having his books broken into "trilogies").
Vernor Vinge's sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep (in progress?).
Tom Simon's epic work.
Any additional books in Elizabeth Wein's Arthurian cycle.

Ink Exchange

2008-06-17T08:07:00.003-04:00

By Melissa Marr. This is not a sequel to Wicked Lovely, just a sideways "companion novel." (I dislike this term because it is longer and more awkward than "sequel", although not as long and awkward as "another novel set in the same universe but focused on different characters which may or may not occur chronologically later in time than the first.")

Very dark and highly emotional, this is undeniably a book about dealing with bad situations: rape, addiction, the shame that comes afterwards, as if it's somehow the victim's fault. (See also Believing bad times equals bad us (Stuff Christians Like).) Kudos to Marr for dealing with these issues in a straightforward way. The book feels very honest.

Moreover, it made me think about my objections to the first book regarding Ash's lack of volition in her situation: while I feel that anything bad that happens to someone in a book should come as a result of their own choices, however uninformed (isn't this traditional for main characters in fairy stories? to say nothing of the hapless people who are turned into frogs and fish), and Ash's life changes without any such choice on her part, Leslie does make choices that, in retrospect, she shouldn't have made. That doesn't mean she deserves what happens to her.

What I do object to is the way humans are like underpeople in this book: Marr makes the faeries so powerful it is impossible, or nearly so, for humans to stand up to them. Why should a fairy king be magically immune to all "lesser" beings?

Recommended with the caveat that these are heavy issues. I consider this book significantly better than her first: the answers don't come nearly as easily.

Midnight Never Come

2008-06-16T13:15:00.001-04:00

By Marie Brennan.

Excellent.

This book seamlessly combines history with faerie conspiracy in a chillingly plausible manner. Michael Deven, seeking advancement in Queen Elizabeth's court, is set a puzzle by Walsingham, one of the Queen's spymasters: identify the hidden player in the intrigues of court. On the other side, Lady Lune struggles to survive and regain her favored position in the hidden court beneath the city.

You might call this urban fantasy, but it is very different from the usual. Political intrigue, tantalizing hints of hidden plots (some never revealed), and romance combine to form a book worth savoring, although I should mention that I started it with the expectation of enjoying it and others have remarked that it opens slowly. The ending is quite satisfying, pulling together many of the clues dropped over the course of the novel.

I do have some reservations about whether I would have been as quickly sympathetic to Lady Lune as I was since I read this interview shortly before reading the book, but she does eventually show a softer side.

Definitely recommended, and quite clean except for a relatively minor amount of violence.

As an aside, the pattern inlaid on the cover is quite lovely, as is the book's website. The publisher seems to have gone to some lengths to promote this book.

Temping Fate

2008-06-14T09:02:00.005-04:00

By Esther Friesner.

I found this on the shelf next to Nobody's Princess (found through Tamora Pierce) and decided it looked interesting.

This is a goofy book similar to Iris, Messenger, although Ilana is more sarcastic. When she applies for a summer job with the D. R. Temp Agency, she finds herself working for Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the three fates of Greek mythology, who really just want some time off to spend with their families... or something. Mayhem ensues. And if you think it's a joke, Ilana really is deathly allergic to eggs.

A pretty enjoyable light read, with at least one serious theme.

List: Books for children

2008-06-12T10:52:00.007-04:00

Because I am lazy, here is a list of books that may be suitable for younger readers. In general, this means they are (1) clean (with regards to sex and profanity) and (2) comprehensible. I may update this list sporadically.

A few minutes later: Added Blackbringer and The Secret Country. I also bolded the author's names to make the list easier to scan through.

M. T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party. Contains slavery and serious themes, of course, but mixed with dry humour. Volume 2 is scheduled for October.

D. M. Cornish's Monster Blood Tattoo. Book titles are Foundling and Lamplighter, with a third forthcoming. Excellent world-building and linguistics. The world isn't as grim as the series title makes it sound, either. Be warned that the whole trilogy will need to be read to get all of Rossamünd's story

Pamela Dean's The Secret Country trilogy. Second and third books are The Hidden Land and The Whim of the Dragon, and all three are intended to be read together. Children playing a game about an imaginary country with their cousins find their way into it in reality. However, I've tried giving this to most of my siblings and they all rejected it because of the "thees" and "thous", so be warned. The Dubious Hills is set in the same world but about different characters, and is probably my favorite Dean book. It might be better for slightly older readers, however—I wouldn't feel bad about giving it to a teen.

Jessica Day George's Dragon Slippers. Comic fantasy, but she does in an excellent job of adding real tension during the latter half.

Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl. Retold fairy tale. Sequels so far (though they are labeled companion novels and focus on different characters, they occur sequentially in time) are Enna Burning and River Secrets. Hale has also written Princess Academy and The Book of a Thousand Days, both independent books.

Patrice Kindl's Owl in Love and The Woman in the Wall. Two humorous books, not directly connected. The second also has some serious themes.

Elizabeth Knox's Dreamhunter and Dreamquake. One book split into two. Contains some sex (not very explicit but there's no missing it) and also torturous dreams. Solid, strong characters and a great historical feel of the early 1900s, even though it's set on a continent that doesn't exist in our world. A sequel would be nice (there is one big loose end) but I haven't heard anything yet.

Laura Ruby's The Wall and the Wing. Wacky humour in a slightly off version of New York City where people fly (but not very well) and monkeys talk. Sequel: The Chaos King.

Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. Comedy with an (annoying) narrator who makes a point of cliffhangers, cryptic foreshadowing and digressions in the middle of fight scenes. Sequels are forthcoming, starting with Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones, which has a great sound as a title. Like Monster Blood Tattoo, the whole trilogy is needed to tell the complete story, although the end of the first book is not much of a cliffhanger. To be honest I should point out that my younger brother found the foreshadowing less cryptic than I did and guessed some of the surprises. Sanderson's adult books are also quite clean, if quite a bit longer.

Delia Sherman's Changeling. Has an idiot moment* but otherwise well done fantasy in an even more off version of New York City.

* That's when you yell at the character "You know you shouldn't be doing this!" and throw the book across the room before skipping several pages to get past the painfully stupid part.

Laini Taylor's Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer. Great adventure with some clever world-building behind it. I'm looking forward to forthcoming books.

Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and sequels The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia. If you haven't heard of these you should have.

Elizabeth Wein's Arthurian cycle, beginning with The Winter Prince. Historical fiction about Arthur's children and grandchildren. Contains several instances of torture and mutilation. In fact, The Empty Kingdom is one of the tensest books I've ever read. Successive books are A Coalition of Lions, The Sunbird, The Lion Hunter and The Empty Kingdom. Note: The last two are really one book and should be read together.

Fire Study

2008-06-11T17:03:00.006-04:00

By Maria Snyder. Third book in the series, after Poison Study and Magic Study.

Warning: Grumpy review ahead.

This book was disappointing. I don't know if it's because I've had a couple months to cool off about the series or if I've just become more critical again, but somehow it lacked the emotional resonance the first two books had to support the plot. The plot was weak! OK, I was surprised about who the villain was, but I don't buy a certain character not dying under the circumstances. Instead of making the plot more believable (by having people's actions be more believable), it seems like the author added new types of magic and other gadgets, possibly to distract the reader with shiny.* And a long-standing mystery is cleared up in an offhand way in the last three pages, probably because the next book is scheduled to take place five years later (in fiction) and focus on a different character. Why not just leave it a mystery? People in real life don't get all the answers. Sometimes relationships end, friends part, and they never get a good reason from each other.

I think it could probably have used more editing to tighten up the story. It just seems loose, and while I finished it, it hasn't left me real enthusiastic about forthcoming books in this series.

Also, the sex was too much in my face, even though it wasn't explicit. And, despite that they're said to be in love, Yelena's relationship with Valek seems more about her than him. (SPOILER: She has a stupid moment where she falls apart.)

* Part of the fun of science fiction and some fantasy is doing a lot with a little. Adding thousands of kinds of magic to a world without a good reason is not so much, and worse, it is done in a distracting rather than an interesting way. (Of course, to be interesting, it might require a good reason.) On the other hand, books like Daniel Abraham's Shadow in Summer do impressively much with one (central) magical conceit (poems can harness elemental forces, like sterility, to human wills—but there is a price).

The Dollmage

2008-06-09T20:13:00.005-04:00

By Martine Leavitt, who also wrote the lovely, though perhaps macabre, book Keturah and Lord Death.

This is a story; the narrator is very present as a storyteller, much more so than in Keturah. (Keturah has a prologue and epilogue that act as a framing story, with the storyteller sitting at a fire. It's a great moment when you get to the end, are reminded of the storyteller, and realize that the names of the people she told the story to are also the names of the characters in the story. Makes you think.) The villagers live in a picturesque village full of bridges and sheep in a world full of mountains. This is a simplistic view of the world, but it isn't clear how literally we are to take it: even one of the characters points out that to have mountains, you must have valleys.

The Dollmage is the one responsible for keeping her village's story on track; she tries to protect her people from a bad ending through her magic. But the current Dollmage is getting old and, despite her great wisdom, is blind in some ways.

The trouble starts with her resentment of her distant cousin Vilsa. When four children are born on the day the Dollmage declares her successor will be born, she decides that Vilsa's daughter is not going to be the one. (The Dollmage, asking God why four children were born on one day, is told that it is to make her wise.) Years of petty slights and resentment build up, pushing the villagers' way of life to the brink of disaster.

The inclusion of God is an interesting one. Resentment and forgiveness are definite themes, and the villagers' way of life is based on promises: there are promises they are born into (they may kill only to defend their children) and promises they make. The penalty for breaking either is death or exile. As the dolls have power to affect reality, so do words, and the villagers believe that breaking their word will cause them to lose that power, making them no different from the robber peoples who live in all the valleys around them, stealing their possessions and relatives. But little is said about her God directly, and much about how she is to learn wisdom, something that troubles me a bit.

Pretty good, and fairly short, I'd recommend at least giving this book a try. Be advised that there is a rape, although not in explicit detail.

Foundling

2008-05-20T20:38:00.002-04:00

By D. M. Cornish; book 1 of Monster Blood Tattoo, etc. (Note that, while imaginative, the edgy feel of the title "Monster Blood Tattoo" doesn't seem to match the mood of the actual book, at least for me.) Also contains illustrations by the author.

Imaginary hat tip to R. J. Anderson and Carbonelle for recommending this.

This story covers Rossamünd's* departure from the foundling society (orphanage) where he was raised and his journey to his new employment. As a sweet, naive, and paradoxically timid and adventurous child, he makes a fairly appealing main character, even if he is perhaps not quite a protagonist.

The characters are all distinct, even if they have shadowy pasts, and the worldbuilding in this book is clever and fantastic, and feels well put together. Instead of merely expositing different ideas, the author gives the sense that they all fit well into the physics, biology and culture of the Half-continent. Of particular interest are the secretive cults that grow or harvest foreign organs for use by humans, either as machines or living prosthetics, and the caustic vinegar waves.

However, the most important instigation in this book is presence of monsters: it is fair to say that the antagonism between monsters and everymen has had a profound effect on history. As carbonelle points out, however, what actually makes a monster is not necessarily as clear-cut as the people of the Half-continent would have it.

Along with these clever ideas comes vocabulary; the made-up words have great verisimilitude, being based on recognizable morphemes (at least to English speakers).

My chief disappointment with this book is that the story ends so soon. While Rossamünd accomplishes what he set out in the beginning to do, there are numerous hints at more to come, and many questions to answer regarding the world and his own past.

Although the strange names and words can be overwhelming at first, requiring a significant investment into the world of the story, this ends up being an enjoyable fantasy adventure story, leaving the reader wanting more but not hanging off a cliff at the end. Recommended.

* Edited to add: The "ü" in Rossamünd is pronounced the same as the vowel in wood, could, should, etc., according to the pronunciation guide.

End of the Spear

2008-05-19T12:23:00.002-04:00

By Steve Saint.

This is labeled as the memoirs of Steve Saint, the son of one of the five missionaries who was killed in the 1950s in the Amazon rain forest. Although it took me a while to get into it, partly due to the number of foreign names and relationships, I became quite interested in what was going to happen.

The style is quite informal and easy to read, although it could perhaps have used more editing—in one place there is a section break, with the associated graphic, in the middle of a sentence. The author for the most part did a good job incorporating English translations of the foreign terms without becoming too repetitive. Although he tries throughout to incorporate a little humor, I think it falls flat until the last few chapters, which I found (mostly) hilariously funny. The "mostly" is perhaps the reason for the humour—it helps to offset the tragedy that occurs.

However, there is a lot left out of this story. The airline agent's visit to the Amazon is dismissed in a couple of sentences, with no mention of her reaction. There are other places where he neglects to mention or explain his own reactions or actions. In the last few chapters, he leaves out quite a lot, focusing on the antics of the Waodani tribe members who accompany him back to the U.S. Part of the reason the book is hard to get into is due to the confusing chronology: it seems to start closer to the present day and then flash back to the past, but it isn't entirely clear when things happen or even the order that they happen in.

Despite these drawbacks, the book is quite interesting, but it could have been better.

Saffy's Angel

2008-05-11T10:43:00.004-04:00

By Hilary McKay.

This is another one of those books I should have found years ago. Serious, sweet and hilarious. The notorious driving lessons are easy to point to as one of the amusing points, but fried corned beef sandwiches and curry sandwiches ("Should I make the curry very hot or very, very hot?") amuse too, as do most of the things this quixotic family gets up to.

The Casson family is a family of artists, with colorful children: Cadmium, Indigo, Saffron, and Permanent Rose, and parents Bill and Eve. The trouble starts when Saffron, perusing the color chart tacked to the kitchen wall, finds all her siblings' names but not her own. The explanation? She was adopted. Oh, tragedy: suddenly she feels like she isn't part of the family at all. One of the strange things about this book is that after this happens, about five years pass in the space of a couple pages, five years where Saffron feels alienated and her family continues to put up with her, not to mention love her.

The family is eccentric but still a family: they come together when they need to. When Rose finishes her first drawing and the "wicked teacher" who had pretended interest snatches it away and stakes it to the wall far above her reach, Cadmium helps her to steal it back and replace it with a replica, down to the four thumbtack holes. And when the wheelchair girl (quite intentionally) runs Saffron over, she suddenly has the friend she didn't know she needed.

Sweet story, nothing too heavy, lots of humor. Not what most people would call fantasy.

Found via E. Wein, who offhandedly mentioned the series, with a quote, and Sherwood Smith.

The Shadow Speaker

2008-04-29T08:45:00.004-04:00

By Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu.

I"m going to try a slightly different style this time.

Ejii is a young girl in what was Nigeria with an unusual power: her cat-like eyes give her the ability to see in the dark and speak to shadows. When the shadows tell her she must go on a quest to stop a war, she must decide whether it is worth her own life to do so, for the journeys of shadow speakers are perilous to the speaker.

Upsides: Strong characters deal with a morally complex situation: Jaa favors violence, while Ejii favors peace, but they are both treated as "good guys." The bad guy is also rounded. Ejii's power is cool but even more dangerous than a double-edged sword, as it hurts her even when she doesn't use it. The narrative is lively and enjoyable to read and has much of the same whimsy that was in Zahrah the Windseeker, but with a plot that concerns more than a handful of people this time.

Downsides: Polygamy, if that's a downside for you. Reincarnation. The shadows are called the spirits of the Earth, if I recall correctly, and said to never lie or mislead. At one point, Ejii perceives a mystic "Whole" of all creatures which she calls "Allah." Also, the first chapter with the Desert Magician is strange and seems out of place.

I would recommend this for the strong writing and creativity involved, but the spiritual aspects, reincarnation, and polygamy involved are somewhat troubling to me and good to be aware of.

Note: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu has also written Zahrah the Windseeker, an earlier book set in the same universe, but more whimsical and less serious than The Shadow Speaker. In Zahrah, all Zahrah has to do is keep following the path she chooses; Ejii is repeatedly confronted with choices where the correct path isn't always obvious or even unambiguous.

The Mark of Solomon

2008-04-26T10:55:00.003-04:00

Consisting of The Lion Hunter and The Empty Kingdom, by Elizabeth Wein.

I think I've mentioned this series before, but Wein takes the Arthurian mythos in a direction completely her own. The Winter Prince, the first book, is about Arthur's children in Britain, but A Coalition of Lions, The Sunbird, The Lion Hunter, and The Empty Kingdom are all set in and around Aksum (what is now called Ethiopia). These aren't precisely fantasy in the sense of having (overt) magic, but they are fantastic historical fiction.

The Mark of Solomon, especially The Empty Kingdom, is intense. In fact, I find the size of all Wein's books to be deceptive: there is little that could be called excess, or unnecessary to the story. They are dense and exciting. The Mark of Solomon, which the author refers to as The Adolescence of Telemakos, is rendered in a tight third-person from Telemakos' perspective, although there are a few brief interludes from someone else's point of view, and concerns his coming-of-age. In A Coalition of Lions and The Sunbird, he was shown to be a quiet, canny child, and we see here how he grows to assume adult responsibilities.

I particularly noticed in reading these two books how all three titles can be interpreted in several different ways. In addition, there is almost nothing I can point to and say "That should have been fixed"; my only complaint is that the second book is so intense, it perhaps could have used some comedic relief. You will probably want to have it, and sufficient time in which to read it, at hand before reading the last few pages of the first book.

In short: Great, intense historical fiction. Highly recommended. Refreshingly clean, too, although some heavy issues such as torture are referred to, more so in The Sunbird than here.

Angel Isle

2008-04-24T22:13:00.001-04:00

By Peter Dickinson.

This book picks up with the epilogue to The Ropemaker repeated as a prologue: Saranja returning home 20 generations after the events in the first book, and finding herself on an adventure very similar, at first, to the first one. The feel of the writing is also quite similar, although with more romance and string theory. However, the world described still feels like it mostly doesn't exist (i.e., doesn't have a history or people doing things outside of the narrative). outside of what happens in these books.

The use of Maja, an 11 or 12-year-old girl, as the main point-of-view character is particularly interesting because of her vulnerability to frequent blackouts. Unlike Tilja in the first book, who had a special immunity to magic, Maja doesn't see everything of importance that happens, and important events often happen while she is asleep or passed out, although she is still vital to the quest.

This book can probably be read alone without missing too much, although there are references to the events of the first book. I have no idea what to recommend it as; despite the size, it's a fairly light read with a flat villain and a not-too-memorable plot. Somewhat enjoyable, but not very deep.

(Slightly?) spoilery quote: "Life as a rag doll isn't all kisses and cuddles."

The Ropemaker

2008-04-19T08:13:00.002-04:00

By Peter Dickinson.

The sequel is Angel Isle, but I haven't yet read it.

This is a straightforward quest fantasy. Straightforward isn't meant to imply that there are magical swords, elves, or dwarves, but more that everyone is who they appear to be. No one is on ambiguous moral ground here, at least from the perspective of the protagonists, and they never trust anyone that it turns out they shouldn't have. While fairly enjoyable to read, I don't think there is a lot of real depth, although some is hinted at, such as the Emperor's policies concerning life and death. (If you die without paying your death tax, your progeny is liable to be enslaved and sold to pay the debt.)

The story principally follows four people from the Valley, a region that has been protected from the Empire and from barbarian tribes to the North by a magical barrier for the last two hundred years. When the barrier starts to fail, Tilja and her grandmother and Tahl and his grandfather set out to find the man who initially put it into place, planning to ask him to restore it. Along the way, they learn about the Empire that they've been isolated from for the last two hundred years.

Enjoyable, but straightforward, making only relatively minor references to issues like aging, death, and the corruption that comes from power.

Off-topic: Stuff Christians Like

2008-04-12T17:24:00.004-04:00

This is off-topic, but I suspect some of the people who see this might be interested: Stuff Christians Like is a new blog with oodles of keen observations about (... wait for it ...) stuff Christians like. Like the side hug and telling instead of showing, to give a funny example and a serious one.

Beware! Reading this will suck away your time like it sucked away my afternoon—but I think it's worth it.

Poison Study

2008-04-12T13:52:00.002-04:00

By Maria V. Snyder.

Poison Study and its sequel, Magic Study, were extremely engrossing despite some annoying typos (missing commas, periods, wrong words). Snyder is apparently one of those authors who asks herself, "What is the worst that can happen to my characters?" and then does it, which can be painful for a reader like myself, but it didn't end too badly.*

Yelena starts as a young woman waiting to be executed. (One of the annoyances I felt is that I don't think her actual age, 20, was mentioned until the very end of the book. She seems older in some ways.) When she's offered the chance to become the Commander's taste tester instead of hanging, she takes it. Unfortunately, one of the Commander's generals, the father of the boy she murdered, would rather see her dead, as would several others.

The real strength of this book is its powerful characters and relationships. While the setting isn't bad, the plot is really character-centered. Yelena is resourceful and intelligent but still tries to do what's right, even when pushed to her limits. What makes it more interesting is that she respects the Commander for establishing order in her country, even though he is a usurper. Valek, the Commander's chief of security, though crafty, is also mostly likable. (He sure made it obvious he was a liar at the very start, didn't he?)

On the other hand, not everyone's actions made sense. The southern magician who tries to kill Yelena early on is a good example. It just doesn't make sense in light of the magician's later actions. (Killing someone tends to be a last resort rather than a first.) There is also intrigue in the castle which is never fully explained: some secret information about Yelena is leaked, but the person she believes responsible appears to be vindicated... or is she?

Overall, the author keeps the tension level** high without making it unbearable, and resolves the conflicts between several of the characters in a reasonable way. (The southern magician is a glaring exception.) However, there is some oblique sex and less oblique rape, so this probably isn't for children. There is also a transgender issue.

This is definitely more character-centered than epic fantasy, although the view opens up a bit more in the second book. For people who like this kind of thing, I think it's great.***

* (Fire Study, the third book in the series, just came out, but I haven't read it yet.)

** (Although it helped lower the tension, at least for me, to have read Sigmund Brouwer's Magnus, a great historical fantasy that doesn't have any magic unexplained by (actual) science. Anybody even heard of this? You will notice a plot similarity that appears in Poison Study's first few chapters if you have read it. And the "great" should be taken with a grain of salt since, although I thought it was exciting, I was significantly younger and less critical when I read it. I should probably reread it sometime and see if I still like it.)

*** (You might argue that there is some "my character is the center of the world" going on here, since Yelena survives this book due to a more-or-less incredible sequence of coincidences and saves, indirectly, many other people in the second book. If you think about it, that means they were also saved as a result of a more-or-less incredible series of coincidences.)

Comment Box

2008-04-02T13:39:00.003-04:00

If you have comments or suggestions about my reviews (are there certain aspects of a book I should be certain to mention, whether fictional, such as theme, style, imagery, etc., or factual, as page count or publisher or the like? links to Amazon or authors' blogs? additional labels to make it easier to find certain books?) or other content you might like to see (or see links to, more likely), let me know here.

Wings to the Kingdom

2008-04-02T13:16:00.003-04:00

By Cherie Priest. Second Eden Moore book.

This is a sequel to Four and Twenty Blackbirds, but is only weakly connected. Many of the characters are new (or were mentioned so briefly in the first book that I forgot them), and the several unresolved issues regarding Eden's family from the first book remain mostly unresolved by the end.

When ghosts start appearing on a Civil War battlefield near Chattanooga and pointing mysteriously, Eden decides to check it out... eventually. Because she's curious. Or is she?

I found this book weaker than the first because Eden had a much less compelling reason for being involved. (In the first book, people were trying to kill her.) To be fair, she at first resists involvement, but when she decides to investigate, her curiosity is not convincing enough to convince me that it should have triumphed over her common sense. Much of the tension that was in the first book is lacking here, possibly because several important secrets are revealed early on. I also would have liked for there to be more progress with regard to Eden's family relationships. Her (great?) aunt from the first book was not mentioned at all, to my recollection, and others are mentioned only briefly. This is good for making the book self-contained, but bad because her family was more interesting to me than the monster story that goes on in this book.

You probably only want to read this if you read and enjoyed the first book or if you're really into reading about Old Green Eyes.

Four and Twenty Blackbirds

2008-04-02T13:11:00.003-04:00

By Cherie Priest. The first Eden Moore book.

The first page grabbed me with its vividness and the small child narrating. A couple pages later, we suspect the narrator is currently somewhat older, but no idea by how much. The author develops a strong Southern atmosphere with ghosts and complicated family relationships. There's a lot of grit and smells and great descriptions of setting.

This is a ghost story, but a strange one: Eden, our narrator, has grown up with the ghosts of three women, one of whom claims to be her mother. However, they aren't threatening at all (though some of the other beings she encounters are). The real threat in this book is the living.

Early on, Eden implies that reincarnation is involved, mentioning memories of a past life. This is probably what bothered me the most about this book. Although there was a good amount of tension and danger, I didn't find this book exceptionally frightening; Eden is quite capable of taking care of herself physically, and I didn't find the supernatural threats very believable.

In the end, I think I liked this book more because of the strong atmosphere and characters than due to the strength of the plot. The mysteries surrounding Eden's life are a definite page-turning factor, especially since no one will tell her anything, but several of the conflicts seem to have only a weak basis, and despite the significant amount of tension I didn't find this to be a very frightening story. (I find grotesque horror undesirable in books; although horrible things do happen in this one, the story doesn't dwell on them in great detail either.)

The Queen's Gambit

2008-03-30T10:45:00.003-04:00

By Walter Tevis.

Very good story about chess. Who knew it could be so exciting? While in an orphanage, Beth Harmon happens to see the janitor playing chess in the basement one day... and she's hooked. While she has a significant talent at the game, she does have other problems: she uses the tranquilizers the orphanage handed out to "even their dispositions" to sleep at night, and becomes somewhat dependent on them. She has very few friends and no social life; almost her entire focus is on chess, her idol

There is some sex, although none of it seems particularly gratuitous; it reveals some things about Beth's character. Still, it is explicit enough that you may not a child read this book. There is also some profanity.

This book hints at deeper issues than chess. Beth's dependence on tranquilizers and later alcohol reflect her unhappiness with the rest of her life. Halfway through, she meets another child prodigy whose goal is to be the best by age 16, and asks him what he will do then. The question is obviously one she should be thinking about herself. (And perhaps she is, off-stage, since she thought to ask it.)

Recommended. A note: unlike my usual fare, the only fantastic element in this is Beth's amazing talent for chess, which is arguably not something completely out of the realm of possibility, considering real examples of prodigies. Also of note is the age: this book was published in the 1980s and seems to be set somewhat earlier than that.

This is Sarah Deming's favorite novel (that's how I found it), and she created a Wikipedia entry for it.

The Perilous Gard

2008-03-26T12:16:00.004-04:00

By Elizabeth Marie Pope. Found via Oached Pish.

Kate Sutton, lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth, is exiled by the Queen to a castle in Elvenwood. The trouble she stumbles into there is all the more chilling for being so plausible: this book could easily be called historical fiction rather than fantasy.

This book took some time to grow on me. It began slowly, but the characters gradually grew in depth. The enemies (if they can be called that) are portrayed more as foreign, with a different (and fatalistic) outlook on life, than as willingly evil; and they are still human, even so. With their people declining, they have very little hope for the future.

Kate is also likable, although she seems to have few interests of her own other than satisfying her curiosity about the mysteries of the castle. She is not too perfect; in several cases she is saved only by happenstance, perhaps by God. In others, she has to accept and work within the situation where she finds herself.

As I said, this book has grown and is still growing on me. (To be honest, there are a few pages in the middle that I haven't yet brought myself to read.) I recommend it.

The Sweet Far Thing

2008-03-19T20:42:00.004-04:00

Being the third book of the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray. The title is taken from the W. B. Yeats poem "The Rose of Battle", which sounds a lot cooler than the title does by itself. (Well, the excerpt of it in the epigraph does, at least. I haven't read the whole thing.) The first and second books are A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels.

It's sweet and it's far. What more do you need to know?*

I found all three books in the trilogy difficult to read straight through. Gemma Doyle starts off the very first book (A Great and Terrible Beauty) by lying to teachers in order to ingratiate herself to other students at her new finishing school, and continues on with similar selfish behavior. In one of Aesop's fables, Something Bad would therefore happen, but the unfortunate events in these books are often ascribable to fate rather than consequence. Although she can also be tender and caring, it seems that she is that way (without ulterior motives) to only a few people, her closest friends and her father, until partway through the third book.

This is a Victorian Gothic, a strange hybrid of finishing schools and parties in turn-of-the-century England juxtaposed with sinister spirits and magic in "the realms." Gemma and her friends are least bearable when they have magic at their disposal: they seem to use it at every whim, with no apparent self-control. Part of the tension hanging over the series is caused by the assumption one would make that walking around like you own the world and doing whatever you want will cause trouble, but as I mentioned, most of the trouble seems to come from other causes, although it was aggravated by Gemma's reluctance to deal with it promptly. Instead of keeping the numerous promises that she makes (and breaks) so easily, she entertains illusion and glamour in a sort of fairyland. Her friends are, admittedly, somewhat culpable in her behavior, but most of her growth as a character seems to come fairly quickly near the end. (At least, that is my recollection, although I read the first two books a couple months ago.)

In the end, if you like dresses and games and vicious cliques and intrigue and sinister magic, you may like this trilogy. I did end up enjoying the third book somewhat more than the first two, because the characters were no longer in stasis. However, I probably wouldn't read it again.

* Yes, I more or less stole, err, borrowed this line from Maureen Johnson, who has at the linked location a short video interview with Libba Bray. Short and funny.

The Year of the Griffin

2008-03-19T20:39:00.002-04:00

By Dianna Wynne Jones.

This isn't a real in-depth review because I'm lazy, but I'd like to say that I found this book (the sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm) extremely funny. At least last night. And then it (the plot) got darker...

The Wreck of the River of Stars

2008-03-17T19:55:00.002-04:00

By Michael Flynn.

A few months ago, I enjoyed reading Michael Flynn's book Eifelheim. Recently I saw his name again and decided to check out some more books by him.

As you might guess from the title, this book is a tragedy. What's perhaps unique about it is that (almost?) every character has a tragic flaw. While the story has a lot to do with the sailors' attempts to bring the ship safely to port (which chiefly involves shedding enough momentum in time to stop at Jupiter when it's at the right place in its orbit), it also has a lot to do with their backgrounds and characters. In fact, I would say this story is more about the characters than about the science fictional elements, which are more of a backdrop. It starts a little slowly (I had trouble keeping track of all the characters being thrown at me) but picks up steam a ways in.

There is a lot of sex. In fact, I almost stopped reading when the self-destructive ship's doctor decides to seduce the only passenger with her private drug cocktail within the first 10 pages. For some reason I didn't, and I eventually started caring about what happened to the characters—at least, some of them. The Igbo girl particularly is amazingly and amusingly perceptive about what drives the other people on the ship. Even though you know the ship will be wrecked (if not in the sense of being destroyed, perhaps, the crew is certainly destroyed), there is something about this book that keeps you hoping everyone will survive.

If you enjoy tragedies and science fiction that focuses on characters (it was fairly apparent that the captain was going to be a central character in the story when he died in the first few pages), you might like this book. On the other hand, it also has (seemingly) realistic science—no faster-than-light travel or fusion drives that don't require fuel. However, I probably won't be reading it again: the often gratuitous sex ("I can't be pregnant! He's too young to father a child!") combined with the tragedy makes it somewhat unpalatable.

A Shadow in Summer

2008-02-21T22:34:00.003-05:00

By Daniel Abraham. This is the first of four (planned) books in his Long Price Quartet, the meaning of which becomes clear shortly into the story.

The central fantastic premise is clever and original, or at least novel to me. I don't think it's one I've seen before. The magic is based on poetry: a skilled poet can describe a natural force, enslaving it in a human form that can be controlled at the poet's will. The central one in this book is sterility, as personified in Seedless, whom I actually found to be one of the most sympathetic characters. However, if the poet fails to use an original and worthy description, a price is exacted by nature: death.

Unfortunately, many of the characters are not very likeable. Several strike me as spoiled, drifting children who lack perseverance in the face of adversity. Having difficulties in a relationship? Just give it up and find someone else to love. This is what bothered me most about this book. At the end of it, very few people have grown appreciably; in fact, they seem to shrink, stripped of the illusion of maturity. (The Galt's household manager is one exception.) While the world-building is very good (in my opinion, of course), the story is not emotionally satisfying. Perhaps the next three books will change that, but I am not in the mood to see; perhaps when they're all out I'll look at them again.

Singularity's Ring

2008-02-14T08:17:00.004-05:00

By Paul Melko.

This book is reminiscent of Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, idea-wise: many humans in the book's world have been genetically engineered (before birth) to have special glands capable of transmitting emotions and thoughts between small groups (two to five) of people. They are then socially trained to work together as a "single" person, or pod human. The characters were interesting, although I didn't come away from the book convinced, as they were, that they couldn't possibly function apart as individual beings.

However, despite several surprising plot twists (don't read the inside cover, though), the plot seemed driven too much by external impetuses. Every time the main character, Apollo Papadopulos, started doing something, it seemed as if another catastrophe, kidnapping, or intervention appeared to set them on a different path. The story also seemed somewhat disjointed, especially in the first half, with dropped plot threads all over the place. (For example, Manuel's twin sister is briefly mentioned, but never followed up on; the Gene Wars are also left unexplained, although with somewhat more justification, perhaps; and another important plot line is also dropped.) The principle antagonists don't have very convincing motivations.

Typographically, there are several annoying homonym errors: break instead of brake, loose instead of lose, and so on. Someone used a spelling checker, perhaps, but ended up with wrong words instead of misspelled ones.

Still, I liked this book quite a bit. The main character, Apollo Papadopulos (really five people who work together as one, most of the time), was quite likeable. Though the storytelling could have been smoother, some of the ideas were quite good; I especially liked the details about the Ring's engineering and the explanation for pods. Others were lacking; the impact of pod minds on sexuality and marriage, for example, was glossed over with a line that sounded like it was from a catechism and some vague sex scenes. Other human relationships, like friendship and parenthood, also seem to have been subsumed by the creation of pods; singletons (some who don't have the pod genetics, others who failed to combine into pods) live in their own enclaves apart from pod society as rejects. The Overgovernment was also left in a shadowy position in the background, despite having a large investment in creating and training Apollo for their mission. Apollo's assertion that "of course" quintets should have five times as many votes because they use five times as many resources as single humans didn't ring true.

If you like the nifty ideas and adventures in science fiction, you'll probably like this book, but don't look too closely at some of the details.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party

2008-02-04T13:42:00.000-05:00

By Mr. M. T. Anderson of Boston.

Recommended, with the slight caveat that there is a second volume forthcoming. Even so, this volume stands very well on its own.

The narrative is composed of accounts, largely from Octavian's perspective, of his early life and accomplishments. It is the eve of the American Revolution, and he is being raised by a household of musicians, artists and philosophers in an experiment to determine whether the African race is intellectually equal to the European race. His restrained and analytical narrative is occasionally interrupted by outbursts of emotion as he relates the treatment of his mother, an African princess, and his own changing conditions as the source of the household's funding changes. While the philosophers (perhaps better called scientists) measure his ingestion and excretion, overlooking the intangible ingredients which make a man, Octavian learns to observe the world around him, and learns, perhaps, more than they would wish.

What he sees are the peculiar events occurring in the name of freedom: old men tarred and feathered, property destroyed and merchants run out of town, slaves fighting for their masters' freedom, all occurring in the name of "Liberty and Property." As Octavian learns, the Liberty is for those with white skin, and others are Property.

This is a good book that I can recommend wholeheartedly.

I especially enjoyed the historical aspect; it was not often in high school, talking about American history, that I was reminded of the horror and caprice of war, even when the cause is righteous. In its latter half, this book brings close the uncertainty that surrounded those who were not elites and leaders, who were fighting to survive in the face of a conflict brought about by an upper class. While the book is fiction, a historical footnote adds that several experiments like the one described above actually occurred.

The second volume is scheduled for October, 2008. Hat tip to olmue for the mention that made me look it up in the first place.

Flora Segunda

2008-02-02T13:56:00.001-05:00

By Ysabeau Wilce.

This is a strange sort of book, reminiscent of Alma Alexander's Gift of the Unmage in that a culture somewhat out of the mainstream is represented. It also reminded me of The Ordinary in the way there are so many unexplained threads that probably lead to the short stories Wilce has published in this universe, mentioned on the back flap. It feels like a world where there is more behind the scenery than you get to see in this book.

The story is about Flora Segunda, whom her mother had to replace her first child, also named Flora, who is gone (though perhaps not dead, considering the vagueness with she's referred to). Flora's mother is the General to the Warlord of a subdued nation; what exactly went on between this state and the empire they fought, especially on a personal level between the leaders, is one of the things I'd like to know more about, since it is hinted that things are not exactly what they seem, but never satisfactorily explained.

Anyway, regardless of the political background, this book is concerned with the trouble Flora gets into when she tries to revive her house's magical butler behind her mother's back. You also get the feeling that there's more behind the scenes here with the house's history and her father's past—he lives in the Eyrie at the top of a tower at the top of the house, and it wasn't clear to me in the beginning that he was her father and not her brother, since she calls him Poppy.

Of course, Flora's mother has good reason for locking away the house's butler, and Flora gets into more trouble than she can deal with on her own. The ending seems a little weak, leaving many things unexplained, as I already mentioned. There is supposed to be a sequel, Flora Redux, so perhaps some questions will be answered then, but I suspect more of them are answered in the aforementioned short stories.

It also seems very odd that Flora, nearly 14 years old, sees nothing wrong with climbing under the covers next to her (male) friend Udo, other than keeping his mother from noticing that she's there breaking his curfew, of course.

Other blogs of note

2008-01-24T08:49:00.001-05:00

Gentle reader, if you've grown tired and weepy-eyed due to the idyllic pace of life here on Hushabye Mountain... wake up. For the rest of you, here are some other places where fine reviews may be found:

3 Evil Cousins. YA reviews by YA teen readers.

Deliciously Clean Reads. The blog that pointed me to Iris, Messenger, although their other reviews haven't managed to grab my attention quite so well.

Fantasy Book Critic. High volume with giveaways and author interviews (well, the other ones occasionally have those too), but the idiosyncratic formatting gets on my nerves. And I haven't really been grabbed by any of the reviews, either.

OF Blog of the Fallen. Thoughtful reviews focused on fantasy and sci fi.

And, finally, Shannon Hale's blog, which doesn't exactly feature reviews but does have some neat interviews with other authors like Libba Bray, Megan Whalen Turner, Sherwood Smith, and so on. Look for the "Squeetus exclusive" posts.

Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

2008-01-22T21:33:00.001-05:00

By Brandon Sanderson.

+1 for cleverness, but -2 for not going anywhere except to the sequel. Sure, a lot of stuff happens, but it seems to be there more to introduce all the clever ideas you'll need to know for book 2 than to advance the plot or develop the characters. (Well, maybe they are all just supposed to be silly, but there are a few hints of something more...) Also, points lost for foreshadowing that I will probably have forgotten by the time I read the sequel, such as the line about hair dye and the somewhat negative impression I got of a certain character.

On the other hand, there is lots of cleverness: people who have magical Talents for breaking things, arriving late, tripping and falling to the ground, and saying things that don't make sense. Honest. Also, witty observations about how stairs are more advanced than elevators, lanterns than lightbulbs, and swords than guns.

It was also reminiscent of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which I haven't even read, due to the narrator's repeated insistence that he isn't nice.

Cute and clever overall, but it doesn't seem to go anywhere much. Perhaps books two and three will be more rewarding... when they come out.

Some more books

2008-01-18T12:03:00.001-05:00

I am accumulating a whole list of books that I have little to say about even though I might have liked them. So, here are some of them:

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Mentioned in several places (e.g., Melissa Marr's blog), I found it quite readable, but a little too obvious with its secrets.

Wicked Lovely, by Melissa Marr. Fairy who always gets what he wants decides he wants a human girl, who refuses. Resolution is a little too facile, perhaps, especially after the darker elements that are introduced (the Summer Girls), but it's good light reading. I think the jacket has a better hook than I'll ever come up with: three rules for what to do around invisible fairies, starting with "Don't stare at invisible fairies."

Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books. I actually read Wintersmith first and then went back and read The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky. I think I liked The Wee Free Men best; it manages to combine a lot of humor with a credible plot and some serious ideas about dreams.

Kristen Britain's The High King's Tomb. This is the third book in her Green Rider series. There were some surprising twists, some in the form of thwarted cliches, and some unsurprising ones in the form of fulfilled cliches. I don't know if I'll read the next book or not, as I'm starting to think I have better things to do with the time given to me.

Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days. The diary of a maid and her princess, who are locked in a tower for seven years when the princess refuses to marry the man her father chose for her. Well, actually, things happen and it ends up being only two and a half years... I found it a little dryer than some of her other books, but a lot of other people seem to like it a lot. Also of interest is the rejected titles list on Hale's web site, containing gems such as "One Steppe Forward, Two Steppes Back."

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and sequel, New Moon. (I haven't read Eclipse yet.) Vampire romance in a sleepy, rainy Washington town. My teenage sister loves them. Also, Meyer has some interesting twists on vampires that I haven't seen before.

Voices and Powers

2008-01-06T10:04:00.000-05:00

By Ursula K. Le Guin. Voices is the second book of the Annals of the Western Shore (whose Western Shore?), but is only loosely tied to the first book (the two characters who reappear in this one are so changed after at least 17 years that they seem like different people). Powers, the third book, meets up with characters from the first two books only at the very end.

I don't know why I enjoyed this book so much. It lacks the pervasive humor of several of the other books I've reviewed recently. The premise involves a secret library in a city overrun by invaders who hate books, but the knowledge contained within does not, in the end, seem to have much to do with the story, which is more about attitudes towards knowledge and learning. The narrator, a girl named Memer (although it took me 20 pages to realize it was a girl), plays a pivotal role in her city, but one that is more behind-the-scenes and functional than glamorous. I can tell you now, she is not a warrior princess.

I also liked the third book, Powers, but I find myself unable to explain exactly why. It concerns a young man named Gavir who was enslaved as a young child and educated to become a teacher to the children of the house that owns him. It made me think about the nature of slavery, as Gavir sees nothing wrong with being a slave in a house with a just master, and he mentions how the slaves of his house used to mock other slaves who were less well cared for. He later speculates that it was fear that made them react that way.

I recommend these both. I don't remember Gifts, the first book, having a big impression on me, but I suspect I might like it more if I reread it. All three deal with serious topics without much of the levity that has been in the other books I've enjoyed lately. Perhaps there will be another book; there is at least one major hanging end from Powers, mentioned early on and then left for the reader's curiosity to pick at.

The Chaos King

2008-01-03T22:15:00.000-05:00

By Laura Ruby. This is the sequel to The Wall and the Wing, which I reviewed a long time ago.

In the city where everybody (well, almost) can fly due to an accident with a silver pen... the pen has fallen into the hands of grows, who like shiny things, and someone sinister is out to get it. Vampires, an octopus, a giant sloth who likes M&Ms, and a book of badly written greeting card poems all have something to do with what's going on...

Filled with a hilarious and zany sense of humor, this book is full of many fun things, including pop culture references like Amazon (Gurl's, sorry, Georgette's cat Noodle lkes to shop there) and Harry Potter. This is not exactly a big surprise since the previous book introduced a plastic hand with all the answers that the notorious Professor ordered off of eBay. If you like silly but highly entertaining young adult books ("Remember that wireless telephone you invented as a child? What happened to it?" "Uh... I think I dropped it..." "Exactly! And someone else found it, picked it up, and now everyone has one!"), you should like this and its precursor, The Wall and the Wing.

Actually... the spine says this is a juvenile. I suppose it depends on which library you go to.

Iris, Messenger

2008-01-02T20:39:00.000-05:00

By Sarah Deming. Found via Deliciously Clean Reads.

Clever, funny book about a girl going to Erebus Middle School (hah) who discovers something about herself. Actually, it's handed to her in pieces, starting with a package containing Bullfinch's Mythology and hand-stamped with a turtle shell which arrives on her twelfth birthday.

This is also a little silly, but short enough that the lack of significant plot (quite a few chapters are retold Greek myths, and the rest is Iris being snarky) doesn't get annoying.

What did get a little annoying was the repeated use of names in dialogue. "Iris, dear?" "Yes?" "Iris, did you know...?" "Let me tell you a story, Iris." I don't need to be reminded nearly so often who's actually talking, and I don't think I had that much of a problem with it as a child either, although I will admit that numerous lines (i.e., more than ten) without any indication of the speaker can make me go back and count ("Abe, Becky, Abe, Becky, Abe, ..., so I guess Becky is saying this line even though it would make more sense from Abe..."). However, this book had the opposite problem.

Other than that, cute book, although the plot seems underdeveloped. I'm reminded of the DWJ story about an adult reader who said her books were too complicated, while the adult's child said "Don't worry: I had no problem understanding them!"

The Dream of the Stone

2007-12-31T11:12:00.000-05:00

By Christina Askounis.

I found this after reading her short story "The Novice" online. (I found it through Mir.)

It might be bad that the first comparison that comes to mind is to A Wrinkle in Time. Let's see, an evil shadow that's spreading through the universe? Check. A pseudo-scientific method of traveling to other planets? Check. Mysterious old lady who likes to quote Latin aphorisms before disappearing? Check. You get the idea...

That said, the writing seems pretty solid. I noticed that she does a good job of describing the settings and characters, although some are a little cliched, especially the villain. The plot is fairly straightforward, without any of the nasty surprises I've come to expect from authors, but it does have a few twists. It does transparently reference Christianity, with the 23rd Psalm and at least one line from a hymn making an appearance, but even so the characters are not perfect.

In the end, I may have enjoyed this most for the nostalgia factor. The original plan was for it to be the first book in a trilogy, but that seems to be on hold for now.

Extras

2007-12-29T15:02:00.000-05:00

By Scott Westerfeld. Sequel to the Uglies trilogy. (Westerfeld writes in his dedication: "To everyone who wrote to me to reveal the secret definition of the word 'trilogy.'")

Aya, a 15-year-old "kicker" (basically a blogger) living in a city with a reputation-based economy, searches for the story that will bring up her face rank—a measure of status that doubles as purchasing power and will save her from babysitting and schoolwork. She stumbles onto a Special Circumstance when she follows a lead regarding a secretive group, the Sly Girls, who try to keep their reputations low key despite the dangerous games they play.

I finished this book in a single afternoon, but I don't know if I would have enjoyed this as much if I hadn't already known about Aya's world from reading the trilogy. It seemed faster paced than some of Westerfeld's other books, but that could be because I read it faster. It did seem a little lightweight for being more than 400 pages long. One particular action was described in almost the same words at least three separate times, a bit repetitious even if the action in question is exciting.

Religion plays a tiny role in the world, which I am starting to notice is a common theme in Westerfeld's books: not that I expect a book to center around it, but it seems to barely exist in his worlds.

In the end, this was an exciting story, but somewhat disappointing because it wrapped up a bit neatly (and perhaps too easily) and didn't leave much to think about afterwards.

The Secret History of Moscow

2007-12-27T08:20:00.000-05:00

By Ekaterina Sedia.

When Galina's sister turns into a jackdaw after giving birth in the bathroom and flies away, Galina joins a policeman and a street artist to find her sister. (The policeman wants to find answers.) They fall underground through a reflection in a puddle and run into various persons who all turn out to be helpful, at least after they manage to tell their own stories.

Despite the poignant and disturbing ending, this book seems more like a patchwork of Russian myths and allusions to Russian myths (without explanations) than a cohesive story. Almost every chapter focuses on a different character's personal history, and somehow the plot gets lost in between—we never get a satisfactory explanation for why people were being turned into birds. I'm not sure even a sequel would redeem this one, although the ending might make a good prologue to a different book, but I think the author does show promise. Someone to keep an eye on, at least.

The Risen Empire and Peeps

2007-12-06T20:55:00.000-05:00

This post is actually about two different pairs of books, both by Scott Westerfeld:

The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds, really one book in two bindings. (The epilogue from the first book is reused as the prologue for the second book.)

Peeps and The Last Days, which is actually an honest sequel about different characters. (The ones from Peeps only show up after the halfway point.)

After reading these two close together, you might get the impression that Scott Westerfeld enjoys the ways large-scale biological systems work. The Risen Empire (hereafter used to refer to the entire story) contains repeated references to cats and how they allowed the human race to evolve at various stages. Peeps contains repeated references to parasites and how they allowed the human race to... well, okay, that isn't quite true. A lot of the parasites in the book are (a) pretty nasty to their hosts and (b) not very interested in humans. When every other chapter except one talks about a different type of parasite, though, you could say biology is a pertinent subject.

So what are these books actually about?

The Risen Empire is an enjoyable space opera set in the eponymous space empire, which is ruled by a god-king, the Risen Emperor. You see, the twist to immortality is that you have to die before the (presumably artificial, but it isn't completely explained) symbiont which provides life can bond with your body. The problem with immortality is that it is used to reward the emperor's loyal servants (typical lifespan without the symbiont and with good medical care: 200 years) and they are slowly accumulating all the wealth in the empire... and are not interested in change. As a result, other groups of exiled humanity not under the auspices of the Empire are advancing rapidly technologically, while the Empire falls behind. The Rix cult is the group in question here.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It has a classic feel (there's nanotech, but it can't do everything, unlike the nano in The Golden Age) and still manages to have an interesting plot and lots of surprises. (There is a good one in the first chapter.) For most of the book, you know about the existence of the Emperor's Secret, something which could bring down the Empire, but not what the secret is. (At least, I didn't quite guess it before it was revealed.) Sadly, there are several potential plot threads left dangling for sequels to pick up, and Westerfeld's FAQ states that he'll maybe write them someday, when he's rich enough and secure enough to not need or want the money and attention he gets from writing young adult books. Oh well.

Onto Peeps: this is a vampire story, although it isn't obvious in the first chapter. The story: vampirism is caused by a parasite that infects humans, and Cal Thompson is one of a few rare carriers who are genetically immune (at least partially) to the effects of the disease. But the girls he kissed before he found out he had it aren't...

If you're bothered by parasites and rats and other gross things, don't read this. Also, it's labeled young adult (The Risen Empire is somewhat adult), but the parasite encourages behaviors which lead to it spreading: biting, scratching, kissing, and all that that implies. The Last Days is an honest sequel that starts off on a different path with some teens forming a band. Is it a problem that their singer has the disease and the world seems to be ending, err, sorry, there are just some waste disposal problems, we'll have them figured out in a few months? The tone is very different from biology major Cal's clinical narration, which I think is a plus.

I enjoyed Peeps a little more than The Last Days, but you might as well read them both together. Also, I hated the plot twist near the end of Peeps. It's one of those things I should have seen coming.

It's important to know where to end: The Risen Empire does a better job of that than Peeps or The Last Days, I think. And now I'll do the same.

Blackbringer

2007-12-01T08:58:00.000-05:00

By Laini Taylor. First book in the Faeries of Dreamdark series (the series title is, in my opinion, a little too prominent on the cover, overshadowing the title and wonderful illustration).

Updated on 12/2/2007 to add some more points I wanted to make; see below.

This is a wonderful, fantastic and clean book. Magpie, a hundred-year-old faerie teenager(?) (apparently 100 years for a faerie is more like a very mature 14 or 15 for a human, although I'm only guessing based on how she acts and how the crows call her a child) has been hunting and bottling devils when she stumbles upon one that doesn't seem to follow the usual rules and has to (wait for it) save the world. Despite the cliche, I enjoyed this book quite a bit, except that a decidedly unbiblical creation story* plays a significant role in the plot.

I laughed at quite a few places, too. Hopefully the next book comes out soon—humans, especially, (playfully called "mannies" by the faeries) were mostly absent from this story, although there was a paragraph or two of painfully obvious environmentalism.

I also loved the illustrations and wished there were more, except that the faeries look decidedly grim in some of them.

I think I found this from an interview Shannon Hale did with Laini Taylor, and the recommendation was seconded by R. J. Anderson more recently.

* SPOILER for those who really want to know (highlight to read): Djinns created the world by weaving everything into a magical tapestry that shuts out the darkness.

Update: Some additional thoughts:

Humans are really missing from this world; there are a few token appearances and mentions of monkeys coming down from the trees, but humans don't seem to be really present (i.e., they have no important function, good or bad) in the world of the story. I have a hard time believing fairies can live all over the world (as they do in this book) and not have relationships with at least one human, somewhere, sometime.

Not all the token cliches are used, which I think is a good thing. While the fairies are tiny (apparently -- although one suspects in some of the scenes that they might change size, because I can't imagine the djinns or the monsters being so tiny, or a tiny fairy being able to easily carry a human-sized bottle), they aren't noticeably allergic to iron (although that might just be because there isn't much iron in the story).

There are some awkward moments in the story (the heroine asking "Oh, did you hear some story the creatures have about someone who will save the world?" "Um, nope, can't say that I have.", which is actually kind of funny), and other places where you know (from prior experiences of How Stories Work) that the characters are walking into trouble. This is one of the things that drives me crazy reading some books, though it wasn't bad here; I hate to read things where someone says something stupid and just keeps digging a deeper pit for himself and eventually gets into well-deserved trouble because of it. Those are the parts I skip over in some parts because they're painful (or at least painfully embarrassing) to read.

There are some really dark things, but not very many. The magic mirror actually scares me more than the main (titular) villain does. You'll see.

I liked the illustrations, although the fairies seemed much grimmer in them than they were portrayed in the prose, especially in the cover art. Did I already mention this?

This book probably belongs in the home grown fairy tale category; while the mythos is not what you could call biblical, I think it is clever due to its simplicity and effectiveness. She does a good job building a story on top of her background story of creation.

Several books at once

2007-11-24T12:37:00.000-05:00

I'll try to be brief.

Lilli Thal's Mimus, translated by John Brownjohn. When a medieval king is betrayed, his son is given to the enemy king's court jester as an apprentice. I skipped parts as too painful to read because it was easy to foresee that things were only going to get worse because of what Florin, the prince, did. My notes say I found this because carbonelle mentioned it in a comment on superversive's blog; I must have foolishly thought I could easily find the reference again. I forgot about it until I spotted it at the library and remembered the title. There's no (fantasy) magic and there are quite a few references to God and the church, but the church (at least the one Florin enters) is not all that you might hope—they throw him out because, being a jester, he lacks a soul.

Julie E. Czerneda's Survival. First book in a trilogy, it doesn't end very satisfactorily. On the other hand, it wasn't so engaging that I'll be miserable waiting for the next two installments to show up. It reminds me of Slonczewski's books (probably because both authors are biologists) but wasn't as good, in my opinion. Maybe the others will change my mind. The premise: Dr. Mackenzie Connor, a salmon researcher in a near future where humanity has joined an interstellar union of species, ends up drawn into an investigation of the destruction of an entire region of worlds, called the Chasm, from which all life has gone. Dr. Connor protests mightily that she only knows about salmon, but is forced to cooperate by higher-ups and the disappearance of her friend Emily Mamani. There is a lot of build-up and description for not much profit, and not enough humor in most of it, as opposed to the charm of investigation and discovery that appears in some other books. It remains to be seen whether the second and third volumes will compensate. I found it because Kristen Britain (author of Green Rider) mentioned Czerneda in an interview and this was the only book the library had on hand.

Jessica Day George's Dragon Slippers. An orphaned girl is given to a local dragon by her aunt in the hopes that a knight or prince will rescue her and marry her (and, not insignificantly, her aunt) out of poverty. The dragon turns out to have unexpected qualities, so she bargains to leave it alone in exchange for a treasure from its hoard... which turns out to be a shoe collection. Shod with a fine pair of slippers, she sets out to make her fortune... Charming and sweet, but there were also some really tense moments. I liked it. Definitely in the original fairy tale category.

Theodore Sturgeon's More than Human. Three novellas fixed up into one book. Classic sci-fi with telepaths, teleports, and telekines, all three of which probably resulted in my enjoyment of sci-fi as a child, and of this book. They don't seem to feature much in modern sci-fi, unfortunately. The language is, at times, somewhat vague, and for quite a while near the beginning you may wonder where the story is going—so many characters are introduced without apparent connection to each other, it's a little hard to keep track. One of them is mentioned for a page and then disappears until 100 pages later. I also disliked the philosophy shown in the ending.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Cordelia's Honor. Omni-bus of Shards of Honor and Barrayar, this is my first read in the Vorkosigan canon. I think I liked Shards of Honor somewhat more than Barrayar, which was much more serious, but both have many moments of humor. It was painfully obvious who was going to fall in love. I also wondered, when Cordelia was sneaking around on Barrayar (a planet whose population is mostly of Russian descent), how there could be so many people with bright red hair that she would not be immediately noticed. As Bujold writes in the afterword, Barrayar is a book about parenthood. If clandestine activity is involved, well, that must be part of being a parent. Ha.

George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin. Classic. I read the version illustrated by Alan Parry and couldn't help noticing that the illustrations often seemed to be a page or two later than the part of the story illustrated, which is a bit unfortunate. Reading this brought back so many memories (I think I saw the movie as a child). I couldn't help wondering which parts were abridged.

Blood and Iron

2007-11-17T09:32:00.000-05:00

By Elizabeth Bear.

This is a dark novel of faerie along the lines of Tithe and Wicked Lovely and even Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, at least the parts of that book that deal with faerie. I stayed up late reading it, which is why I'm mentioning it, although I'll also mention that the reason may only be that it twigged on one of my personal buttons, a lack of volition; faeries can apparently bind and control each other through their names and do so as a common practice, and the main character (which I will call so despite the presence of numerous viewpoint characters) is under such a binding.

This does not feel like the first novel in a series: numerous characters and conflicts are introduced very quickly (by page 20, I was wondering who all these people were already and how they were going to end up related to each other), and there are a lot of unexplained issues in the background. There is at least one line that I couldn't make sense of. Also, the ending goes into what is presumably a little prelude to the second book before stopping. There's also a lot of implied sex.

So why did I enjoy it? There is an extremely effective point of view change at a critical moment (I hesitate to say more about that). There is at least one other really shocking moment. Flipping to the end of the book wasn't enough to give away how things ended: the middle of the story is actually important.

I don't know. From one perspective, it's an exciting adventure and political intrigue story, well-written. From another, it has a ton of characters, a lot of whom aren't really fleshed out for us, and some really disturbing elements that I'm hoping the second book will redeem.* I found I liked it better than I thought I would, so you might too.

On a mostly unrelated note, I wonder why the author is using a pen name instead of her real name; the copyright page says "Copyright Sarah Kindred writing as Elizabeth Bear." Yes, I actually do usually read the copyright page. Scary, huh?

* Wondering why saying "God" hurts faeries is actually only a minor one emotionally (for me), but I suspect it's very telling on their relationship to Heaven and Hell, upon which the second book promises to reveal more.

Update (12/10/2007): I found the sequel (Whiskey & Water) disappointing. The omniscient point of view makes it very hard to keep track of which characters know what at what point, and her self-professed short story style doesn't help (but read her post, it's interesting and argues for a different perspective.) I also didn't have much in the way of guesses about motivation or even what's going on early on; there wasn't enough information, misleading or otherwise, for me to even formulate a plausible hypothesis. Her use of unfamiliar legends and myths may not have helped (Fionnghuala goes from the seeming wise-woman of the first book to become someone else entirely without any warning or hints that I picked up on, although to be fair I may have read the book too quickly.) And I agreed with some other reviewers who said the book started too slowly—I think that the author let a lot of the tension that was present in the ending of Blood & Iron drop simply by letting seven years pass. I really didn't want to finish the book, but I forced myself in the hope that it would get better. Also, there were too many gratuitous sex scenes.

Slan

2007-11-03T09:38:00.000-04:00

By A. E. Van Vogt.

Exciting adventure, but something is definitely missing in the way the characters behave. Foreshadowing (even false foreshadowing) seems distinctly absent. The science fiction tropes are also dated (hypnotism plays a big role again, as in Cordwainer Smith and Isaac Asimov's fiction of the same period and in Van Vogt's World of Null-A), and the ending is a little weak, possibly reflecting initial publication as a serial novel: perhaps Van Vogt wasn't sure he was finished with the story.

The problem with the characters is that the main ones seem too credulous for superhumans who are both (a) supposedly several times more intelligent than an adult human and (b) aware that humans lie. They seem to swallow every successive thing that someone else tells them, despite supposedly having a fantastic grasp of human psychology due to their ability to read minds. (The superintelligent superhumans as main characters idea is also reminiscent of the only other Van Vogt book I've read (mostly), The World of Null-A.) Also, we see less of the other characters than we'd like; even Kathleen Layton appears mostly in the beginning and then fades away as Jommy Cross takes center stage as a mostly solitary actor, with a shadowy "organization" in the background chasing him but little interaction with other people.

Despite this weakness in the characters and the dated nature of the science fiction (hypnotism, mind-reading and antigravity in the same world with super-strong steel, newspapers, and "radiotelephones"), this is still a pretty good story for its length. (Short, if you're in doubt.) Brevity is a virtue, supposedly. There is also no mention of God or religion, if I remember correctly; the majority of people are treated as a mob without individual thoughts or perrsonalities, easily manipulated by the ruling powers through their irrational fear of slans. What is a slan? Read it and find out—if you trust the author that much...

There is a sequel (at least partly) by another author.

The Englishman's Daughter: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in World War I

2007-11-03T09:27:00.000-04:00

By Ben Macintyre. (A post at Wittingshire pointed me to it.)

Non-fiction story of seven English soldiers who were stuck behind the lines in France during the English retreat in 1914 (during the Great War); one of the soldiers falls in love with one of the village girls, hence the title (you are told this in the prologue), and eventually the soldiers are caught by the occupying German army.

Pretty good book, but it seems a little short to cover two entire years of life. 80 years later, however, I guess the author may not have been able to come up with enough confirmed detail to flesh out the story more. I also disliked the epilogue, agreeing with the villagers that he interviewed in it that it was better left in the past.

Dreamquake

2007-11-03T09:15:00.000-04:00

Book 2 of Elizabeth Knox's Dreamhunter duology.

This book starts off slowly with a recap of the previous book, but quickly picks up speed beginning with the second chapter. Knox's writing reminds me of John C. Wright's—mysteries from the first book are well-planted seeds that grow into explanations here, and the ending is quite complete except for one plot thread which the author obviously intended to leave open.

Once again, I noticed how most of the characters are so distinct in personality and actions, but I also noticed a few nameless throwaway ones. Also once again, the historical details (especially the inclusion of a certain major scene) are very convincing. The atheist vs. Christian debate continues and plays a role in the ending.

There is also premarital sex, although in the oblique fashion that, when I was younger, made me take a (children's) book to my parents and say, "I think it's talking about sex!" and then have to present my five different pieces of evidence from various pages to convince them. Well, actually, I don't think it was that oblique in this book. I don't know what the typical historical attitude towards it would have been, but the Hames and the Tiebolds are certainly not typical families.

Definitely a fun, exciting second half with a good ending (although if you like every thread to be tied off and snipped, you'll be disappointed). The attempt to let someone pick it up without having first read the first book, while perhaps well-intentioned, does slow it down somewhat at the beginning, however. Read Dreamhunter first.

Some anthologies

2007-10-21T09:43:00.001-04:00

Not a review, since I mostly lack the patience to go through anthologies story by story, but I thought I'd mention a few.

I've been reading some of the stories in Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow's latest anthology, The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, but while some of them are pretty good, I think their anthology The Faery Reel is still the one I enjoyed the most. (They also did The Green Man and some others that I haven't read.)

I've also been reading Gene Wolfe's Starwater Strains and Strange Travelers. I enjoyed many of the stories in Starwater Strains and almost all of them made at least some sense ("The Game in the Pope's Head" was the exception, but perhaps I just didn't want to understand it since Wolfe introduced it as a Jack the Ripper story). "Viewpoint" stands out as the first story and as an original, disturbing take on "reality TV"; "Empires of Foliage and Flower" is a fable nominally set on Wolfe's Urth, but which really could be anywhere; "Golden City Far" also stands out, as the first and last stories in such collections tend to do. In Strange Travelers, "The Haunted Boardinghouse" caught my attention, as well as the nifty idea of a traffic jam that has lasted for years, long enough for its occupants to begin developing their own unique freeway culture, which appears in the first and last stories in this collection.

Last night I started reading Vera Nazarian's collection Salt of the Air. The writing is pretty good, although I'm not sure what to make of the cover art. $29.95 also seems awfully expensive for such a small book (I checked it out of the library); sure, it's probably a small press, but for that price you would think they could have done a better job proofreading. (For example, the running titles at the top of the page are not always right, and there is a glaring typo in Gene Wolfe's three-page introduction.)

I can't remember what the "other things" I wanted to put in this post were (I knew last night, but alas...), so I'll stop here.