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| 1484720970
| 9781484720974
| 1484720970
| 3.81
| 26,747
| May 05, 2015
| May 05, 2015
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liked it
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In a magical universe that makes absolutely no sense… The various kingdoms seen in Disney animated films are now a single entity, the United Kingdoms/S In a magical universe that makes absolutely no sense… The various kingdoms seen in Disney animated films are now a single entity, the United Kingdoms/States of Auradon (the book uses both). Many of these movies take place in the real world and some during specific eras, but never mind. Auradon also boasts modern technology and clothing. The leader of Auradon is the Prince once known as the Beast (not to be confused with the Artist Formerly Known as Prince), who is referred to as “King Beast” by not only his subjects, but his wife and son. The King banished all the villains and dangerous criminals to a penal colony, the Isle of the Lost. They include Maleficent, the Evil Queen, Jafar, Cruella de Vil, Captain Hook, Ursula, and Dr. Facillier… Wait, you say, didn’t most of those characters die at the ends of their respective movies? Yes. But our “heroes” brought them back from the dead to incarcerate them. All this was twenty years ago. On the Isle, where everything is grimy and foul, we meet Mal, Maleficent’s angst-ridden daughter who takes out her anger on her peers. She’s friends, in a self-serving way, with Jay, strapping son of the sorcerer Jafar and accomplished pickpocket. Their paths tangle with Carlos, Cruella de Vil’s geeky son, and Evie, the vain, sheltered daughter of the Queen who poisoned Snow White. Feeling threatened by bubbly Evie, and desperate for her mother’s approval, Mal goads her squad into helping her search for her mother’s missing Dragon’s Eye scepter. The thief who lays hands on this artifact will sleep for a thousand years… Meanwhile, in the aggressively happy-go-lucky land of Auradon, Ben, the son of Belle and the King, is good-natured and handsome but not terribly bright. Ridiculous plot devices are converging to make the perfectly healthy King abdicate in favor of Ben, who fears that he won’t measure up. The lad has been having strange dreams, of a girl among the lost souls on the Isle, which give him an idea for a kingly gesture… Content Advisory Violence: Carlos and Jay are both severely neglected at home, and Maleficent verbally bullies Mal. Very little actual physical violence. Sex: At a party, Mal lures Evie into a trap by telling her Jay is waiting to make out with her in a coat closet. Language: Nada. Substance Abuse: The book goes so far out of its way to avoid this that it becomes silly. Mal convinces Carlos to throw a party at his mom’s house while she’s away (where? They can’t leave the island, remember?). At this wild party, the kids imbibe root beer. Also, Cruella vapes these days rather than smoke. Nightmare Fuel: The gargoyles at the bridge might frighten very young readers. Those who have a fear of tiny spaces or being buried alive might not do great with the scenes in Cruella’s secret passages or the treasure room. Politics and Religion: As the kids scrounge for the answer to a riddle, Evie suggests the Golden Rule, which she dismisses as “Auradon greeting-card nonsense.” Jay distracts Dr. Facillier at a key moment with a stolen pack of tarot cards. Overcrowded Crossovers and Accidental Allegories As I said in a review of a different book, Disney might be the only corporation I know of that commissions and publishes their own fanfiction on such a grand scale. They now have three properties that are mega-crossovers featuring all their beloved animated characters: - Kingdom Hearts, an anime-influenced video game. I know very little about it, but it seems well-loved online. - Once Upon a Time, a gothic primetime soap. I really enjoyed the first half of Season 1 but after that, the cast grew far too big and the plotlines too convoluted for my taste. That said, plenty of people enjoyed it. - Now there’s Descendants, an unholy combination of The Selection, Percy Jackson, High School Musical, and…The Great Divorce . One of these things is not like the others. So how is Descendants similar to The Selection? They’re both silly stories with dystopian elements tacked on. Both feature a handsome prince who’s too pure for this world, who falls in love with a girl from the lower rungs of society who initially despises him and everything he stands for. I have no idea what Maxon saw in America, and I have no idea what Ben sees in Mal either. The romance is only hinted at here, but is the main plot of the first Descendants movie. It’s like the Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus series in that everyone’s identity mostly comes from their parents. A big part of both franchises is the young heroes’ struggling to break free of their larger-than-life parents, but still—their parentage and the powers, virtues and vices that come with it are the main attribute of each character in both universes. It’s like High School Musical since they’re both impossibly light-hearted, wholesome stories about high school, presented as Disney Channel musicals. The Great Divorce is a C.S. Lewis novel about Heaven, Hell, and possibly Purgatory. A group of people from a miserable, hateful city are given a chance to stay in a beautiful kingdom for a while. They’ve done nothing to earn this; it was granted to them by the merciful Son of a great King. The travelers find that they’d rather stay than go back where they came from. I doubt that any of the Disney execs who concocted this franchise have read The Great Divorce. (Sometimes it seems like Lewis has been haunting Disney since they dropped the ball on the Narnia series; a lot of his favorite themes have seeped into Mouse House IPs of late, especially the Star Wars sequels). The resemblance is all the more startling because it was clearly unintentional. I’m pretty sure that the allegory is accidental because SO LITTLE THOUGHT WENT INTO THIS STORY. The glaring flaws are not the fault of Melissa de la Cruz, who makes the best of the material she was given. The blame lies squarely with the committee that dreamt this thing up. The world-building in this franchise is so sloppy, it makes the Star Wars universe look as airtight as Middle-earth by comparison... Consistency? What’s That? 1). No explanation is even VENTURED for why all these characters, whose stories take place across several worlds and a millennium or two, now live in the same era and geographic location. You’d need some serious hocus pocus to pull it off, but at least try to give a reason. 2). And WHY is this kingdom of Auradon a modern place? Weren’t the timeless settings of Disney fairytale movies a big part of their appeal? The franchise itself isn’t consistent on how much tech the characters have. In this book, Ben muses that there must be more to life than the shiniest new chariots (his parents originally lived in the 1700s and would have used carriages), yet Cruella has a run-down car that Carlos is often forced to repair. In the movie, the kids arrive at school in a spiffy black limo. And Mal uses a modern tablet for the visual aids while she narrates the opening. 3). The Beast is the LAST Disney Prince who should be dealing out punishments and refusing to consider others’ views. It’s like he’s learned nothing from his time as a monster, cursed precisely for his lack of compassion. If anything, he should be erring on the side of mercy. To quote King Edmund the Just, “Even a traitor may mend. I have known one who did.” 4). Not only did they get the poor guy’s character completely wrong, he is referred to throughout as “King Beast.” Would it have really hurt to give him a name? A lot of fans call him Adam, which doesn’t sound quite right for an 18th century French prince, but really suits him as an individual. What would have been interesting is if the Islanders called him “King Beast” behind his back. As an insult. 5). Same thing with the Evil Queen (who is often unofficially named Grimhilde), the Fairy Godmother, the Genie…The characters actually refer to the Evil Queen as “Evil Queen” as if it’s her name. This would work in a full-blown satire like the Shrek movies, but the Descendants franchise seems like it’s striving for poignancy over comedy. 6). The kids’ names are mostly a mess too. Mostly, not all. Evie is actually a rather clever name for the daughter of someone who tempted a girl into eating the wrong apple. Maleficent is certainly arrogant enough to name her kid after herself; maybe Jay is short for Jafar Junior as well. And Ben is a name that I’m just fond of—a character named Ben is always a good guy, even if he starts out a bad guy and has to be dragged kicking and screaming back to the Light (looking at you, Ben Solo). But the other original character names range from uninspired to cringey. For instance, Mulan and Li Shang named their daughter Lonnie. After five minutes of searching Beyond the Name, I came across Zhihao, a unisex Chinese name meaning “will, purpose, ambition” + “brave, heroic, chivalrous.” (I accept that I got this information off the internet and apologize if the translation is incorrect). Now doesn’t THAT sound more like Mulan’s style? 7). Some of the characters are way off-base. Jafar acts more like the Governor from Pocahontas than himself, and the Evil Queen seems to have turned into Mrs. Bennet. [image] 8). Let’s not acknowledge the existence of Doug, son of Dopey. The idea that someone took advantage of that childlike, helpless character is frankly disturbing… Who Exactly is Our Target Audience? The Isle of the Lost also suffers for being a middle-grade book. Not that being YA these days would have saved it. It seems that YA books are getting racier and darker, MG books are getting more infantilized, and no author can bridge the gap unless their name is Rick Riordan. Ideally, this series would have crossover appeal. It’s clean and has the middle-grade emphasis on friendship and cool clothes, but the characters are teens—half of whom are what Kenny Watson ( The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 ) would call “official juvenile delinquents” —and their familial and romantic relationships could be super angsty. Indeed, the Descendants movies seem to have a large teen-and-young-adult fandom even with their shallow emotional beats and garish aesthetic. I just think that the series, both the books and the movies, could be better if allowed to explore some of the unpleasant or edgy parts of the story. A big one is how some of the villains were raised from the dead to be imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost. Who among the Disney good guys has the power to do this, and why would any of the good guys consider it justified? Reviving your enemies just to punish them is a villain move. Punish the living criminals by all means, but let the dead rest. Some small ones are the party Carlos throws at Mal’s behest, a wild party among delinquent teens where they dare to break out the…root beer. Or the scene where Mal acts disgusted by Cruella’s smoking habit and the puppy-pelt enthusiast reassures her that it’s only an e-cig. (Which might have its own health risks, but that’s outside the scope of this review). Am I arguing that children’s books should feature more substance abuse? Of course not! But bending over backwards to avoid it, in a context where it’s clearly happening, just insults the reader’s intelligence. How would Cruella even get e-cigs? All the gadgets on the Isle are supposed to be hopelessly outdated. The root beer thing isn’t unique to this book; there’s a joke about the notoriously rowdy centaurs breaking into some in The Last Olympian and it jarred me right out of that book too. The only time I’ve ever seen it work is in Diary of a Wimpy Kid II: Rodrick Rules, a scene that mostly succeeds thanks to great acting from Steve Zahn and Devon Bostick. [image] [image] Other than that, either make a joke out of the trope itself, like the “age-appropriate beverages” gag from Over the Garden Wall, or have Carlos secretly switch real beer for non-alcoholic beer like in Freaks and Geeks. Or, hear me out, let the kids drink real beer. Because they’re rotten and proud of it, and the whole point of the series is that they learn to be kinder, more responsible people. This also applies to their ostensible quest: Mal wants to effectively kill Evie by putting her to sleep for a thousand years. I don’t remember this even being discussed by anyone except Mal. Isn’t that a major part of their arc as friends? Of course she thinks better of it once they get there, but that doesn’t absolve her of her murderous intent. Seriously, the only actual villainy committed by these kids is petty theft, white lies, and easily-remedied acts of vandalism. That’s about as much of a redemption arc as the Hagenheim books, where characters are desperate for absolution because they talk too much or they stole something under duress when they were five. Please. Give me Zuko or Edmund Pevensie—someone who actually messed up and needs forgiveness—over this cast of mildly rebellious hooligans. [image] [image] Conclusions I don’t think any of the myriad flaws in this book are the fault of the author. Melissa de la Cruz was probably given a very short, harried timeframe to write this, and I doubt any of the main characters, settings, or MacGuffins are hers. If anything, this book proves that her prose is pretty good, because it flows so nicely that the ridiculously convoluted plot and backstory seem simple. The characters of the kids are all consistent and exactly what they set out to be. Mal is conniving and arrogant, Jay thinks he’s hot stuff, Evie and Carlos are actually sweet, and Ben is a cinnamon roll. The scene where Carlos and Evie leave the party to watch mainland programming on an ancient rabbit-eared TV is genuinely poignant. This book won’t hurt or scare anyone, but it might have been better if it dared to, just a little. As is, it’s a valiant attempt to make a confusing, half-baked franchise palatable, and it does a decent job. ...more |
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1
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Jul 29, 2019
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Sep 04, 2019
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Jul 29, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 1599904780
| 9781599904788
| 1599904780
| 4.06
| 22,637
| May 25, 2010
| Jun 01, 2010
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really liked it
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Having had a few years to recover from the Westfalin-Analousian War, the kings and queens of the Ionian continent have devised a novel peacekeeping pl
Having had a few years to recover from the Westfalin-Analousian War, the kings and queens of the Ionian continent have devised a novel peacekeeping plan: they’ll all exchange children for several months to a year, hopefully securing many marriage alliances and lifelong goodwill. Most young Ionian royals find this plan annoying, but it’s actually painful for Poppy and Daisy, twin princesses of Westfalin. Not too long ago, they and their ten sisters were under a curse that left several Ionian princes dead. It wasn’t the girls’ fault at all, but the truth is not widely known. In some places the sisters are still suspected of witchcraft. So Poppy finds herself alone in her late mother’s homeland of Breton. The Breton King is already hosting Prince Christian of the Danelaw, so Poppy is instead housed by the noble Seadown family. She makes fast friends with Marianne Seadown, the brothers Roger and Dickon Thwaite, and even the wary Christian… …but their comraderie collapses when mysterious Lady Ella turns up at the King’s ball. Nothing is known of this girl save her first name, yet every eligible bachelor in Breton is after her. And she has her cap set at Christian, whom Poppy was starting to really like. At first Poppy’s just hurt, as one is when slighted by a kind and handsome prince. But previous experience tells her there’s something fouler at work here than a swain-snagging siren. She’s aided by Roger, who thinks he knows Ella’s true identity. What follows is a caper of card games, masquerades, glittering chandeliers, shiny ball gowns, and horrors from the Underworld. Content Advisory Violence: Poppy has to shoot an evil creature with a silver bullet. Sex: Dickon shocks the Breton court by showing up to a masquerade with no shirt, and Marianne coordinates with a midriff-baring top. Language: Poppy turns the air blue by saying things like “blast it.” Substance: Dickon gets drunk at one of the parties. Nightmare Fuel: (view spoiler)[The Corley’s magic shoes are turning Eleanor’s feet to glass. They’re able to reverse this after the witch who cast the spell dies (hide spoiler)]. Conclusions This is a lighter, more sparkling book than Princess of the Midnight Ball. Its atmosphere is bright, glittery, and fast-paced – so much so that the underground sorceress with plans to take over the upper world seems almost foreign to the rest of the book. The Corley doesn’t seem diabolically evil so much as a demented granny who enjoys matchmaking too much—not very frightening compared to the villain of the first book. Her powers over glass are a clever and legitimately scary twist on Cinderella’s godmother, but she never seemed all that intimidating. The current King Under Stone, Rionin, is a lot more frightening. He should have been in more of the book. Poppy is a fun main character with a winning mix of traits. She loves fashion and frippery, but balances that with the practicality and grit she needs to survive a family curse. She’s witty, brave, and equally lethal with a pistol or a knitting needle. Cool! Christian is a charming, adorable, awkward, typical boy. Unfortunately, he spends most of the book in an enchanted stupor, which he doesn’t conquer until the last few pages. I liked him, but he’s too out of it to claim my heart like Galen did in the first book. Galen was shrewd and crafty and dauntless, a trickster and a warrior. Christian’s a good kid, but was befuddled and in need of rescue for most of the story. He’s more victim than hero. This is a good sequel to Princess of the Midnight Ball—squeaky-clean, romantic adventure with a neat twist on a fairytale. To me, it lacked the tension and depth of the first book. But I did enjoy it quite a bit, and I look forward to the end of the trilogy. ...more |
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1
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Dec 29, 2018
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Jan 03, 2019
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Dec 10, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0805092676
| 9780805092677
| 0805092676
| 4.20
| 105,492
| Dec 08, 2010
| Oct 08, 2013
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liked it
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Gwyneth “Gwen” Shepherd is in a race against time—past, present and future. She’s the last in a long line of time travelers, tied to the infamous Comt
Gwyneth “Gwen” Shepherd is in a race against time—past, present and future. She’s the last in a long line of time travelers, tied to the infamous Comte de St. Germaine, hunted through the ages by a rival secret society called the Florentine Alliance. The time travel gene only appears in one family member per generation, and up until a few weeks ago, everyone assumed it was Gwen’s overachieving cousin Charlotte. Now our awkward, rather goofy heroine has days to cram a lifetime’s worth of education. She must also put aside a broken heart—a monumental task for a teenage girl—after the apparent betrayal of her crush and fellow time traveler, Gideon de Villiers. An evil plan incubated for centuries is finally about to come true. The plan depends entirely on Gwen, and only she can prevent its unfolding. If only she had any choice… Content Advisory Violence: A young woman is stabbed and has an out-of-body experience before magically healing. A young man is shot repeatedly and left for dead, but heals (off-page) the same way. These scenes are slightly gory, but not bad compared to the stagecoach shootout in Ruby Red. Sex: Gideon and Gwen exchange several snogs, as do (view spoiler)[Raphael and Leslie (hide spoiler)]. A girl is doing karaoke at a party and a drunk boy hollers at her to strip (she doesn’t). At this same party, a girl is caught canoodling with a much younger boy, and a drunk girl remarks that Gideon has a cute butt. Xemerius makes a joke or two about Gwen losing her virginity, which doesn’t happen. Language: The word “sh**” is used a handful of times. Milder profanities include “hell” and “bloody.” Substance Abuse: Racozky is always in an altered state. Everyone at Cynthia’s party except the four main characters get decidedly sloshed and look quite ridiculous. Nightmare Fuel: St. Germaine is still a creepy character. But there’s nothing here like the random demon at the end of Sapphire Blue. Conclusions Kerstin Gier’s Precious Stone trilogy is what you’d get if you threw The Princess Diaries in a blender with the Stravaganza series and sprinklings of the Bartimaeus Sequence, Doctor Who and the Italian Renaissance conspiracy plotline from The Da Vinci Code (although this series has no interest in space opera, aliens or religious vendettas). It’s hard to follow and very silly indeed. It’s also thrilling, cute, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. My only gripes with this final installment: 1) Too much time spent worrying about relationships 2) The book jacket lied—the book didn’t answer all my questions Gwen is actually a realistic sixteen-year-old girl—scared and whiny with no sense of priorities. The book knows this about her and doesn’t sport with our intelligence by pretending that she’s a great leader, or smart, or brave, or even particularly useful. I thoroughly enjoyed her narrating style and could occasionally even relate to her. Gideon, Leslie, and the rest are also allowed to be flawed and awkward, which makes them seem much closer to real kids than the average cast of a YA book. I found Charlotte’s fall from grace a little too close to something that would happen in a Disney Channel movie, but your mileage may vary. I counted forty-eight pop culture references, although alas, Gwen never namedrops her favorite bands, Queen and ABBA. I thought that her reliance on their music to keep herself afloat said a lot about her character—she’s a bit old-fashioned, likes to sing and dance, and is almost proud of her dorkiness. She can be poppy and fluffy but also knows when to say, (*stomp-stomp-CLAP*) “You got blood on your face/You big disgrace/Somebody better put you back into your place…” To me, the main difference is that Queen are indisputably one of rock’s greatest bands, while ABBA…aren’t. But it was really cute that Gwen liked them both. The weakest part of the series winds up being the world-building. (view spoiler)[Why Gwen sees ghosts is never really explained. The horrifying fiend from the end of book two is never integrated into the story or even mentioned again. Then what was the point of that whole scene? (hide spoiler)]. Overall, this trilogy is the literary equivalent of a milkshake. It’s sugary and insubstantial and I wouldn’t want a steady diet of it. But it makes a nice occasional treat—sweet, harmless, and fun. Recommended, especially to anyone who liked the Stravaganza series or The Selection. ...more |
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Jul 25, 2018
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Aug 06, 2018
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Jun 20, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0062024744
| 9780062024749
| 0062024744
| 4.05
| 5,435
| Feb 04, 2014
| Feb 04, 2014
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really liked it
| ”Who ever heard of a witch who really died? You can always get them back.” A teenaged resident of South Wood, Wildwood, d ”Who ever heard of a witch who really died? You can always get them back.” A teenaged resident of South Wood, Wildwood, decides to horse around with parlor necromancy one night and inadvertently summons a spirit far beyond her powers. At first young Zita thinks she’s summoned a primordial being from the deep past, but the true identity of the spirit is tied to the bloody recent history of Wildwood. Zita is no great hero. Her sole claim to fame till now is having marched in the South Wood parade as the May Queen. She also has to deal with the mysterious new cult that her father just joined, the Synod of the Blighted Tree, whose acolytes all wear blank masks, and who seem to be planning for something… Across the magical divide in Portland, Prue McKeel promises her parents that she will at least aim to come home safe after saving the Wood. Then she and Esben Clampett, the clockmaker bear with hooks for hands, head back into the forest as a shadow falls on it. Prue has been told that she has to bring Prince Alexei back to life or the whole Wood will collapse. In the hazy land between the Wildwood and Portland, the Industrial Wastes, the Unadoptable escapees of Joffrey Unthank’s ruined orphanage/child-slave-labor-factory-hellhole have just crossed paths with a team of anarchist men known as the Chapeaux Noir, who spout a lot of fine rhetoric about workers’ rights and the environment, but readily admit that their only actual plan is to (I quote) “blow stuff up.” The two groups realize they have a common goal in bringing down the Industrial Titans, and soon get embroiled in the chaos deeper in the Impassable Wilderness. Curtis Mehlberg was last seen searching for his fellow Bandits, who have all vanished without a trace. And the forest is being overrun with ivy that chokes and drowns everything in its path. Zita suspects the spirit that haunts her has a hand in it. There’s a bustle in this May Queen’s hedgerow, and she’s very alarmed… [image] Content Advisory Violence: There’s allusions to heavy violence, although the stuff that’s actually shown isn’t that bad. The people of South Wood have erected a guillotine on the grounds of the Governor’s mansion, and while we don’t see it used, the characters are quick to tell Prue (and us) that the thing is in no danger of gathering dust. We do see the Chapeaux and the Unadoptables lobbing explosives at various buildings, but the carnage left by these explosions is largely left unexplored. Sex: Nothing. Language: One use of “damn”—Curtis remembers his little sister is present and ostentatiously corrects himself, “I mean shoot.” Substance Abuse: Nothing. Politics and Religion: The Synod is the archetypal creepy cult, but Meloy uses mainstream religious lingo to describe them. Individual members are called Caliphs, a name that actually refers to an Islamic authority figure, and the term synod refers to a council of Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox bishops convened to decide on doctrine. I understand why Meloy would use established religious terms to give his fictional cult some credibility, but if you’re reading the book with younger kids, you might want to clarify that Caliphs and Synods are not sinister entities in the real world. The cult members also ingest a fungus as part of their ritual, which was described in terms reminiscent of Catholic Eucharistic rites. As a Catholic, this made me a little uneasy, but I couldn’t tell how much of the resemblance was intentional. At any rate, this is hardly The Golden Compass. Crude Humor: The only way to extract the Spongiform is by pulling it out of the victim’s nose; once removed, the narrator tells us that the stuff looks like grey spaghetti. When Nico, Rachel, and the kids get caught in a net, some poor boy winds up with his face right against Elsie’s butt. Conclusions I wasn’t impressed with the first Wildwood book, but the second one was a marked improvement on the first and made me care just enough to see how the whole thing ended. I’m glad I stuck around. Meloy ties his whole story together quite nicely here. All the plotlines are addressed and resolved (except for a tiny unanswered question at the end that might be a tentative sequel hook). The many main characters all get page-time and moments of heroism. I feel like the strongest and most memorable of the group turned out to be Rachel when it should have been Prue, but your mileage may vary. These days it’s commendable when an author focuses on the conflict they created rather than getting tripped up by inane shipping wars. The main relationships in this book are those between parents and children, and those between siblings, which is exactly how it should be in a middle-grade book. There are light hints that the friendship between Alexei and Zita, or Nico and Rachel, might deepen down the road, but they’re only hints. It was quite refreshing to read a MG book that stayed age-appropriate, and didn’t force its younger characters to grow up too fast. Kids have the rest of their lives to worry about dating. The final showdown reads like the battle at the Black Gate in LOTR combined with the battle of Manhattan from The Last Olympian (can’t say why without giving the whole thing away), with a touch of Sleeping Beauty and what might have happened in Prince Caspian if Nikabrik and his buddies had successfully resurrected Jadis. [image] [image] [image] So while these images have been used before, they’re still stirring and effective. Ellis brings them to life beautifully in her illustrations, which have never been better. While the literary ancestors of this series have always been fairly obvious—Grimm’s fairytales, LOTR, Narnia, Tiffany Aching, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and maybe Labyrinth —this installment made me realize its musical influences for the first time. I think there must have been a lot of Led Zeppelin playing in the Meloy-Ellis household during the writing of these novels. Much of the imagery in this particular installment seemed inspired by “Stairway to Heaven.” I know classic rock connoisseurs mock that song now because it’s been played to death, but the reason it was overplayed in the first place is because it’s so evocative. The melody is a haunting sister to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and the lyrics, while they have no clear meaning, borrow just enough from Dante and Tolkien to create their own spooky little realm, where pipers lead perceptive souls through tangled forests and down long roads, towards an enlightened age where everything is revealed to be golden and beautiful. This sort of hippie daydream has become hackneyed now, but it’s reaching for something truly magical, the kind of feeling Frodo gets while listening to Elvish songs in the hollowed halls of Rivendell: Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike…and it drenched and drowned him. [image] I always felt like that passage described how it felt to read The Lord of the Rings itself, to read other great fantasies (like the Chronicles of Narnia or the works of Robin McKinley), to listen to those ethereal Celtic-inflected classic rock songs, or to gaze upon a painting by Botticelli or one of the Pre-Raphaelites. These things make you feel as if the boundaries between the real world and the infinite realms of Faerie will dissolve at any moment. There are few books (or songs) written today that stir this feeling in me. Today’s culture is sedentary and sanitized to a fault, immured with our tech far from the natural world—and note that fantasy comes from mythology, which came about to explain the savagery and beauty of nature. I remember reading the part in Throne of Glass where the main characters are riding through the forest on their way to the castle, and being a little startled at how phony the whole scene felt. I actually asked myself, “Has this author spent any quality time in a forest before?” (I don’t think she has, but enough about her). Suffice that in this case, though, the answer to that question is an emphatic yes. Meloy and Ellis have clearly spent lots of time in forests very much like the Wildwood they created. They’ve also studied folk art and ballads from medieval times through the nineteenth century. They’ve listened to, and made, a lot of good music. And they’ve read all the right books. The last fifty or so pages of Wildwood Imperium brought back a bit of that drenching, drowning enchantment that all the best fantasy stories can bring. The first book in this series still has a lot of flaws, and given how long it is, I don’t blame people who give up on the series there. But if you slog through, and slog through Under Wildwood (which is much less of a slog), your efforts will quite possibly be rewarded here. The series lacks the sparkling originality of LOTR and Narnia, or the deep spiritual grounding that those share with the Land of Elyon books. It doesn’t have the innovative creatures of the Spiderwick Chronicles, the twists and character depth of Over the Garden Wall, the wit and world-building of the Artemis Fowl novels, the layers of meta-meaning in A Series of Unfortunate Events, the gothic romance of Labyrinth, or any single character as powerful and memorable as Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching. But it does have a compelling plot and a fantastic atmosphere, and in this installment, it even grows a heart. Overall, I’m glad I read it. ...more |
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1
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Jun 10, 2018
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Jun 13, 2018
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May 23, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0805092668
| 9780805092660
| 0805092668
| 4.18
| 116,062
| Jan 05, 2010
| Oct 30, 2012
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liked it
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Sapphire Blue picks up right after Ruby Red. it’s been a few days since Gwen Shephard discovered that she, not her cousin Charlotte, inherited the “ti
Sapphire Blue picks up right after Ruby Red. it’s been a few days since Gwen Shephard discovered that she, not her cousin Charlotte, inherited the “time-travel gene” that manifests in one girl of each generation in their family. The Montrose-Shephard family have assumed till now that Charlotte was the one with the power, and trained her since infancy accordingly. But it’s really been Gwen all along, and she is utterly unprepared. There’s a sinister conspiracy that spans the centuries, about to close in on its goal in the present day. The survival of the two time-travelling families, and possibly the world because of course, is in the hands of Gwen and Gideon, her male equivalent from the de Villiers line. Unfortunately for the rest of the poor souls embroiled in this, Gideon is a loose cannon who might be aligned with his Circle’s enemies, and Gwen is both infatuated with Gideon and rather slow on the uptake in general. He might undermine them, and if he does, she will be of no use in stopping him... Content Advisory Violence: Gideon gets knocked on the head by an unseen, unknown assailant in the present day. He claims he was following Gwen around a streetcorner when this occurred, and he blames her for luring him into an ambush. She has no idea what he’s talking about and is highly distraught by the accusation. Gideon also gets in a sword-fight (not shown) in the eighteenth century and shows up splattered with someone else’s blood. Sex: A lot more innuendo than was in book one. Gideon and Gwen spend several minutes smooching on a couch when they’re supposed to be doing their homework, and Xemerius thinks they went a lot further than they actually did. A creepy old man momentarily molests Gwen and a few other young women at a party in the eighteenth century. Also in attendance at this party is a worldly young widow dying to sink her claws into Gideon. Gwen assumes that he and Lady Lavinia have been intimate in the past, although Gideon says some things that make that seem unlikely. Gwen mentions that she is one of only four girls in her grade not on birth control. I can relate, Gwen! This is a kind of stupid joke, because many girls are prescribed birth control for purely medical reasons—but it is a reflection of how many sixteen-year-old girls think. She feels that she’s in no danger of becoming sexually active, and is both relieved and embarrassed by this (again, very relatable). Language: One or two uses of “sh**” and “hell.” Substance Abuse: Gwen tells us about a sleepover party where she and her school friends broke into the host’s parents’ vodka. This exciting incident culminated with our heroine warbling High School Musical (not dated at all, cough) songs into a hairbrush and commanding that her host’s father join her when he came to investigate the noise: “C’mon, baldy, get those hips swinging!” This mortifying experience has made her wary of the happy juice. But she unwittingly drinks punch laced with alcohol at an eighteenth-century soiree and is a giggling mess for the rest of the evening, eventually gracing the company with a stirring rendition of “Memories” from Cats, two hundred years before that song was written. Why not just play air-guitar? [image] Nightmare Fuel: In St. Germane’s library, Gwen finds a creepy old tome about famous demons summoned by bad magicians throughout history. She pauses at a particularly gruesome illustration and the demon portrayed therein materializes in front of her. It boasts and tries to frighten her, but she refuses to be cowed. She just snarks at it and calmly reads on, trapping it once again between the pages. In present-day London, Gwen is also followed about by a little gargoyle-demon calling himself Xemerius. He looks and acts like a talking cat with horns, and is not meant to be a frightening creature, but I’m not sure if he can be trusted. Conclusions Kerstin Gier’s Precious Stone trilogy has so far been a sugar rush. The characters don’t have a whole lot of depth, the plot is impossible to follow, and the world-building is not necessarily consistent. Evil sorcerers and demons are present in this book, despite never having been mentioned in the first. The scene with the fiend in St. Germane’s library, in particular, is more in line with Jonathan Stroud’s (wonderful) Bartimaeus trilogy than anything in Ruby Red. It’s unclear how the ghosts Gwen sees tie in with anything in past or present. That said, I like how Gwen claims that she’s awkward and dorky and is, in fact, awkward and dorky. She falls down. She gets sick. She laughs at the wrong things. She struggles to focus in class. She gives herself pep talks in the bathroom mirror. When she’s scared, she calms herself down by singing and dancing to ABBA songs—and sometimes, other people see her do this. Plenty of YA heroines call themselves dorks, but very few of them actually are. Gwen is the real deal, and despite her over-the-top feelings about everything (especially Gideon), her genuine dweeb-ness makes her likeable. Gideon is not on a level with Eugenides or Maxon Schreave or Morpheus the Netherling, but he develops a bit in this book, apart from only Gwen’s lovelorn perception of him. Apparently he’s unsure where he stands in this conflict of time-travellers, and his handlers are genuinely worried that he might turn traitor… This series is The Princess Diaries meets Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in England. It’s great entertainment that actually deserves its lovely shiny covers. I can’t wait to see how it all ends. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 13, 2018
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Jun 19, 2018
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May 23, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1250006325
| 9781250006325
| 1250006325
| 4.03
| 71,162
| Nov 15, 2010
| Feb 28, 2012
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it was ok
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Torn picks up right where Switched left off. Wendy Everly has just found out that she is the heir to the throne of Förening, a Trylle (troll) enclave
Torn picks up right where Switched left off. Wendy Everly has just found out that she is the heir to the throne of Förening, a Trylle (troll) enclave in Minnesota, hidden from human eyes unless those humans are taken there, or invited in. Angry with her mother, cold Queen Elora, for imposing tough restrictions on her—including driving away Finn, her bodyguard/boyfriend of a few days—Wendy runs away, as seventeen-year-olds often do. She brings along Rhys, the human boy with whom she was switched at birth. She convinces herself that her main goal in this endeavor is to introduce her adopted brother, Matt, to Rhys, his long-lost biological sibling. But getting away from her mom and the stifling rules of the Trylle Court is definitely part of it. The three kids have scarcely met up when they are kidnapped by the Vittra, a rival nation of trolls. Oren, king of the Vittra, cares nothing for the two human boys in his dungeon, but has a particular interest in Wendy. (view spoiler)[He is the ex-husband of Elora and Wendy’s father (hide spoiler)]. Much as Wendy dislikes her mom and Trylle society, she finds them marginally more palatable than (view spoiler)[her apparent father and his minions (hide spoiler)], and she has no intention of cooperating with him. She does, however, find a motherly/big sister figure in Sara, Oren’s much younger, kinder wife. And she feels a peculiar connection with Loki, an irrepressible Vittra tracker/guard who treats her well while Oren holds her and her adoptive brothers prisoner. Soon Finn and his colleague Duncan arrive to rescue the three captives, and they successfully escape, helped by Loki for unclear reasons… Back in Förening, Tove, the Trylle boy with the great psychokinetic powers, resumes training Wendy in her own power of Meanwhile, Finn continues to be cold and distant, which frustrates Wendy to no end. Doesn’t he remember all their stolen kisses and fervent glances? He says he does, but Duty Comes First. He can’t risk messing up Elora’s plans for the future of the royal line. Thus, he refuses to be more than civil to Wendy, even though it tortures her. Back in Vittra-land, Oren is pretty annoyed that his powerful daughter escaped, and Loki contrives to go after her alone. He claims that he’ll convince her to return to her father’s palace, but what is this rascal really after? Content Advisory Violence: A lot of punching and kicking and combatants flying through windows. Little blood shown. Pretty much the same as the last time around. Sex: The raciest material in here is Wendy’s occasional recollection of her makeout session with Finn towards the end of the previous book. They start snogging again at the very end of this installment, but are interrupted by his father. Wendy and Rhys stumble on (view spoiler)[Matt and Willa canoodling on a bed; the two older kids are quite embarrassed to be caught in this situation. Wendy also gets kissed by Loki, who feels that the two of them are bound by destiny. He wants her to run away with him, but she refuses, confused by all the sudden changes in her life (hide spoiler)]. The Chancellor continues to be an old perv who thinks creepy thoughts about Wendy and various other women young enough to be his granddaughter, much to the disgust of Tove, who can hear his thoughts. Language: One or two uses of “sh**” and some minor cuss words. No F-bombs this time. Substance Abuse: Everybody lightly imbibes champagne at Trylle festivities. Rhys and Wendy are too young to legally drink, but they are under adult supervision on these occasions, so I’m not sure if it’s all that problematic. Nightmare Fuel: The hobgoblins are kind of gross and ugly, although nothing we haven’t already seen in Labyrinth or the Spiderwick Chronicles. What makes them nightmare fuel is the fact that two human-looking Vittra can conceive such a monstrosity. [image] Conclusions The Trylle trilogy has a goofy-sounding title, and the books themselves have so far been, well, goofy. That said, this series is a lot more pleasant than other examples of paranormal YA from the same era. Why is this so? Because the melodrama in this is a lot less intense than many of its contemporaries. It’s not constantly squawking about the end of the world (which never arrives, because sequels and money) like the Maximum Ride series. It’s not swollen and baroque and using every fantasy creature but the kitchen sink, like the Mortal Instruments. And while there remains some definite overlap with Twilight, the “love triangle” here isn’t all that much of a love triangle. Finn’s feelings for Wendy are really just hormones, and he can easily cut himself off from her without any visible pain. Loki, meanwhile, is earnest and full of hope. He likes her not just for her looks, but for some strange affinity he senses between the two of them. He’s a sap, but he’s sincere enough to sell it. I actually like Loki. Unlike Finn, he has an actual personality—snarky, flirtatious, kind of stupid but surprisingly brave, in case you were wondering—and his chemistry with Wendy doesn’t feel nearly as forced. During book one, I found Finn tolerable but boring. When Loki showed up, I wondered if Finn was necessary for the story at all. He almost disappears about halfway through this book and only flares up again at the end. Wendy's still an idiot. She hasn't listened to the Beatles in years and doesn't like chocolate, all of which makes me seriously question her sanity. But by the end of this book, she has decided to put her angst on hold and go through with something uncomfortable to help out her future queendom. Good job, Wendy. The young supporting cast—Matt, Willa, Tove, Rhys, and even Duncan—are all actually rather likeable. Queen Elora turned out to be a more complex, interesting, and empathetic character once her backstory is told. Oren so far is a pretty one-dimensional villain, but I thought Elora was one-dimensional in Switched, so he too might improve upon closer acquaintance. Some people have made fun of the world of this series, populated as it is with beautiful trolls. But there is actual precedent for that in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore. Some of their trolls were monstrous and brutish, like the three who harass Thorin & Co. in The Hobbit , but others were humanoid and fair and crafty like the folk in these stories. For a much better YA treatment of these creatures, see East by Edith Pattou. So far, the Trylle series is definitely silly, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s fast-paced and enjoyable over all. I’m curious to see how it all ends. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 07, 2018
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Jun 13, 2018
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May 23, 2018
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Paperback
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| 1250006317
| 9781250006318
| 1250006317
| 3.87
| 101,196
| Jul 05, 2010
| Jan 03, 2012
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it was ok
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Switched begins with a flashback. Our narrator, a seventeen-year-old named Wendy Everly, tells us the occasion that she first became aware that she wa
Switched begins with a flashback. Our narrator, a seventeen-year-old named Wendy Everly, tells us the occasion that she first became aware that she was a “monster.” She was six years old and throwing a tantrum at her own perfectly nice birthday party. But we can’t quite dismiss little Wendy as nothing but a brat, because her father died very shortly before her birthday. Wendy storms back to the kitchen to yell at her mother for buying her a chocolate cake when Mommy knows full well that Wendy doesn’t like chocolate—this is the reader’s first major clue that something’s wrong with Wendy. For this, the spoiled child deserves perhaps to be sent to bed early, lose dessert privileges, or get bopped on the head with a rolled-up newspaper. But no, Wendy’s mother declares that the little girl is a monster and no offspring of hers. She stabs at Wendy erratically with a large knife, and probably would have killed her had not eleven-year-old Matt, her biological son, stepped in just there. As is, Wendy has a giant scar on her stomach that will stay forever. Fast-forward eleven years. Matt and Wendy live with their aunt Maggie, their mother having been institutionalized shortly after the knife incident. Matt has done all right for himself, but Wendy has bombed out of several public schools, and has a rep for being sullen, difficult and rather stupid, all of which is true. There’s a boy in one of Wendy’s classes who stares at her. He has black hair and pale skin and beautiful dark eyes, and his name is Finn. On the day our story begins, Wendy decides to ask him why he stares. “Everyone stares at you,” he replies with no visible emotion. “You’re very attractive.” He’s a lot like every other sulky, leather-jacket-wearing, late 2000s paranormal YA love interest, but unlike Edward Cullen or Jace Wayland, Finn just spits it right out. Credit where credit is due. Why is he named Finn, though? A guy named Finn is almost always a wholesome character. He’s supposed to be a farm boy who shelters fugitive princesses and wears the sweaters his momma knitted for him, or a former Stormtrooper with a heart full of empathy for Resistance pilots, scavenger orphans, mechanics, and space goats. Same goes for a lad named Ben, James, Sam, or Will. The emotionally-unavailable bad boy with a hidden heart of gold archetype is more likely to be named something like Nick or Jack. Finn also tells Wendy that he’s noticed her ability to think something at someone and make them change their mind. She has always been able to do this—say, she looks at an angry teacher and thinks “You aren’t going to send me to the principal” and the teacher, a bit befuddled, sits down and tells her “You don’t have to go to the principal’s office.” Sometimes she wonders if this is what her mom meant about her being a monster. At any rate, it frightens her that Finn (or anyone, for that matter) knows of this talent of hers. She uses this talent to persuade Matt, who knows better and is very worried, to drive her to the asylum for an audience with their mom. Wendy interrogates the woman but comes away with little she didn’t already know. Her mother raves that Wendy, as a baby, somehow disposed of Michael, the mother’s biological second son, and substituted herself. Matt dismisses this as the ranting of a lunatic but his sister thinks there might be some truth to it. Wendy goes to the school dance for the first time ever, solely to talk with Finn some more, but he says something callous, she becomes enraged, and she hurriedly leaves before he can explain. Good thing he just decided to climb through her bedroom window and explain it to her anyway. This is one of a few spots where the book treads a little too close to Twilight, although given the changeling theme, it could also be a nod to Peter Pan (our heroine’s name is Wendy, after all) or Labyrinth (albeit Jareth is much, much cooler than Finn). Did I say changeling? Turns out that Wendy is not only adopted, she’s not even technically human. She belongs to a race of creatures from Norse folklore called the Trylle—known to humans as trolls, but not to be confused with the monsters that live under bridges and/or eat jellied Dwarves. [image] Nope, these trolls—er, Trylle—look human enough, although they’re prettier than most of us and might have a green undertone to their skin. The Trylle culture is dying out. For the past several generations they have swapped their royal/high-ranking babies with human infants, so the Trylle babies can acquire wealth and education while in human society, then bring at least some of that back to their true people once they return. Finn is a Tracker, a low-ranking Trylle whose job is to find adolescent changelings and bring them home. And Wendy is the only daughter of the Trylle Queen, the inexorable Elora. Finn wants Wendy to come to the hidden Trylle stronghold in Minnesota with him, but she hedges, thinking of the worry she’d cause her aunt and especially her brother. Then she gets attacked by a rival band of Trylle, called the Vittra, and realizes she endangers her human family if she stays… Content Advisory Violence: Stylized, action-movie style fights between the Trylle and the Vittra. Very little actual weaponry used. Lots of punching and flying through windows. No gorier than the average Rick Riordan book. Sex: Finn and Wendy make out a few times, despite not knowing each other well at all. The night before he has to leave the settlement, he spends snuggling in bed with her—snuggling is all they do. Before that, she suspected that her mother had a creepy, Mrs. Robinson-like relationship with him; in reality, (view spoiler)[Elora had been in love with Finn’s father and had some sort of maternal feeling for him, which she squelched as soon as she realized he liked her daughter and was a threat to the Trylle aristocracy. (hide spoiler)] Elora is currently having an affair with a Trylle lord, the father of one of Wendy’s new friends, which is thankfully not shown in any detail. Rhys invites Wendy to join him for a Lord of the Rings marathon and she falls asleep on his couch. Finn gets there and assumes the absolute worst, despite a lack of any real evidence. Language: There’s one F-bomb and a variety of less pungent four-letter words in here. Substance Abuse: Social champagne drinking, including by the underage and very awkward Wendy. Nightmare Fuel: Nothing. Politics and Religion: Nothing. Conclusion Switched is definitely part of the post-Twilight paranormal trend: awkward brown-haired heroine, sulky love interest with no concept of personal space, glamorous hidden society in some rural part of America….too much melodrama for a story that just started and characters we barely know, and prose that veers from fine to patchy. This paperback edition includes four bonus chapters called “The Vittra Attack.” The publisher labels this a short story but it isn’t—it has no arc of its own and is hard to follow until you finally see where it connects to the main body of the story. These four chapters are from the POV of a Vittra named Loki, whom I assure you I was not picturing as Tom Hiddleston with long black hair. [image] Ahem. Loki drives the getaway car for the two Vittra who tried to capture Wendy. He gets pushed around by the Vittra king, but is close to their queen, for some reason. Loki is never shown or mentioned in the book proper, so I don’t know why Hocking considered him important enough for his own bonus chapters. At any rate, the book would have been improved if his chapters were woven into the main book—it would have added at least some sense of urgency. It’s silly, fast-paced, not terribly deep, and enjoyable enough that I’ll probably read the second book. It’s a good deal better than the aforementioned Twilight Saga or the Mortal Instruments series, but not nearly as much fun as the Percy Jackson books. If you want a melodramatic YA urban fantasy trilogy that’s actually mostly good, though, check out A.G. Howard’s Splintered trilogy. It has one very annoying major character, but the prose and worldbuilding are solid. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 14, 2018
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Apr 19, 2018
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Apr 18, 2018
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Paperback
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| 3.78
| 215,553
| 1611
| Jul 2004
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it was amazing
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Prospero, the rightful king of Milan, was overthrown by his brother Alonso and cast onto the open sea with his toddler daughter, Miranda. Alonso expec
Prospero, the rightful king of Milan, was overthrown by his brother Alonso and cast onto the open sea with his toddler daughter, Miranda. Alonso expected the two to drown, but by some fortune or providence they wash up safe on a distant island instead. They find the island uninhabited save by the recently deceased witch Sycorax, her son Caliban (called “monstrous” in appearance, but never described in any concrete detail), and an “airy spirit” named Ariel who was trapped in a cloven pine by Sycorax when he refused to obey her. Prospero is himself an accomplished magician. He frees Ariel with his magic, and the spirit happily serves him in gratitude. Caliban also does Prospero’s bidding, but it rankles him. By his own admission he tried to rape Miranda at one point, causing Prospero to treat him harshly. Thus life continues among these four, and the other spirits occasionally summoned by Prospero, until, many years after the mage and his daughter landed there, another shipwreck occurs on the island. The titular Tempest was raised by Prospero, and when the numerous survivors came ashore, Ariel passed among them unseen, confusing each group so they miss each other and believe themselves to be the only survivors. Among these are Alonso the Usurper, who gets separated from his son, Ferdinand, who is handsome and just of marriageable age. Miranda has just become nubile herself, and sparks immediately fly between the prince and the isolated girl who turns out to be his first cousin (this was not considered incest in Shakespeare’s day, apparently—certainly no one in the play objects to their engagement). Alonso believes his son and heir has died, and Ferdinand likewise believes that “full fathom five [his] father lies”… Meanwhile Caliban, nursing his wounds, stumbles upon two drunken fools, Stephano and Trinculo. He ingratiates himself to them with an ostentatious display of servility, and convinces them to help him overthrow Prospero… As always, this Shakespeare play is full of evocative phrases that could apply in many contexts beyond its own story. Seemingly inspired by both explorers’ tales of the Western Hemisphere (it was written ca. 1610, at the beginning of the colonial period) and an ancient tradition of weird sea adventures that stretches back to The Odyssey , it adheres to its audience’s familiar world of monarchy and conquest, but also hints at what Miranda calls a “brave new world” where those constructs might turn out to be very fluid indeed. Even on the surface level, it is a visually rich story whose figures and tableaux have found their way into countless later works. The whole episode on Ramandu’s Island in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader borrows heavily from it—an elderly magician who waits to be restored to his proper place, isolated on a remote island with his young daughter who is courted by a prince/young king, a creature of the air who serves the magician, a table laden with enchanted food and three lost lords fixed at said table for infractions against its provider, a relic of an evil witch long dead—it’s all there. I also wonder if the characterization of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars sequel trilogy drew any inspiration from Prospero. Again we have a mage of great pedigree marooned on an island (on a hard-to-find planet, no less), who only grudgingly uses his magic these days, trying to protect a young woman who is both coveted by a monster (for whom the magician feels somewhat responsible) and romantically pursued by a handsome prince—Kylo/Ben being an interesting fusion of Caliban and Ferdinand. Luke in The Last Jedi could easily have shared the sentiments Prospero expresses in the epilogue of the play. In the link below, Loreena McKennitt has adapted those haunting words to a fittingly eerie melody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOaBU... The play intrigues on multiple levels and is a great illustration of Shakespeare’s powers, with more at stake than A Comedy of Errors or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but happier and easier to digest than, say, Coriolanus or Hamlet. I’m very glad I read it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 02, 2018
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May 29, 2018
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Apr 02, 2018
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 0763630152
| 9780763630157
| 0763630152
| 4.12
| 22,008
| May 02, 2005
| Aug 08, 2006
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liked it
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We begin right where
The Naming
left off, with Cadvan and Maerad escaping the Edil-Amarandh mainland on a ship bound for the islands. Among the Is
We begin right where
The Naming
left off, with Cadvan and Maerad escaping the Edil-Amarandh mainland on a ship bound for the islands. Among the Islanders they find many allies, but witness frightening omens. On the open sea they are harassed by magic, sent by an entity whom Cadvan identifies as the Winterking. Having now escaped into a different part of the Edil-Amarandh continent, the two Bards are still pursued by agents of the Dark, even as they search for something they don’t know how to identify. This stressful situation is made even worse for Maerad, because she is suddenly desperate to be Cadvan’s equal instead of his student. Some of this is her competitive nature and nascent powers. Some of it she doesn’t understand. She feels warm and cold at the same time when he looks at her…it bothers her when he spends much time with other women…the mildest criticism of his stings fiercely… When a freak accident (that might not have been so accidental) happens in the mountains, Maerad assumes Cadvan is dead and begins to wander alone. Her rambling path will help her learn more about her family and her powers, and eventually lead her into the lair of Arkan the Winterking himself. And he is quite different from what she expected… Content Advisory Violence: Our main characters and their friends are attacked by the forces of the Dark, and fight back with gusto. Maerad transmogrifies a Hull into a rabbit and Cadvan snaps the rabbit’s neck, just to be sure. Maerad is terribly wounded and captured by Viking-like raiders. She gets her period while still wounded and sick in captivity, and the narrator tells us that “her whole body felt like it was weeping blood.” Lovely. Sex: Maerad feels very awkward with the two different men she develops crushes on. Language: Nothing. Substance Abuse: Social wine drinking as befits the pseudo-medieval setting. Nightmare Fuel: Not recommended for people who are afraid of avalanches. The Storm Dog was pretty scary too. Conclusions When I finished The Naming, I figured that Allison Croggon had established her universe and characters and could now move on to more exciting material. Unfortunately, The Riddle appears to have wandered off course. On the surface, nothing appears to have progressed. Our characters are still wandering with no clear direction. Ostensibly, they’re on a quest, but their quest is so vague that there’s almost no way of knowing if they find what they seek. Meanwhile they get pursued by generic agents of evil. In between flights and fights, they sit at the hearths of various allies, eating well and reciting poems lifted from Tolkien and droning about how sad everything is. The supporting characters are nice enough, but nothing we haven’t seen many times in this genre before. The only interesting aspect—the whole heart of the story—is Maerad struggling with her crush on Cadvan, which at first she can’t even admit to herself. In the first book we learned that she has a hard time trusting men, after one tried to rape her in the settlement where she was held as a slave. Even though her teacher has been nothing but kind to and protective of her, she is still a little afraid of him, especially on those occasions when he acts tenderly, and she suspects that he might return her feelings. Maerad’s constancy and self-control are (deliberately) tested by (view spoiler)[Arkan, an ageless, amoral elemental sorcerer who looks young and is freakishly handsome. [image] Arkan sulks so much when Maerad asks him about a Bard who lived hundreds of years ago that she concludes the two must have been romantically involved. But he claims to love Maerad and proposes to her, and his anguish when she leaves reminds me more than a little of the Beast when Belle left. [image] (hide spoiler)]. So this book, while its prose is well-crafted and its main characters likeable and compelling, is a chore to complete. The author seems to have completely misunderstood what worked in the first book, and doubled down instead on the many things that didn’t… Croggon steals from the best—the influence of Tolkien is all over the world of this series, while the characters and their abilities can trace their lineage to Ursula K. Le Guin, Robin McKinley, George Lucas, Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, and the Brontës. But impeccable pedigree isn’t enough to render something interesting that you’ve already read about so many times. Middle-earth could seem vast and gloomy and lonely too, but what made it work were the spots of brightness—from the grandeur of Minas Tirith to the elegance of Lothlórien to, perhaps most importantly, the rustic warmth of the Shire. Tolkien could even make the reader believe in kindly lands that were no more, such as the opulent Dwarven Halls of Erebor and Moria. Each of these places had its own culture and mood; if anything, it was the dark passages between these places that started to blur together. Unfortunately, in the Pellinore series, the pleasant environs all seem the same, allowing for some differences of climate and cuisine, and likewise once you’ve seen one monster or ruin, you’ve seen them all. You’ll also notice that while some of the authors listed above, Nix most of all, could describe a magic system and make it sound unique and even functional, Croggon’s is vague and brings nothing new to the table. Pierce’s magic is pretty vague too, and her settings are very close to those of an earlier fantasy master—Tortall is to Narnia as Edil-Amarandh is to Middle-earth—but Pierce has always known her greatest strength and emphasized it. It’s her characters that bring readers back for at least eighteen books set in the same universe. George, cheeky and clever and loyal unto death; Thayet, noble and gracious; Alanna, the spitfire with a heart full of insecurity; Numair, vain and secretive and romantic; Daine, empathetic and feral; Keladry, whose altruism and self-control as a young teen outshine that of most adults. They burn so bright that we forget how cliché their surroundings and their struggles can get. The overarching storylines are just a way for these lovable folks to interact. Watching them build friendships and rivalries, flirt with each other, and learn from each other is more than worth the admission price. Cadvan and Maerad are much more introverted and morose than any of the Tortall characters—again, Brontë/Tolkien influence rather than Austen/Lewis influence—but they are equally likeable and tangible. By a wide margin, this wandering mage and his angst-ridden pupil are the best part of this series. I loved watching the growth of their friendship, in spite of their both being afraid of opening their hearts, in The Naming. I loved the hints of romance in that book, and the stronger ones in this. That’s what the story is really about. (view spoiler)[By the end, it was clear to me that Cadvan is in love with Maerad, and while she was sincerely infatuated with Arkan, she loves Cadvan back (hide spoiler)]. That is where the emphasis should be. But instead, the book wastes hundreds of pages on aimless treks through fantasy lands that we’ve already traversed under other names, with a thin magical system that is neither functional nor unusual enough to sustain interest, in a melancholy narration style that treads too close to a better-known writer’s voice. The many moments of friendship and blossoming love between Cadvan and Maerad are enough to carry the first third of the book—sometimes these are even lightly humorous—but after the two are separated, all fun disappears from the story for several hundred pages. Arkan, while an interesting-enough fellow, lacks a clear motivation. He needed to be highly developed to make up for the Nameless One being traced-over Sauron, but while the Winterking was meant to be enigmatic, he comes off as blank instead. He reminds me of both Jadis from Narnia and Jareth from Labyrinth, but both of them are much better defined. Jadis works because she’s a pure and ruthless evil, capable of no emotion except lust for power and contempt for those who get in her way. [image] Jareth works because he’s not actually evil—he acts like a man under a curse, desperate to communicate with the girl he loves and trying to do as little damage as possible while still acting the role his curse demands of him. [image] This book asks us to believe that Arkan has human emotions, but his interest in Maerad veered between seeming sincere and merely lustful; he’s also much more violent than Jareth ever was, and shows a Jadis-like lack of empathy. Besides, why root for Arkan, or feel more than passing pity for him, when there’s already a handsome, brooding magician in this story and he’s actually nice? Cadvan actually cares for all of Maerad—he enjoys her company as a friend, he honors her gifts as a fellow mage, and he cherishes her beauty and heart as a future lover. He’s the whole package. Of all the series that don’t need a love triangle (however subtle in its execution) this one rivals The Selection and Splintered for the top spot on the list. When you have a Maxon, a Morpheus, or a Cadvan, the love story is a foregone conclusion, and that is just fine. I’m not sure I’ll continue with this series. The next book, The Crow, doesn’t even feature Cadvan and Maerad, but follows her brother Hem and his tutor Saliman. I liked those two well-enough in The Naming, but they don’t strike me as being able to carry a whole book themselves. And the last book appears to be even more wandering around and vague magic words and very little romance. So tell me, friends, is it worth continuing? ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 11, 2018
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Mar 18, 2018
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Mar 11, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1423159128
| 9781423159124
| 1423159128
| 3.75
| 36,638
| Jul 22, 2014
| Jul 22, 2014
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liked it
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So Disney is now writing their own fan fiction. This wouldn’t bother me if only the fan fiction in question were consistent with the films that they t
So Disney is now writing their own fan fiction. This wouldn’t bother me if only the fan fiction in question were consistent with the films that they themselves release. The Beast Within is an entry in a series by Serena Valentino examining how the iconic Disney villains turned bad. Given this information, the book already has a strike against it—the villain of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast isn’t the Beast, it’s Gaston. But the Beast is the more interesting of the two characters, being the only Disney Prince who’s an antihero. (At least the only animated one. Allowing for characters from their live-action franchises, he’s joined by Edmund Pevensie, Loki Odinson, and Kylo Ren. And I totally bring them up because they're relevant, definitely not because I'm infatuated with any of those characters. What do you take me for, a fangirl?) *clears throat* [image] [image] [image] Anyway…what was I saying? Oh yes, the Beast is an antihero of sorts—he starts out a rotten pretty person, loses his looks and status, becomes a decent chap when a girl is kind to him in spite of his ugliness and temper, and finally transforms into a hero when said girl (and his loyal servants) are threatened with violence and death. He’s one of the most dynamic characters in the Disney animated canon. Whereas a book about Gaston would have consisted solely of hunting and killing things. So even though the Beast/Prince technically does not belong in the lineup with Maleficent and Ursula, I was more than willing to read his story anyway. And Valentino has some promising ideas. There’s a lot of evocative imagery in this little book. I especially liked those creepy statues that move through the gardens when the Prince’s back is turned. This is a nod to the original tale by Gabrielle de Villeneuve, and I salute Valentino for putting it in. She did her homework! But I don’t think she was given much time or freedom for this project. The pieces never seem to coalesce and the mood is all over the place, ranging from deliciously spooky and mature to kiddie-table slapstick. Don’t take this as a slight to slapstick comedy, I love the stuff when it’s done well. But it’s never been a strong point of Disney’s, and it really does not mesh with the story or vibe that this book was going for. The metamorphosis of the Prince happens in an instant in most versions of this story, including the original, Disney’s 1991 version, and then the 2017 live-action remake of the ’91 animated film. In this book, it takes a few months, and the Prince starts to lose his mind along with his handsome body. He starts avoiding mirrors, but his official state portraits still show his evolution into a hideous beast—perhaps this plot point is a nod to The Picture of Dorian Grey. This is effective characterization. It made me pity him even as I rooted for him to learn his lesson, the narcissistic swine. Unfortunately, the application of the curse is pretty silly. The Enchantress in this version is the Prince’s old girlfriend, Circe, whom he publically abandons when he finds out she’s a farmer’s daughter. (Um, Disney? Farmer’s daughters didn’t have a whole lot of free time for hanging out with royalty. This is kind of far-fetched). Circe has three older sisters—Lucinda, Martha, and Ruby—who then show up at the castle and lay the famous curse upon the Prince, cackling that he’ll never break it in time. These three are exactly what I meant earlier about the uneven tone. They can be menacing occasionally, but mostly they’re a trio of silly cartoon characters. They squawk rhyming incantations while clobbering each other with household objects and falling out of their chairs. Like a production of Macbeth where the role of the Three Witches is played by the Three Stooges. They don’t belong in the same story with a cruel, beautiful young man who thinks his garden statuary is trying to kill him. [image] A few other problems in brief: 1). Gaston is here portrayed as the son of the Prince father’s steward (or butler or something) and the Prince’s best friend from early childhood. He actually tries to help the Prince on several occasions. While I think this is a nod to Darcy and Wickham in Pride & Prejudice and therefore enjoyed it—and there’s a great scene when the Beast finally transforms and tries to kill his friend—it’s not in character for Gaston AT ALL. The thing about narcissists is that they repulse each other. They can only be friends with docile, enabling persons. 2). Once Belle shows up, the whole story feels like it’s on fast-forward, with occasional inane commentary from those three goofy witches. The writing in these scenes is patchy at best, especially compared to those fun creepy passages in the earlier half of the book. This makes me think that Valentino just ran out of time. There is zero development of Belle’s character, or her relationship to the Beast. 3). The book insists that the story takes place not in France, but in an imaginary kingdom that has contact with France. The narrator even refers to Lumiere as “the flirty fellow with the French accent” even though we know that in-universe, they all have French accents. “They can sing, they can dance/After all, miss, this is France,” state the lyrics in “Be Our Guest.” Circe and her sisters make references to a mad queen who flung herself off a cliff to her death many years ago, implying that this is the same kingdom where Snow White and the Seven Dwarves took place. The shared universe idea is cute, but there’s nothing in the movies themselves to suggest that it’s the same country. 4). Finally, can we get this poor man a name? He is referred to in this book solely as “the Prince” or “the Beast”, even in the passages narrated from his perspective. I can understand if he forgot his name after years of enchantment, but then he and Belle should have figured it out at the end. On the interwebs, this character is sometimes referred to as Adam. Adam is not a particularly 18th century French aristocrat-type name, but it is a very nice name, that might be a literary reference in this context (Frankenstein’s Creature was also occasionally called Adam). So I’ll continue to call him Adam, but ANY NAME AT ALL IN CANON WOULD BE NICE. At any rate, this isn’t horrible for a media tie-in, but it doesn’t quite reach its potential either. A short and harmless read, perfectly appropriate for ages ten and up. The flaws in the book appear to come from Disney rather than the author. I would happily read more of Serena Valentino’s work. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 29, 2018
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May 31, 2018
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Jan 30, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 006202471X
| 9780062024718
| B00A2KDGLI
| 3.98
| 8,575
| Sep 25, 2012
| Sep 25, 2012
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liked it
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Congratulations, Colin Meloy, for producing a second installment that was noticeably better than the first! A few months after Prue McKeel and Curtis M Congratulations, Colin Meloy, for producing a second installment that was noticeably better than the first! A few months after Prue McKeel and Curtis Mehlberg entered the Impassible Wilderness to rescue Prue’s baby brother from an evil sorceress, life has returned to mostly normal for the McKeel family, although Prue is struggling in school and her parents don’t know why. The Mehlbergs have had no such luck. Curtis is still missing, and the parents are so desperate to find him that they flew to Turkey, leaving their two daughters, Rachel and Elsie, at the decidedly creepy Unthank Home for Wayward Youth. Meanwhile Curtis has been happily training as a bandit in the Wildwood, almost never remembering his parents and sisters. The mad Dowager Governess was defeated (although we all know the drill with fantasy “deaths” without a body to show for it) leaving chaos in the wood. Warring factions have sprung up and no one seems to know who the leader should be. Iphigenia, Chief Mystic and priestess of the Great Tree, insists that Prue needs to come back if the Wood should be saved. The girl’s destiny has not yet run its course. Back in Portland, Prue confides in a concerned new teacher, Ms. Thennis. Prue suspects the Wood is calling her back, but what’s wrong now? Content Advisory Violence: Like the first book—not much, but what’s there is startlingly bloody for a middle-grade book. We see a shape-shifter get stabbed, and her shape changes from her human to animal form as it dies. Assassins are sent after children, and while they are unsuccessful, that’s not for lack of effort or menace on their part. Joffrey Unthank forces children to labor in his factory, and some have been maimed or terribly injured in said factory. Some rebellious kids burn down a building. Sex: Prue notices that Curtis’ shoulders are starting to broaden. That’s it. Language: None. Substance Abuse: None. Nightmare Fuel: The aforementioned shape-shifter is described in a frightening way, and one of the illustrations portraying her in mid-morph gave me the willies. That said, it’s a lot less scary than the first book. Know your kids. Kids, know yourselves. Miscellaneous: There’s a villainous Ukrainian character who speaks in a stereotypical accent and generally acts like an evil agent from the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon. She’s not super offensive, but she still comes off as a product of accidental xenophobia. Conclusions The first volume in the Wildwood series, simply entitled Wildwood, really rubbed me the wrong way for a variety of reasons. The characters were hard to empathize with, the story took too long to get where it was going, and the whole thing was so hipster it had never heard of itself. Not to mention that the narrator’s fondness for obscure vocabulary words made it hard to picture what was happening at some points. [image] However, the book had a lot of potential. It stole from the best—C.S. Lewis, Terry Pratchett, Jim Henson, and a wee dash of J.R.R. Tolkien at the end—while bringing its own Old Americana aesthetic and an agreeably spooky mood. The illustrations by Carson Ellis (who happens to be Meloy’s wife and album-cover artist) were charming pieces of folk art. The first book dashed my hopes, but for some reason the second one called to me. And while not the greatest general-audience fantasy novel ever written, it’s actually quite agreeable. The addition of Joffrey Unthank and his orphanage/factory is straight outta Lemony Snicket, which both is and isn’t an improvement on the first book. It’s an improvement because a lot of the weirder “real world” parts make sense if the “real world” in this universe is a Snicketesque realm of absurdism. Yet it’s also a step back because there was no indication in book one that this world was like that. It’s a good ret-con, but still a ret-con. And even in such a surreal place, Mom and Dad Mehlberg leaving their two remaining children in such a place while they go to search for their son doesn’t jive with what little we know about them. Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire wound up in situations this bad and worse, but their parents were dead. Big difference. [image] On a related note, the almost bloodless battle between the kids and the Industrial Titans’ goons was underwhelming after the spectacle at the Plinth in the first book, wherein people actually died and there were fantastical creatures. This one felt a little too much like the end of a '90s family comedy. It just did not go with the tone of the previous book, or this one up until that point. As for the Titans themselves, Big Business being the villain has become cliché, but it usually doesn’t share antagonist duties with faceless magical forces, so watching the heroes battle both in Wildwood Imperium should actually be interesting. The hipster milieu from the first book has also been greatly toned down. It has receded to the background, where it’s just fine. Prue and Curtis no longer try to wriggle out of their destined duties, and they certainly aren’t ranting anymore about emotional support while everyone else is marching off to die. They have figured out that pacifism is a good policy in Portland, but will not save you from an evil sorceress or a shape-shifting assassin. When one lives in two different worlds, one can accommodate two different worldviews. Also no more posturing about expensive jeans or coffee. They were actually believable twelve-year-olds this time around. And Curtis got called out for being selfish and oblivious—by Prue, by the narrator, and by his own conscience. Character development. It’s a good thing. Rachel and Elsie, Curtis’ sisters, are not terribly unique—Rachel is a typical sulky goth teen, Elsie is a typical bright-eyed little girl who brings her doll everywhere—but they were believable and likeable enough. They reminded me of both Susan and Lucy Pevensie from Narnia, and Wirt and Greg from Over the Garden Wall. Both very nice sets of sibling characters to be reminded of. [image] [image] The most interesting new addition to the ensemble hasn’t even shown up yet. Remember Alexei, son of Alexandra? When he died, she went mad with grief and forced two Daedalus-like geniuses to rebuild him as an automaton, only for Alexei to figure out what he really was and destroy himself. Well, Prue has been told by the Great Tree that her task is to revive Alexei somehow, that only this can save the Wood. Some reviewers think this refers to an act of dark magic, and while it might, I can see another possibility: Prue must descend into this universe’s Land of the Dead, find Alexei, and help him “return to the Sunlit Lands” (h/t The Silver Chair ). I really hope this is what Meloy means: the descent and return of figures like Persephone, Dionysus, Orpheus and Psyche are some of the most potent stories in all of mythology. [image] All told, this was a decent book, much better than I expected one in this series to be, and my curiosity is piqued for the third and final installment. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 03, 2018
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May 08, 2018
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Jan 22, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 161312693X
| 9781613126936
| B00KLMGU6U
| 4.17
| 21,098
| Jan 06, 2015
| Jan 06, 2015
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liked it
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The first fifty or so pages of Ensnared, the conclusion to A.G. Howard’s Splintered trilogy, are a solid adventure story as Alyssa and her father sear
The first fifty or so pages of Ensnared, the conclusion to A.G. Howard’s Splintered trilogy, are a solid adventure story as Alyssa and her father search for an entrance to Wonderland and the adjoining dark realm of AnyElsewhere, where evil Queen Red dragged Morpheus, Allison, and Jeb at the end of Unhinged. We’re learning all kinds of stuff about Alyssa’s dad, who had no memories of life before Pleasance, TX, until recently, and whose whole identity was assigned by Allison years ago. His name is really David Skeffington (arguably the most English name ever), not Thomas Gardner, and he’s not only English, but part of a knightly bloodline sworn to protect the gates between the worlds. This is a lot of information to digest, but it’s so exciting that I scarcely cared. The parents in YA books are overwhelmingly useless , and I LOVE how Howard has made not just one of the MC’s parents empowered and central to the plot, but both. When they reach AnyElsewhere they meet up with Morpheus to save Wonderland— And then Jeb happened. *sad trombone* Content Advisory Violence: Lots of surreal violence—human vs. humanoid, human vs. monster, two souls fighting each other for control of a single body. A lot of this also goes under Nightmare Fuel. Sex: A LOT of goofy make-out scenes. The Morpheus/Alyssa ones were bearable. The Jeb/Al ones, on the other hand, were devoid of spark and frankly abhorrent. Also they were in their undergarments one time for no reason. This shows how desperate Howard was to sell us Jeb-as-love-interest—Jeb in his boxers is meh, Morpheus in a full three-piece suit can start a forest fire just by blinking. Not recommended for the under 14 crowd. The Y in YA stands for young, people. As always, Morpheus makes innuendos. They’re about as raunchy as those of Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H, a phrase which here means “not all that raunchy.” Also, he hears Alyssa complaining about her ugly asylum issue undergarments, sews her some pretty silk lingerie, and leaves it on her pillow. It’s sweet that he paid so much attention to her wants, and I applaud his craftiness—nothing manlier than a guy who’s not afraid to sew, cook, or do other “chick” things—but dude, you’re not even dating yet. That’s kind of creepy. At one point everyone’s outer clothes get destroyed and Jeb has to paint them on. A dumb excuse for showing skin and Jeb being “useful.” Language: Morpheus’ favorite word, after “luv,” is still “bloody.” Substance Abuse: I got nothin’. Nightmare Fuel: 80% of the book is this. Jeb created an evil doppelganger who has gaping holes in his body and wants to kill everyone. Morpheus almost gets dismembered and eaten by gorilla-kingfisher mutants. There are land-dwelling flying piranhas that eat people and animals alive. A guy gets his eyes gauged out and tongue chopped off (not shown). Both Red and Hart possess Alyssa’s body like demons at one point. Since the Queen of Hearts is a character here, decapitation is a constant threat for all. And I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff. Yeah, don’t read this book late at night. The Problem of Jeb Howard’s world-building is a beautiful, earnest tribute to Carroll while being innovative and rich in its own right. She cleverly references her source material and other works. Alyssa and her parents can be (and usually are) pig-headed idiots, but our heroine is somewhat developed, and the parents defy expectations. Morpheus is a magnificent anti-hero on par with Erik the Opera Ghost, Howl Jenkins, Jareth the Goblin King, Eugenides, Han Solo and his son Ben. But Jeb…Jeb is a black hole where a character should be. He’s a splicing of Anakin Skywalker and Frank Burns, and just as charming as that implies. [image] [image] Remove the make-out scenes and Jeb spends two books tagging along and getting captured. Nothing that a younger sibling or younger sibling-like character couldn’t do. He could be Toby from Labyrinth or Wentworth from The Wee Free Men. Jeb does some nice things in this last book, but they’re way out of character (as my friend Nicki pointed out in her review) and far too late. His back-story is sad, but he’s so obnoxious that I don’t care. He will never be one-quarter the man that Morpheus is. But not only does Howard apparently want us to like Jeb, she forces Alyssa’s parents to love Jeb, even though he has done nothing to earn their love, and hate and mistrust Morpheus, even though he has done nothing but help them for years, putting up with all manner of abuse in the meanwhile. Alyssa, at least, is seventeen and has an excuse to be stupid. This love triangle could even work if Jeb were a consistent character and contrasted in a meaningful way with Morpheus. Let’s look at The Phantom of the Opera. Christine Daeë, our heroine, is about the same age as Alyssa and just as confused. She has two suitors: one is Erik Destler(?), the dangerous magician who (in the Lloyd-Webber version at least) loves her for her talent as well as her beauty, and empathizes with her because she’s almost as isolated as he is. The other is Raoul de Chagny, the wealthy and sanguine youth who likes Christine’s pretty face, has been comfortable and popular his whole life, is kind of shallow, and is just the sort of boy that parents approve of. While most readers/viewers wanted Christine to pick Erik, it makes sense that she would cling to Raoul. She’s just a kid and he’s safe. Erik is much better suited for her, but he means adulthood in all its aspects—power, responsibility, sexuality, moral ambiguity, and ultimately death. Raoul, being made of sunshine and cinnamon and frolicking puppies, represents a postponement of all that. Granted, Erik kind of shot himself in the foot. He had a real knack for impulsively strangling folks and dropping chandeliers and getting angry mobs after him. Christine herself represents feminine energy, resurrection, redemption, and the promise of new life. In Splintered, we have our embodiment of Scary Adult Things in Morpheus, who, like Erik, is a literary descendant of Hades. We have our Creative Potential/Fertility/Death and Resurrection/Redemptrix figure in Alyssa, who like Christine, is a modernized Persephone. And Jeb has no place in the archetype because he’s not like Raoul. He’s not wholesome, cheery or sweet, and the last thing on his mind is guarding Alyssa’s innocence. So there’s no reason for him to be here. He should either have a)replaced with a wholesome boy, b) been demoted to kid brother/platonic friend, or c) written out altogether. The Ivory Gate In the Aeneid, Virgil claims that there are two exits from the Underworld: There are two gates of Sleep, one said to be ~ The Aeneid , Book VI, verses 1212 – 1218 (Robert Fitzgerald translation) [image] This passage stood out to me when I read the poem for English class. Further research brought up many different interpretations. Some scholars argue that it only refers to what time of day Aeneas reemerged. Others speculate that it’s an early example of metafiction—or it signifies that everything Aeneas does from Book VII onward is somehow…false. Like he and the Sibyl reemerged in a parallel universe, a dream very like reality but not exactly right. It would explain why the poem becomes 50% more surreal after this point, events moving with dreamlike speed and personalities changing like nightmares. One of my teachers theorized that Virgil didn’t really believe Aeneas was a hero, and that this passage was the first clue. If he were really a good guy, my teacher argued, he would have been able to pass by the Horn Gate. As it is, he and the Sibyl had to reenter the living world as lies, as fictions of themselves. The teacher felt that the end of the poem, where Aeneas abandons his principles and stabs an enemy begging for mercy, proved that this Aeneas is not the same Aeneas who entered the Land of the Dead. Long before Alice fell down a hole and found a strange world below, Persephone did. I discussed earlier how Morpheus and Alyssa are a variation on Hades and Persephone—he rules an underground realm and can be invisible/a moth when he wishes, she enters his domain and lives to tell about it and also has a connection with plants. Jeb, according to this scheme, is the mortal Pirithous, who in his hubris thought he could carry off Persephone. (Persephone was a lot smarter than Alyssa and paid him no mind). But the mythical stuff goes further than that. The first 50 or so pages of this very book are all about gates between the real world and various topsy-turvy-lands…the sort of places one could only access by, say, an ivory gate. And there is even a character named Ivory here. Also, like Aeneas, Alyssa is granted a vision of her descendants. It motivated Aeneas to find Lavinia and bring Silvius into the world, but Alyssa is happy to put her Child of Destiny with Morpheus on hold until she’s produced an unnecessary family with Jeb. Morpheus is both Hades and Lavinia (a zany combination of mythological figures if ever there was one), Alyssa is Persephone/Aeneas, and that makes Jeb not just Pirithous but Dido. Let him GO, Al. Earlier I was complaining that Jeb really drags this series down, and would need to either not exist at all or be a very different character in order not to. But even his continued, obnoxious, unchanged existence I could tolerate if only it had ended differently. Because Alyssa rashly makes an unbreakable magic vow to Jeb that he will be her first husband, and she will return to Texas as soon as possible to grow old at his side. Everything her real country needs from her—such as her being Queen and bringing them an heir with both human and Netherling powers—can wait fifty or sixty years. How very selfless of her. [image] From here on out, the characters sally forth from the Ivory Gate, for this is not where the story’s supposed to go. To be a hero, Alyssa would have to grow up and put aside childish things. Jeb, for all his forced sexual energy, is a childish thing as far as Al’s concerned. She’s known him as long as she can remember, and now she’s being called to rule a world that he can’t even survive long in. She has to release him. Either that or make the wrong choice, go back with him and her parents and forget Morpheus and Wonderland. This is not an attack on Howard. Plenty of wonderful authors have done this—Jane Austen, L.M. Montgomery, J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan among them. Austen forced the character Henry Crawford to commit an over-the-top act of immorality just when he was starting to redeem himself, her logic being that she didn’t want Mansfield Park to be a repeat of Pride and Prejudice (Jane’s sister Cassandra was displeased with this development). Montgomery destroyed the character of Dean Priest because he was based on her husband, and she wanted to pair the autobiographical Emily Starr off with Teddy Kent, a.k.a. “the one who got away.” Rowling started out intending to redeem Draco Malfoy, even making him a valued friend to Harry and Hermione’s love interest, but scrapped this because children needed to learn that people can’t change and forgiveness is for losers or something. Riordan set up a love triangle between Luke Castellan, Annabeth Chase, and Percy Jackson, which he solved by forcing Annabeth to friendzone Luke while he died in her arms. Boo. Let me clarify: the way the story should go ≠ the way I personally want it to go. I didn’t want Frodo and the Elves to leave Middle-earth at the end of The Return of the King , and I certainly didn’t want Beth to die in Little Women . But every good story has loss… This is a Gift, It Comes with a Price *hat tip to Florence + the Machine* [image] When Alyssa saw her future son in Unhinged, I immediately thought of the scene in the film version of The Return of the King where Arwen sees her future son and decides to stay in Middle-earth. Staying meant that she’d never see her family again this side of the far green country. Aragorn would age and die, but she would not. Her children would also age and die, and she would linger as some kind of shade, only dying after many long years. [image] Some might argue that Alyssa makes the same choice as Arwen, but Alyssa actually makes the opposite choice. Arwen’s was a sacrifice. She got to stay with her beloved Aragorn, but at the cost of her immortality and her entire people. She gave up the familiar and comforting to stay in a changing world hemorrhaging of magic, and help her husband and friends keep it in order. She became deeply acquainted with grief. [image] Alyssa, on the other hand, gets to have a perfect human life with Jeb (*gags*), then as soon as he dies she hops back down the Rabbit Hole, becomes sixteen years old again, and becomes Morpheus’ merry queen forever more. This was dumb in The Hero and the Crown , too, but at least Aerin made sacrifices and felt obligated to marry Tor for the sake of Damar. Also Tor wasn't a jerk. A quickie list of Other Fantasy Characters Who Sacrificed Things Because That’s How Fantasy Works: • In addition to Arwen, nearly every major character in LOTR gives things up. Frodo loses a finger, goes home traumatized, and eventually has to leave Middle-earth. Galadriel and Gandalf refuse the One Ring, lose the power in their own rings, and sail away with Frodo after becoming obsolete. Elrond gives up not just his ring and his kingdom, but his daughter. Faramir cedes the throne of Gondor to Aragorn. Everyone is willing to die so Frodo and Sam can accomplish their mission, which those two know they will not return from. • Luke Skywalker defeats the Empire and redeems his father, only for his father to promptly die on him. By then he has also lost both his mentors, the aunt and uncle who raised him, and his hand. • Another member of the One-Handed Hero Club is (view spoiler)[Eugenides of Eddis, who sacrificed his right hand, his health and his family to wed his beloved Irene and unite his home peninsula against invaders. (hide spoiler)] • Yet another member of the OHHC is (view spoiler)[Lirael of the Clayr, who defeats an existential threat to the universe but loses her hand and her guardian angel doggy. (hide spoiler)] • Alanna of Trebond (view spoiler)[saves her kingdom from an evil usurper, but loses her twin brother, one of her boyfriends, and her guardian angel kitty. (hide spoiler)] Interestingly, the two young men in Ensnared sacrifice a great deal. Morpheus has always relied on his magic. For the bulk of this book, he is stripped of his powers and has to rely on the person he hates most for survival. Jeb’s willingness to surrender is way out of character, but credit where credit is due. He also knows what his wife will do when he dies and marries her anyway. But Alyssa gets everything on her own terms. She wanted both, both boys, both lives, and she got them. She’s not a hero like Arwen, Frodo, Luke, etc. She didn’t learn a blessed thing. This beautifully-written series could have closed with a powerful message about coming of age. Instead it goes out with the whimper of teenage wish fulfillment. What a missed opportunity. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 04, 2018
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Feb 14, 2018
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Jan 18, 2018
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Kindle Edition
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| 0439404371
| 9780439404372
| 0439404371
| 3.98
| 99,637
| Jan 2000
| Sep 2002
|
really liked it
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Twelve-year-old Prosper and his little brother, Bo (short for Boniface), live with their friends in an abandoned movie theater deep in Venice. The bro
Twelve-year-old Prosper and his little brother, Bo (short for Boniface), live with their friends in an abandoned movie theater deep in Venice. The brothers are fleeing from an uncaring aunt who would keep Bo at her side like a lapdog and send Prosper to a faraway boarding school. Their roommates—Hornet, Mosca, and Riccio,—are homeless kids with nowhere else to go. They survive by stealing food and picking pockets. The leader of their little group is named Scipio. His living quarters are unknown. He provides the others with blankets and other necessities, and delights them with the treasures that he steals. For Scipio is a thief—the self-proclaimed “Thief Lord” who has developed a fearsome reputation for himself in the city’s underworld. Everyone also assumes that the Thief Lord is an adult, not the scrawny twelve-year-old mincing about the rooftops in a plague doctor mask. One fateful day, a mysterious Comte offers Scipio a job that would make him a legend, with ramifications that neither he nor any of his crew have any idea of. When the heist collides with Aunt Esther’s quest for Bo and the crisis Scipio is running away from, some of these children will be faced with choices that will determine the rest of their lives. Content Advisory Violence: Characteristic of Funke, there’s some startling violent images here—i.e. the kids threatening to shoot Victor with his own gun, or Morosina pondering having her dogs tear the boys to pieces. No actual gore. (view spoiler)[Scipio’s father is emotionally abusive, but does not appear to be physically abusive. His apparent cruelty still takes a terrible toll on his son (hide spoiler)]. Sex: Absolutely nothing. Language: Squeaky clean. This is a book where supposedly gritty adult characters say “darn” and “heck” with no children present. (I wonder if this was license on the translator’s part. This translation is by Oliver Latsch, not Anthea Bell, who translated the Inkheart series, where the word “damn” was used as punctuation). Substance Abuse: Ida smokes. Everyone thinks it’s gross, including the characters living in an abandoned building which cannot have been particularly clean. Nightmare Fuel: (view spoiler)[The legendary magical item on the Isola Segreta turns out to be an enchanted carousel—ride the Lion of St. Mark and you’ll become younger, perch on the merman’s tail (or was it one of the other magical critters?) and you’ll age as many years as rotations you made round the carousel. The Comte and his sister, who appear emotionally frozen at about age nine, ride the winged lion until their bodies match their childish minds. Scipio takes the age-up creature and jumps off when he’s old enough to shave—considering he’s Italian he can probably shave already, but that’s beside the point. Barbarossa wants to be a young adult again, but loses the machine and emerges a sniveling five-year-old. Scipio’s psyche hasn’t caught up with his body, while Barbarossa’s adult mind and memories are caught inside a child’s body. (hide spoiler)] Politics and Religion: Riccio offers to disguise Prosper by “painting [him] black like Mosca” (this does not happen and I don’t think any larger statement was meant, but still, as an American it’s a bit cringey). Conclusions The Thief Lord features a strong atmosphere, a fascinating supernatural element, and an intriguing title character. Unfortunately, the atmosphere doesn’t always match the plot, the supernatural element isn’t even hinted at until halfway through the book, and the title character plays second fiddle to a rather bland protagonist and a colorful supporting cast member who doesn’t fit the mood of the piece. A Venetian setting will always make a book interesting. There’s something about winged lions and mermaids and masques and gondolas and canals full of deep, dark water that draws me in every time. In The Thief Lord, the setting is a character, and this definitely works in its favor. The movie theater where the kids live is like Venice itself in miniature: ancient, grimy, secretive, and somehow still starry and magical. Scipio fits into this environment seamlessly for most of the story. He’s like a cat, charismatic and glamorous and self-sufficient and disappearing for long periods of time. Yet like all characters who wear a mask, we know that he struggles with self-loathing, and the part of his life hidden from his friends is probably highly disagreeable. All this turns out to be true about him; Funke never examines his dysfunctional home life in any great depth, but that’s forgivable in a middle-grade book, especially one like this with one foot in reality and the other in the land of magic. (view spoiler)[What bothered me about Scipio was that all his problems seemed to evaporate once he took a spin on the carousel and emerged as a young man. These wishes, in myths and fairytales, tend to backfire spectacularly on the wisher. Scipio’s wish was completely understandable, but again, there’s usually a punishment for willfully disrupting the cycle of things like that. It was annoying that, to paraphrase Florence and the Machine, his gift didn’t come with a price (hide spoiler)]. This whole theme of youth and age is pretty deep. I found it intriguing that the Comte and his sister apparently never got over watching their employers’ children playing while they had to work—they find the key to regaining their youth and the first thing they do is take over the old manor. They play with the rich-kid toys they used to envy, and even that doesn’t make them happy. There’s Barbarossa, who seems to have been stuck in the intense selfishness of a five-year-old. His punishment is pure nightmare fuel, but fitting. Then there’s Aunt Esther, who wants Bo to stop aging at six, and has no use for Prosper because he needs guidance more than hugs and is no longer cute. I just wish that the first half of the book had featured these themes, and the element of magic. As is, the first half was mostly Victor donning bad disguises, walking into obvious set-ups, and fussing over his tortoises. I found Victor adorable, by himself and with his perfect match, Ida. But starting the book off like that makes it seem goofier and lower-stakes than I think Funke intended. The magical element also sprang up out of nowhere, without even a hint. All we needed was a brief flicker of it—one of the St. Mark’s Lions around the city could come to life for a few seconds, or one of the kids could glimpse a mermaid or merman in a canal. Maybe there’s a location in the city where time freezes or accelerates or goes backwards, foreshadowing the pivotal event of the novel. The way it was executed, it was jarring—like if the Baudelaire kids in A Series of Unfortunate Events had learned that that Sugar Bowl everyone was fighting over could make its owner invisible. I don’t mind surprises, but it’s nice when the genre of a book is clear and consistent throughout. Finally, I found the lack of empathy displayed by the children (and some of the adults) in the book downright alarming—understandable, but still not the traits you’d want in a hero. The kids, Bo and Mosca largely excepted, are all rotten to Victor when they first meet him—much more rotten than their situation actually requires. And while I can’t blame them for this, everyone seems delighted with what happened to Barbarossa. He’s horrid, but it’s still bad form to jeer at him in his reduced state. I had this problem with Inkheart, too—even the usually good kids have many moments of being startlingly bratty. This book is harmless fun. This is the first time I’ve read it, but I know that the eleven-year-old me would have been beguiled by the Venetian setting and fallen in love with Scipio, the pre-teen Byronic hero. It flew by and kept me up late turning pages. I think many of you will like it too. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 13, 2019
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Jan 17, 2019
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Jan 03, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0143104837
| 9780143104834
| 0143104837
| 3.90
| 23,634
| 1816
| Oct 30, 2007
|
really liked it
|
This is the marvellously strange and creative novella that Tchaikovsky's ballet is based on. And it is just as surreal as the ballet - but ballets are
This is the marvellously strange and creative novella that Tchaikovsky's ballet is based on. And it is just as surreal as the ballet - but ballets are surreal by nature, while books needn't be. Like a darker, Continental forerunner to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It makes zero sense, but is more than evocative enough to make up for it. Our heroine is seven-year-old Maria, the daughter of a well-to-do German family. This Christmas her godfather, the royal counselor and inventor Herr Drosselmeier, has brought among his haul of amazing toys a nutcracker, which Marie becomes fascinated by. Begging permission to stay up late, she witnesses the Nutcracker and all the other toys come to life. He leads her brother's toy soldiers against the evil Mouse King - a seven-headed mutant - but is about to be killed by the beast until Maria throws her shoe at the creature and knocks it down. Fainting (as all nineteenth century heroines written by male authors must do), she falls against glass and cuts her arm. Upon waking the next day, Maria tells the whole crazy story to her parents and the doctor, who attribute it to a fever from her wound. But Herr Drosselmeier knows more than he lets on, and proceeds to tell her, pretending all the while that he's merely spinning a tale, how the Nutcracker came to be what he is. In an adjoining magical kingdom - it bleeds into the real world but it's never explained how - lives a beautiful princess who ran afoul of a scheming Mouse Queen and was cursed to be a nutcracker. Dismayed, her parents sent out Drosselmeier, an important figure in their court, to find a cure. Drosselmeier eventually learns that the curse can be broken if a particularly hard nut is cracked in the princess's presence, and it must be broken by a boy with strong teeth who has never needed to shave and also has never worn boots (meaning, I think, that he's too young to serve in the military). His nephew proves to be just the kid for the job and liberates the princess from her curse, but he messes up the end of the procedure by tripping on that evil Mouse Queen (who can apparently change sizes) and the curse now falls on him. He can only be freed if a girl loves him despite his ugly new form. A few nights later the Nutcracker returns to Maria, showing her the seven crowns of the Mouse King whom he slew. He leads her into a magical land, his place of origin, filled with happy people and living dolls and whole towns made from candy. Maria tells her family about this experience and they all dismiss it as a dream. Embarrassed, she becomes withdrawn, and one day whispers to the Nutcracker that she wishes he really were Drosselmeier's nephew, because unlike the spoiled princess, she loved him even though he was ugly. And BOOM! There stands a handsome lad, who proposes to her on the spot. It was all true. A year and a day later, he comes back to fulfill his promise, and as far as Hoffmann knows they live happily ever after. Like many writers of his day, Hoffmann is verbose, and his characters are prone to melodramatic exclamations that would sound over-the-top from anyone, but especially from a seven-year-old girl and a boy of about twelve. Our author often seems to forget just how young his main characters are, and apparently he doesn't see anything creepy about a marriage between a groom of about thirteen and an eight-year-old bride. Huh boy. I've never been particularly into ballet, but it's a beautiful art form and if you love the ballet I definitely recommend this. Also recommended for people who like Alice in Wonderland, Phantom of the Opera, Labyrinth, and the works of Maurice Sendak, but didn't think any of those were quite surreal enough. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 20, 2017
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Dec 20, 2017
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Dec 20, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0785217142
| 9780785217145
| 0785217142
| 3.89
| 5,264
| Jul 10, 2018
| Jul 10, 2018
|
really liked it
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A parallel England, 1604 Thomas Fawkes is embarrassed. He’s sixteen now, the only student at St. Peter’s Color Academy in York who hasn’t been given hi A parallel England, 1604 Thomas Fawkes is embarrassed. He’s sixteen now, the only student at St. Peter’s Color Academy in York who hasn’t been given his own mask and can’t speak to any color. (I’ll explain to the best of my ability, something the book itself neglects to do). Thomas gets booted from school. With no friends or family to take him in, he heads to London, drawn by the rumor that his father, Guy Fawkes the famous mercenary, has returned to England. After a number of misadventures, Thomas stumbles upon his father. But dear old Dad isn’t nearly as enthused about discovering his long-lost son as he is about the plot he and some allies have concocted to assassinate King James and all of Parliament. This plot is just the latest escalation in a century-long war between two different philosophies of magic. The Keepers believe that each individual should only manipulate a single color, and the White Light at the source of the color spectrum is too dangerous for anyone but the wise to talk to. The Igniters commune directly with the White Light and use it to manipulate all the colors. Thomas is a Keeper like his father before him. But he learns that someone else has a plan about that… Content Advisory Violence: Several brief but rather nail-biting sword fights, and a shootout at the end. A man goes about stabbing people and animals with an infected knife and giving them the plague. The MC and his young lady friend are frequently menaced by hoodlums and conspirators in dark alleys. One of these scuffles leaves Thomas bleeding profusely. There are two mass hangings, one including a child, who escapes the noose and runs. Brief discussion of the full punishment for treason: hanging until nearly dead, drawing (disembowelment) and quartering (dismemberment). A man strikes his fiancée across the face. She hits back. The whole plot revolves about a bunch of men plotting to blow a building filled with hundreds of people to kingdom come. Sex: Some verbal sparring, buttoned-up, costume-drama flirtation, and a single kiss between Thom and Emma. Our hero watches with contemptuous amusement as a young couple sneaks away from a party with obvious horniness. Language: One or two uses of “bloody.” Substance Abuse: Some of the plotters seem to be heavy boozers. In fairness, they could hardly drink the water in 1604 London… Nightmare Fuel: This universe suffers a magical blight called the Stone Plague, which literally petrifies its victims. Sometimes it spreads quickly through the host body, turning them into a statue in a matter of minutes. Other times it fastens to a particular part of the anatomy and destroys it long before it kills the victim. When we first meet Thomas, he has a stone eye and eyelid which he hides under an eye patch. (view spoiler)[He briefly becomes entirely stone, before the plague recedes but maintains its hold on both his eyes. A while later, he regains his sight in a highly symbolic manner (hide spoiler)]. Politics: We see the beginning of racism in England as it joins in the African slave trade. Many Londoners get spooked when they see a black person. King James holds a masquerade with a slavery theme, wherein white nobles paint themselves ebon—it’s not quite the same thing as the vile minstrel shows that appeared in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but this is where it started. Thomas rightly feels uncomfortable watching. Religion: The whole thing is an allegory of the Protestant Reformation, veiled very thinly indeed. The White Light is clearly God, Who is portrayed with more affability and snark than grandeur. [image] Kill the King, Brandes’ historical notes at the end of the book are extremely brief, and assume the reader already knows most of the true story. I myself knew little of this particular episode, so here’s some background info. Let’s start with a timeline of the Reformation: 1517 – Martin Luther, disgusted by the corruption of the Renaissance Vatican, writes the 95 Theses, starting Reformation fever throughout Europe. 1532 – Henry VIII, driven by paranoia over a lack of male heirs and an obsession with one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting, declares the Pope has no authority in England. Catholic religious, and secular subjects who refuse to follow Henry as religious leader, are executed. 1553 – Mary I, Catholic daughter of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, inherits the throne from her Protestant half-brother Edward VI. Intending to eradicate Protestantism from England, Mary has nearly 300 Protestants burned at the stake as heretics. 1570 – Pope Pius V issues a papal bull declaring Elizabeth I, Protestant daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, illegitimate and absolving her subjects of having to follow her. Elizabeth doesn’t want to kill subjects just for having a different religious practice—it didn’t exactly make her father or sister popular—but she has no qualms about executing those she sees as disloyal, and as her reign goes on, these people become disproportionately Catholic (or Puritan, but that’s a story for another time). 1603 – James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England. English Catholics hope for an ally in James, since his mother Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was a staunch Catholic. But James is Protestant and continues his cousin Elizabeth’s legacy of persecution. Ostensibly, Catholics in England had the right to worship as they chose, provided they professed the British crown, and not the Papacy, was the most important power on Earth. But thousands of Catholics cherished the Church above the State and were called traitors for it. The punishment for treason, as mentioned earlier, was hanging, drawing, and quartering. This was the environment in which several desperate, unhinged Catholic Englishmen concluded that the only way to stop the persecution was to blast King James and Parliament to smithereens. The plot itself proceeded quite closely to how it was portrayed in the novel. The only major difference, besides the given one that the real plotters had no magical powers to help them, is the presence of young Thomas Fawkes. The International Genealogy Index (IGI), compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, records that Guy Fawkes married Maria Pulleyn, daughter of his schoolmaster, in 1590, and their son Thomas was born in 1591. But these records are considered a secondary source, and there’s no other known information about the marriage or Thomas. Covered in the Colors, Pulled Apart at the Seams I give Nadine Brandes all kinds of credit for coming up with this world. It’s colorful (I’m sorry), exciting, and a fine place to immerse yourself for a few days of reading. There’s just one problem. The magic system, while beguiling, doesn’t make any sense. Magic is a hard thing to write well. Too much explanation takes the wonder out of it, when wonder is the whole point of having magic in the first place. But at the same time, too little explanation of the magic in a given story can be maddening. Especially if it’s one of those books where Everyone is a Mage. Fawkes is one of those books. My favorite example of a magic system remains the one Garth Nix created for his Old Kingdom universe. It’s consistent and as lucid as magic ever could be without completely stripping it of mystery and glamour. He spends a few pages in the early chapters of Sabriel detailing the MC’s magical education and methods. By taking a little time to explain, instead of dropping the reader headfirst into a foreign world, Nix never needs to repeat it, and we can follow the rest of the story with ease. When Sabriel writes a rune in the air or rings any of her sacred bells, we know precisely what she’s doing, why she’s doing it, and what the likely result will be. Whereas when Emma Areben, Benedict Norwood, and the other characters of Fawkes did their color-speaking, I often had no idea what to picture. Below, the magic system of this book as far as I could understand it: In this universe, colors are semi-sentient entities. A given person can bond with a specific color (never really explained how) and the objects around them that are their color obey them. Someone who communes with Red can drain the blood from an enemy’s body, or alternatively coax the heart of a freshly-dead friend into beating again. [image] A Blue-speaker can manipulate water. [image] A Grey-speaker can lift rocks. [image] A Brown-speaker, like Emma, can command wood and soil. [image] It would appear that everyone but beggars has some color power in this society. Wearing a mask painted a given color solidifies a person’s bond with that color, which is why Thomas is so ashamed to be the only conspirator with no mask. But the function of the masks themselves is unclear. This is a good place to mention that THERE’S NO FUN IN A MASQUERADE BALL IF EVERYONE WEARS A MASK ALL THE TIME ANYWAY. The most powerful color is the White Light, which is the font of all other colors. Let the Spectrum In [image] By the time this story begins, the color-control system has been in place for one-thousand six-hundred years. In the olden times, the White Light reached out to people directly, but the wise men taught that ordinary people were too weak to speak to it, the source of all power. So for centuries, only those sages could interact directly with the Light. Ordinary folk were discouraged from seeking it out and told to ignore it if it sought them instead. Each mage was allowed to only manipulate a single color… …until the mid-sixteenth century, when someone whom the book refers to only as “Luther” and some unnamed allies had a breakthrough. Why, everyone should be able to talk to the White Light! And use it to manipulate all the colors! These radical dudes became known as “Igniters”, opposed to the “Keepers” of the old ways. It’s like the Verities vs. the EƋians in My Lady Jane, only without the humor. Brandes actually does an excellent job showing the brutality of the Protestant English regime to its Catholic subjects. But while the book is sympathetic to the Catholic plight, it’s still based on a misunderstanding of what the Reformation was really about. What a lot of people don’t know about Martin Luther is that he really didn’t want to split from the Church in Rome. He had no problem with the Catholic practices modern Protestants tend to find unnerving—perhaps most startlingly, he maintained a lifelong devotion to the Virgin Mary. Luther never even left the Church of his own volition; he was excommunicated by the Pope. He felt compelled to speak against Church corruption, which by his time was rank. Luther was sent to Rome for a conference of his monastic order, where he witnessed priests mocking their faith and participating in debauchery. In 1516 – 17, Pope Leo X initiated a new program of indulgences—wherein people paid the Church to forgive their own sins or let the souls of their dearly departed out of Hell. The Vatican coffers were empty because Leo emptied them on hunting expeditions and depraved parties. The higher branches of Church bureaucracy were heavy with equally rotten fruit. From Luther’s famous anti-indulgence post on the cathedral doors, other thinkers piled on until they had a movement, and what had started as an uptight, fiery German monk trying to clean up the extant Church became innumerable men building churches of their own. Heads of state saw the opportunity to drive papal authority out of their lands. Henry VIII was about as spiritual as the average aardvark, he just wanted the power to grant himself divorces. Back to Fawkes . Keepers = Catholics. Igniters = Protestants. White Light = God. Talking to the White Light = prayer/reading the Bible. So Brandes is implying that the Catholic hierarchy did not even allow the faithful to pray to God directly. Wow. What?!? And then there’s that “They weren’t even allowed to read the Bible!” meme that Melanie Dickerson already beat to death five books ago. The average pauper or peasant during the medieval and Renaissance eras couldn’t read, period. Public schools didn’t exist; only the wealthy could afford tutors or college. But the Church, for all its other horrifying problems, really did want the people to know the foundational stories of their faith. So they covered churches in art depicting scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints. The major episodes of the Life of Christ were also told through the specific artwork/meditation combination called the Stations of the Cross, and the lengthy meditative prayer, the Rosary. The lower classes may not have been able to quote the Scriptures word for word, but they knew what they believed, and they prayed frequently, multiple times a day. The idea that the entire Catholic Church conspired for centuries to keep the populace ignorant of the Bible’s contents is ludicrous. If you want to make the Reformation look like a good or at least necessary thing, all you need to do is tell the truth. The Vatican was a playground for power-hungry monsters, and they preyed on peoples’ fear of Hellfire to take their money. Someone needed to shine a light on these cockroaches, and Luther (who had some serious issues himself) wound up being the one who started it. As a Catholic, I’m grateful that someone did it, because I hate to imagine what my church would look like now with no reform. The reality is a much better story than the Don’t-Let-Them-Read-the-Bible conspiracy. Conclusions Fawkes merges history with fantasy elements, which don’t always make sense but are certainly entertaining. The book is a lot of fun for its own sake and would make a fantastic movie. That said, I found that it misconstrued what the fight between the Gunpowder Plotters and the King was really about. Just remember that it’s meant to entertain more than educate and I think you’ll enjoy it as I did. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 07, 2018
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Nov 14, 2018
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Dec 04, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1905294719
| 9781905294718
| 1905294719
| 3.97
| 89,995
| Sep 28, 2007
| Sep 28, 2007
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it was amazing
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Inkdeath is the epic adventure I expected
Inkheart
and
Inkspell
to be—and as much as I complained about the slow pace, plot meandering, and in
Inkdeath is the epic adventure I expected
Inkheart
and
Inkspell
to be—and as much as I complained about the slow pace, plot meandering, and innumerable characters in the first two books, I can tell you now that all the buildup was worth it. Funke was juggling so many different plots by the end of Inkspell that I was seriously worried that many or all would be dropped or mishandled in the third act, but she surprised me by keeping all of them going until their natural conclusions, and also resisting the temptation to add new ones. Not every writer can do that. (view spoiler)[Dustfinger is dead, Orpheus is abroad in the Inkworld, the Adderhead is immortal but frozen in the death process, Meggie is angry, Resa is pregnant, Fenoglio is racked with guilt, and Mo can’t tell whether he’s himself or the Bluejay these days. Can the Adder be stopped? Can Death itself be undone? Can anyone achieve peace in the Inkworld? Can the people from our world ever return here—or should they? (hide spoiler)] I can’t say much more than this without ruining all the surprises. Content Advisory: It might help to think of this as a very clean book for adults that happens to have a few teens among its many protagonists. Young kids might find it inaccessible and hard to follow—I remember a lot of younger friends who loved the first two books hated this one—and it avoids the melodrama of a typical YA offering. (There is a love triangle, but it’s minor. It is treated like a teen relationship should be, gently but not too seriously, and not given any undue importance). Violence: Various warlords enjoy brutal executions, including flayings and disembowelments. These are never shown, only mentioned. We do, however, see a handful of stabbings. There’s a few non-graphic torture scenes. The Adderhead has fairies killed en masse, thinking that bathing in their blood will alleviate his pain. A warlord threatens to cut out a man’s tongue; a magician sends a prisoner horrifying visions, hoping to drive him to suicide. Orpheus reads a unicorn into being for one of the warlords—so said warlord and his friends can hunt the animal, brutally butcher it, and parade its bloodied corpse through the streets of Ombra City. A dead man lies unburied outside castle walls, and his daughter is put in a cage hanging from a window above him in an attempt to break her spirit. The Piper forces children to work in the silver mines. There’s a panic in the marketplace and three little kids are trampled to death. Sex: Farid walks in on Orpheus yanking a serving-girl onto his lap, and the narrator adds that Orpheus molests all his maids, becomes enraged if they reject his advances, and might spend some of his money on prostitutes. Brianna’s past affair with Cosimo (or his doppelganger) is mentioned a few times. Violante has an obvious crush on Mo—or the Bluejay, rather—and sulks when she finds out he’s already married. Meggie gets a few chaste kisses in with both Farid and the new boyfriend, Doria. Language: A few emphatic “damns!” from Fenoglio and Elinor, usually directed at each other. They’re madly in love, they just don’t know it yet. Substance Abuse: Fenoglio and Orpheus are both described as heavily hitting the booze, the former because he’s depressed, the latter because he’s debauched. Elinor has no patience for Fenoglio’s drinking and tells him so on several occasions. Anything Else to Worry About: The Adderhead’s flesh is rotting on his body even while he lives. No one can bear the stench well enough to go near him—except the Piper, thanks to his fake silver nose. Overall, this is one of the most satisfying conclusions to a fantasy series that I’ve ever read. Warmly recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 04, 2018
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Jan 07, 2018
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Jul 30, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0439554004
| 9780439554008
| 0439554004
| 3.95
| 130,446
| Oct 01, 2005
| Oct 01, 2005
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liked it
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Inkspell picks up a year after Inkheart left off. The Folcharts—Mo, Resa, and Meggie—are reunited in Elinor’s house. They have been joined by Darius—a
Inkspell picks up a year after Inkheart left off. The Folcharts—Mo, Resa, and Meggie—are reunited in Elinor’s house. They have been joined by Darius—another “Silver-tongue” who can read things out of books but isn’t nearly as good as Mo—and a number of fantastical creatures who escaped from Inkheart, the book that Mo read aloud from thirteen years earlier that has dogged his footsteps since. All should be well, but meanwhile in another part of Italy, Dustfinger has found a sinister Silver-tongue, using the prideful stage name of Orpheus, who reads him back into his story. The fire-breather leaves behind Farid and Gwin the marten, believing that Gwin is predestined to bring about his death in the Inkworld. Farid, devastated at being abandoned by the closest thing he’s ever known to a father, turns his steps towards Elinor’s house… …meanwhile, Meggie is catching up on all the angst and anger she never directed at her secret-keeping father all these years. She’s also rapidly sprouting from a scrawny little girl into a pretty young woman, and when Farid shows up he NOTICES. Farid wants to follow Dustfinger. Meggie wants to test her Silver-tongue powers. Unlike her father, the girl has a gift for storytelling, too. First she writes herself and the boy into the story, then she reads them in. Mo is horrified when he figures out what his daughter has done—and has only himself to blame, as usual, since this all could have been cleared up with a conversation. Soon the Magpie, mother of the late Capricorn, shows up at the bookish house, accompanied by Orpheus, who proceeds to read her and Mo into the book—Resa refuses to let go of her husband’s hand and is dragged back to the world where she spent years as a foreigner. In the Inkworld—a Renaissance faire fever dream of Boccaccio’s Italy and Chaucer’s England—Dustfinger reunites awkwardly with his wife, Roxane, who has believed him dead for years and reluctantly remarried in his absence (luckily for him, her second husband has also died). She is immediately suspicious of Farid, believing him to be Dustfinger’s son by a woman of our world. Farid fears being separated permanently from his pseudo-father and returns her suspicion with outright hostility. Also, Fenoglio is somehow pottering about in his own book, both delighted to the point of megalomania and hubris at seeing his creation spring to life, and dismayed that he can’t stop bad things from happening to his favorite characters. Casualties include Cosimo, the handsome and chivalrous son of the reigning Prince of Lombrica. Cosimo had an arranged marriage with Violante, the ugly but shrewd daughter of the evil Adderhead, who reigns across the mountains in Argenta. Then Cosimo died. According to Fenoglio’s story, none of this was supposed to befall the youth. He writes a resurrection for Cosimo, and forces Meggie to read the passage aloud. And a doppelganger of Cosimo appears—but he has no memories of anything the real Cosimo did. He shows no interest in his little son with Violante, forbids the poor woman from entering his chambers, and calls upon Brianna, the beautiful and headstrong teenage daughter of Dustfinger and Roxane, to share his bed in his wife’s place. The reader never witnesses an interlude between the young royal and his even younger mistress, but their consummated dalliance is the talk of the kingdom. Meanwhile, the Magpie fatally wounds Moe with her gun (why did she need to read him there if she was only going to shoot him with a weapon from our world?) but he and Resa are found by the Motley Folk—the class of roving actors, acrobats, jugglers, minstrels, fortune-tellers, and assorted other curiosities that Dustfinger and Roxane belong to. Some of them remember Resa from her time as a slave in Capricorn’s household. They take Mo in, but believe him to be a charismatic highwayman known as the Bluejay, robbing caravans from Argenta in a one-man war against the Adderhead’s tyranny. Little do they know that Fenoglio, who has apparently learned nothing, has made up this Bluejay, circulated the songs about him, and based him on Mo. What could possibly go wrong? Some of you may think that I waited too long between finishing this meandering doorstopper and reviewing it. I assure you that the span of time makes no difference. This book made no more sense to me when I first closed it than it does now. While the first book in this series had no plot but zigzagged between locations, this one has no plot, but follows about two hundred sets of characters each in their own location. At no point do the plotlines intersect—okay, the adults all met up when Roxane arranged for the Barn Owl to tend Mo, and Dustfinger spoke to Resa through the bars of her dungeon cell in total darkness, and Funke implies something weird here, something to the effect of “she had fond memories of him visiting her in the dark” which confirms my suspicion from book one that there was something between these two. Is it really adultery when both believe their spouses to be dead? This is a question for the Aeneid, not a middle-grade novel with Shel Silverstein and Roald Dahl quotes in the chapter headings. Quick summary of everything that actually happened in this book: 1. Orpheus is bad. Really bad. 2. Also, Orpheus tends to sweat and has bad skin, so it’s funny when Farid, who is fifteen years old, by the way, repeatedly refers to him as “Cheese-face.” Farid, Junie B. Jones just called and she says you sound immature. Grow up, man. 3. Dustfinger is such a horn-dog that Roxane sees a strange kid with him and automatically assumes said kid is his. 4. Mo never tells anyone anything. Mo is an idiot. 5. Also, Mo hates cats. Told you he’s an idiot. 6. Adultery. Lots of adultery. You know, for kids! 7. Fenoglio is a menace to society and must be stopped at all costs. 8. The two kingdoms don’t like each other because reasons. 9. No one cares that Cosimo is cheating on Violante because Brianna is hot and Violante has a pockmark on her face. Seriously. 10. Sometimes we check back in with Elinor and Darius for no discernible reason. 11. On page 420, a wild Mr. Tumnus appears…and is never mentioned again. Orpheus just reads him out of his book and he potters around Elinor’s house looking forlorn. I didn’t care about Tinkerbell in Inkheart—I never cared about Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, either. But Tumnus is my smol son. Protect him. 12. Have I mentioned Fenoglio is a menace? Someone, please, stop that man. 13. Mo is slowly turning into the Bluejay whether he likes it or not. 14. Farid and Meggie like each other because teenagers and hormones. 15. Dustfinger is dead! Dead for real!...Sure, Cornelia, I totally believe that you killed off one of two characters in this whole miserable story who had a pulse. And by the time it happens, it’s too late to care. We’ve been dragged through 635 pages of nothing. In all this there are two positives. One is the world-building. The setting was richly realized and felt infinite like a good faerieland should - even though this sort of faux-Italian renaissance faire kingdom was cliché back when Jo March was sending serials to the Weekly Volcano. The other bright spot is Roxane, who alone among the dramatis personae is stoic, competent, and able to put the needs of others ahead of her own. It’s kind of hilarious that she goes to someone called the Barn Owl for help, considering Jennifer Connelly played her in the movie version—if you get why this is amusing, you remind me of the babe. Connelly so strongly resembles Roxane as described in the book that I wonder if Funke wrote the character with her in mind, the way Mo is patterned on Brendan Frasier. Roxane’s perspective for more of the book would have helped, since she was the only person around who occasionally showed symptoms of common sense. The ending was meant to be a cliffhanger, but upon closing the book my only thought was “a) my head hurts and b) Who’s going to get poor Mr. Tumnus back to Narnia?” ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 21, 2017
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Jul 31, 2017
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Jul 17, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1481497588
| 9781481497589
| 1481497588
| 3.65
| 100,309
| Sep 26, 2017
| Sep 26, 2017
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really liked it
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The town of Whimsy sits right on the border between the human, humdrum World Beyond and the vast realms of Faerie. It’s been summer in Whimsy and the
The town of Whimsy sits right on the border between the human, humdrum World Beyond and the vast realms of Faerie. It’s been summer in Whimsy and the surrounding territories for as long as anyone can remember. The town is populated by mortals with Craft—artists and artisans. The Fair Folk love refinery but can create nothing of their own, so they rely on these talented humans for clothing, entertainment, decoration, and delicacies. They compensate the artists with whatever enchantment the artist asks for (which usually backfire in spectacular fashion). The Good Folk are too luxurious to last long without their human Craftsmen, and the humans need the patronage of the Good Folk to protect them from monsters and other Good Folk. As with most codependent relationships, this has created resentment. Our narrator is Isobel (not her real name—everyone here needs an alias for their own safety), a seventeen-year-old painter with an uncanny gift. The Fae are notoriously shallow, but Isobel can find the seed of deep emotion in their faces and bring it to the forefront in her portraits. With the many commissions the fairies give her, she is able to support herself, her upper-middle-aged aunt, and her two kid sisters. They are kid sisters in every sense of that word—March and May are about twelve years younger than Isobel, and they used to be goats. Some Fair One turned them into humans but didn’t want the bother of raising them, so Emma and Isobel took them in. Ten years ago, Isobel’s parents were slain by one of the fell beasts from the wood around Whimsy. Another such beast breaks into the fields and accosts our heroine as she walks home from market, but the monster is driven off by a powerful fae—Rook, Prince of the Autumnlands, who happens to be the subject of Isobel’s next portrait. As Rook sits in Isobel’s parlor, she develops a major crush on him, and starts to think he might reciprocate. But she knows that fairy/human affairs can lead only to ruin, and tries to put him out of her mind. So she’s shocked when, after sending him off with his finished portrait, he reappears, paranoid and livid, and demands that she follow him into the wood, to stand trial for an offense he refuses to explain coherently. All he tells her is that something is wrong with the portrait and his fellow fae will be able to use it against him, but she suspects the truth is far worse… Content Advisory Violence: A few vague, scary battles between fairies and monsters occur, which will be detailed under “Nightmare Fuel.” (view spoiler)[Rook breaks off his own finger to rid himself of an iron ring which won’t come off otherwise. [image] (hide spoiler)] Sex: Rook and Isobel kiss passionately in the woods. He has her up against a tree and she’s embracing him when she realizes what danger they’re in and tells him to back off. He does so at once. They kiss a few more times after that in a much more subdued manner. The Spring Court apparently set a trap for the two by putting Isobel in a bedchamber that Rook was bound to wander into once he got drunk enough. He crashes on the bed with her, and she panics, sure that they’re being spied on. She convinces him to turn into a raven so she can hide him among the blankets. He stays in that shape for the rest of the night, fearful for his life and hers. Our two leads accidentally-on-purpose glimpse each other’s toilette while travelling in the forest. A bored fairy turns Isobel into a bunny rabbit. Rook is able to figure out what happened and restore her to her true form—her clothes are still where they fell when she was morphed and she scrambles out of his arms, mortified, to find them. Language: Isobel frequently uses a scatological four-letter word when she’s frustrated. Her little sisters enjoy repeating this word. Substance Abuse: I got nothing. Nightmare Fuel: Where do I even begin? Let’s start with the Alder King, the villain of the piece. He sends zombie-like minions after Rook and Isobel; on one occasion, rotted humanoid and plantlike fae arms claw out of the ground and our protagonists have to beat them away. [image] Later on the King himself appears. He’s humanoid but much larger than a human, swathed in dust, and deranged by the thousands of years that he’s lived. One of the King’s servants is Hemlock, originally the huntsman (technically huntswoman or huntress) of the Winter Court. Hemlock looks more like a tree than a human and is always accompanied by vicious fae hounds (view spoiler)[who, it is implied, turn on her (hide spoiler)]. Hemlock doesn’t even bother trying to look human, but the other fae all maintain beautiful glamours, which only waver when they’re sick or injured. Underneath that, they’re nearly fleshless, bug-eyed, and stretched; think El Greco meets Tim Burton. Even with the glamours, each has a single, grotesque flaw: Gadfly’s fingers are twice as long as they should be, Lark has shark teeth, Aster is as gaunt as a famine victim, Rook’s flaw is a major spoiler. The Fair Folk also put glamours on their food, which is liable to be rotten and crawling with maggots in reality. Conclusions An Enchantment of Ravens is a cool, brief breath of fresh autumn wind. Granted, the Good Folk are [image] —but Margaret Rogerson has largely avoided the overly trendy elements that will make other books in this genre very dated in the next few years. One unfortunate YA trope that does appear is the dreaded insta-love. It could not be more obvious from the beginning that Rook and Isobel will become a couple, and they waste no time in falling. That said, their bickering is a lot of fun, they spend very little time kissing or whining, and both of them are willing to die to save each other and Isobel’s family. One nice touch was how Isobel tells Rook her real name, but never reveals it to the reader. It’s their secret. Aw… As an individual character, particularly a female MC in a YA fantasy, Isobel has a lot going for her. She’s devoted to her Craft. She’s knowledgeable but still awkward, projecting a cynical persona to protect a huge imagination and childlike appreciation for the beauty of nature. So many of the girls in these books get completely mired in their own melodrama, but she never does. She can always distance herself from the nonsense at hand, laughing at it and at her own role in creating it. This is a mark of maturity that will serve her well (view spoiler)[as Queen of the Fair Folk (hide spoiler)]. Rook is one of those vain but deep antiheroes with glorious hair. He’s a familiar archetype, but one with enduring appeal, and Rogerson did a good job balancing his human and inhuman traits. He made me sigh, he made me laugh, and he made me root for him. (view spoiler)[Long live the Autumn King. (hide spoiler)]. These characters live in a vast world with ample room for more adventures. I enjoyed the season-based classifications of the fairy courts, and the forest was one of those magical places where you could just feel the limitless possibilities; anything could happen in there. My only gripe is with the plot. So many things were left unexplained and hurried by in the rush to the next scene. How did the Alder King take over? What was the pain Isobel detected in his eyes? What’s Gadfly’s motivation? (view spoiler)[Is Isobel immortal now? How did that happen? With the Green Well gone, will she still wind up partially cursed like Aster? Is the Good Law sundered for real—and what are the ramifications of that? (hide spoiler)] I don’t need every question answered. Bill Watterson deliberately refused to explain the “Noodle Incident” in Calvin & Hobbes because he figured that leaving it blank made it funnier—every reader could fill it in with the most over-the-top thing they could imagine. Likewise, while it would be interesting to know the origins of the Lady of the Green Kirtle from The Silver Chair or Supreme Leader Snoke from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi —or why/how Elsa from Frozen obtained her powers—or why that Sugar Bowl was so important in A Series of Unfortunate Events—or literally any information at all about Jareth and his Labyrinth— but those things are not needed to understand the story, and too much time spent on them might destroy the tale’s momentum. Today, YA fantasies tend to err heavily on the side of over-explaining the lore. I appreciated that this one did not, but you could argue that it under-explains instead. Balance is nice. Rogerson’s prose is agreeable—fairly descriptive and old-fashioned, bursting with imagery, snarky without being harsh. Overall I really enjoyed this book. Recommended for fans of Robin McKinley and Sharon Shinn, Labyrinth enthusiasts, and shippers of Hawkeye/Margaret (M*A*S*H) or Kylo/Rey (Star Wars). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 13, 2018
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Jul 05, 2018
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Jun 15, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0451531450
| 9780451531452
| B0072Q2LKM
| 4.09
| 73,435
| 8
| Jan 01, 2009
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Torn as to how to rate this one. Based on creativity, prose style, and humor: 5 stars. Based on overabundance of disturbing, disgusting content: 1 sta
Torn as to how to rate this one. Based on creativity, prose style, and humor: 5 stars. Based on overabundance of disturbing, disgusting content: 1 star. This book is not for the faint of art, or the casual mythology fan. Ovid's aim was to encompass all of mythology into a single narrative, and he very nearly succeeded. The only places where he cheats a little are on the myths that already had either several or definitive versions - the Labors of Hercules, the Trojan War, and the wanderings of Odysseus and Aeneas are glossed over. This is just fine with most readers; the book is taxing enough to the average attention span as is. The result is a mixed bag. Some of Ovid's retellings are psychologically spot-on and told with a freshness and verve surpassing that of most modern fiction, to say nothing of other ancient writing. The story of Apollo and Daphne is everybody's favorite for this reason: the prose is fluid as a river, the pacing is sublime, and the emotions ring true. It's a tale as old as time. Horny boy meets terrified girl, and miscommunication leads to catastrophe. Unfortunately, because this is the pagan Greco-Roman mythos, nothing can ever be undone, and having entombed herself in bark to ward off Apollo's embraces, Daphne is stuck there for good. She cannot reevaluate the situation. She cannot change her opinion of him. Similar instances occur all over: Actaeon and Diana, Pan and Syrinx, and there must be thirty other pairs I'm forgetting. The only major exceptions are Vertumnus and Pomona, who get a happy ending by virtue of being Roman, and Dis and Proserpine, who are stuck together because they're both powerful gods and neither can conveniently get turned into anything... Which brings up the main problem with Ovid. Good Lord, but this man had a twisted, filthy mind. This story of Dis and Proserpine (or as they are better known, Hades and Persephone) is a good example because there are several other ancient versions to compare it with, most notably the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (earliest written version 7th century BC). The story is essentially unchanged: man meets girl, man drags girl to miserable underworld kingdom, girl eats a handful of pomegranate seeds, girl has to stay, girl becomes more like her husband over time. Ovid's narration is so close to the hymn-writer's in some places that if he were submitting it as a school paper today, it might not pass an online plagiarism test. But in other, disturbing ways, his version diverges substantially from the source. There is no mention in the Hymn, for instance, of an outright rape. While it's entirely possible that Hades forced himself sexually on Persephone once he had her in his kingdom, the hymn-writer never states any such thing, and we can give the lonely god the benefit of the doubt. The writer of the Hymn also goes out of his way to refer to Persephone as "deep-breasted" - which establishes first that she's a fertility goddess, but second that she's nubile. She is physically an adult, although she isn't quite mentally an adult. Ovid goes there. In his version, the poor girl is raped by Dis while he's driving the chariot (this sounds anatomically impossible, but that's beside the point). He also goes out of his way to describe Proserpine as a child, with "small breasts" (note the inversion of the Homeric epithet), who weeps as much for the flowers she dropped as for her lost virginity (let's hear it for heavy-handed imagery!). The original was Labyrinth; Ovid's is Lolita. Charming. He smuts up a lot of stories in this manner. The tale of Pygmalion and Galatea, of which he is the earliest source, is almost unrecognizable from many of its beautiful treatments in art. In Edward Burne-Jones' series of paintings, Pygmalion is attractive and noble. He refrains from touching his statue as if she were real, even though his heart is moved by her. While he's out, Venus rewards him by bringing the marble girl to life, and we leave her innocent and awkward while her handsome young creator kneels before her, kissing her hands and averting his eyes from her exposed body. In Ovid, meanwhile, Pygmalion was in the habit of molesting the statue and only noticed she had come to life because the cold marble body he was groping had suddenly turned warm and started to move. Well then. So do I recommend this book? It can be disturbing and revolting in equal measure, not to mention features nine hundred characters too many and having no continuity no matter how hard the writer tries to force it. Yet it's been a well of inspiration throughout the ages for art (Bernini to Burne-Jones) and literature (Pyramus and Thisbe found their way into A Midsummer Night's Dream , while Rochester borrowed Vertumnus' old lady disguise in Jane Eyre ). For mature readers who love mythology or want a glimpse into ancient Roman psychology, absolutely, go read it. For casual fans, younger readers, and more delicate sensibilities, just read Apollo and Daphne, which is the best story and best writing of the lot. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 21, 2017
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May 05, 2017
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Apr 21, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0670075159
| 9780670075157
| 0670075159
| 3.69
| 34,965
| Aug 30, 2011
| Sep 19, 2011
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it was ok
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EDIT: I decided it really wasn't fair to compare this book with a TV show that came out after it. Also the second book in the series was a big improve
EDIT: I decided it really wasn't fair to compare this book with a TV show that came out after it. Also the second book in the series was a big improvement on this one and made me like it a bit better. Prue McKeel is a twelve-year-old from Portland, tasked with watching her baby brother while their parents spend the day at the craft fair. Prue transports baby Mac in the little red wagon hitched to her bicycle, and the infant is carried off by crows. Prue follows the crows into the woods, right to the edge of a fantastic waste called the Impassable Wilderness, where no one is supposed to go. But Prue wants to rescue her brother, so after conning her parents with a lump of blanket shaped like a baby - the most transparent trick baby since Kronos swallowed the stone he mistook for Zeus - she bikes away the next morning, into the woods. She is accompanied by her classmate, Curtis, a nerd with a fairly obvious crush on her, though why he likes her is anyone's guess. In the woods, they are quickly confronted by bipedal, clothed, musket-toting, talking coyotes, who attack them. Prue escapes but Curtis is captured. Curtis is taken to the Dowager Governess, who reigns over the coyotes. She plies him with blackberry wine and adopts him as a son instantly, drafting him into the war she wages against the bandits of the wood. [image] Prue, meanwhile, meets a friendly mailman and gets shipped to the Governor's mansion in a more civilized part of the Wood, where she has a friendly chat with a giant talking owl who promptly gets arrested. While on the run from a similar fate she falls in with the bandits, who take her to see the mystics, so they can stop the Governess - who of course was the brains behind kidnapping the baby - from sacrificing the infant to an invasive vampire plant, which once fed on human blood will destroy the entire Wildwood. I had to keep a running list of all the things that this book stole from, or at least reminded me of: - The Chronicles of Narnia, especially The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Silver Chair, and Prince Caspian . Things stolen: talking beasts, evil sorceress who preys on the insecurities of young boys, blood sacrifice on a stone ruin, heroine followed into the forest by annoying boy from school, trees that turn the tide of the battle. - The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. Things stolen: kidnapped baby brother, prepubescent heroine on quest, evil queen who stole the baby, fantasy Scotsmen who steal things. -Labyrinth. Things stolen: kidnapped baby brother, heroine on quest, sorcerer who kidnapped the baby, talking animals, cowardly but ultimately helpful old man. - The Trolls by Polly Horvath. Things that overlap: Pacific Northwest setting, little brother lost in woods, possibly haunted woods. - James Cameron's Avatar. Things stolen: Governing body that has to sit around a semi-sentient tree and meditate before deciding anything. Much environmentalist pontificating that detracts from the story. - The Lord of the Rings . Things stolen: "The Eagles are coming! The Eagles are coming!" Also, Prue lifts a line from Aragorn at one point. - Macbeth . Things stolen: the trees at the end. Although those could just have easily come from LOTR or Narnia. Needless to say, that's both a long list and a mostly good one. Unfortunately, while Meloy imitated the superficial trappings of these works, their spirit evaded him. C.S. Lewis might be one of the best writers the English language ever produced, with his immaculate sentence structure, his evocative imagery, his professorial fourth-wall breaks, his barely-described but internally consistent characters, and his vast knowledge and love of mythology and Scripture that holds up the structures of his own stories. The Narnia books especially are shaped by the horrors of WWII. Conversely, Wildwood's prose, while literate, is swollen with too many words, many of which can be found nowhere but in a thesaurus. The characters are inconsistent and remote, and there is no deeper meaning underneath. No Aslan emerges to give his life for the kids and the wood. This is not the stuff that epics are made of, and it saps the final conflict of the punch it was meant to have. Edmund Pevensie never forgets that he made the war worse by going to the Witch, and that his actions under her influence brought about the death of Aslan. He grows into a “quieter, graver man” than his brother Peter, humble and of sound judgment. Curtis Mehlberg arguably causes more damage to Wildwood than Edmund did to Narnia – taking lots of bandits out with a cannon – but neither he nor anyone else seems to remember this. At the end of the book, he unironically says “We lost a lot of bandits in this war,” as if he had nothing to do with that. [image] Pratchett's writing style was in the same great British tradition as that of Lewis, and Tiffany Aching is one of the finest heroines YA offers. She's spunky without being aggressive, brilliant without being a know-it-all, no-nonsense but never mean. She squares off with a faerie queen, but unlike the Dowager, the Queen just wants a baby for company; Wentworth will probably be neglected once the capricious Queen gets bored of being a mom, but no one is going to murder the child. You know, because infanticide doesn’t really belong in a light-hearted middle-grade adventure. Compared to Tiffany, Prue is negative space, a girl-shaped cardboard cut-out in hipster clothes. We are told at the beginning of the story that she draws birds, listens to vinyl, does yoga, is a vegetarian, likes lattes, and is finicky about her jeans—I’m sorry, her Levi’s—being the exact right shade of indigo. Meloy thinks these are character traits. Also, the Nac Mac Feegle could wipe the floor with the Wildwood Bandits any day. “Ye take the high road an’ I’ll take yer wallet!” The Trolls, Labyrinth, WFM and (to a lesser extent) LWW all show an older sibling learning to value an annoying younger one when the younger one is imperiled: Sally, John and Edward to Robby; Sarah to Toby; Tiffany to Wentworth; Peter to Edmund (developed more in the movie than the book). This theme is absent in Wildwood. Yet Prue isn’t particularly tender with little Mac either. The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference… The comparison to Labyrinth doesn’t hold up beyond the superficial similarities of the plot. Prue is a child, comfortably ensconced in her upper-class hipster existence; Sarah is in her mid-teens, anxious about growing up, angry at her parents for divorcing, and stuck in an affluent but apparently loveless home. Jareth has nothing in common with Alexandra beyond being a magician, and he forms an interesting contrast with both her and Pratchett’s Faerie Queen in his treatment of the stolen child. The Goblin King is a great babysitter and a lousy tyrant: most Labyrinth-dwellers might not even know who their King is, whether they have a king, or what is a king. He never bothers them, preferring to lounge on his throne or stalk Sarah in owl form. Labyrinth is not actually a kids’ adventure story, but a gothic semi-romance following the Hades/Persephone template that, for reasons best known to itself, features singing goblin muppets. [image] I can’t be certain if Meloy “borrowed from” The Trolls since that book is not exactly well-known. Which is a shame, because there aren’t that many books I read in second grade that I remember now and am still stunned by how good they were. The novel is episodic and remarkably short, surreal and sometimes hilarious but ultimately somber. Unlike the other works on this list, this one might not technically be a fantasy, since one is never sure whether or not the titular Trolls are literally real, or the semi-hallucinatory manifestation of human envy and greed. At 135 pages, you can fit four Trolls inside Wildwood. The stuff borrowed from Avatar is but the culmination of a problem that runs throughout the book: Meloy’s modern, affluent perspective screaming its presence at inopportune intervals and ruining the illusion of timelessness that he’s trying to create. Of the works we discussed above, Narnia and Labyrinth take place in their present days or not long before (the 1940s and 80s, respectively), while Trolls has a present (1999) frame story with flashbacks to the 70s-80s where most of the action occurs. (This doesn’t apply to WFM, which takes place entirely in an imaginary setting that satirizes high fantasy and steampunk in equal measure). But while Lewis uses the vernacular of the time, he never references sports, big band jazz, or popular movies—he doesn’t even mention WWII all that much. Henson and Co. make their heroine deliberately untrendy, with her long straight hair, baggy hippie clothes, and preference for reading and solitude; the male lead’s anime hair, flouncy shirts and slim-fitting leggings are admittedly more dated, but he’s more of a throwback to his actor’s 70s glam rock days than a true 80s hair-metal bodice-ripper pretty boy. Trolls, likewise, has only a scant handful of grounding references and the present age of the main character to date it by. My point is, the hipster pablum spouted by Prue, Curtis, and occasionally even the narrator is going to age this book terribly. It’s as annoying as Cassandra Clare trying to show off her knowledge of urban teen subcultures and looking like that one friend’s mom who tries way too hard to be her child’s “friend”; it’s like Rick Riordan referencing Hillary Duff in The Lightning Thief or writing a thinly-veiled fictional version of Gerard Butler into The Lost Hero . Scholastic has to reissue the Animorphs series every five years or so to update the pop culture references. Returning to Wildwood, Meloy’s insertions have a political tang to them largely absent in Clare, Riordan and Applegate, which makes them doubly annoying. When Prue rudely snaps at her mother “I’m a vegetarian; ergo, no bacon” (pg. 2), the narrator seems to find her justified, and to share her belief that meat is yucky. I have absolutely nothing against hipsters or vegetarians, but the snobbery in this particular book bugs me. Eat whatever you want, but don't look down your nose at people with different diets. Later comments about expensive jeans, yoga, and vinyl records raise the question: Do any actual kids care that much about these things, or is this hipster adult projection? For someone who comes so dangerously close to plagiarizing Lewis, you’d think Meloy would’ve noticed that the only Narnia character who sounds anything like his two protagonists is one Eustace Clarence Scrubb; in fact, Curtis’ explanation of his pacifist beliefs (pg. 101) is mighty similar to Eustace trying to whine his way out of a duel with Reepicheep in Chapter II of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader . The thing about Eustace - who when we first meet him enjoys reading about grain elevators, has an absurd amount of faith in the British government, and regularly ingests something called Plumptree’s Vitaminized Nerve Food – is that he’s meant to be an idiot. After a traumatic experience, he becomes a dramatically different kid. Funny how the many scary things that happen to Prue and Curtis never stick to them. In short, if you want your MCs to be likeable, pre-dragoned Eustace is the last person you want them to sound like. I haven’t even gotten to the supporting characters, so let’s hear a bit about them now: -Brendan the Bandit King: the leader of a ragtag band who live in the wood and terrorize merchant wagons. I like him well enough, but he's not developed much. -Iphigenia the Mystic: an old magic woman who does old magic woman things. She is the chief priestess tending the Avatar tree that tells the Wildwood mystics what to do. She can also talk to plants—in a memorable scene towards the end, she convinces a great mass of blackberry plants to move off the road for the bandits and militia. The soldiers stand around for half an hour waiting for her to finish this instead of simply cutting the plants down with the many sharp implements at hand. They had precious little time to reach the place where the Dowager intended to kill Mac, but Goddess forbid they trample some plants. -Owl Rex: a giant Great Horned Owl, who stands as tall as Prue, Owl Rex is the Crown Prince of the Avian Principality. He is the rightful ruler of the Wildwood’s birds, but the crows broke away from him to serve the Dowager instead. Easily the second least offensive character in the ensemble, Owl is arrested shortly after being introduced and then disappears for three hundred pages. -Richard: a cowardly but ultimately kind and helpful old man who drives an arcane mail van through the North Wildwood. He becomes friends with Prue, calling to mind both Tumnus from LWW and Hoggle from Labyrinth. Note that both of those characters betrayed (or almost betrayed) their young female friends, and were forgiven, but forgiveness is a theme and Meloy doesn’t like those. So, no fall from grace and mini redemption arc for you, Richard! [image] [image] -Governor Lars Svik: a weaselly, ineffective leader, whom we know is weaselly and ineffective because the narrator and the characters often tell us so, although there remains no evidence that Svik is any more incompetent than the average soulless bureaucrat. His secretary, Roger, gives strong Wormtongue vibes. I suppose Roger shows up in a sequel, because while teased as sinister, he does nothing here. -Septimus the Rat: the only character in the group that I can truly say I liked, Septimus lives in the Dowager’s dungeon, befriends Curtis once the latter turns against Alexandra and is imprisoned, and helps the boy, the bandits, and Dmitri the turncoat coyote escape. Septimus is cool because he actually seems like a rat, rather than a human in a rat’s body. He’s sneaky, always hungry, and his scope of comprehension rarely goes beyond what he wants to eat at the moment. His line, “It feels good on my teeth,” becomes a running gag. -Dmitri the coyote: No development at all. He used to work for the Dowager, now he doesn’t, no personality. All the coyotes have Russian names, and Alexandra and her late son Alexei are probably named after the last Tsarina and her son. -Alexandra, the Dowager Governess: could have been a strong villain given a little development. Her tragic backstory is easily the best part of the book. Perhaps a novel targeting older readers and focusing on the clockwork boy and his crazy mother would have yielded better results for Meloy. I wouldn’t even mind reading the sequels if this plot thread reemerges and becomes important. But I have no particular hope for that. As is, Alexandra is scary but can’t hold an icicle to her obvious inspiration—Jadis, one of the most terrifying villains in fantasy when you tally her list of crimes and their magnitude. I’m also not sure how I feel about the white, redheaded Alexandra affecting the costume of a stereotypical “squaw.” You would think that a writer as PC as Meloy would consider this “cultural appropriation” or at least a bit too close to the romanticized “white savage” trope. [image] I’ll close with a few quick points. 1) I have never used the word “similar” so frequently in a review. Wildwood uses its literary tradition for a crutch, even if it looks down its nose at its predecessors. 2) Each of the books/films/TV shows I compared it to has an underlying archetype from mythology or the Bible, that inform its symbolism and ultimate meaning: • LWW: The Passion and Resurrection of Christ • Labyrinth: Hades and Persephone • WFM: Just a changeling myth, but Hades and Persephone and Orpheus and Eurydice figure into its second sequel, Wintersmith • Over the Garden Wall (see below): The Divine Comedy • Trolls: Joseph and His Brothers Let the reader take note that those four old stories have a fair amount of shared imagery: seasonal change, characters entering caves or falling down holes, journeys into the underworld, prophecy, separation from and reunion with family, forgiveness. Most importantly they involve death, real or perceived, and resurrection. Wildwood really ought to follow along these lines, but doesn’t. If you like Americana fantasy and/or folk art, watch Over the Garden Wall instead. This Cartoon Network miniseries features emotional depth, character growth, flashes of great dialogue (“My name is Greg” “Hi Greg, I’m Beatrice” “My brother’s name is Wirt” “Who cares?”) actual suspense, symbolism, a world you can really wander in, and economic, well-paced storytelling. When a 110-minute, episodic cartoon with musical numbers is better at basic storytelling than a 541-page, third-person past-tense novel—let alone this much better—a) that cartoon is inspired, and b) something’s really wrong with that book. [image] Read The Trolls. Read The Wee Free Men. Check out Labyrinth. And if by some crazy circumstance you still haven’t visited Narnia, get yourself those books as soon as you can. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 31, 2017
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Aug 08, 2017
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Apr 20, 2017
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.81
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liked it
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Sep 04, 2019
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Jul 29, 2019
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| 4.06
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really liked it
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Jan 03, 2019
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Dec 10, 2018
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| 4.20
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liked it
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Aug 06, 2018
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Jun 20, 2018
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| 4.05
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really liked it
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Jun 13, 2018
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May 23, 2018
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| 4.18
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liked it
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Jun 19, 2018
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May 23, 2018
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|||||
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| 4.03
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it was ok
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Jun 13, 2018
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May 23, 2018
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| 3.87
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it was ok
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Apr 19, 2018
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Apr 18, 2018
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| 3.78
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it was amazing
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May 29, 2018
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Apr 02, 2018
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| 4.12
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liked it
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Mar 18, 2018
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Mar 11, 2018
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| 3.75
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liked it
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May 31, 2018
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Jan 30, 2018
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| 3.98
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liked it
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May 08, 2018
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Jan 22, 2018
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| 4.17
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liked it
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Feb 14, 2018
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Jan 18, 2018
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| 3.98
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really liked it
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Jan 17, 2019
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Jan 03, 2018
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|||||
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| 3.90
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really liked it
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Dec 20, 2017
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Dec 20, 2017
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| 3.89
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really liked it
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Nov 14, 2018
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Dec 04, 2017
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| 3.97
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it was amazing
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Jan 07, 2018
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Jul 30, 2017
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| 3.95
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liked it
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Jul 31, 2017
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Jul 17, 2017
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| 3.65
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really liked it
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Jul 05, 2018
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Jun 15, 2017
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| 4.09
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May 05, 2017
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Apr 21, 2017
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| 3.69
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it was ok
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Aug 08, 2017
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Apr 20, 2017
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