The Fickle Hand of Fate

I'm back! Plus, Grease Monkey by Tim Eldred

2010-08-14T19:32:00.001-07:00

Hi guys! I disappeared for three months, and in all probability you've all forgotten that I exist! Sorry! Basically, my computer died for a while, and then I was in the throes of summer college and I just wasn't up for it. I didn't read any blog posts during the time I was gone either, so I'll be catching up for a long time. But I'm back, and I read some awesome books while I was gone!

Grease Monkey was one of those awesome books. It's a black-and-white science fiction graphic novel about a space station in a future where an awful lot of humans have been exterminated by aliens. Benevolent aliens came along and helpfully lifted gorillas up to the level of humans, so that the world wouldn't be too underpopulated to survive. Now, the gorillas and humans who populate the space station are in constant preparation, just in case the bad aliens come back. The book follows Robin Plotnik, a new cadet, as he assists Mac Gimbensky, the gorilla on the cover who happens to be the mechanic for the best squadron of fighter pilots on the station, the all-female Barbarians.

That's all just the set-up, though. What you get when you read this is the experience of living on that space station, with those people. It's not a sweeping space-military war epic. It's not a "how disturbing could I possibly make these aliens?" story, or an "in the future we all have weird sex every second of every day" story. It's not a "realistic" story wherein unlikeable people make stupid mistakes and just live with it. It's about real people having normal everyday problems, and TOTALLY COMING OUT ON TOP. It's awesome!

Like I said, it's not a sweeping epic. It's written in vignettes, for the most part, and that's where the day-in-the-life feel comes from. It's lots of days in their lives, and their lives are way funnier and more awesome than mine. It's a rich, complete story, it tries to make you think, and it's intense sometimes, but it's not trying to shock you or impress you with how trendy it is. You can read it in tiny little sips, one vignette at a time, and enjoy it, but it's the kind of book you just WANT to read, because when you're reading it, you're happy.

Since it's a graphic novel, a word on the art: Fantastic. Very clean and crisp and fun to look at, a pleasure to look at. There's no trouble telling which characters are which or what's going on in the panel, and a big spread will take your breath away. It really will.

You can read the ongoing sequel at the Grease Monkey site, as well as find all kinds of art, suggestions for further reading, and other cool stuff. I say once again: Awesome.

I've got loads of books to post about and plenty of spare time, so I'm hopefully back on a weekly schedule now. I hope y'all will bear with me as I get back into the swing of things.

Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

2010-05-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

Many and profuse thanks to my buddy Bookmonkey for recommending this totally awesome series way back whenever he did. It was months ago. Check out his blog, there's a lot of awesomeness over there.

Night Watch is kind of the Russian version of The Dresden Files, but better. (Please don't kill me, Dresden fans. He's awesome too.) It follows Anton Gorodetsky's life as a low-level operative of the Night Watch, the organization of good-guy magic-users devoted to foiling the plots of the Day Watch, the bad guys. They have a careful truce set up, so that for every good deed THEY do, the bad guys get to do one EVIL deed, and vice versa.

So, they don't do all that much good. What makes them the good guys, again?

That's what the book is about. It's totally frikkin awesome. There's some navel-staring toward the end, but for the most part it's action, magic, chase scenes, and murders! It's divided up into three separate parts with some time in between each one, so we get an overview of a slightly bigger picture, three major events happening in sequence. We see some of the consequences of actions further down the road that we (or I, at least) never saw coming. It's like life, like that.

In a book with a theme like this, you expect to get a lot of Dark, Broody, Controversial characters (i.e. characters with no redeeming qualities whatsoever), and there is some of that, but I really like these characters and I like how all of them have legitimate reasons for their actions. Not just excuses or "I have to have motivation for my villains" reasons, REAL reasons. Of course, Anton is my favorite, and in no small part because he's one of the few characters who doesn't want to take part in the dance and the compromises, who doesn't just assume things are they way they should be because someone else tells him they are.

This is a book about subtlety. And it's about plots, and intrigue, and mysteries. And also about hurling fireballs. And a note on the translation: Absolutely flawless. I never would've guessed that it was originally in Russian, there's no awkwardness at all, and the writing isn't only competent, it's amazing.

Really, there wasn't a thing about it that I didn't love. There are three sequels, which I'll be reading as soon as possible: Day Watch, Twilight Watch, and Last Watch.

Buy Night Watch

Captivate by Carrie Jones

2010-05-06T20:31:00.000-07:00

Last year, I reviewed Need by Carrie Jones. In that review I said that I enjoyed the book and the basics were excellent, but it was a Twilight read-alike, the execution was shaky, and it wasn't entirely satisfying. I said I hoped she'd write a sequel, because she could make it so much better. This is that sequel. Is it as awesome as I'd hoped? Read and find out. (Sorry guys, it's a pretty long review. I didn't do it on purpose.)

First, Captivate a lot more coherent and solid than the first book, for the most part. It starts to look at the ramifications of the first book and the consequences for the characters' actions, (mostly Zara's,) so you should definitely read the first book first for it to make sense. There's more fantasy, with the odd inclusion of Norse mythology this time around. I love Norse mythology, and it could be a really interesting choice, but I think she's getting in over her characters' heads with Ragnarok.

A note on the pixies. That example for it not being Twilight is out the window, because these are vampires. 1) They drink blood. 2) A pixie's kiss can turn you into a pixie. 3) They can't enter a home uninvited. 4) They're arranged like vampires tend to be, in coven sorts of things under a king or lord. (Or Sheriff, or what-have-you.) 5) They glitter. Aside from the glitter, they're more like vampires than the Twilight vamps are. Need I go on? (Pun!)

Speaking of pixies and Ragnarok: There are plenty of people (like, say, ME) who would be overjoyed to discover a supernatural world, even if it was realistic. (i.e. There are villains, people still die, etc.) There are also characters (less common than I'd like) who are capable of dealing with that kind of supernatural world when they find it. I can only wish that Zara was one of those characters. It's not that she's a waste of space or something, she's a fully-rounded character and I like that, but she's just not mature enough to be dealing with this kind of thing with so little guidance. She goes on and on about "most people don't know about this dark underbelly," but she really doesn't know a thing. She thinks she can take on vicious pixies by herself with a sword, but, as she promptly finds out, she has no idea how to fight (with a sword or without.) And she doesn't have the life experience she needs to make balanced decisions.

(minor spoilers await)

Case in point. Around the halfway mark of the book, something happens to her boyfriend. Instead of, say, being upset that her boyfriend of some three months is gone now, she compromises one of her most integral principles in her despair, then resolves to become the one thing neither she nor her boyfriend wanted her to be, in the name of saving him from something he'd probably WANT in the first place, even though she has no plan for saving him and other people are volunteering who are far more capable of succeeding. She totally derails her life in the name of saving him by herself. Guys, he's not that motivating. He's kind of oafish and bloodthirsty, and while he does genuinely care about Zara, she's obviously not the most important thing in his life, and he never listens to a word she says. Maybe if they'd been together longer and forged more of a relationship, sure, but this kind of reaction after three months of a relationship built on making out is simply not healthy. This is what therapists are for, Zara.

I do approve of the direction in which Zara has derailed her life, but I'd rather she went off and did that rather than making it all about some guy with little or no personality. And the derailing is the ENTIRE second half of the book! It doesn't end in a cliffhanger so much as she ran out of space and stopped between chapters. I might even have believed it more if it was in the heat of the moment, but it wasn't. It was almost 150 pages of Zara being too dumb to live. Does this remind y'all of something? Say, the second book in a certain famous series? (I do give props to Jones for not being afraid of drastic changes, though. I think if you're going to bring up an idea you should go all the way with it, and she does.)

So yes, it is better than the first book, but not by as wide a margin as I would have hoped. It IS better than Twilight though, the plot is way more interesting and the characters have much more depth. Despite all that ranting I just did, for the most part I enjoyed it, and there are some very interesting new developments and characters. I'll still pick up the third book, and hope Zara matures a bit during it.

The series I reviewed two weeks ago, Soul Screamers, is actually really similar, but Soul Screamers succeeds in all the places where Need flags.

I am aware that authors google themselves. To Ms. Jones, should she happen by:

Hello! I just totally dissed your book, and I feel really bad about it. Please don't think I hate your guts. I'm just the sort of person who obsesses about flaws, you know? The point is that I have read your book, and I cared enough about the characters to be this frustrated. I enjoyed the book, I think you have some great ideas, and your characters are awesome. I hope this review brings you business, and I can't wait to read your next book. -Fate

Buy Captivate

Shades of Green by Rhonda Parrish

2010-04-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

So, I'm a little shy today, because I got this book for review from the author, so it's a fair bet she's going to be reading the review shortly. Of course I'll be my usual honest, nitpicky self, not to worry. I was afraid I was going to have to be scathingly rude and snipey, but I'm shy because I liked it, so I'm a bit giggly, and I'm shy because I'm still going to be nitpicky right in her face. Am I allowed to criticize when she's published and I'm not? I'm going with a resounding "yes." This entire blog is me criticizing published authors, so I think my opinion on that should be obvious. But that's probably an essay of it's own.

Anyway, the book. It's a novelette, which means it could be considered a very short novel, but it has the structure and scope of a short story. It's about the a girl who is the last swamp elf in the world and lives with the big lizard people (the Reptar) who hate her guts. She meets a human, falls in love with him, and has to choose between him and causing the destruction of the entire Reptar race.

First, the sniping. There are a lot of what I consider simple mistakes in the first ten or fifteen pages: "as you know, Bob," fantasy names that sound made up, etc. There just seem to be too many words on the pages, when those sentences could be much more streamlined and get to the point a lot faster. I don't want to have to sit and decipher oddly phrased sentences when we could be getting on with the plot. I also think the Reptar are too human--just humans wearing crocodile suits, really. I would expect a reptilian culture to be noticeably different from a primate culture, just for starters. They wouldn't build things the same way. But that was less important as the story went on.

After about twenty pages, I was far too interested to continue making notes. Rhonda's strength definitely looks to be in the area of plotting, (Twists! Reversals! A totally unexpected ending, but still a square peg in a square hole!) and worldbuilding to a slightly lesser extent. A lot of it is pretty standard fantasy fare; some of it is fascinating. The Reptars have a post-technological society centered around a magic stone that seems to be alive in some way. It kind of creeped me out, but it's supposed to be benevolent. I'm terribly curious. It reminds me of Interstellar Pig, and oh, how I love Interstellar Pig...! Also, I thought the romance was done really well. It rang true.

You can read the first chapter at Rhonda Parrish's site, as well as see a bigger picture of the cover. (I'm not crazy about most of it, to be honest, but I love the Reptar in the background and you can't see his teeth in my little picture.) Keep in mind that it gets much better than the first chapter, after the plot picks up. If you like it, you can buy it here, or go here to browse her other work. (More stories set in this 'verse, surely?)

Soul Screamers series by Rachel Vincent

2010-04-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

Kaylee screams when people are about to die. Her "panic attacks" have already landed her in the hospital once, so she doesn't want to tell anybody now, but if she really can predict deaths, what is she supposed to do about it?

These really remind me of something I might have written when I was a tween. "Girl discovers she has special powers and joins the awesome secret society of other people with special powers, at least one of whom is a hot boy" kind of thing. Not terribly original, but here at least, really good. Fair warning: I'm going to swear in a paragraph or two.

My Soul to Take, the first book of the series, is mostly about introducing you to Kaylee, her friends and family including boyfriend Nash, and the world she lives in. The characters are all good (all of them are more than they let on in the beginning), especially Kaylee. She's got a great mixture of personality traits, so it's hard to sum her up in one or two keywords. She's self-conscious, but doesn't have an inferiority complex, tempestuous but not exhausting, sometimes kind of an idiot but only when she's really upset, and sometimes selfish but always trying to help. The story is half mystery and half romance (published by Harlequin Teen, here) and it just has that indefinable something that draws you in and makes you care.

I was worried that the second book, My Soul to Save, would be mostly teen wangst and relationship issues. That it wouldn't deliver on the fascinating ideas and potential the series was offering But not to worry: Save takes everything that was good about the first book and makes it TOTALLY AWESOME. We know who Kaylee is now, we know what she's capable of, so now we go and do some shit. Trips to the Netherworld! Showdowns with demons! Fame and fortune! And of course, relationship issues, but these weren't boring or wangsty. This was one of the best treatments of teen romance I've seen; passionate, but uncertain.

Vincent has succeeded in doing the one thing that every urban fantasy writer wants to do: She created a supernatural world and made me really believe it was there, totally alien, but right next to me. Kaylee has matured already, she's brave, she's smart, and she strong. I could totally see her as the heroine of an adult urban fantasy series (like Anita Blake or Harry Dresden) in ten or twenty years. It helps that I'm convinced Nash is evil, and that would be great backstory after the fact. (I have no evidence for this belief, he seems perfectly nice, but there's something he's not saying. Such as "I'm a serial killer" or "I'm a hellbeast in disguise" or something interesting like that.)

The third book (My Soul to Keep) comes out in June, and if you have a Kindle there's a prequel story called My Soul to Lose that you can order. Somebody please read this series and come theorize (and spaz) with me! Some similar books I'd recommend are Sucks to Be Me by Kimberly Pauley (review here) and Need by Carrie Jones (review here.)

Buy the series

Gladiatrix by Russel Whitfield

2010-04-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

Some other reviews led me to believe I was going to hate this and deride it mercilessly for being utter crap, but I don't and won't. I kind of loved it, and I'll tell you why.

It's not because of the historical accuracy. That obviously wasn't a concern here. The story was based on one image, and focused on what might have happened to achieve a moment like that. This is a highly stylized, highly fetishized, highly modern-opinion-ized version of Rome.

It wasn't because the heroine was likeable, because she wasn't. There's not anything likeable about her at all, really, except maybe her perseverance. But she's interesting. I'm not asked to like her, only to understand her.

It was because this is a really great pulp action novel. Blood, sex, violence, exotic locations, intrigue. The writing flows well and isn't too stylized or self-aware, and it's no chore to read. It's not a timeless work of literature or one of my favorite books, but it'll only take one afternoon to read. Embrace the glorious VIGOR of it, the intensity that's so serious as to be a bit silly. It's liberating. It's the perfect vacation book, whether you're on vacation or not. A bucket of popcorn wouldn't be amiss, either.

It sort of reminded me of Mara, Daughter of the Nile... Mara is a cut above, though, better history and focused on absolutely delicious intrigue.

Buy Gladiatrix

Breathers: A Zombie's Lament by S.G. Browne

2010-03-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

Andy is a zombie, in a world where zombies are well-known but not accepted. He still has all of his faculties intact, but he is dead and decaying, and zombies are second-class citizens if they're citizens at all.

This is a really interesting zombie book, thoughtful, quirky, original, and gross, on every page. It's written in that modern men's Nick Hornby fiction style, which I don't always like, but in this case it makes the story very clear and accessible. It's easy to start reading, and hard to put down. (The book design has a lot to do with that too... Great cover and overall design, the physical act of reading was pleasurable.)

But, lest you think it's all whining and introspection, let's not forget Andy's new friend Ray and that tasty, er, venison, he's been serving.

I'm not sure I'd say I "liked" the characters, plot, etc., but it was definitely worth reading. There are two conflicting ideas coming from the text and I'm not sure which one is the intended (or even unintentional) Aesop. Are zombies just people like us, or are they total monsters that need to be killed for our own protection?

I hate the ending a little bit, but it's not out of the blue, and it certainly isn't disappointing. Browne doesn't rely on his premise to carry the book, he definitely puts in the effort and writes the whole way through, which I think is fantastic.

World War Z (reviewed last week) was the book that piqued my interest in zombies, and is without compare for zombies on a global scale, like Breathers is for the personal scale. Breathers also reminded me of The Reformed Vampire Support Group (reviewed last August), although RVSG is firmly YA and Breathers is firmly adult. Browne also has an (unrelated) new book called Fated coming out in November, and I'm super excited.

World War Z by Max Brooks

2010-03-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

I heard a lot about this one on the interwebs a while (like, months) ago, and apparently put it on my automatic holds list at the library because, lo and behold, when I wasn't thinking about it at all, there it was. I then proceeded to dawdle over it for more months, piddle around with the first chapters for three or four days, and then down the entire thing in an afternoon.

World War Z is composed of interviews with/statements made by various survivors of the zombie apocalypse. The research that must have gone into this is mindblowing, because it really has a worldwide scope. There are interviews with soldiers from all over the world, civilians, doctors, everyone, through the whole course of the war. Max Brooks must know everything about everything by now.

There are a few recurring names, but no "main characters," and the book benefits from that immeasurably. This isn't "small group gets trapped in Sav-A-Lot with zombies outside," or "young soldier gets caught up in a zombie war," or what-have-you. It's ALL of those. It's kind of an immersive experience, terrifying in its realism. Everyone's affected, and there's nowhere to run.

I was impressed with the range of human behavior included in the book. There were brave people, cowards, good leaders, bad leaders, greedy jerks (to put it tactfully), and selfless heroes. That tends to tell me Mr. Brooks was actually writing a story, not a pamphlet for some agenda, which is always a danger in any book that deals with politics.

World War Z is thorough, gripping, realistic, intense, and a resounding success. Not to mention the words that are rapidly becoming the highest praise I can give a book: well-written.

Buy World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

The Zorgamazoo Audiobook!

2010-03-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's not out yet. Hasn't even been made yet. But, guess what I just heard from Robert Paul Weston's blog? Alan Cumming is going to be the voice! Alan Cumming! THIS IS AWESOME AND I CANNOT WAIT!

For the uninitiated, Zorgamazoo is one of my absolute favorite books. I reviewed it here, and here's my interview with Mr. Weston, the author.

Demonkeeper by Royce Buckingham

2010-03-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

No review last week because I was sick. It was not awesome.

And I know awesome, because Demonkeeper is awesome. Just look at the puppy eyes the blue demon on the cover is giving you. Go ahead, I'll wait while you wibble.

Nathaniel Grimlock is a 15-year-old Demonkeeper, who is left on his own in a house full of demons when the older, fully trained Demonkeeper dies. It's now his job to keep the demons contained and cared for. Luckily the demons are friendly (if a little destructive)... Except for one. Guess which one escapes?

This quick-paced (but fully developed) horror for tweens. Bruce Coville blurbed it, and that's fitting because Royce Buckingham is on par with him in this book. I don't say that often. I don't know how Demonkeeper can be so terrifying, and yet so unbelievably cute! When I say "terrifying," I mean tween-suitable "AAAAAAH!" and "eeew gross!" and when I say "cute," I mean so adorable your brain might just explode. The book was like a breath of fresh air in the midst of a pile of bigger books that, while also awesome, were emotionally draining and/or a trial of my stamina.

The other main character, Sandra Nertz, isn't quite as adorable as Nat or his minions, but she is fun. She's a junior assistant librarian!

Obviously, I loved it. Buckingham's other book is called Goblins!: An UnderEarth Adventure, and I'm looking forward to reading that... Other books I recommend are Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy (review here) and anything by Bruce Coville, especially Goblins in the Castle.

Buy Demonkeeper

The Masterplan by Scott Mills

2010-03-01T22:17:00.000-08:00

The Masterplan is an indie sci-fi graphic novel coming to you from Top Shelf Productions, which you might have heard of. They've also published several books by Alan Moore, the Owly series by Andy Runton (LOVE), Tales from the Farm by Jeff Lemire, and a bunch of other stuff that I haven't read. Just judging by the ones I have read, Top Shelf only publishes works of stunning genius. I could be wrong.

Anyway, The Masterplan. A brilliant scientist drags his ex-wife and his brother along on a mission designed to keep the universe from expanding too far (gazillions of years in the future, when that might be a problem.)

This isn't a traditiional graphic novel... It reminds me of a webcomic more than anything else, except not designed to be read one strip at a time. The art is in black and white and minimalist, with the characters mostly just distinguishing characteristics with a hint of background behind them. It makes the reading really smooth, and it feels sort of wistful and pure. It suits the story.

This is a pure kind of sci-fi, very much about ideas and science and an intergalactic, universal scope. It's not science-y, it's very easy to understand and I don't know how accurate any of the theories might be, but it is about science. It's also about those three characters I mentioned, but it's not like we have to know every detail about them. We know how they feel. It's about travelling all over time and space, meeting aliens, robots, themselves, and other awesomeness, but its also touching and sad in a way that's hard to describe. Wistful.

This is a great book and I highly recommend it. It's hard to describe, but it's an experience I really enjoyed. You'll want to have a few hours to yourself and just sit down and read it all the way through, and then sit there staring at the cover for a while before you move on. (If you ever do.)

Buy The Masterplan

Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey

2010-02-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

Intro

I'm aware that my posts have been erratic for a while. We're hopefully back on a weekly, weekend post schedule now.

Way back in September I gushed about The Fire Rose and how much fun it was. I mentioned that it was the first of a series. Well, I finally finished the rest of them, and instead of taking up five more reviews I'm doing them all at once. It's a little on the long side, just to warn you.

The Fire Rose (awesome!) was written in 1994. Then, in 2001, Lackey started the Elemental Masters series, which is the same series, but without The Fire Rose listed as number one. So... I have no idea what's up with that, but at any rate, each book retells a classic fairy tale, but set in the 1800s (I think) in England, and centered around various elemental magicians. Some characters have cameos in multiple books, but each book stands alone and has a different set of protagonists and villains.

Another warning: Two of these books are awesome, including The Fire Rose. Two of them are enjoyable. Two of them are hideously awful and should never have been published, and I can't believe the same author wrote all six.

The Serpent's Shadow

This is one of the enjoyable ones, a very loose rendition of Snow White. (It's not like Beauty and the Beast, where the recognizable elements ARE the plot. The recognizable elements aren't as significant to the story in Snow White.) It stars a half-Indian lady doctor, Maya, who is also a magician. She was a fantastic, strong woman with anything BUT a stock character profile. She had a unique perspective on things and a pragmatic attitude that I found refreshing. The plot involves a lot of Indian mythology, and that put an interesting light on things without overwhelming the story.

Lackey spends a lot of time ranting about the anti-feminism of the time period, and even though she has a point, it was really frustrating because it's not like I can do anything about it. It was two hundred years ago. Stop ranting at me and tell a story, for Pete's sake!

The Gates of Sleep

Sleeping Beauty! Perhaps the one fairy tale in which the heroine does the absolute LEAST! Surely that'll make a great heroine-centered book, right? Well, no, not really.

The first 120 pages of the book could have been cut and it wouldn't have mattered, because NOTHING happens. The whole thing is a long, boring ramble on the social conditions of the time and how terrible it would have been to be poor back then. Another situation which I am powerless to rectify, and also, not a first act of a story, which, when that annoying interlude is removed from my mind, was still horrible. The first event is a mother's baby being taken away without her even getting a chance to get used to the idea, when that kind of urgency was totally uncalled for, and the next interesting thing that happens (120 pages later) is the same child being taken away from her new parents without being given any inkling of the danger she's headed for.

And, when the curse finally takes effect on the girl, her guardians go into fits. What did you THINK would happen when the woman you've been hiding from this entire time got her hands on the EXACT THING she wanted? HELLO?! The stated reason why they didn't come to rescue her at the beginning was that "as long as we didn't hear anything, we assumed the witch hadn't figured out how to curse her." So, they just waited to hear something. Um, okay.

I didn't really hate the characters, but I didn't like them either. They were all so unremarkable that they might as well not exist at all. I enjoyed the book more than I'm letting on, and the villains were fantastic (and the book was freakishly similar to Hotel Transylvania for some reason). Read it if you're a completionist, love Sleeping Beauty, or just like this series and want to look at some of the intricacies of the magic system Lackey's created, but otherwise you won't miss much if you skip it.

Phoenix and Ashes

Awesome! And yet, I have no idea why. I keep a book journal, and my notes are basically "I love it! I'm enjoying it so much!" for half a page. Fantasy and/or romance fans, definitely read this one.

It's a fairly faithful retelling of Cinderella, but there's a little bit of a role reversal here. The Prince needs saving almost as much as Cinderella does, and to me, she was the strong one in the relationship. Not that I don't like strong men, because I do, and this Prince is no weenie, but there's just something different about this romance. It's not just a marraige of equals, if you'll pardon the pun, but a place where two separate, damaged people come together and make a whole relationship. The Prince isn't the kind of romantic hero that I swoon over, but at the same time I really love and respect him and I can actually cheer on the princess even more, be more invested, because I'm not jealous of her. :)

I think the two things this book has in common with The Fire Rose are 1) the special romance at the heart of it, and 2) how it stays true to the fairy tale, but isn't bound by that fairy tale. The rest of the books either kind of wander off to do their own things or wander WAY off and are just in the same territory. These two fantastic ones take the immortal heart of the story and go from there, rather than taking the trappings and trying to force a new story into them.

The Wizard of London

Skip this one, if you have the power. (I, too, have felt the urge to finish terrible books just because I started them, and to start them just because I've read the rest of the series. I feel your pain, completionists, especially where this book is concerned, and I support you in your coming time of trial.)

This is one of the most mindnumbingly boring books I've ever read, and I've read The Grapes of Wrath. It's based on "The Snow Queen," a very odd and confusing fairy tale to be sure, but that doesn't have anything to do with how boring this book is because the book doesn't seem to have a thing to do with the fairy tale.

What it does have to do with is two special kids in a boarding school and their animal companions. Two sickeningly average special kids in a boarding school and their sickeningly average animal companions. Seriously, the majority of the book is the two little girls doing... Well, not much of anything. It's SO day-in-the-life that MY life was infinitely more interesting, and it took me about three weeks of two or three chapters a day to get through this beast.

I did like the new things Lackey incorporated into the magic system, how it's all very systematic but still complicated, but still a lot of elements just seemed stuck in there to take up space. I also liked how sensible the characters (mostly the kids) were, always telling someone else where they were going and when they'd be back, etc., but at the same time, they keep foiling the villains' plans and the plot never goes anywhere.

SPOILER:

I kid you not, the villain is defeated by two small children overwhelming him with the power of love. Um, okay. END SPOILER.

The one character I liked never stuck around longer than a few pages. (And it's not the woodland spirit you might be thinking of if you've already read it. It's the husband.) The depths that were available were never plumbed. I kept reading hoping it would get better, but it never did. Skip it.

Reserved For the Cat

It's based on "Puss in Boots." You guessed it--talking cats! Woohoo!

I love talking cats!

Anyway, the basic story is that a Russian ballerina comes to England and pretends to be a famous Russian ballerina, at the behest of the talking cat.

This book was fun. It wasn't mindblowing and the writing wasn't magnificent, but I did enjoy it. I had a good time trying to figure out who the prince was going to be (it could have been one of three or four people at one point,) and there were machinations! I also love machinations.

It's pretty standard stuff, so don't let it preempt something awesome on Mt. TBR, but if you love ballerinas, talking cats, and/or machinations...

Conclusion

Surely, if Ms. Lackey can write glowing tomes of happiness, she shouldn't also write (or at least publish) horrible piles of drivel. Or even enjoyably average novels. I just don't get it. But I'll keep reading all her stuff, because I'm pathetically addicted to her glowing tomes of happiness...

Fate's Favorite Superman Books

2010-01-29T18:02:00.000-08:00

I've devoted a not inconsiderable amount of thought to reviewing graphic novels in recent months. I LOVE graphic novels and I read at least one of those to every "normal" book I read, and of course I have plenty of thoughts about them, but I couldn't figure out how best to do reviews. There's not much point in telling you how much I liked Elongated Man #783 (fake example) if you don't know who Elongated Man is and haven't read the preceding 782 issues.

For the moment, I'm going to try to do graphic novels that stand alone and tell a complete story, and I'll probably continue to do more than one at a time when I do them. So, without further ado: Superman!

My three favorite titles, through mild coincidence, have nothing to do with each other but do tell an overall story. All Star Superman by Grant Morrison, Superman: For Tomorrow by Brian Azzarello, and Kingdom Come by Mark Waid.

All Star Superman is the only Grant Morrison title that I have any kind of enjoyment for, but it is AMAZING. We already know the basic story, about how Superman was sent as a baby from the planet Krypton, raised by a good farming couple in Kansas, etc. The Superman story has been told at least a thousand times, and Superman, on average, kind of bores me. All the stories are the same sometimes. But Morrison gets rid of the transitional material, the "story glue," and just shows us the panels that are important to the story. He shows us the heart of Superman, the reasons why we loved the story the first time we heard it. He shows us a naive, innocent man who is able to wield amazing power, and what's more, wield it well. The art is hard to explain, but I really like it. The whole story is contained in two volumes.

Superman: For Tomorrow is another two volume book, set a year after The Vanishing, a moment in which a substantial portion of Earth's population simply disappeared. It's a darker and edgier story, sparely written, and deeply moving. You have to fill in a lot of the story yourself, so it'll bear multiple re-readings. I was really surprised by how well the whole book was done... Azzarello shows us what happens when Superman loses his naivete and finds out the world is more complicated than he thought it was. It breaks his heart a little bit, but it doesn't break HIM. He doesn't lose his idealism. The art captures that story beautifully too... It looks like Superman in all his iconic awesomeness, but it incorporates shadows and uncertainty.

Now, if you've been following me for a while, you know how much I love Kingdom Come. It's one of my favorite graphic novels EVER, but it's also becoming one of my favorite Superman graphic novels. The Kingdom Superman is full of sorrow, and even bitterness, and he isn't perfect, but that doesn't make him any less Superman. He's still trying to do the right thing, and trying to save people. He still knows how to throw a punch and how to fill out spandex. I think Kingdom Come can be thought of almost as the future of For Tomorrow in a way.

I see these three graphic novels as partly a timeline, showing an almost childlike Superman growing up, but also as three kinds of Superman/Superman story. The simple kind, the kind that looks at the darkness, and the kind that goes all the way. Whole, breaking, broken. And the best thing is that all three kinds are about idealism. I love all of them. I love Superman. I love to turn a page and see a big, full-page drawing of Superman flying above all of us who are on the ground, because he's better than us, and he inspires us to be better too. Even when he's not perfect, he's inspiring.

There have been a few other ones I liked (Superman for All Seasons by Jeph Loeb was great, and the Superman: Man of Steel series that started in the eighties is my favorite longterm series) but these are my absolute favorites so far. For those of you who have never read Superman, I envy you the joy of discovering him for the first time, and I recommend Superman for All Seasons and then All Star Superman as a great place to start.

Buy All Star Superman (Volume 2 should be out in paperback at some point.)

Buy Superman: For Tomorrow

Buy Kingdom Come

Reasons by Tracy Fabre

2010-01-19T15:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Stimulating Conversation and StoneGarden.net for this one!

Delphi Brent was seriously injured in a hit-and-run when she was a teenager in Colorado. Ten years later she plans to return to spend the summer with the Laughlins, old friends of her family, only to have her parents reveal that it was the Laughlin boys who were in the car that hit her. She goes anyway, and finds herself falling in love with one of the brothers.

The premise held a strange fascination for me, for no apparent reason, but even being interested in the outcome I found myself skimming a lot of the book. The characters all seemed very similar, and hardly did anything but talk to each other about whatever character happened to be absent. The characters and conversations were very realistic, to the point where their conversations weren't any more interesting than the conversations I could be having in the real world.

I think Tracy Fabre does a little bit more telling (as opposed to showing) than she should. We're told about the characters, but they don't really do very much, and we never get much of an insight into their thoughts or emotions. Kind of like a real conversation, only without even visual cues to give us a hint. The story just kind of meanders slowly to the end, with a few little surprises but no big ones.

Basically, the book was very realistic, so I was bored, which is more of a reflection on me than the book. I do recommend it though, if this is the kind of book you like.. It's got a very calming, Midwest small town atmosphere, and the romance is gentle and not overblown. This would be a nice book to take out to a small town and read out in a field somewhere... Mm...

See Tracy's website for information about her upcoming new release, Sending Rupert Home.

Buy Reasons

I Kill Giants by Joe Kelly & Jim Ken Niimura

2010-01-12T16:44:00.000-08:00

I spent forever trying to work up a review for this book but I'm finally facing facts: This book has to be read to be appreciated, and I cannot do it justice, so this is more of a "short blather" than a review.

Before I read it I had somehow gotten it into my head that it was about a post-apocalyptic little girl with an ax... In case someone else got that impression, it's completely wrong and has nothing to do with this book. This story is about a present-time girl named Barbara, about 12ish I think, who has an ancient Norse hammer in her bag, with which to kill the giants of the title.

This is a sad book. Barbara basically stole my personality from when I was younger, and I think anybody could find a similar element to identify with. It's also a funny book in some places, and an exciting book especially toward the end, and an intense book all the way through. The art is fantastic, nightmarish, disturbing and cute as scenes demand. The design of the book as a whole is fantastic too, I love just holding it.

The story is complete in one book (unfortunately.) I suggest Courtney Crumrin(review here) as something also amazing and of similar content and style, but not the same.

Buy I Kill Giants

The Deep by Claire Nouvian

2010-01-01T19:23:00.000-08:00

I was going to talk about Avatar this week, but I think plenty of people are doing that. Suffice it to say that I didn't love it unconditionally, but I did love it. Among (many) other things, the alien planet really looked alien, and it had a variety of cool animals and creatures populating it.

Which brings me around to The Deep. I'm absolutely terrified by creatures that live in the ocean--not in rivers or fishbowls, just in the ocean--but I'm also fascinated by them. They're so beautiful, and different, and complex, and simple, and alien. That's what this book is about.

This is an oversize book, one that you'll want to read at a table, and there's hardly any text. The whole book is huge, full-color pictures of deep-sea animals on black, like the cover, and it is truly amazing. The vast majority of them were animals I had never seen before, despite my ocean-dweller fixations, and they're animals I couldn't have made up if I tried. Each one has a small, inconspicuous paragraph with it's significant informtion, and every so often there are short essays to give you an impression of the big picture (ha, pun) but they support the pictures, not the other way around.

After I read this I immediately went out to look for more, but there's not much out there for laymen. This is the best of its kind, with current information and pictures you can stare at for hours. I knew there was some strange life on Earth, from pachyderms with prehensile noses to my weird grandmother, but I never knew there were things like this.

Buy The Deep

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

Enemies and Allies by Kevin J. Anderson

2009-12-19T20:44:00.000-08:00

I've heard Kevin J. Anderson get a lot of flack on the interwebs... To hear some people tell it, he's the most horrible writer in the entire world and is singlehandedly responsible for ruining a gazillion franchises. Dune? Star Wars? LibraryThing only seems to show that he wrote one Dune novel, but a lot of Star Wars. Well, I won't speak for those, because I haven't read them, but I liked this Superman/Batman story.

This is a novel about the first meeting of Superman and Batman in the 1950s. The classic story is that Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne were on the same cruise ship and hijinx ensued; this is different, the two of them conducting parallel investigations into Lex Luthor and his business.

The writing isn't mindblowing, but it doesn't get in the way when you're reading and it's not hard to pay attention to, so it's a fast read. There were a few annoying things, like Luthor gets called "the bald industrialist" WAY too many times in narrative, and Lois Lane got sidelined into hero-bait as usual. There some to be a lot of story elements lifted from other things, James Bond stories and Watchmen and a few other things I recognized, but those seem to be homages rather than theft. They aren't major story things, just elements.

There isn't any wildly new material here as Superman and Batman go, but prose always touches on ideas that graphic novels don't. The psychology of the three main characters was what really fascinated me. Batman is done well... He seems a little bit out of focus for some reason, but he's the Batman of the Christian Bale movies and that's my favorite attitude for him. Clark has this arrogance and almost simple-mindedness about him that's a very interesting and legitimate interpretation, and his intrinsic sweetness kept me invested in him as a hero. Luthor, though, was perfect. Frightening and fascinating, supremely arrogant but with the intelligence to back it up, a real predator.

So, not brilliant, but satisfying to me as a fan. It works as an action story, but underneath that there's an engaging discussion of two of America's most well-known superheroes. The book doesn't take itself too seriously, but it takes a campy subject and writes a legitimate story.

So far my absolute favorite novel based on "real" superheroes is Batman: Rise of Sin Tzuby Devin Grayson and Flint Dille, which I reviewed here, and my favorite new superhero novel is Heroby Perry Moore, reviewed here.

In other news, I went to see Avatar on Friday and there's a review forthcoming this week. Woo!

Buy Enemies & Allies

bookdrum.com

2009-12-14T14:17:00.000-08:00

When I read, I like to make it a multisensory experience. If the characters are listening to music, I like to listen to the same thing. If somebody looks at a painting, I look up the painting and take a look myself. On top of that, I look up words and allusions I don't recognize. It sounds like a lot of work, but it's really not, and there are a lot of benefits to doing it that way... I remember what I've read better and I understand it on a deeper level. Plus, a lot of the stuff I learn is really interesting. Otherwise the author probably wouldn't have put it in the book.

So, basically, Bookdrum is an awesome project. When it's all up and running I won't have to do all that myself, I can just go there and it's all done for me! Each book in the database will have a summary, review, glossary, notes about the author and setting, and a comprehensive page of all those songs and paintings and allusions, right there on the page for me to look at. Kind of like Cliffsnotes, only helpful and interesting. I just think it's awesome personally, but it'll also be a great resource for studying and I can easily see how the interactive approach might help kids appreciate difficult books more.

The site isn't running yet, but there's a Tournament going on where you put together a profile of your book of choice and submit it. The best profiles win monetary prizes (and no small beans, either), and they're also going to be looking for staff writers among the applicants. I've already started mine, (I'm doing Sandman!) and it's a lot of fun. You have until the end of February, go check it out!

Andromeda Stories by Keiko Takemiya

2009-12-13T11:22:00.000-08:00

Andromeda Stories is a three-volume manga by the author of To Terra, which I reviewed here. It's basically To Terra only good, and 300 pages shorter.

Where To Terra was a sci-fi story with fantasy workings, this is a fantasy story with sci-fi workings. The setting is the planet? star system? Andromeda, where they have dragon cavalry (awesome!) and a high-fantasy social structure, but advanced technology everywhere you might imagine magic. And where you might have an evil demon army, you have an evil army of mind-controlling machines taking over the planet. The technology parts are really what make the fantasy interesting; they make a very standard fantasy story go in cool new directions.

The characters are fantastic, especially where manga is concerned. Each one has a believable mixture of good and bad qualities unique to them, and they just seem to have a lot more THOUGHTS than other characters. They have reasons for the things they do and they really believe in those reasons.

The ending was one of those Twilight Zone endings... A foreseeable twist, but in a good way. Sad, faintly frightening, kind of cool, and interesting, but kind of off on a tangent where I would've put a more traditional ending.

MINOR SPOILER. Beware brother/sister incest. It worked okay for the story and it's only toward the very end, but the part that kind of squicked me out was that they're supposed to be in their 20s but the girl at least looks about 12. Of course a lot of girls are drawn that way in manga, but still. END SPOILER.

On the whole it's a quick story with interesting ideas and pretty pictures, which sounds to me like good manga! It kind of reminded me of a cross between John Christopher's Tripods series (which is awesome) and Osamu Tezuka's Buddha (which is good manga and written well at the least.)

Buy Andromeda Stories

Archangel by Sharon Shinn

2009-12-06T23:36:00.000-08:00

This book is crap. But it's really good crap. By the end of this review I'll probably be ranting about it and hating it again, but before I get to that I'll tell you to read it.

So, the basic idea is really kind of complicated. It's a fantasy world in which angels (winged beautiful-voiced people) chaperone the spiritual lives of the humans. Gabriel, an angel, is about to become the new Archangel, but he has to find and marry a particular human woman before that happens.

The worldbuilding and plot are the best parts of the novel, and they are stunning. It's not like anything else I've seen, and it's mesmerizing. There are unique fantasy elements, the barest hints of sci-fi that really throw a whole new light on everything you learn about the fantasy stuff, there are complicated social and political relationships, not to mention a host (ha, pun) of befuddling characters. The plot, aside from the romance aspect, is an edge-of-your-seat-er.

Gabriel is an arresting character, especially since he's not your run-of-the-mill protagonist. He is so arrogant, but it's not annoying. He really is right. I just like him. With him, you know you're safe, because he'll be just, and he'll also be compassionate.

And then we have Rachel, his intended. At least I think her name was Rachel, I started calling her "Superbitch" halfway through and never stopped. I have never read about a protagonist so annoying, unpleasant, pigheaded, vindictive, and selfish, much less all of those in one package. At first I didn't mind and kind of liked it, because she had good points and I admired her nerve, but it grate and grated and finally I snapped. I hate her. I hate her!

She never sees that half of her problems are caused by her own selfishness. ALL of the other characters revolve around her, and yet she never stops complaining about how terrible her life is. She's never happy, even when she gets exactly the things she wanted, and she lashes out at people just for existing. She tortures all of the other characters just to see them squirm, when all they've ever done is try to help her. She never learns, never repents, only gets worse and worse. Describing her is like describing a VILLAIN, for Pete's sake! If I can't stand her, I can only imagine what all the poor characters were going through sharing a book with her for months on end. And then the romance, which was interesting, was not satisfactorily finished.

She was almost enough to make me stop reading the book on more than one occasion, and the sequel, Jovah's Angel, apparently takes place far in the future and she's not in it, or I definitely wouldn't be reading that one. The worldbuilding, though... That's amazing, and wanting to understand this world is what kept me reading, and it was worth it, if only marginally. As long as she's gone, and there's not another one like her, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't love the sequels.

Be warned, there's some heady religious subject matter here. I was satisfied in terms of being interested and never outraged, but there's still a lot I'd like to know. It's sort of wavering on the line between pro-religion and atheistic, and it's really hard to tell which view actually comes out on top.

Trust your own judgement on this one. If liking the characters is a big part of your reading pleasure, skip this one. If you like worldbuilding more, check it out. If you like Poison Study you'll probably like this.

Buy Archangel

Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman

2009-11-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

I am aware that I tend to criticize books for having "literary claptrap" endings or being "literary" in having unlikeable characters and only vaguely comprehensible plots, etc. However, I don't intend to come across as disliking "literature." I dislike a lot of it for the reasons stated, but a really brilliant literary work is, well, really brilliant. This is one of those really brilliant books.

Shawn McDaniel is 14. He wants a girlfriend. He likes rock'n'roll. He loves his family. He remembers everything he's ever heard since the age of three, and he might be kind of a genius. He has severe cerebral palsy and is completely incapable of communicating his thoughts to anyone, even though he has plenty of thoughts. And he thinks his father is planning to kill him.

I read the whole thing in one sitting, without even looking up. Usually I check the time ever chapter, get up to get coffee, put the book down to watch TV or write, even just stare at the wall for a while thinking about something else, but not this time. (Luckily the book is only 115 pages long, if it had been any longer I might've starved to death!)

I don't say this often, but this is a perfect book. The reason it's so short is that the plot I just described is the plot, there's no nonsense with subplots or insignificant characters or even insignificant thoughts. The pace is perfectly balanced to convey exactly the right emotions and not distract you with anything else. And yet at the same time the ideas are so rich that I could probably read the book several times in succession and not get bored. Both sides of the issue (euthanasia) are rigorously explored, and then you're left to let it sink in.

The part that fascinated me the most was Shawn's personality. He can't DO anything, he's sheerly receptive, and yet he's a fully developed character. It's an example any writer should look at, because it really shows how actions should conform to personality and not the other way around. There's a thingness, a separateness, about a person that doesn't have anything to do with who they are on the outside, and it's different for every person. There wasn't a single character in the book that didn't seem like a real person, and Shawn is unique, with an arresting, memorable personality despite the fact that he can't affect his surroundings in any way.

So to sum up: Wow. Read this. I'm going to buy it for my personal collection and I foresee I will be reading it more than twice. There's a companion novel called Cruise Control, the same story from a different POV, which I also have to read or I will explode, and then I'll start on Trueman's other books.

Buy Stuck in Neutral

The Adventures of Blue Avenger by Norma Howe

2009-11-20T19:28:00.000-08:00

This picture is a little small, but I love this cover. It's dynamic, interesting, and it perfectly illustrates the book's idea. It's a little 90s, but I like it. It has that "I want to be a superhero" attitude that I know so well.

Anyway, the book is indeed about a superhero, of a sort. The titular Blue Avenger starts out as 16-year-old David Schumacher, the average (but smart) student whose hobby is drawing a superhero called the Blue Avenger. He considers himself to be Blue Avenger, and has the blue-fishing-vest and towel-turban ensemble to prove it. (I can't remember whether he based the character on himself, or if they just grew together over time, but it doesn't really matter.) On his 16th birthday, he changes his name and takes on the persona of Blue Avenger in order to right the wrongs of the world.

I really liked it, but it's kind of odd, and not in an objective way. There was just something about it I couldn't put my finger on. It's kind of a YA story written in kids' prose... The characters say intense 16-year-old things, but in an almost simplistic 11-year-old way. Blue is a great character, very recognizable and easy to connect with but a little offbeat and quirky, teetering perfectly between adult and child, and he doesn't see the world the same way anybody else does. His friend Omaha is a little more of a stereotype, the mostly-mean tomboy with the vulnerable side that everybody likes for some reason even though she's mostly mean. (Okay, in this case I don't remember everybody liking her, mostly just Blue, and he has his own personal mental processes.)

The main theme of the book is the major philosophical debate of free will vs. fate, much more heady stuff than I expected, which is great. In fact, I don't think it went far enough. It only really presents the predestination argument, which is a valid argument, but it's incomplete without the equally valid choice argument. No real resolution is offered either, I personally prefer a conclusion even if I don't agree with it, but for a book for kids that's not necessarily appropriate so I understand leaving it out. Also note the painfully apparent and oversimplified gun control message, which was surprising considering the complexity of the other theme.

This is one of those wacky books I always loved as a kid, full of bizarre facts and random events. It's a quick, fun book, and I'm really glad I read it. I recommend Suck It Up(review), Grooves, and Winchell Mink.

Buy The Adventures of Blue Avenger (Even though it has a horrible blob thing on the cover now. What is that?)

To Terra by Keiko Takemiya

2009-11-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

To Terra is a three-volume sci-fi manga that apparently was written several decades ago (70s?) and was just released in English. (To accompany an anime, I think.) The idea is that in a fully computer-dependent society, and by that I mean on ONE particular computer, a group of psi-powered mutants (the Mu) have been exiled from society and for some reason think that going back to Terra will solve all their problems. It kind of reminded be of Battlestar Galactica. (The old one... can't stand the new one.)

I liked this, but it's totally incomprehensible. I wrote in my book journal that it was "like a Monty Python sketch done at half speed by lobotomy patients," and while that might be a little excessive, that was pretty much the impression I got. All the characters are exactly the same except for the goals we're told they have, and those same informed goals are the only reason for the plot. The art, which is absolutely gorgeous on big sweeping starscapes and spaceships, is indecipherable in small panels.

It takes forever for anything significant to happen, and when it does there seems to be no reason for it. Since none of the characters have any reasons for their beliefs, their actions just come across as juvenile and ill-informed. Every so often there's a time-out to try and explain some of the science involved, but that just makes it worse. I understand what the story is doing emotionally, but I have no idea what's ACTUALLY going on or with what characters.

But, despite all that, I did like it. The atmosphere is absolutely mesmerizing, and if you just sort of relax and zone out while you read it becomes dreamscape-y rather than just confusing. It's an interesting look at some older sci-fi, where some common ideas are used as new and thrown together in unorthodox ways. It's sci-fi, but Takemiya tends to use fantasy in the workings of it. I certainly didn't get bored with it, as hard as I was working to follow the story.

There's this sudden flurry of action and energy and awesomeness at the end that makes the whole saga worth the trouble... And then an epilogue that plunged me back into misty confusion. So, if you don't really get what happened, neither do I. I also don't understand why a central male character was persistently drawn as a girl, but that's beside the point.

This is another one of those books that I'm not sure whether to recommend or not. If it sounds interesting then go ahead, knock yourself out, it's only three volumes. I don't have any recommendations at this point, but I'll be reviewing some similar things in the future.

Buy To Terra... (v. 1)

Superpowers by David J. Schwartz

2009-10-30T21:17:00.000-07:00

Five college kids get superpowers for no reason and decide they should be superheroes. The basic gimmick is that it's real people having a realistic experience with superpowers.

I wanted SO hard to love this, but I didn't. Why does "realistic" have to mean boring and annoying? The second page gives us this fantastic quote: "This isn't some snooty book where people nobody likes do things nobody cares about for reasons nobody can figure out. That's what they call literature." It'd be an even better quote if it didn't exactly describe this book!

I didn't like any of the characters. The ones I liked in the beginning got more and more boring, and the ones I disliked in the beginning got worse and worse. At first I kind of wanted things to turn out well for them, but by about halfway through I just never wanted to see them again. Plus, there are a lot of characters and they're all the same. They're written in the exact same style and their backgrounds are the same, so it's really hard to keep each of their arcs coherent.

There are a lot of POVs and that puts way too much distance between the reader and the action, or lack thereof. MINOR SPOILERS: There's no supervillain. There's no villain at all. At this point every superhero novel is experimental and this is a good choice for what Schwartz was trying to do, but what he does instead doesn't work. The novel starts on May 19, 2001, and you can guess where it's headed... The lasy 75 pages consist of "9/11 was sad," over and over and over. That's true, but when that's all you do for 75 pages it gets old fast, and it doesn't actually constitute a climax. 9/11 WAS sad, and if you're going to use it in a book it should make me feel something besides boredom. END MINOR SPOILERS.

Like so many literary novels, there were a million interesting places this story could have gone, but it didn't go to any of them. It got bogged down in "nobody's perfect," and even more than that, "everyone is terrible." Thanks a lot, literature.

Superheroes are about setting an example, an ideal to reach for. They're about inspiring people to try harder and be better. They aren't supposed to be realistic.

Skip this book and read Hero instead.

Buy Superpowers

Vampire of the Mists by Christie Golden

2009-10-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

The Fickle Hand of Fate is a year old! The anniversary was actually ten days ago, but I had no idea I'd been blogging for so long. Woo!

This week, through sheer happenstance, I bring another video game novel for your reading pleasure. This one is the first novel of a series based on the D&D game Ravenloft, and any bias I had toward video game novels is now completely gone, because this book is amazing too. I promise you don't need to know anything about the games to appreciate it, I sure don't, so read on!

Jander Sunstar is a golden elf from Evermeet, and he's been a vampire for 500 years. The day after the woman he loves is killed and he swears vengeance, he is magically transported to the secret country of Ravenloft which is ruled by the mysterious Count Strahd von Zarovich (read: Dracula.)

This is a seamless blend of gothic horror and high fantasy, combining the best elements of both. Jander is at once tragically villainous and sympathetically heroic, and his story is so subtle. The core of the novel is his relationship with Strahd, the flaws in both of them and how they're trying to manipulate each other, the sympathetic parts of each of them and why they do the things they do. But still one is firmly the hero and the other is firmly the villain.

You know, I never really understood why vampires whine the way they do. I knew, but I didn't understand. Now I do. The speed with which time passes for (and passes by) Jander is striking... One day he's talking to a young woman and the next time he leaves the castle he meets her child. He didn't even realize it had been thirty years, and every time he looks around someone else he knew is dying. There are so many things he loved that were taken away when he became a vampire, like the colors that you never see at night. All you see are shades of gray, and eventually that's all you see morally as well as physically. I understand how terrible it must be now, and at the same time Strahd and Jander are truly frightening.

I was frustrated for all the right reasons reading this book: I was desperate to know what was coming and unable to figure it out. I would have plot epiphanies and await events eagerly, only to discover the characters were going in a completely different direction that was even better. Every element is in its place.

There are a lot of recommendations I could make, because Vampire of the Mists falls on a cross-section of so many things (just like Ravenloft does.) You've got Dragonlance etc. for the heroic fantasy, Dracula, Interview with the Vampire for the love/hate vampire relationship thing... There are also a lot more Ravenloft books. I hear the quality varies with the author, but there are some big names. Several more by Christie Golden, some by Tanya Huff, Laurell K. Hamilton, Gene DeWeese... Several more feature Count Strahd. Jander features in short stories collected in the books The Best of the Realms and Realms of Valor, both of which I will be trying to find in the near future.

Buy Vampire of the Mists

Batman: The Rise of Sin Tzu by Devin Grayson & Flint Dille

2009-10-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, this is the novelization of a Batman beat-em-up video game from 2003. You're well within your rights to expect it to suck, right? I sure did, but hey, it was a Batman novel, and I'm working on a superhero story right now, so I figured what the heck. I'm glad I did, because it was so good.

Basically the story is that a previously unheard-of villain, a mastermind of war known as Sin Tzu, is going to conquer Gotham City. He's bored, he needs a challenge, and he chooses Batman's city. He leads all the criminals in Gotham as their "general," with three well-known Batman villains as his "captains." As I understand it, the video game is basically you (as Batman, Batgirl, Robin, or Nightwing) beating up enough bad guys to get to the boss battle with each captain, finally culminating in the battle with Sin Tzu.

In light of that, the authors don't pay so much attention to the fighting itself, but delve into the thoughts of the characters. Not just "Why are we fighting this battle?" but "Why do we fight at all?" Each chapter is written from a different 1st-person POV, including all the Bat-family and multiple villains, with several from Sin Tzu's perspective, and the result is a subtle, many-faceted look at the six hours the book covers. It's intense. The pacing is excellent, everything is orchestrated perfectly.

They really get the Batman-ness perfectly. Everything I love about Batman is there, all the characters' motivations and relationships are pitch perfect. Another great thing was that I never wished it was a graphic novel... The story is exactly suited to its medium, the story couldn't have been told like this any other way.

Apparently certain parties who will remain unnamed (because I don't know who they are) were hoping Sin Tzu would be a hit like Harley Quinn was and make the leap into mainstream continuity, but he never did. If I had anything to say about it he would have!

I've only looked at one or two other Batman novels, (The Ultimate Evil is the one that comes to mind,) but I didn't finish any of them because they just didn't get it. If you like Batman, definitely try to find this book!

ETA: Hey guys, look what I found! More Sin Tzu!

Buy Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu

Housekeeping

2009-10-03T02:26:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of Banned Books Week. I meant to do something at the beginning of the week, but I forgot to think of something, so I didn't do anything. So, uh... so there.

Anyway, I just want to say that banned books aren't just for Banned Books Week. They're for whenever you darn well feel like reading them, because ideas are for everyone. We can talk about them, applaud them, condemn them, hate or love them, please just anything but banning them and pretending they don't exist.

In other news, I recently changed my email address and I thought Blogger had the new one, but I haven't been getting my comment notifications, so don't be offended if I haven't responded/don't respond to a comment, especially on an older post. The e-mail I have listed on my profile is the correct one and emails are welcome, as always, especially if you have a burning desire to recommend a book, respond to a review, or otherwise speak your piece. Happy Saturday!

Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney

2009-10-03T01:01:00.000-07:00

Raise your hand if you've heard of Nikola Tesla. If you're in an engineering-type field you probably have, or if you've read a lot about the early 1900s, but after relentlessly quizzing everyone I ran into while I was reading this, most people don't know the first thing about him, so it might surprise you to hear that he was the greatest inventor ever, period.

I was first introduced to him in the movie The Prestige, which is an amazing movie that everyone should see, and see more than once. I thought he was a fictional creation for a long time, but when I found out he wasn't I knew immediately that I was going to be fixated on him for a long time. If ever there was a real-life mad scientist, it was Tesla.

Tesla first invented practically everything we ascribe to other inventors like Edison and Marconi. In some cases his early work inspired later inventions, in some cases other inventors used his basic inventions in their apparatus, and in some cases there was outright theft. Tesla patented all of his work, (scientists still find that their "new" inventions now can't be patented because he already did it a hundred years ago,) but the constant legal battles kept the public confused as to who invented what. That combined with his iffy business skills and other random factors lead to him being little remembered today, even though he was a famous and celebrated inventor in his time. (He did get his name on the Tesla coil, which is used to produce the alternating current we use, and he valued making such a contribution to history over the money he might've been making, but I only wish he was remembered for everything he deserved! )

Tesla was truly a visionary. He made intuitive leaps even beyond where our technology is today. He described and demonstrated things, like fire he held in his hand and a "death ray" that could vaporize aircraft (not built and demonstrated) that we can't figure out how to recreate. He did a lot of his work in his head, which only adds to the befuddlement and awe. While other inventors were still messing around inventing with wireless radio equipment he was already building and demonstrating remote-controlled submarines. The government wouldn't buy them.

On top of his brilliance his friends loved him, and even just reading about him made me dream about seeing beautiful, magnificent things that no one has ever seen before. Reading his biography was like reading an amazing science fiction novel, only it was all true!

I don't have enough room to summarize the whole book with all his achievements and ideas, so I highly recommend picking up this biography in its newest revision because it's clearly and thoroughly written, with equal parts emotional prose and technical explanation. I haven't read any of his other biographies yet, just skimmed a few things and read articles, but there seem to be plenty of them available, just in case you can't find Man Out of Time.

Buy Tesla: Man Out of Time

The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey

2009-09-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

Mercedes Lackey is an old pleasure of mine that I'm only just rediscovering. She's most famous for her Valdemar books, a series with gazillions of books usually in trilogies, but she's written a lot of other things.

I pulled an all-nighter to finish this book, and I was doing Wiggles of Happy the entire time. I found myself alarming my cat by squealing incoherently as I turned pages.

What we have here is a brilliant gaslamp (steampunk but fantasy instead of sci-fi) reinterpretation of Beauty and the Beast. Rosalind Hawkins is left destitute by the death of her father, and has to travel across the country to take a tutoring job offered by the mysterious Jason Cameron. When she arrives she discovers that there are no children for her to tutor, and instead she will be translating old magic books for Jason because he has suffered a debilitating injury and is unable to read them himself.

Rose is a marvelous heroine, feminine and intelligent and vulnerable and resourceful. Jason is fascinating too, mysterious and larger than life, and undeniably sexy despite (or because of) his realistic flaws. The story is written mostly in third-person from Rose's point of view, but some sections switch to Jason's or Jason's secretary, Paul du Mond's. It was jarring the first few times, but I discovered that it allows the characters to plot individually and for us to know what's being planned without the characters knowing. The plot delivered on every promise it made, but using the plans characters made that were at odds, I never knew who was going to come out on top. There was a perfect blend of romance, mystery, and action.

The Fire Rose was immensely satisfying, detailed, and an utter joy to read. It is the first of Lackey's Elemental Masters series, all of which feature reinterpreted fairy tales in the same time period and system of magic, but not the same protagonists. I'd love to hear more about Rose and Jason, but I'm also looking forward to book 2, The Serpent's Shadow.

Some other Beauty and the Beast stories I found were Beast by Donna Jo Napoli, Beauty by Robin McKinley, Beastly by Alex Flinn, Belle by Cameron Dokey, and Rose Daughter also by Robin McKinley. These tend more toward "retellings" than "reinterpretations..." if you know of any more, let me know!

Buy The Fire Rose

District 9 starring Sharlto Copley

2009-09-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

I saw this movie twice in two days, then spent several weeks trying to compose a review... And I just can't. I literally have no words for the unmitigated awesomeness that is this movie.

1 hour and 52 minutes long, rated R for bloody violence and pervasive language. It is VERY violent and disturbing, but there's a reason for that. Don't go if it's going to disturb you, but if you do go (and you should,) DON'T leave. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be shellshocked for days. Best movie ever.

Watch a trailer if you must, but other than that (if that much,) go in with as little preparation as possible. You really don't want to know what's coming, so I'm not going to tell you. Just go see it. Like I said, unmitigated awesomeness.

For those of you who have seen it, I recommend this site as a great place for intelligent discussion plus incoherent squeeage and rampant quoting. (No, I haven't posted anything there yet, because of this inability I have to say anything but "AAAAOMGOSHSQUEE," but I expect I will eventually.)

Buy District 9

Wicked Game by Jeri Smith-Ready

2009-09-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

Eh. Don't like it.

The main selling point for this novel is its new, interesting idea, and it IS new and interesting. Ciara, our reforming con artist protagonist, becomes the marketing rep for a vampire radio station. The vamps are OCD a la the old legends where you could keep them out of your house by scattering seeds or hanging a net, (they'd be distracted by counting the seeds and untying all the knots until sunrise,) and each one is mentally trapped in the time period when he or she died. That's why they have the radio station... Each one is a DJ with a show centered around the music that was popular when they were alive.

It's a really good idea! And it started off great, interesting and unexpected with a host of interesting characters, but then it just dwindled off into nothing. The good characters, (Monroe, Franklin, and Gideon) were the ones that got NO face time, the romance was well-paced but lacked a certain spark, and the plot was wibbly. Difficult to figure out what the plot was even supposed to be, and it was painfully predictable when it WAS there. It couldn't decide if it was a romance, a vampire fight or a "huge companies are evil" plot, so none of the plot elements worked, especially since the Designated Vampiric Villain seems nicer than the good guys and was only trying to defend himself. The magnificent idea Ciara has to save everybody really doesn't work, either.

I wound up hating all the characters that got any attention. I was rooting for the bad guy to just take 'em all out because they were all such jerks! Ciara started out strong and interesting, but the more we learned about her the more boring she got, and about halfway through the book she suddenly turned into an idiot and started letting everyone walk all over her.

I read a lot of good reviews for this one, but I didn't enjoy it.

Buy Wicked Game

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

2009-08-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

I'm so on the fence about this one, it's not even funny. Do I love it? Do I hate it? I'm not sure. I do love the book design though, I'll start on a positive. Take a look at that cover. I dare you not to love it.

This is the story of the infamous villain Doctor Impossible as he plays out another scheme to control the Earth. Odd-numbered chapters are told from his perspective and are absolutely riveting, while even-numbered chapters are told by Fatale, a cyborg superhero on the team that's trying to track him down. Her chapters are flat and boring.

Literary novels like this are like watching train wrecks in SLOW MOTION. I have a feeling that it's not going to have a satisfying ending, just literary claptrap in which we all see how terrible the illness or social issue or dog dying is, but there's no resolution or hope or even much conflict, just exploring the issue. Things take forever to happen and all it is is long internal monologuing about the angst of it all. And yet, you can't look away.

Doctor Impossible was the reason I sat through the boredom. I lived for his chapters. He's the only sympathetic character in the book, and although I think that was the point, it didn't endear me to the other half of the story. Doctor Impossible was witty, intelligent, brave... "Savvy" is the word. He knows the story is going to play out exactly like it always has and nothing's going to change, but he keeps on trying, he never gives up.

All the heroes were boring, flat, and annoying, and it was like pulling teeth just to sit through their scenes. They tried to work up some mystique and suspense, but I just didn't care, with the possible exception of Blackwolf (a Captain Ersatz of Batman, so I had to like him) and Mister Mystic (who got just enough attention to make me want more, but not enough for me to know if I actually liked him.)

SPOILER ALERT:
The heroes don't do much but complain and fight amongst themselves, but somehow they still beat Doctor Impossible. It's just not fair.
END SPOILERS

Really, I just don't know. I was frustrated and enrapt for equal parts. If this sounds remotely like something you might potentially be interested in, read it, think about it, let me know what you decide. Most of the reviews I've read really haven't understood what the book was trying to say any more than I did, and some of them are just mistaken. It's not a parody of superhero literature by any means.

Anyway. Read it, read Hero, read Watchmen.

Buy Soon I Will Be Invincible

The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks

2009-08-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

This is a fascinating, hilarious book. The vampires drink blood, but after that you can drop all the old vampire tropes. These vampires are really quite ill and nauseated most of the time, get their blood from guinea pigs, and only leave their homes to attend their weekly Support Group meetings. Our main character, Nina, has been a vampire for about thirty years since she was fifteen, and still lives with her (now 70-year-old) mother.

Now, throw in a vampire slayer who kills one of the group's members and starts a runaway train of plot weirdness! I hesitate to use the word "intricate" for the plot, but I'm not sure why. It's just sort of magnificently random, and the "barely holding together, and loving it" feel makes it a joy to read. The story is dark and gothic, but the style is hilarious. It's unique.

The characters were very much like real people -- always whining (funny and not annoying in this case), and having no idea how to go about reacting to a plot like this, but hiding a few gems in the ranks. It really felt like what might happen if a bunch of real people were attacked. And, like real people, the more you get to know them the more fun they are, and that applies to every single character.

What we have here is a case of everything going right, all the narrative devices coming together and working well. Making something that's new and great, but doesn't make a big deal out of itself. If there's one thing I hate it's a story that's trying too hard to be cool, and this is definitely not one of those.

Support Group just came out last April, but Catherine Jinks has written a lot more books than I expected so there's plenty to look into. There's a planned sequel, The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group, but no release date on that as of yet... I recommend Sucks to Be Me for fans of this.

Buy The Reformed Vampire Support Group

Boys That Bite by Mari Mancusi

2009-08-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

When Sunny is mistaken for her goth twin sister and bitten by a vampire, will she be able to reverse the effects before prom? I didn't know, but by halfway through the book, I surprised myself by sort of caring.

This is one of those teen vampire books that's so common, mostly just teen girls complaining because they've been somehow wrangled into the vampire world while making as many pop culture references as possible. Nice beach reads, but kind of annoying in bulk. Which is why I was surprised that I kind of liked it.

There are a lot of quirky little things hidden away in the text that made the book stand out and be memorable. I liked the Slayers Inc., beer-drinking Druid, we-order-vamp-gear-online style of the thing, where people are people everywhere you go. The plot seemed pretty cut and dry and the reader is set up to see a particular outcome... Then the plot changes and you quickly formulate another set outcome... Then it changes again and you think "Oh... OH... Hm." There's an obvious lead-in to a sequel, Stake That, which looks like a rather brilliant plot move and might actually be better than Boys That Bite. (There's also a third book after that, I see.)

The one thing that bothered me was how terrible all the other characters were to Sunny. She's being turned into a vampire against her will, and it doesn't look like that great of a gig, and all anyone can talk about is how terrible it is for THEM. Whiny characters annoy me, but Sunny really is in the right, she's the injured party, and nobody cares. I would be having serious second thoughts about my relationship with people if they were that callous about ME.

It's not a must-read, but there were a lot of things to like and it doesn't take long to read. I suggest this book to casual vampire fans or to the "need something to read after Twilight" crowd.

Buy Boys that Bite

Suck it Up by Brian Meehl

2009-08-02T18:42:00.000-07:00

Morning McCobb, a 16-year-old boy who likes superheroes, is the first vampire in history to come out on national television. Will the vampires' dreams of Worldwide Out Day be realized, or will Morning ruin it all by succombing to his lust for the blood of Portia Dredful, his publicist's daughter?

As it says on the cover several times, this is a vampire novel that's not quite like the rest of them. While it is a light read it's also a thoughtful story, one that should be read slowly, not in one big chunk. Things need to unfold at their own pace.

There's a certain realism in the atmosphere that I found fascinating. Most vampire books feel hidden in the shadows, confined by the need to keep the vampires a secret from the humans in the book. Morning is thrown out into the world, and it feels like a coming out for all the vampires in all the stories. It made me look at everything in a new light.

The vampires themselves are also interesting and not the norm, there's more of an emphasis on shapeshifting than the common powers, and they have a singular origin story. The characters were all very grounded in the story for me, each with a coherent set of motivations and a firm sense of self, by which I mean I had a very distinct image of each one. They didn't bleed into each other or agree about things just because it was the author's opinion! While the romance is obvious, Portia is not your typical heroine, and I loved her power.

The plot was slow in some places, but that should be a cue to slow down and get in deep in those places. There's a great mix of internal conflict with Morning and Portia, and external conflict with Morning and Ikor, the vampire who's willing to kill Morning to keep vampires from coming out. Everything is resolved beautifully at the end, with just enough of a tease for me to hope we get a sequel AND hope we don't. All in all, a thoroughly satisfying book.

It sort of felt like taking the hero of The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl and putting him in Sucks to Be Me (links are to reviews.) I recommend Sucks to Be Me, or maybe Vladimir Tod.

Suck It Up

Buy Suck It Up

Hero by Perry Moore

2009-07-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

Thom Creed's father is a disgraced superhero. There's a lot Thom can't talk to his father about--like how he's developing superpowers, that the superhero League wants him to join them, and especially not that he's gay.

I read the whole book today. 428 pages, only breaking for food and the water closet. It was just that good. It's *sob* *pause* *gasp* over and over the whole way.

Thom is a totally relatable character that I loved to cheer on, especially speaking as a teenager. He makes mistakes, and he doesn't always have a very realistic image of himself, but he never gives up. He goes after what he wants, and he doesn't mind working for it. The other characters mostly made me want to tackle them and hug them to death, but even the characters I didn't like were fascinating. Most of the established heroes are thinly veiled versions of DC heroes--Uberman, Warrior Woman-- but they became archetypes to work from and ideas to explore, rather than the parodies I was worried about.

The plot was intricate, 428 pages is long for a YA novel, but it was easy to follow, one event flowing naturally into the next. Perry Moore slammed right to the heart of what superheroes mean, both the fantastic and the terrible but mostly the amazing.

I highly recommend this book to anyone. YA, otherwise, superhero fan, otherwise, GLBT, otherwise, whatever. I hear there's a TV series in the works and I can't wait... I'm sure I'll be mentioning this book in other reviews, but as yet I don't have anything I can recommend that wouldn't fall flat after reading this. Maybe go read the classic graphic novels.

Buy Hero

Weird Henry Berg by Sarah Sargent

2009-07-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

It seems that this book is little-known enough to not have a picture. Amazon confirms that it's out of print... Snap it up while you can! It was originally published in 1980, but mine is a 1993 edition.

Henry Berg is a boy whose father was a dope fiend and is no longer around. He spends most of his time imagining himself as an animal, trying to get away from his mother's hounding about his schoolwork. His best friend is a lizard named Vincent, and he's determined to keep him despite his mother's objections and a little old lady's claims that Vincent is a dragon.

I was hoping it would suck, so I could get rid of it and make a little shelf space for another book, but instead it sucked me in from page one. Having been brought to tears by the amazing Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, I thought this very similar story would just be a cheap imitation or something. Instead, I was brought to more tears.

It's basically a more realistic Jeremy Thatcher, a secret pet story with a dragon, but I didn't find myself comparing them while I was reading. Weird Henry Berg is hilarious, especially where the dragon Aelf is concerned, but it's also not afraid of hard themes. It's a story where things aren't always black and white, where more than one person is in the right, and things can be confusing. I found a fascinating theme of duality in the book, between the ancient and modern, light and dark, age and youth. It's a fantastic, exciting kids' story, with an underlayer of deep, thought-provoking material. I was very impressed.

This, Jeremy Thatcher, and The Monster Garden are three of a kind. I heartily recommend all three.

Buy Weird Henry Berg

Push starring Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning

2009-07-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

Push is a sci-fi thriller that came out on DVD last week, starring Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning, 111 minutes, and rated PG-13 for "intense sequences of violence and action, brief strong language, smoking and a scene of teen drinking." It's a superhero movie that's not based on a comic book, and it's awesome!

I kind of envision Push as what a DC version of X-Men might be. Similar powers and stuff, but less political and more action-oriented. It follows the recent (awesome) trend of being a grittier, more realistic superhero movie. It's not as stylized and predictable as people usually envision superheroes. The heroes have some of the classic powers, like telekinesis, but there are also some new powers I'd never seen before.

While it isn't "stylized," it is very stylish. It doesn't take place in New York! It happens in Hong Kong, and to me it looks like the costuming and cinematography are influenced by that as well. Not enough to be confusing, just enough to be new and interesting. The plot has a lot of classic tropes thrown in, done very stylishly of course, and combined with the new powers and story it creates a great balance of expectations fulfilled and expectations turned around.

The characters are great. They're just so themselves, they might be "types" like the precocious kid or the evil government agent, but they're so like real people that it doesn't matter. I especially loved how all the "I wish that character had more scenes" throwaway characters came back for more scenes! I was especially impressed with Dakota Fanning's acting. I knew she was going to do "pottymouthed kid who's older than Fanning's stereotype," but I didn't think she was going to do it well or believably.

The only thing I will mention as a warning was that some story elements weren't clear, like who was working for who in some cases. Just make sure you're paying attention and it won't be a big deal.

There's not much else I can say without giving spoilers, so just go watch the movie. I recommend it especially to fans of X-Men or Jumper.

Buy Push

Interview with Kimberly Pauley, author of Sucks to Be Me

2009-07-14T19:08:00.000-07:00

Hello blogosphere, today The Fickle Hand of Fate welcomes Kimberly Pauley, who runs YA Books Central and is the author of the fabulous YA vampire novel Sucks to Be Me! I reviewed the book at the end of May, and you can read that review here, but suffice it to say that I adored it! The sequel, Still Sucks to Be Me, will be available in 2010. Kimberly was kind enough to answer a few questions for me. So without further ado, on to the interview!

FF: Welcome to The Fickle Hand of Fate! Thanks so much for this visit.

KP: Thanks! And thanks for having me too :-)

FF: What was your goal in writing StBM? Just entertainment, or do you have some nefarious plot to influence the world?

KP: Well, primarily entertainment. There are plenty of novels out there that have really deep messages (and many of them are great!). But I did also tried to include some "heavier" stuff as well...I just tried to make sure it wouldn't make a reader feel like I was hitting them over the head with it. I want readers to come away from the book having had fun reading it. If they learn something too, that's great, but I'm happy if it just makes them smile.

FF: What is one thing you wish you had known when you started writing?

KP: That the whole vampire thing was going to just explode the way it did. I wrote STBM in 2005 before Twilight (and a bunch of other vampire books) came out and it actually made it a hard sell because most of the agents and editors I sent it to (in 2006) felt that the market was saturated. So I probably would have written a non-vampire book first.

FF: What’s the best part about having a published novel? How about the worst?

KP: The fan letters. That sounds cheesey, but really, they make my day. Especially when someone actually writes me a real physical letter. Heck, I hardly get those from my family! The worst? Um, probably the people that ask me either a) are you going to be the next J. K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer or b) have I made a million dollars yet? (the answer to both of those would be NO...not that I would mind being the next J. K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer, exactly, but mostly I'd just like to be me.)

FF: Do you feel like YA writers/vampire writers are in competition with each other, or is it more like a mutual admiration society?

KP: I think most writers are very generous and we all help each other out a lot. I'm sure there are some out there that view it as a competition, but I've never met any. After all, the more people read, the better the world is! All the writers that I know are generally happy to recommend each other's books. I know I am! There are so many great YA books out there.

FF: You mention on your website that you don’t read vampire books anymore in order to keep from accidentally recycling ideas. What do you read instead?

KP: I read a little bit of everything, though my reading is way down lately because of our baby (Max) and with writing. I prefer fantasy, though. And also I (of course) read a lot for YA Books Central.

FF: Were any characters from StBM based on real people?

KP: Um, not really. There are pieces of people in the characters, but nobody in particular was really the inspiration for any of the characters.

FF: Do you have a StBM playlist, or music you use to inspire you?

KP: If I listen to music while writing, it's usually pretty mellow, otherwise I get distracted. So mostly stuff like Portishead and Morcheeba or Amy Winehouse.

FF: What actors would you choose to star in a StBM movie?

KP: That's really tough. Someone had asked me this before and I'd picked out a couple, but every time I pick someone I see someone else that would work even better. I'd actually love some suggestions! I'm not as up on my teen actors as I once was. :-)

FF: Would you even accept a StBM movie deal, or would you rather the book stayed unsullied?

KP: Oh, I would. :-) But you definitely have to know ahead of time that you're giving up some ownership. Authors generally have no control at all over what a movie turns out like (unless they're really big time like J. K. Rowling). I'd actually love to see what someone would do with it. Though I actually think a TV show would be even more fun.

FF: Thanks again for giving us your time! Is there anything else you’d like to add?

KP: Just that I'm happy to report that I've turned in the sequel to my editor. It won't be out until next year, but I'm still happy to have this round done! And I'm doubly happy to report that I've heard back from her with the revision notes and while some of it is a little extensive (cutting 4 chapters up front, for instance), I think it's all great stuff and I think the book is going to be so much better when I'm done with it (my editor rocks!). I'll be all finished by the end of August.

Again, the sequel comes out next year. You can find out more on Kimberly's website, complete with an excerpt from book 2!

Buy Sucks to Be Me

The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga

2009-07-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

Fanboy is a comic book geek with all his hopes and dreams set on getting Brian Michael Bendis to like the graphic novel he's writing. His comic books are the only bright spot in his life of constant bullying, until he makes a new friend: Kyra, the Goth Girl.

I was all set to call this book the best YA book I've read in months, maybe even the best literary/realistic YA book I've EVER read. It's gritty and dark, but still funny and totally believable. Fanboy is a likeable hero and easy to identify with, and his graphic novel idea is amazing, I wish somebody would actually write it. The writing was in first person present tense, which is usually annoying but in this case made everything seem very immediate and intene. The thrills were that special kind of dread and hope mixed together, "Is what I think is going to happen really going to happen?" Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't.

But then I got to the end of the book, or the lack of one. The big finish was about 20 pages before it should've been, just before the big breath out that leaves the reader feeling satisfied and ties up the events of the novel. There was no "ending," it just ended. Things that were heavily foreshadowed, like Goth Girl's violent desires, the bullet, and the third thing that Fanboy wants (essential to his character), are all totally abandoned. We have no climax, and no explanation. Goth Girl was left a total mystery, we have no idea why she did anything or even HOW she did the things we saw. We don't know her, and personally, I didn't really care. I wanted to identify with her, but I just wished she'd get over whatever her issues were (we don't even know that) so we could go do something else. There's no resolution between her and Fanboy, just a sappy "I think it'll all be okay eventually" from him, with no indication that this is the case.

Obviously, I'm annoyed. The build up was so amazing, and then this pointless drivel of an ending. If anyone has any theories I'd love to hear them. There is a sequel coming out this fall, Goth Girl Rising... Hopefully she'll be more sympathetic and the book will anwer enough questions to offset this book. I don't know if I recommend this or not, really... Maybe somebody else would be more satisfied. I definitely was not.

Some similar books that I'll be reading soon are Adventures of the Blue Avenger and Suck It Up, but I haven't read either one yet.

Buy The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl

Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale

2009-07-06T13:20:00.000-07:00

I went to see this movie for Christian Bale, (I'm a huge fan,) but I came away impressed by the whole thing. It's rated R and is 142 minutes long.

This movie tells the story of John Dillinger, wanted gangster played by Johnny Depp, and Melvin Purvis, the lawman assigned to bring him in, played by Christian Bale. (Sort of like a 1934 gangsters version of 3:10 to Yuma. But not.) I won't go into much of the plot beyond that, both because it was pretty straightforward and because I wouldn't want to give anything away.

Obviously a lot of money and time was spent on this. The costumes and scenery are striking and memorable. (And while I'm no expert on the 30s, they looked authentic to me and evoked the perfect atmosphere.)

However, neither the plot nor the props were the most impressive thing about the movie. I was absolutely blown away by the acting.

Depp gets the most screen time, and while I've never been a huge fan before, I now think he's a genius. Dillinger is a complex, sympathetic, sexy, scary criminal. Everything about him rang true, every scene got us deeper into his head. He's sort of noble criminal, apparently with lot of fans amongst the public, but at the same time he's unpredictable and frightening.

Bale is just as much of a genius, but without the screen time to display it so obviously. (Maybe he's even more of a genius, because he can make such a memorable character without all that many scenes or even all that many lines.) You have to really dig into Purvis to see what makes him tick, and you probably won't know by the end of the movie if your theory is correct, but you feel for him all the same. He wants badly to do a good job, is driven to bring Dillinger in, but doesn't know how far he can go before it's too far. His men trust him, but does he trust himself?

The conflict between these two characters is a confluence of forces rather than a boxing match, and that's what drives the movie. We see what each one is doing, but we have no idea what's going to happen when the two forces collide. It's intense, and it delivers on its promise.

Definitely one to go see and pay attention to.

Buy Public Enemies

Dracula's Brood, compiled by Richard Dalby

2009-07-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

Mmm, vampires.

This is a collection of 24 vampire stories published shortly before or after the publication of the infamous Dracula in 1897. Some of them influenced Dracula; others were influenced by it.

I was amazed by how much I enjoyed this anthology. There were no stories I disliked, and only a few that didn't impress me. I tend to think of that time period as a little bit one-note with all the stories being the same, but there's an astonishing variety here. The disembodied finger gave me doubts and the man-eating trees destroyed my conception altogether.

I will emphasize that this variety is all about ideas. The stories in this anthology could've all been written by the same person stylistically, and I found that I liked that... There's no getting caught up in verbal acrobatics and a writer frantically trying to "find their own unique voice." It makes it a lot easier to get lost in the story for the story itself.

Fingers and trees aside, there's a lot of classic vampire stuff here. Back then "vampire" still meant "horror story," and these stories are actually scary, while still containing that essential vampireness that we still love today. A special effort has been made to include stories that aren't reprinted often, so there's new material here even for the most hardcore fan. (Some of these haven't been reprinted since they were first published, over a hundred years ago!) There's even a tasty poem translated from the original Romanian.

I recommend this anthology first to any short story writers and horror writers in particular, because there's a lot they could pick up about pacing, technique, etc. that is still just as useful today as it was back then.

For vampire fans (and I mean fans of vampires altogether, not just any book with vampires in it. You know who you are,) you should definitely read Dracula, then move on to The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories or The Dracula Book of Great Vampire Stories, both of which have plenty of the classic short stories like The Vampyre and Carmilla and Dracula's Guest, and then settle down to savor Dracula's Brood, one story at a time. It doesn't look like it's in print anymore, so get it while it's here and cheap.

Buy Dracula's Brood

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

2009-06-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

A lot of people liked this book. I definitely recommend it for elementary kids... It's got sort of a pre-steampunk feel to it, lots of automata. Plus, it's about movies, and what kid doesn't love movies? There's a lot of good historical info included on the invention of movies, and it might lead kids on to other books. It's inventive, a lot of the story is told silently through pictures and that really suits the whole silent-movie theme.

That said, it didn't do much for me. It's just basic kid-book fare. The plot was painfully obvious to me and the characters were annoying, especially with their constant arguing over who should reveal secrets first. I was hoping for something mind-bogglingly wonderful from the praise it gets, but it was just the same old stuff: An orphan, a spunky girl to be his best friend, a mean old man, and a bunch of riddles to solve.

And- Hm. I really thought I had more to say about this, but I guess that's it. I recommend it, especially for kids, who won't notice that the story's been done so many times, but it's not a "heave it to the top of Mt. TBR" recommendation. A good similar book at a slightly higher reading level might be Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, and some other books with the same general attitude are The Palace of Laughter by Jon Berkeley or The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas (awesome, awesome book with review forthcoming eventually). Here's a list of books about the history of movies and one about silent movies, if this book sparks your interest.

Buy The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Father's Day

2009-06-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

Have a great day, fathers!

Devilish by Maureen Johnson

2009-06-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

Jane and Allison have always been too quirky to be popular at their Catholic school, but that's never been a big deal. However, after a hugely embarrassing disaster Allison comes to school with new clothes, new hair, and a new policy of refusing to speak to Jane. At first Jane doesn't know what's going on, but then a freshman boy named Owen reveals it might be something sinister... Like a deal with with the devil.

Jane, our first-person narrator, is the element that's going to make or break this story for you, and for me she definitely made it. She's funny and witty without being a "let's make this character hip and sharp-witted" character. She comes across as a real person I'd like to hang out with, not a "character." And the very best thing is that she does not do wangst. Things happen. They suck. She acts. No crap.

The plot has an interesting snowballing quality to it. It starts slow, and a lot of it is fluff (the writer usually writes straight YA chick-lit), but things accumulate until you're on the edge of your seat and chewing your hair by then end. And let me just say: The ending delivers. Seriously delivers.

I really enjoyed figuring out the twists of the plot and getting to know these characters. It's a little bit of a beach read, but I highly recommend it as an enjoyable read and as a YA book dealing with high school in a believable and interesting way. The only note I have is that, not having a background in Catholicism, I didn't have a substantial frame of reference for the Catholic-school parts of school. It wasn't hard to follow, I just wondered which things would really happen in a Catholic school and which wouldn't.

A similar book (with more plot and POW to it) would be the excellent Sucks to Be Me, reviewed here. For more of Maureen Johnson's style without the paranormal check out her other books. 13 Little Blue Envelopes seems to be her most popular.

Buy Devilish

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things by Ted Naifeh

2009-06-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

I've had this series recommended to me by several people, a friend of mine who's recommended a lot of my now-favorite books, a review by Darla D from Books and Other Thoughts (who also recommends a lot of books I end up loving), and several other people I can't remember. It took me a while to get around to reading it, but I loved it when I did!

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things is a kids' graphic novel. It has a classic plot--girl moves to creepy old uncle's house and creepy stuff happens--but this is a model example of Tropes Are Not Bad.

There are three main things that keep this book amazing:

A) It knows its tropes, loves them, and uses them well. This is the kind of story kids like.

B) It's funny, in a biting way. It's SMART humor. The characters and dialoge are just off-beat enough to make everything seem shiny and new.

C) It's a graphic novel with gorgeous, quirky, dark art that sets the mood and lets us create a little more of the story in our own heads while giving us something pretty to look at. I love fantasy art in general, and this art adds humor to dark scenes and a sense of creepy to the funny scenes.

I will warn that the characters are not paragons, and this is not a morality play. The characters are good, but they aren't above being vindictive and conniving. It's a little creepy sometimes because it's unexpected, but it's realistic and would promote discussion.

I highly recommend this series to kids (of all ages ;) ) who like this sort of quirky fantasy/gothic horror trend that's happening right now in fiction. Fans of Lemony Snicket, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Skulduggery Pleasant, Zorgamazoo, that whole vein.
Buy Courtney Crumrin & The Night Things

Terminator: Salvation

2009-06-07T15:32:00.000-07:00

When I first started this blog it was with the intention of doing the occasional movie review. Well, obviously, so far I haven't gotten around to it. But after poking around on the internet... Am I seriously the ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD who loved this movie?!

I have yet to find a single positive review. (If you know of one, let me know.) So I threw one together.

Just to clarify if you missed it a second ago, I LOVE THIS MOVIE. I completely do not understand any of the criticism. The acting and the effects were both so good that I barely noticed them, I felt like things were really happening. I never once caught myself wondering what time it was, the way I usually do in movies.

I will say, I'd only seen the original movie before this one (liked it), and that I'd rather watch infomercials than the Sarah Conner Chronicles. But based on liking the original movie and learning as much as possible about the other two before I saw this one... this is a great movie. It doesn't feel the need to regurgitate the same plot again or explain it in painful detail, the actors are instead capable of conveying that backstory with a look while continuing with the motion of the movie at hand. I feel like there was space for this movie in the lore, they didn't have to hack the old stuff to bits to fit it in (like they did in, say, Star Trek).

In addition, this is what dystopia ought to be for me. It looks cool. It's grungy. It's sci-fi. All the tropes are there with no need to draw attention to themselves, just being cool the way they're meant to be. I like the way the romantic elements are subtle, not just a parade of "let's get it on" scenes. I like the total badassery of the characters.

The actors are great. The look is great. The story is great. What's not to love? See it for yourself while it's still in the theater.

I am of course open to discussion if anyone wants to contest my opinion. :)

Buy Terminator Salvation on DVD

Stargazer by Claudia Gray

2009-06-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

Stargazer is the second book in the Evernight series/trilogy?, just published March 24th.. You may remember my review of February 14th, in which I gushed repeatedly about how awesome Evernight is. Stargazer is just as awesome.

There's not a ton I can say without giving spoilers for either of the books, but I'll do my best.

First, Gray has the same control over her plot here that I was so impressed with in Evernight. I gasped at every twist. Sure, the elements have been used before--what elements haven't?--but this story hasn't been told. It feels new, and that's very special. Most of the meat of the story is internal conflict and slow development, then the last third is an explosion of action that grows perfectly out of that development.

I do feel like more Twilight-esque themes are used here, particularly the love triangle and "true love" aspects. The difference is that Gray knows what she's doing, she consciously deals with things rather than just applauding them because they sound nice. Sure, love feels all-consuming. But that doesn't make anything okay as long as you do it for love. There's a real world out there that contains more than two people, and what you do is going to have consequences for you, the object of your love, and everyone else around you.

I hate to keep comparing it to Twilight, but with its ubiquity it seems unavoidable... One of the things that bothers me most about Twilight is that the only characters who seem to matter are Bella and Edward. Bianca, Evernight's protagonist, actually has other friends, actually has parents and teachers and random people she meets on the street. She actually cares about them. This shouldn't need to be said.

I think the main question Stargazer wrestles with is, "What can you do for love?" It's dealt with in romantic love, parental love, sibling love, and friendship love. There's an intricate world here with a lot of gray areas (hah, pun!) and it's worth investing the extra time to not just enjoy the story, but really chew through what's going on in it. It's a fantastic book, no matter how deeply you want to invest yourself, and an amazing move forward in the overall Evernight story. I can't wait for the next book.

Buy Stargazer

Sucks To Be Me by Kimberly Pauley

2009-05-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

I return after my two-week hiatus with a book that I LOVE. A book that came out last year and isn't nearly as well-known as it deserves to be: Sucks To Be Me by Kimberly Pauley, in which Mina Hamilton's parents want her dead. Well, undead. Maybe. They're vampires, and now Mina has to decide if she wants to be one too.

There are boys and dates in it for you Twilight fans, but I'd never say it's a Twilight read-alike or even "like Twilight." It's funny, and touching, and realistic, and there's no wangst. And did I mention how funny it is?

The book starts off sort of boring and pop-y, but hang in there for two or three chapters. There are a lot of pop culture references but they're relevant, the ones I was actually thinking of rather than trying to hard to work them into the narrative in an attempt to be hip. The vampire references are updated and modern: Be honest, when someone says "vampire" you probably think of Twilight and Buffy now, not ghastly specters clawing their way up from the ground. Pauley layers both ideas, and you can tell she really likes the genre she's writing in and she's conversant with it.

There are a lot of great, quirky, realistically deep characters, and the plot is straightforward but detailed. I loved Mina and I think I'd love her just as much if she was a real person, along with all of her friends and family. I'd love to hang out with her and she's an amazingly loyal person to the people she loves.

Let me say one more time that this book is HILARIOUS. It was just under 300 pages, but I wouldn't've minded if it was 3000. Luckily there's a sequel in the works for next year. (Humor isn't something that can be explained easily, so check the book out for yourself. :) )

If you like this you might like ghostgirl, although I felt it was heavily in the camp of "trying way too hard to be cool and failing completely." The book itself is gorgeous though, I want whoever designed that to design my book someday. A slightly younger boy-targeted version of this might be the Vladimir Tod series.

You can read my interview with Kimberly here!

Buy Sucks to Be Me

No review this week

2009-05-23T18:49:00.000-07:00

Just dropping by to apologize for the absence last weekend and saying there'll be another one this weekend. :) I'm flying across the country and just don't have time to get it all typed up. Next weekend you can look forward to a review of the fabulous Sucks to Be Me: The All-True Confessions of Mina Hamilton, Teen Vampire (maybe) by Kimberly Pauley.

Dramacon (all three volumes) by Svetlana Chmakova

2009-05-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

It seems like I've been giving a lot of negative or iffy reviews... I hope to fix that today!

Dramacon wasn't the first manga I read... that was Hellsing Vol. 1. Flash review: The story and characters were great and I would've loved it if it hadn't been a manga. The manga-ness was really annoying and got in the way of the characters for me.

Dramacon is way better. If it wasn't a manga, I wouldn't like it.

The story is in three volumes, each one a different year for Christie at a manga convention. It was hilarious--one of those books I couldn't read in a public place because of the stares--and sweet, using the melodramatic spazziness manga has to hit all the right emotional notes for the characters and make it realistic and over the top at the same time.

The art is great, switching styles just a little bit to suit the tone of each scene. It's subtle, funny, and it works. It's also easy to follow, which is important for me because without clear art I can't figure out what's going on or who's speaking, no matter what country the comic book's from.

Although I've never been to a real con, I think it captured the atmosphere really well. The first volume is the funniest and simplest, with the only big plotline being Christie meeting Matt, that handsome black-coated guy on the cover. The second volume is more serious, adds more characters and has more real-life-like drama. The third volume doesn't have as much stuff about the con itself because it's keeping track of all the characters, but it's an excellent conclusion. (There may be a fourth volume in the works, but a google search and Svetlana Chmakova's website didn't give me that impression.)

I'm in the middle of Death Note right now and loving it, but these three (or five if you count each volume of Dramacon) are the only manga specimens I've even made it to the end of, and Dramacon is the only shojo. I either don't GET what's going on or I just don't LIKE it. So, got a good recommendation? Leave it in the comments!

Buy Dramacon

Angel: After the Fall by Brian Lynch

2009-05-01T20:37:00.000-07:00

That's a nice picture of Angel and the dragon on the cover there, no? There's a nice gallery at the end of the book with more pictures (although I can't remember if there are more dragons in them.)

Some spoilers ahead.

I'm a huge fan of Angel, but I was shy of reading the season 6 comics for a while because I liked the way the series ended and I wasn't much of a graphic novel fan at the time.

It turns out I didn't miss much. I declared this book to be un-canon... not because it was bad stuff, but because it was just so boring and unsatisfying. The things I didn't like about season 5 were still there to be disliked, and while the book was very intense in places, it was all about all the awful things that had happened to the characters since we'd seen them last. Which would be fine, but... nothing terrible really happened. At all. And what things did happen were the things that happened onscreen in the series, there was nothing NEW to deal with.

Also, the story picks up quite a bit after the last scene of season 5, and I was pretty confused for most of the book. (The second volume goes back to just after the series end. While it wasn't any more interesting than the first volume, I think the order ought to really be switched. I spent both books confused rather than neither.)

The best part was probably the art. It really harked back to the visual feel of the series itself, it wasn't hard on the eyes like some graphic novel art is, and I just enjoyed looking at it.

SPOILER: Everyone lives. (Although some by a skewing of the definition.) So, the ending of the series didn't really matter. While some of the things they thought up for the graphic novel were pretty clever, they took away what the ending was supposed to be ABOUT. Not Fading Away. Not backing down, no matter what. Going out swinging, even though you know you're going out.

It was worth reading as an Angel fan, definitely not a waste of time, I just prefer my own mental image of the season 5 aftermath. I recommend it for Angel fans, but I suspect that anyone else might be very confused. For a really amazing Buffyverse graphic novel try Fray; I loved it even when I didn't like graphic novels and didn't know much about Buffy, and I still love it now.

Buy Angel: After The Fall

Review: Art of Darkness by Sara K. Schneider

2009-04-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

I got this book about six months ago courtesy of LibraryThing and Cuneiform Books (which seems to have only published this one book... odd). I was pretty frantic with worry about something else entirely, and I read the whole thing in one day because I was desperate for distractions. That aside, I'd recommend reading it slowly to remember the details.

Art of Darkness is a very interesting nonfiction book on a topic that I've never seen addressed before--the art and science of false identities. It looks at how false identities are created, from fake IDs to real-time performance on the street, from con men to undercover police. The history of false identities is intermixed with descriptions of methods and discussions of the various issues associated with having one, including the criminal aspects and the problems some undercover cops have disengaging themselves from their deep cover identity.

It was very understandable from the point of view of someone who only knows about crime and crimefighting from TV. It did drag and get repetitive in some chapters, but like I said I've never seen a book about this subject before, so she doesn't get too specialized and tries to stay general. There are a lot of different viewpoints and plenty of firsthand information from interviews Schneider conducted.

I recommend this book for people interested in true crime. It's also a great writing resource, not just for those writing crime fiction but for anyone writing something involving a fake ID or an impersonation. However, it's not really light reading or reading-for-pleasure material.

Buy Art of Darkness

Review: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

2009-04-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

If you like Stephenie Meyer's writing but the Twilight series puts a bad taste in your mouth, The Host is for you. It was written for adults, and the complexity and realism reflect that.

The plot is taken from your basic bodysnatcher sci-fi story, but in this book, it's not about resisting the takeover. The takeover has already happened, and the protagonist, Wanderer, is one of the bodysnatchers. Unfortunately, the body she snatched, Melanie, is not happy with her. Then, to make things worse, Wanderer starts falling in love with the memories of Melanie's lover... and he may still be out there to find if they can work together.

The characters here have much more depth than in Meyer's young adult fiction. They have a certain intrinsicness, like they would exist without the framework of the story, and the breadth of the work allows for a deeper exploration of themes like sibling love and romantic rivalry. I also loved how both sides of almost every argument are totally understandable, and Meyer doesn't shy away from shades of gray. Each story question involved me totally.

At first the science fiction elements of the story were a bit eclipsed, but by the end I had the same sci-fi feeling I mentioned in my last review. The feeling that there are things out there that are totally other, but fascinating. And while many of the themes are stock sci-fi themes, they're treated with appropriate sobriety. The ending is amazing.

I like Twilight, but I have a lot of problems with Stephenie Meyer's work (or lack thereof). I've heard from some Twilight fans that they had trouble getting into The Host, which I take to mean that it is indeed a more rewarding read. It is her best work by far.

One of the best bodysnatcher movies I've seen is the 2007 release The Invasion, but no books are coming to mind. Recommendations, anyone?

Buy The Host

Review: Singularity by William Sleator

2009-04-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

To borrow from the back of the book: They were twins, but they were different as night and day. Harry was quiet and easygoing. His brother, Barry, was outgoing, arrogant, and sometimes even cruel. But when they went to explore the abandoned farmhouse of their eccentric uncle Ambrose, all that changed. At the farmhouse--where things mysteriously disappeared and animals suddenly aged and died--time seemed to go mad, hours rushing by like seconds.

Singularity is a science fiction book written for older kids, bordering on YA. It was originally published in 1985. It may be a little obscure and old, may seem like just kids sci-fi... but it's every reason I've ever read a book. It was ABOUT something, but something so hard to describe... the only thing I could say when I finished the book (in one sitting of four or five hours, as I recall) was "Oh, my God."

Barry is like every fantasy/sci-fi villain, only back when they were sixteen. He's cruel, self-centered, reckless, power-hungry, and he can charm or coerce anyone into doing whatever he wants. He's frightening. Harry, his twin, takes a little longer to understand, and by the time you do understand him you realize you might not have understood Barry as well as you thought.

The book is tightly written, only necessary things are included. A lot of the plot is internal and it may seem slow, but it is crucial to understanding the point. By the end, you have that painful and yet exultant feeling of understanding everything in the world, simply because you can't put any of it into words. Singularity gives me the feeling sci-fi always did when I was a kid... the feeling that the universe is so much bigger and so much more magnificent than I could ever hope for. The feeling that there is still something to strive for, and that there are things so beautiful they make you feel like crying.

I hope someone else will pick this book up and discover that same feeling while they read it. (But then, isn't that the point of every book we recommend? The hope that someone else will be touched in the same way?)

I've loved every book of William Sleator's that I've read, most acutely this one and Interstellar Pig, and I will continue to search more of them out.

Buy Singularity

Review - Jumper: Griffin's Story by Steven Gould

2009-04-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

In 1992, the book Jumper was published. In 2004, a sequel called Reflex followed, and quickly after in 2008, the movie of Jumper. It was only loosely based on the books and reimagined the "Jumper universe" and changed the atmosphere of the story considerably. Jumper: Griffin's Story was published along with the movie, using the reimagined universe and the character Griffin, who was created for the movie.

The basic idea is that some people, "jumpers," can teleport, and "paladins" are trying to kill them all.

My first experience with the whole thing was the movie. LOVED it. It was both quick and interesting, and original while dealing with old themes. Griffin was my favorite character.

I wasn't thrilled when I found it had been a book, but I read the first book first. I was glad I didn't have high expectations, because it was miserable. It dragged on for over 300 pages, nothing but abuse and misery and terrorists and whining teenagers.

I was interested in reading this one afterward, because of the reboot. Unfortunately, it was almost exactly like the first Jumper book. The plot was exactly the same... kid learns how to teleport, a bunch of terrible things happen to kid, kid makes lair for self, kid finds a girlfriend, more terrible things, ends in tears. I couldn't tell any difference between Griffin and David from the first book. They had the same voice and responses even though they're ostensibly from different backgrounds.

Also, this book doesn't ADD anything to the movie. No new revelations are made, no insight is gained on Griffin's life. The Griffin I knew from the movie was very different, more self-assured and angrier. More interesting and dynamic. I would've been a lot more interested in seeing how Griffin got to that point, or even a novelization of the movie from his perspective, rather than a story of how Griffin started that's basically the old book with the names changed.

What I'm trying to say is this: Watch the movie. Don't read the books. I realize this is backward from what a lot of people are saying, but it's the truth. The books Are Not Good. The movie Is Very Good. A better option for a book about teleportation might be the classic The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, although I haven't read it yet.

Buy Jumper: Griffin's Story

Review: Inamorata by Joseph Gangemi

2009-03-27T15:28:00.000-07:00

Does this book really exist? I can't find it through the publisher, fewer than 100 people have it listed on LibraryThing, the website for the author listed inside the book is nonexistent, you can only get it through Amazon from their authorized sellers and then only in paperback and for a penny, and googling is fruitless. It was only published in 2005! And all that's a pain, because I want someone to discuss it with! What's the deal?

Warning: very minor spoilers may follow.

Inamorata is a Gothic horror/mystery/romance/something, but set in the 1920s during the height of the Spiritualism fad. The viewpoint character is one Martin Finch, a college student who becomes part of a study financed by the Scientific American which offers a prize of $5,000 dollars to anyone who can prove "psychic phenomena" to the satisfaction of the board of judges. Martin's job is to help prove the candidates to be tricksters and does so with great ingenuity, until they discover Mina Crawley, a medium with unexplainable talents. Martin quickly becomes fascinated with her.

The investigation, and "Margery" as she was called in the papers, were both real. Gangemi goes deeper into the story, exploring the possibilities and the people involved to great dramatic effect. A word of warning: it's got some upsetting and graphic content, including a graphic surgical operation, implied abuse, drug use, and "Lets see how outraged we can get Fate's feminist sensibilities" content.

It was very upsetting. Most of the characters were too realistic for me to like, except the lawyer near the end of the book. (You'll know him when you see him.) I considered setting it down several times, but I HAD to know how it was going to end! I HAD to know what was going on!

I never found out. It's the MOTHER of all ambiguous endings. It seems like the answer is just beyond my fingertips... there were so many hints, so many clues, but I can't put them together.

If you like the Gothic feel, historical fiction/romance, ghosts, you'd probably like this one as long as you don't mind the upsetting parts and the ambiguity. If it sounds interesting, please read it and then come tell me your theory!

The one thing I really wanted to read when I finished this... besides a full explanation of what happened... was a real history of spiritualism or study of it in that time period. Here are a few, and here's a list of related books.
Buy Inamorata

Review: Need by Carrie Jones

2009-03-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

Need is the latest big YA push, written by Carrie Jones (author of Girl, Hero; Love (and Other Uses for Duct Tape); and Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend.) It's billed as a Twilight read-alike, and that's mostly what it is.

The main difference is that there aren't any vampires. There are pixies instead! Also, the protagonist, "Zara," yes there's a reason for the funky name, is a rabid liberal, and for that I can see no reason. It's just annoying. I don't have anything against liberals, I just wish they wouldn't be all up in my face, and it'd be better for their cause if they didn't act like dumb, whiny, totally genre-blind teenage girls the whole book. Also, the writing is in first person, present tense, which is sort of jarring.

Those things aside, it was a very engaging read and I enjoyed it. While it sounds EXACTLY like Twilight in the first few chapters, you quickly realize that there's more going on here. The characters are more confusing and believable, and the mystery/horror factors get center stage. There's a lot of good imagery and some fascinating red herrings and surprises. I loved almost all of the characters besides Zara, they're very down-to-Earth and funny.

The writing wasn't as good as it could've been, and the ending was a little weak. I ended up rooting for the bad guy, but even aside from that it wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be. There's definitely room for a sequel and I really hope she writes one, because there are a lot of things I'd like to see addressed more in-depth and I think she could work out the kinks in this one and end up with something really great. The basics are excellent, just the execution is shaky.

Need isn't the Best Book Ever, but it's definitely worth reading if you like the genre (YA, fantasy/horror/romance.) It's also recommended for Wicked Lovely fans, and definitely check it out if you liked Twilight or the idea of Twilight but not the way it was handled. (Another book even better for that purpose would be Evernight, which I liked way more than any of these others. Full review here.)

Buy Need

Review: The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale

2009-03-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

Three reviews in one this week! I felt like I needed to read all three of the books in this series before I could judge any one as a whole. A fourth book is coming out next September, which I will presumably review at that time. You may recognize the name Shannon Hale from the popular new graphic novel Rapunzel's Revenge (which I didn't particularly like but don't have anything against); this series is older but ongoing.

The Goose Girl is the first book in the series, and is a retelling of the Grimm fairy tale by the same name. You can read the original story here at Shannon's website. I'd recommend reading it first... it gives away the plot, but I think I got more out of the book from knowing the original. I won't recap the plot here, except that the main character, Isi, learns magic and goes through a lot of hardships before the end, and even having read the fairy tale doesn't prepare you for the "reality."

The story follows the fairy tale in most particulars of plot, but fully fills in all the magical and personal details. A whole world is created within those parameters and it doesn't seem forced at all. The book dragged terribly over the first half for me, where everything is being set up for the main action, but it is VERY worth it to read on to the end because overall the book is fantastic! I especially love the unique magic that Shannon's come up with and how it fits into the story.

The main character starts out annoying, but that's the way she's supposed to be and she gets her act together around the same time the plot gets good. What really made the book for me was the cast of supporting characters who are detailed, funny, and endearing.

* * *

While Enna Burning is a sequel to The Goose Girl, it doesn't follow the same character or a fairy tale. It has a very different attitude than the first book, and the fact that it isn't recycling the same ideas is part of what makes it good. It's about one of the goose girl's friends, Enna, who discovers fire magic during a war with Tira, the kingdom to the south.

I was furious for most of this book. How could it HAPPEN this way?! This is wrong, she's not writing the book right! I hate it!

That was when I realized that Enna Burning isn't the same kind of story as The Goose Girl. Enna Burning isn't a fairy tale. It's a story about redemption. Reading it is like living the story itself, not being a character or living in the world, but living the actual emotion of the whole story, and it was worth it to go through all that with Enna.

Despite what I'm saying about it being different, if you liked The Goose Girl you'll like this one. The same characters are present and I liked seeing the update on them, especially Isi and Razo.

* * *

The third book, River Secrets, is about the abovementioned Razo, one of Isi's friends who is featured more prominently in Enna Burning. He is selected as one of the guards of a peace mission to Tira.

Again, this book has a much different atmosphere than the other two. This is a mystery, a political intrigue, a coming-of-age story. Instead of discovering magical talents, Razo discovers that he's pretty awesome all by himself. And where the mystery is concerned, it's a great one. Some parts I guessed and others were totally opaque, keeping the pages turning.

This one is hilarious due to Razo's less-than-serious influence. I was laughing so hard my sister came over from the next room to see what was so funny. My answer was "Here, read this whole book," which is exactly what I'm telling you!

The other thing that struck me was the effort Shannon's put into her worldbuilding. The separate countries aren't just identical places with different names, they actually have very different customs, languages, and geographies. Altogether, this book was exemplary.

* * *

The fourth book is called Forest Born, but as yet I don't know who it's about or what the plot might be. I do know that I'll be snatching it up as soon as it's available.

These books are really something exceptional, and each one has something to say. There's something in here for everyone, whether you like romance, fairy tales, fantasy and magic, mysteries, or just stories about people getting better rather than getting worse. The way the characters are portrayed is very organic and easy to relate to, and the plots will grab you and make you listen. Enjoy!

Buy the Books of Bayern

Review: Kingdom Come by Mark Waid (+ Watchmen Yay!)

2009-03-06T22:59:00.000-08:00

I saw Watchmen last night. It was excellent. Basically the graphic novel brought to life, almost to the point that there's no reason to watch the movie because it's just a shorter, bloodier version of the graphic novel. But I enjoyed it, and I applaud the makers for their self-discipline in not screwing around with the material.

Yes, that does have something to do with this review! Kingdom Come is like Watchmen, only with real DC superheroes. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and all the rest. It was published in 1997, is less than half the size of Watchmen, and is absolutely fantastic.

The story takes place some time after the classic "metahumans" have retired, and the world is now being overrun by a new breed of superhero. The kind that America asked for, the kind that doesn't have any rules about not killing its enemies. Unfortunately, they also don't care about human collateral damage. The old superheroes come out of retirement to try to set things to right. The story is told in the form of a Christmas Carol-esque journey taken by a pastor and a cloaked spirit who demands that he judge the superheroes and say who will be punished in the end.

As far as I can tell, the characterization is very good. (I'm not sure because I'm not very familiar with the "classic" superheroes.) My favorite character is Batman, which comes as no surprise to me. The art is very good, not drawing attention to itself while being colorful and descriptive. There are a lot of large panels that I really loved looking at.

The plot is amazing, really grabs you by the throat and makes you listen to what it's saying. It asks questions like "Why do we fight?" "Why should we?" "Who is a part of the human race, and what does that mean?"I was on the edge of my seat the entire book, desperate to know how it ended, and it certainly delivered on its promise of a grand finale.

Try to get a hold of this editionit has a bonus scene in the back. My review of Watchmen is here, and can be summarized with the words "READ WATCHMEN." Another graphic novel in this vein that I'd recommend is Astro City, which is less intense but works with the same themes.

this edition

Review: The Quintessential Gentleman by Henry Russell

2009-03-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

Bonus review this week, since Mini Book Expo and Ulysses Press were kind enough to send it to me and I'm not sure if the review is overdue or not. I hope not, obviously, and I don't think it is.

Anyway, I read a lot of books about style and etiquette. I take none of the advice and follow none of the rules, but I find it very interesting and great research for the writing of certain stylish and mannerly characters. The Quintessential Gentleman is honestly one of the better ones I've read, because it's both funny and useful. If you can't read the type on the picture, it says "The Quintessential Gentleman: An Ironic, Sometimes Irreverent Guide to 21st-Century Manners by Henry Russell, Elegant Englishman."

This book was published in 2006, and it's suitably modern. It doesn't stress rules, since most people expect you to be flexible anyway, but instead shows appropriate attitudes to have and/or things to say in a huge variety of situations. The One Great Rule of stylebooks is, in my experience, that being a gentleman consists of being considerate to the needs of others and that little else is necessary.

Henry Russell is very funny in his candid, realistic approach. He doesn't focus on the usual round of what cut of suit to wear and which fork to use, but instead presents a few paragraphs on each topic and sub-topic, including but not limited to what to say at a bar mitzvah, what to write in a thank-you note, and how to get rid of boring people who want to talk to you. It's not so much a plan of action as a guide to strategy.

This book is slightly smaller than a dvd case and just under 200 pages, a very quick read that gets the job done. Some others I recommend are Freakin' Fabulous by Clinton Kelly, and anything by John Bridges.
Buy The Quintessential Gentleman

Review: The Monster Garden by Vivien Alcock

2009-02-27T20:27:00.000-08:00

I was reading The Monster Garden around the same time I was reading Bruce Coville, and loved it just as much. (I reviewed one of his books here.) It's a kids' book, although I'm not sure what age the protagonist is exactly (12ish?), originally published in 1988 and featuring a variation on the "secret pet" story. This was the second book to ever make me cry, after Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher.

It'd been a long time since I'd read or thought about this, and I didn't remember a lot of it so it was almost like reading it again for the first time. I cried again, and I loved it just as much as before if not even more.

Frankie Stein is the daughter of a research scientist. She accidentally creates a baby monster with unwanted cells from her father's laboratory, which first scares her and then starts endearing itself to her (and the rest of us.) She enlists a girl who's good with babies/animals to help her take care of it and keep it secret, so that no evil scientists can take it away. But the monster keeps growing...

My favorite thing about this book is the way Monnie, the monster, is treated by the author. I love him/her/it to death, but I'm never told "here, you're supposed to love this." My second favorite part is the relationship between Frankie and Monnie and how it grows, how well I come to understand them over the course of the story.

A lot of basic kid themes are present, including sibling rivalry and the special dynamic friendship has at that age. (And the friendship subplot is one of the most believable things in the book. You'll know what I mean when you read it, it's not what you're usually fed in these books.) I really like Frankie, and how practical she is with herself even while she's having a completely emotional and impractical reaction to something. She's the kind of person I'd like to be my friend, and when I'm reading The Monster Garden it's like she is. Also, I love Alf.

This is Vivien Alcock's absolute best book, and suitable for all ages. Unfortunately a lot of her books weren't this good, a lot of them had weak endings as I recall, but the other one I liked was The Mysterious Mr. Ross, and Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville is the first book I'd recommend to go with this The Monster Garden.

Buy The Monster Garden

Interview with Robert Paul Weston, author of Zorgamazoo!

2009-02-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have been reading this blog for any length of time have probably heard me mention Zorgamazoo once or twice. Possibly more than twice, because I'm crazy about this book. (You can read my full review here, complete with a short summary and a few excerpts.) The author, Robert Paul Weston, graciously agreed to a short interview this week!

If you haven't read the book and are too lazy to click over to the review, Zorgamazoo is a kids' fantasy novel written entirely in verse that was released last October. And without further ado, my friends, the interview.

FF: How long did it take you to write Zorgamazoo?

RPW: It took me about three years, but not full time. I was also working and going to graduate school.

FF: What was your goal for the book? Why did you write it?

RPW: To be honest, once I began my goal was simply to complete it, to challenge myself and see if it was possible. And as for why I wrote it...I suppose because I had a story to tell. The idea came to me like all ideas, which is to say mysteriously and without warning. At the time -- several years ago now -- I didn't consider myself a children's writer, so initially the story didn't appeal to me. But I'd speculated about a novel in verse from time-to-time and I thought, what if I told this particular story in rhyme? Would that make it more appealing to me? The answer turned out to be a resounding yes.

FF: Are there any specific books or other media that you feel influence your writing in general or Zorgamazoo in particular?

RPW: In fact, there are many. First, the obvious influences -- Roald Dahl and Dr. Suess -- but they're sort of ubiquitous in nearly every English-speaking childhood. In a way, we're all influenced by those two in one way or another. I was also a fan of Edward Lear's nonsense poetry as a child (and astute readers will pick up on the homage I paid him in chapter 14).

I also looked to modern examples of epic verse as inspirational examples of what was possible; notably Vikram Seth's novel The Golden Gate, which is written entirely in Pushkin sonnets, and The Wild Party by Joseph March. Merely knowing pieces like these existed helped sustain my momentum while writing Zorgamazoo.

Music was also an inspiration, as I've always been a fan of lyrics. I think songwriters are the unsung heroes (pun intended) of contemporary form poetry. Of course, when I say "contemporary," I'm including the lyricists of Tin Pan Alley and writers of the Great American Songbook. I even took inspiration from musical theatre -- W.S. Gilbert, for instance, whose topsy-turvy songs are composed with an almost despotic adherence to a given metre.

FF: What do you read for fun?

RPW: I'm a slow, methodical but dedicated reader, and there are few things I love more than getting lost in a book. I tend not to read much children's literature, however, but since producing some of it myself, I've made an effort to bone up, and I've discovered some incredible gems I would have overlooked otherwise. I adore David Almond, for instance -- Skellig is pure genius. My favourite books from recent memory are Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer and The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill.

FF: Do you have a particular writing process? Story first and then rhyme, vice versa, or something completely different? What's your favorite part?

RPW: The story always comes first. I've unfortunately scrapped a lot of writing that wasn't well planned. But while the overall story of Zorgamazoo didn't deviate much from the beginning, there are certainly individual scenes that were altered because I fell in love with a particular couplet. Characters turning right instead of left, maybe, because "heft" and "bereft" wouldn't cut it.My favourite part? Hm...it comes near the end and it'd be a spoiler if I told. But I can say that my favourite part to read aloud is the second half of chapter 3, when Dr. LeFang stalks onstage for the first time.

FF: What's the best part about having a published novel? How about the worst?

RPW: Let's start with the worst. That's when your editor tells you to murder your darlings, meaning to cut out some part of the book you adore, and then has the audacity to ask you to go ahead and grow yourself some new darlings. The feeling goes south from there when you realize she's absolutely correct. The best part, however, comes afterwards. That's when you get a message from a kid who tells you he's never finished reading a single book in his whole life, until now...and you believe him because he's misspelled every word in the email.

FF: Would you ever accept an offer for a movie adaptation of Zorgamazoo?

RPW: Uh, yes please. Are you offering?

FF: I think Zorgamazoo is fantastic as a stand-alone novel, but how would you feel about a sequel?

RPW: The schedule for my next two novels is a little too tight for producing another work of long form verse, so those next two will be in prose. However, I would love to have the opportunity to revisit Katrina and Morty in the future. So the short answer is yes, I'd like to do a sequel, but you'll have to give me some time.

FF: The Author page on zorgamazoo.com says your next novel is called Grimm City. What can you tell us about it?

RPW: In many ways, Grimm City is the antithesis of Zorgamazoo. Whereas the latter is humorous and whimsical, Grimm City is rather dark, features more sophisticated themes and it aimed at an older YA audience. It's a literary thriller set in a mysterious, isolated city populated with skewed versions of fairy tale characters; and as I mentioned, it's a prose novel -- no rhyming here. At the same time, however, certain similarities have emerged: First, I hope it will stand (as I hope Zorgamazoo stands) as a different kind of fantasy novel, and second, also like Zorgamazoo, it has at its heart a strong but strained father-son relationship.

FF: Thanks for giving us your time! Is there anything else you'd like to add?

RPW: Only that I'd like to thank readers who have sent me their comments, appreciation and words of encouragement. Writing can be a lonely pursuit at times, so it helps tremendously to know someone out there is reading your book and enjoying it. So thank you. I wasn't kidding with that earlier question -- hearing from readers is truly the best part.

You can visit zorgamazoo.com for more info about the book, news, all that lovely stuff, or visit Rob himself at his blog, Way of the West. You can buy the hardcover here. (I already went and bought it after originally reading a second-hand ARC, and it's lovely. Perfect size, perfect type... seriously. Buy the thing.)

Rob, thanks again, and Grimm City sounds fantastic! Keep up the good work!

Buy Zorgamazoo

Review: The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

2009-02-19T23:24:00.000-08:00

This is one of the few books I’ve literally not been able to put down and had to read in one sitting. Its premise is one I had never seen before, as of last year when I read it and still, and that’s pretty rare where fantasy novels are concerned.

The odd-numbered chapters of this book deal with a place simply called “The City,” where dead people live until they are forgotten on Earth. At one time the city was huge, and no inhabitant could ever dream of meeting everyone who lived there. But now the city is shrinking, and no one knows why. The even-numbered chapters tell the story of a woman named Laura Byrd who is trapped in Antarctica, alone at a research station with no means of communicating with the rest of the world. She slowly withdraws into her own thoughts, and most importantly her memories.

Kevin Brockmeier weaves these two stories together masterfully, constantly dropping hints but never revealing too much of the story at one time. Each clue slowly makes what is happening more clear, making for a gripping read. Even if you guess the story like I did, as it unfolds you're drawn more and more into the surreal experience of listening to Laura’s thoughts as if they were your own, and you want the story to be complete.

Each character is fully formed with all the good and bad qualities of any other person you would meet on the street, and their strange situations only make that more clear. I didn't find them personally compelling as individuals, but that wasn't quite the point.

The important thing to remember when you pick this up is that it's not your typical fantasy book or thriller. It's more literary. The plot moves slowly and it's very introspective, without a lot of "fantasy." Be prepared to sit and think, or just sit and drift. Read it when you've got some time on your hands, especially if you're inclined to stop and process while you read.

Buy The Brief History of the Dead

Review: Kingdom of the Occult by Walter Martin

2009-02-16T16:04:00.000-08:00

Bonus review this week, seeing as I'm pretty sure this review is more than a few days overdue. (Very sorry, Thomas Nelson. This book is freaking huge.)

The Kingdom of the Occult is an updated, October 2008 version of The Kingdom of the Cults, originally published in 1965. It is 733 pages long, 678 if you don't count the Q&A appendix, counselling assessment appendix, bibliography, or index. It contains in-text footnotes, along with case studies, graphs, etc., and suggested resources at the end of each chapter.

The goal of this book is to investigate cults/cultism, examine cults' influence on America and the world, compare/contrast Christianity and cultism, and prepare Christians to speak to members of the occult. It aims to do this by historical analysis, theological evaluation of each cult's beliefs, and apologetic contrast between the cult and Christianity.

I had some issues with the theology presented, but I won't go into that. E-mail me if you want a rant. What I will say is that the main impression I got from the book was paranoia and Us vs. Them. My advice is to read it while you're awake and paying attention, to do wide research to back things up, and make sure to look up all the Bible references so you know what's being talked about.

This book would be very useful for any kind of research on the subject, much more than for casual reading. There's plenty of information, including statistics etc., that would come in really handy for papers or presentations, and it suggests or mentions plenty of other sources to look at for each topic that it addresses.

Buy The Kingdom of the Occult

Review: Evernight by Claudia Gray

2009-02-14T00:25:00.001-08:00

Evernight is a YA vampire romance published last year, and at first glance it seems very much like a Twilight knock-off. However, while it may be a read-alike, it's not just a knock-off. It's an amazing, amazing, amazing addition to the genre, that far more people should have heard of by now. (Also, if you haven't read any summaries or Amazon reviews, DON'T. They'll give things away that you don't want to get until you're reading.)

Bianca is a new student at Evernight, a creepy Gothic boarding school where all the other students seem to be beautiful and rich. On her first day there she meets Lucas, a bronze-haired boy who is not only gorgeous, but seems to feel as out of place as she does. He's also got some anger issues and he's moody and secretive. They fall in love. There's also a third romance interest. I know, it sounds familiar. But bear with me for a few chapters.

Evernight knocks over all the tropes and cliches you're thinking of. I love Twilight, but I freely admit having some issues with it, and Evernight deals with all of those issues exactly the way I'd been wishing something would.

My favorite aspect of the book is the plot. It's perfectly crafted, and I'm in awe of the way Claudia Gray is in such control over it without making herself evident in every encounter. There's a lot of mystery and activeness here, for those of you who don't like nothing but romance, along with some delicious romantic intensity, and a few plot turns that will keep you up past your bedtime.

There's a variety of characters present and all of them are very real and organic. None of them fell into the cliches they might have been prone to, and their interactions were also very believable. (I don't know about you, but I hate those books where the characters are just talking heads. Everything these characters do is based directly on their motivations.) There's a lot of subtlety here, and Gray doesn't need to spell things out for us for us to understand them.

I have plenty more good things to say, but I won't spoil. Just read a copy for yourself. The sequel, Stargazer, is coming out on March 24. If you're looking for further recommendations let me know and I'll pass some on, but basically this is great for anybody who likes the genres.

Buy Evernight

Review: A Passion for Books by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan

2009-02-06T15:54:00.000-08:00

I love to read books about books. I don't personally know that many bibliophiles, so I like the sense of community I get. I'm also interested in the history of books and bookmaking and book-people and everything else. Unfortunately, I find that a lot of these books-about-books start to ramble in the third or fourth chapter, and it can be difficult to actually obtain information from them.

This book's full title is "A Passion for Books: A book lover's treasury of stories, essays, humor, lore, and lists on collecting, reading, borrowing, lending, caring for, and appreciating books." Rather than being one person rambling, it is instead a collection of said stories, essays, humor, lore and lists, gathered from a wide variety of times, places, and people. Each essay explores a new topic, with plenty of useful information and interesting tidbits to sink my teeth into, without having so much that I'm overwhelmed or worse, bored.

There are cartoons, humorous essays, lists of must-reads, informative articles, and character sketches of the most famous (and infamous) bibliomaniacs. There's something to suit anyone's interests, or in my case, to suit all of my interests! Some of my favorites were the essays concerning book collecting, something I didn't know much about before. Other highlights were Umberto Eco's essays on how to run a public library and how to justify a private one... he's funnier than I gave him credit for!

This is definitely my favorite book in its field, but my other book-about-books review from November can be found here, and a list of a gazillion recommendations for more books can be found here. My favorite in the list is The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski.

Review: The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci

2009-01-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

The Plain Janes is a book that came out in 2007 from minx, an imprint of DC Comics that makes chick-lit graphic novels. Another blog reviewed it and it looked interesting, so I picked it up from the library. (If it was you let me know, I can't remember who reviewed it for the life of me.)

This book follows a girl named Jane who leaves Metro City in favor of a small town after her family is traumatized by a bomb detonation. Many of her thoughts are revealed in her letters to a comatose John Doe who was standing next to her when the bomb went off. At her new school she joins the group of school rejects, all named Jane, and they begin a series of "art attacks" on the town.

The Plain Janes is simple and real, without any distractions from the main emotion. It's perfect for graphic novel format because so much of it is about the art itself, and the style reflects that. The pictures are clean and uncluttered, and dialogue is economized.

The character development is excellent in this, especially considering how short the book is. I usually find that the more realistic characters are the more annoying they get, but the Janes--Main Jane, Brain Jayne, Sporty Jane and Theater Jane--are my kind of people. There's also a collection of supporting characters, each of whom has much more depth than you might expect on their first appearance. The story raises good questions and delivers a pitch-perfect ending.

There is a sequel called Janes in Love that I would very much like to read, should the library choose to buy it, and Castellucci has written several traditional novels, but if you're looking for something similar to this, your best bet is to try out the other books from minx.

Buy The Plain Janes

Review: The Monsters of Morley Manor by Bruce Coville

2009-01-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

This is a re-read from my younger days... I picked it up again because A) I liked it when I was eleven and usually when I like a book, I keep liking it, and B) Because even if I hadn't liked it when I was eleven I'd still want to read it. So there.

I've always liked Bruce Coville. (Click here for a list of his books.) His I Was a Sixth Grade Alien series and Aliens Ate My Homework series were and are some of my all-time favorites, and Jeremy Thatcher is The Best Book Ever. I've read most of his books, which go from kids' to YA and are mostly sci-fi or ghost-type stories with the occasional fantasy. All of them are fantastic (except the My Teacher is an Alien series, it's just not as good) so pick your poison and go to town.

The Monsters of Morley Manor, however, is a little bit outside his usual range. It starts off ghosty-horror when five monsters are brought to life, then progresses through fantasy, complete with magic rock and wizard guys, to sci-fi with world-hopping and aliens, then back to ghosty-horror.

The protagonists are Anthony Walker and his younger sister Sarah. Anthony is about ten-ish and Sarah is a few years younger, but unlike many authors Coville resists the urge to oversimplify them. The book deals with some complicated issues, involving Anthony and Sarah's recently-deceased grandfather, the afterlife, betrayal, time travel's effect on relationships, and a few other things, but it's presented as just real things that have to be dealt with, and the kids deal.

The book is suitable for anyone who can read a chapter book. The style is simple, but the plot is complicated enough to be interesting. The ending was sad, but perfectly executed, and the only thing wrong with the whole thing is that Bruce Coville never wrote a sequel. There aren't many similar books, except possibly Zorgamazoo in the genre-bending sense (and is it just me or do I recommend that book in every review...), but if you like this one you'll like his others.

Buy The Monsters of Morley Manor

Review: Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica

2009-01-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

I hate memoirs. BUT, I have a weakness for workplace stories and rants. It lets off steam when those library patrons have been acting up again, or when the person in front of me in the Wal-Mart line is being a jerk. Waiter Rant is a sort-of memoir by the guy who writes the Waiter Rant blog, but don't worry... there's a lot more in it than what's on the blog, and it's only sort of a memoir.

It seems like this is a book about why he wrote this book, more than anything. And that's fine. He tells the story of how he became a waiter and what it's really like, from dealing with customers to dealing with other staff, and he does it with both humor and insight. He tells the stories of other people he's seen pass through the dining room. He tells about his fear of failure and how long it took him to decide to write this book. There are happy moments, sad moments, gross moments... just about everything, and even if you've never been a waiter I'm sure you'll sympathize. I'm also sure you'll decide to start tipping a lot more than you have been!

Equal parts personal history, work anecdotes, and insider information, Waiter Rant is a quick, smooth read. I was impressed with how orderly it was, structured almost like a novel with flashbacks and asides but everything being revealed in the right order. It ends shortly after he's gotten his book deal, and I was encouraged to go bang out the rest of the Great American Novel right then and there.

I hear he's writing a new book and I can't wait to read it, but until then there's Not Always Right, a blog about funny and stupid customer quotes, and Quiet, Please, the same sort of kind-of-memoir only about a librarian.

Buy Waiter Rant

Review: Larklight by Philip Reeve

2009-01-09T10:59:00.000-08:00

Larklight's full title is "Larklight, or The Revenge of the White Spiders! or To Saturn's Rings and Back!: A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space," and that's exactly what it is.

Larklight takes place in an alternate England--I think it's Victorian, darn that terrible history professor--where the English want to conquer not other continents but other planets. Their scientists have discovered the secret to a chemical wedding that allows their ships to travel quickly from one to another. Larklight is the name of a house in space, occupied by Art and Myrtle Mumby, their father, and their robot servants. When a certain Mr. Webster comes to call, the children find themselves adrift in space to cope with aliens, space pirates, and a sinister plot threatening the whole of the solar system!

This is really more fantasy than sci-fi, but fans of either genre should find something to enjoy. It keeps up a feeling of offbeatness that other books aim for but don't always achieve. There are lovely weird ideas and a wonderful irreverence for practicality. The illustrations (all done by David Wyatt) are quirky, similar to those in The Edge Chronicles, and I really enjoyed how the text would occasionally reference them and make them part of the narrative.

The characters are fun, and although most of them are situated in traditional roles, Reeve has put in the work to make sure their actions aren't just stock responses. Art is my favorite, he's the funniest, and also the POV character. His older sister Myrtle is hilariously annoying though, and when the two are separated, Art provides journal entries from her secret diary to make up the difference.

I wasn't entirely pleased with the ending. It felt a little too planned, considering the tone of the book. Also, be prepared to discuss some religious issues with your preteen if you give it to them... for most of it the characters accept Victorian Christianity, then an alien creator is introduced, who then proceeds to proclaim a very vague concept of her own religion. I wished somebody would just pick one and stick with it.

This is the first book of a trilogy, the others being Starcross and Mothstorm, and I look forward to the other two tying up some unexplained points. There aren't a whole lot of similar books, which is great, but some I'd recommend are Fergus Crane by Paul Stewart and The Pirate's Mixed-Up Voyage by Margaret Mahy.

Buy Larklight

Booking Through Thursday: The Best

2009-01-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

This week's BTT asks about my favorites from 2008. And to this I say: AAAH! I can't pick favorites, for one thing, and for another my reading journal only goes back to August. I had a list before that but there was a computer crash and it went bye-bye... that's why I keep it on paper now. Anyway. My best attempt, in no particular order:

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder (I'll review it sometime. It's awesome.)

Watchmen by Alan Moore (review here)

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy (review here)

Zorgamazoo by Robert Paul Weston (review here) (Let me just note that I got the real, published hardback version for Christmas and it's gorgeous. I read the ARC. The real one has better fonts and is a great size and I'm absolutely in love with it.)

Gosh, that looks like a tiny list. It's just the best of the best, and just since August. Maybe I'll add to it when I remember the others...

Find more responses to Booking Through Thursday here.

Review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2009-01-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

This review is going to be in two parts. If the first part is satisfying to you, feel free to skip the second. :)

This is a great kids' book. Optimum age range is probably 10-12, but there's a lot of leeway. It does start out scary, and has one or two more scary sequences, but a kid who's into that funny-gothic thing that's going around now should love it. The writing is pretty simple, the characters are cute, and the ending is tied up neatly. Some similar books are A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, which has 13 books and would take up more time, and The Wednesday Tales, which is a work-in-progress with its third book coming out on the 27th.

Since that's most of the good things I have to say, we now embark into part two.

This book was really disappointing. All the experiences I've had with Gaiman and all the hype I saw for it really had me hoping for something special, and all I got was... lame. There were some interesting ideas, but nothing had me sit up and go "Ooh! That's new!" There seemed to be too much emphasis on "quirky worldbuilding" and not enough on plot. Most of the book is about Bod growing up in the graveyard, which, honestly, is boring as heck. The coming-of-age stories that exist already are like unto grains of sand on a seashore.

Then, after the plot picked up, I guessed all the twists, and that was annoying. On top of that, the ending was way too sweet and inspiring and it didn't go with the tone of the book at all. There was one character that I loved, Silas, and I especially loved the way he was sort of talked around in the narrative, but the book wasn't about him. If it HAD been, THEN I would have loved it.

This just really didn't do it for me because I was expecting something a lot better. If I'd just expected a cute kids' book it would have been great.

Buy The Graveyard Book

Review: Bucky Katt's Big Book of Fun by Darby Conley

2008-12-26T21:16:00.000-08:00

My brother gave this to me for Christmas... Thank you, brother!

Get Fuzzy is a daily comic strip featuring Bucky Katt the Siamese, Satchel Pooch the adorable Shar Pei/Yellow Lab mix, and Rob Wilco the slightly geeky owner of the apartment.

I'm a longtime fan of Get Fuzzy and it's one of the few newspaper comic strips that can actually get a belly laugh out of me. The art is cute and clear, and Darby Conly is great at depicting the animals' expressions and attitudes.

This strip is really accessible to everyone. Bucky's cattiness is hilarious whether you're a cat person or not, as is Satchel's clueless dogginess, because they're both SO cat and dog and everything they do is so recognizable!

This is the second big collection of strips, the first being Groovitude: A Get Fuzzy Treasury. You can also get a free daily fix here, via Comics.com. If you're already a Get Fuzzy fan, try out Pearls Before Swine.

Buy Bucky Katt's Big Book of Fun

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

Review: V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

2008-12-19T22:08:00.000-08:00

This makes the fourth graphic novel I've read. (That's Watchmen, Sandman, Angel Season 6, and this. Watchmen and Sandman were reviewed here and here.) I saw the movie ages ago and adored it, but I didn't realize it was a graphic novel until I was looking for more stuff by Alan Moore, writer of my beloved Watchmen. Needless to say, the anticipation ran high.

I was not disappointed. V for Vendetta is much sleeker than Watchmen, more streamlined, and it suits the story very much. The story is as follows: A Guy Fawkes-ian terrorist, code name V, is targeting a post-WWIII totalitarian government. Hijinx ensue.

The art in this book was dark, which suited the mood perfectly, but I had trouble making out the pictures sometimes. Especially in the last third, I couldn't figure out which characters were which or remember what had happened to them. Luckily V's silhouette is very recognizable, and he was the character I was really interested in...

V is definitely insane. But a cold, clean, utterly sane kind of insane. He knows exactly what he's doing and he believes in it, totally and completely. His strikes are surgical, perfect, terrifying. He is the only man who could bring about the kind of changes wrought in the space of the novel... whether or not those changes should be brought about is the main course of the meal for thought. V is steeped in literature and culture, practically everything he says is a quote, and it makes him like a living metaphor, adding new dimensions everywhere you look. My favorite scene is a long conversation he holds with a statue of Lady Justice. Does he really believe the statue is talking to him? Does he just want it to be? Or is he just playing out the metaphor he sees? The scene distills the character of V perfectly for me, showing all of his intent and the different sides to his actions. You'll know it when you see it.

V for Vendetta didn't hit me quite as hard as Watchmen, but the punch definitely connected. I recommend it without hesitation, especially to fans of the movie. While it's been too long since I saw it to comment on any specifics, the atmosphere and gist of the movie and novel seem to be the same, and I certainly enjoyed both. If the Guy Fawkes thing is new to you like it was to me, I recommend your favorite search engine, Wiki, or the book Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser.

Buy V for Vendetta

Booking Through Thursday: Generosity

2008-12-18T20:24:00.000-08:00

Do you give books as gifts?

To everyone? Or only to select people?

How do you feel about receiving books as gifts?

1) Most definitely! Mostly because I'm familiar with books more than other things. It's usually easier for me to think of the perfect book than the perfect something else.

2) To most people. If it's someone I don't know so well I may not get a book, because I don't know what they like, already own or have already read. But then again I don't usually give presents to people I don't know so well.

3) FEEEED MEEEEE!!!! I mean, um...

Review: Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

2008-12-12T18:59:00.000-08:00

I totally adore Skulduggery Pleasant.

The protagonist, Stephanie Edgley, is twelve, but she's a very unique twelve-year-old. The writing is relatively simple, but the ideas are relatively tough. That means it can really appeal to everyone, right? Stephanie discovers after her Uncle Gordon's funeral that he was more than he seemed, and at that same funeral she meets Skulduggery Pleasant, a very thin gentleman... This is one of those rare finds in which I loved ALL of the characters, couldn't predict the twists and turns, and couldn't be distracted from the book for more than ten seconds.

Skulduggery has to be my favorite character. He's mysterious, suave, and otherworldly, while he's also very urbane and utterly hilarious. But Stephanie is a close second. She's practically my Mary Sue, in a really good way... Well, more like she's the character I always want authors to write but never receive. She's smart and brave, but she still struggles. She's twelve, but she still needs help from the adults (weird "but," I know.) She wishes for magic, and she's actually EXCITED when she gets it!

The magic and world are built on old themes, but the usages are fresh and new. It's written for kids and I know they'll love it, there's plenty of action and humor, but the subtleties were enough to blow my mind and give me things to chew over. The plot twists weren't the same old "surprises" I was expecting, but nothing was random or haphazard about the way it was put together.

Altogether this was a real treat for me, and I can't wait to read the sequel, Playing With Fire. My sister, the YA one, has read both books and says the second is just as fantastic as the first.

This is often billed as a Potter alternative, but that just means it's an urban fantasy book for kids... It reminds me a lot more of The Dresden Files for kids, or The Nightmare Before Christmas, with maybe even a hint of Zorgamazoo...

Buy Scepter of the Ancients

Booking Through Thursday: Time is of the Essence

2008-12-11T20:59:00.000-08:00

1. Do you get to read as much as you WANT to read? (I’m guessing #1 is
an easy question for everyone?)

2. If you had (magically) more time to read–what would you read? Something educational? Classic? Comfort Reading? Escapism? Magazines?

1) Definitely not.

2) All of the above? Is "etc." an option? I would be catching up on Mt. TBR, which contains a little of everything. (There's a myth about a dude perpetually pushing a boulder up a hill... it always reminds me of dear old Mt. TBR.)

Mm, short and sweet this week. Read more responses here!

Review: Capote in Kansas by Kim Powers

2008-12-06T00:25:00.000-08:00

I have a small predilection for all things Capotean. (Is that a word? It is now.) I've read all the books about/by him I could find and seen at least three movies about In Cold Blood. I wrote a long paper on him last year. He just fascinates me. So I was understandably excited about reading this novel, a fictional account that focuses on his relationship to Nelle Harper Lee.

I was a little disappointed, honestly. It wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't as good as it could have been. The first half seemed like just a list of historical events, without much fiction to keep it interesting, and then the second half seemed mostly fiction without many facts to ground it. Powers warns in his author's note that he has long been preoccupied by the wonders of Capote and Lee, and it's apparent that this book is an ode to his preoccupation.

Truman and Nelle are done very well. They match the images I have of those two authors almost exactly... unfortunately that's not such a good thing. Nothing in the book made me consider them in any new light. The same goes for the storyline and events. The most interesting things are the things that can be found in any biography, and no new food for thought is presented.

This might do well as an introduction to the subject, or a summary or general reminder. The facts are mostly straight and it isn't a chore to read. But I would recommend reading the real novels and biographies. Why go to a secondary or tertiary source when the primaries and secondaries are incredible in their own right?

Buy Capote in Kansas

Booking Through Thursday: 5 for Favorites

2008-12-04T20:15:00.000-08:00

1. Do you have a favorite author?

2. Have you read everything he or she has written?

3. Did you LIKE everything?

4. How about a least favorite author?

5. An author you wanted to like, but didn’t?

They WOULD pick author questions... For some reason it's much easier for me to group books together by subject, setting, tone, whatever, rather than author, so it's hard for me to think in terms of authors. But I'll do my best.

1) I have a lot of favorites. I mentioned some of the early favorites in my Thanksgiving post, but here are some others: Kevin Brockmeier, Derek Landy, Alan Moore, Maria V. Snyder, Jane Yolen, William Sleator, Oscar Wilde, Truman Capote, quite possibly Robert Paul Weston... and a host of others that just aren't crossing my mind right now. For the purposes of the next few questions I'm going to go with the great C.S. Lewis.

2) Not quite. I haven't been able to get some of his journal stuff or some of the poetry, I haven't had the money for the new Boxen book, and I'm sure I've missed some essays here and there, but I've read the grand majority of his work.

3) Heck yes. Especially Till We Have Faces.

4) Steinbeck.

5) I can't really think of one. So as a bonus: some authors I wanted to DISlike but didn't. J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, and Jane Austen.

Read more responses here!

Review: Urchin of the Riding Stars by M. I. McAllister

2008-11-28T12:51:00.000-08:00

Due to a hectic week, the joys of Thanksgiving, and my laptop being broken, I did not in fact read this book this week. However, I did in fact read it three months ago and it's fantastic. Urchin of the Riding Stars is the first book of The Mistmantle Chronicles. There are three, with a fourth that either just came out or is about to come out, but unfortunately my library doesn't have any of the sequels so I've only read the first one.

I didn't really like the first six or eight chapters, in fact I nearly put the book down and moved on, but I was so glad I held on to the end. It's pretty obviously a Redwall read-alike. The first chapters introduce the setting, an island surrounded by mist, and a host of very expected Redwall stock characters. Urchin, a squirrel, arrived on the island during a meteor shower as a newborn baby who was then adopted into the society of the island with only a few animals knowing about the prophesies, etc., that accompanied him. There are some power-hungry nobles trying to take over the island! WHO can save us? Blah blah blah, blah.

BUT, after all that is out of the way, we really set into the good stuff. This is shorter and written more simply than Redwall, but it deals with different themes. I may be wrong, but I can't remember Redwall ever dealing with organized infanticide or demonic possession. Urchin does, and does it very, very well. Urchin has more focus on a political intrigue kind of plot, more internal intensity. There isn't a definite "The people inside are good and that horde over there is bad," but there IS a definite "these actions are good and these actions are bad."

As the book goes on the characters turn out to be much more developed than the first chapters would indicate. The plot becomes ever more complex, but isn't hard to follow and doesn't get bogged down. There are some religious themes, one of the best characters is a priest and they all pray to the Heart of the Island, but like the other themes I've mentioned it isn't quite pronounced, only there. The story sets up a series well, I hope the growing pains were worked out in this one and the second book can pick up where this one left off.

Overall, this was an excellent book, good for kids who like animal fantasy or people who like basic fantasy in general. It was similar in ways to the Silverwing series by Kenneth Oppel and to the Warriors series, maybe even similar to The Wind in the Willows in a way, or The Giver. It's suitable for all ages, but the younger a kid is the more I'd suggest discussion.

Buy Urchin of the Riding Stars

Booking Through Thursday: Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T11:49:00.000-08:00

Today is Thanksgiving here in the U.S.

Now, you may have noticed that the global economy isn’t exactly doing
well. There’s war. Starvation. All sorts of bad, scary things going on.

So–just for today–how about sharing 7 things that you’re thankful
for?

This can be about books, sure–authors you appreciate, books you love,
an ode to your public library–but also, how about other things, too? Because in
times like these, with bills piling up and disaster seemingly lurking around
every corner, it’s more important than ever to stop and take stock of the things
we’re grateful for. Family. Friends. Good health (I hope). Coffee and tea.
Turkey. Sunshine. Wagging tails. Curling up with a good book.

So, how about it? Spread a little positive thinking and tell the world
what there is to be thankful for.

1) Number one is, of course, that I'm thankful for the reason for my faith. I'm a Protestant Christian. I'm not going to say I'm thankful "for my faith," I'm just going to say I'm thankful I have something to have faith in.

2) My friends. I was a loner growing up.

3) My cats. They always know just when to snuggle and just when to be aloof. We don't have to talk to each other to understand each other.

4) The Great American Novel. I'd go crazy if I didn't have people talking in my head all the time! Oh, wait... um. Anyway.

5) Some of my favorite authors from my childhood in no particular order: C.S. Lewis, Bruce Coville, J.R.R. Tolkien, Diane Duane, Lloyd Alexander, and Brian Jacques. Each of them helped shape the way I think now, and not only that but I frickin' loved their books, and still do.

6) Libraries. Not necessarily library patrons, but, uh... anyway. As a person of less-than-huge income, I would be severely limited in the books I could read without the library. As it is, I have a definite imbalance in the number of books I want to/can read, and the number of books I actually have time to read. That's a lovely thing.

7) Last, but certainly not least: I'm really thankful for turkey. Really, really thankful. And cranberry sauce.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This is definitely my favorite holiday.

News flash, book is the new cool

2008-11-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

So apparently, due to laziness, the word "book" has now replaced the word "cool." That's just so... so book! Full story at the Times Online.

Review: A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel

2008-11-21T20:56:00.000-08:00

This is nonfiction, a sort of history meets personal essay of 372 pages counting the index and notes, 319 pages sans, with plenty of illustrations.

This book was a joy to read, a hymn of praise to the very act of reading. It focuses on that specifically, the act of reading, and it's amazing the amount of information there is to be had. There was some overlap with the history of books, history of writing, etc., but only in passing. It's really all about reading. There was a lot of information that I'd never come across before that seems to have been included just because it was interesting, and that was fine with me!

The book is organized in two main sections, "Acts of Reading" and "Powers of the Reader." There are chapter headings like "Learning to Read," "The Silent Readers," "Ordainers of the Universe," and "The Author as Reader." So instead of a moving through a chronological timeline, Manguel brings us into a much more organic narrative that actually resembles the way we read books. We skip back and forth between similar things, follow tangents that only make sense to us readers. We pause to meditate on single thoughts, and dash along through topics that aren't as mesmerizing.

Manguel draws us into what feels a very intimate group, tracing readers down through history all the way to us. It's a reassuring book; because reading is such a private affair it can seem lonely, but rest assured there are a gazillion other readers who have loved just the same things about their books as we do about ours. A History of Reading was informative, while remaining informal and very enjoyable.

Some other books that sit next to this one on the humongous bookshelf of my mind: The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petrosky, Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, and Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian by Scott Douglas. All of these were interesting in the same way, though the subject matter varies ever-so-slightly.

Buy A History of Reading

Booking Through Thursday: Honesty?

2008-11-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

Suggested by JM:

I receive a lot of review books, but I have never once told lies about the
book just because I got a free copy of it. However, some authors seem to feel
that if they send you a copy of their book for free, you should give it a
positive review.

Do you think reviewers are obligated to put up a good review of a book,
even if they don’t like it? Have we come to a point where reviewers *need* to
put up disclaimers to (hopefully) save themselves from being harassed by unhappy
authors who get negative reviews?

No. There's a difference between a review and an advertisement, and if I get a review copy, I'm going to write a REVIEW. That means what I liked and what I didn't like and why. If I say a book is wonderful I'm going to have to give reasons, and if I hated the book and have to make up reasons, then anyone who reads the book on my recommendation is going to be annoyed and not pay attention to my good reviews anymore. So trying to get me to do that really wouldn't do anybody any good. Let this be a warning, authors! I am an honest reviewer!

And here's a tip, authors... The best way to get a good review is to write a good book.

Read more responses to BTT here!

Watchmen trailer 3

2008-11-20T10:34:00.000-08:00

Behold, the trailer that debuted before Quantum of Solace (good movie) last week. It looks... slightly less awesome? But still awesome.

Review: City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

2008-11-14T19:09:00.000-08:00

This is the first book in a YA series, which I have heard much about and read on the recommendation of my dear sister, who is a YA several years more Y than I. It follows two 12-year-olds who live in the City of Ember, a place where the sky is always dark. But what's that? They're running out of food, widgets, and lightbulbs to keep the streets lit?

First, and remember this, I liked the book. I had somehow gotten it into my head that it was a YA urban fantasy book, and it's not. It's more of a kids' sci-fi-ish book. But after I figured that out, it was original, interesting, and kept me curious the whole way through, which is an important feature for a kids' book to have.

The two main characters, Lina and Doon, are pretty normal stars for a book like this. Kids who seem to be the only competent people in existence. But I love how they take time to interact with each other, and they actually have reasons for running into each other besides "the plot says so." The addition of Lina's baby sister helped to ground Lina and Doon and keep them from being too autonomous. Several of the secondary characters, like Doon's father, had a refreshing depth I that I didn't expect and proved that not ALL of the adults are useless. And even if they don't ACT like real kids, Lina and Doon have an earnestness about them that's really believable.

Okay. I have issues with the plot. I have no idea why everyone thinks this book is a YA when no one over the age of fourteen is going to believe a word of it. The very first incident in the book is the graduation of the 12-year-old students. As per tradition, jobs are RANDOMLY ASSIGNED to them and they go out to make their way in the world and become useful members of society. I can understand that a city that's running down needs everyone to start helping at an early age, but randomly assigning the jobs? That can't be efficient.

The middle half of the book is the best. It has a Redwall-esque riddle to solve and believable kid angst, mixed in with Tantalizingly Tiny Tidbits of information about Ember. But there's a depressing lack of climax to the story, and the reveals aren't satisfying to me. Just ask my sister, I ranted at her for a good half hour about how retarded some of it was.

Back to the good stuff though. A kid won't notice any of the stuff I didn't like, and there's both a prequel and a sequel to maybe explain some of the things that didn't work. And I liked the book. It has a slightly Lemony Snicket-y feel, but with content more similar to The Giver. (It doesn't have near the upsetting content as The Giver, it just reminds me of it. Also: I love The Giver.) So if you have/are a 12-year-old, snatch City of Ember up and make yourself comfortable, you'll love it.

Note that a movie version of this book came out a short while ago. It didn't play at my local theater, but if anyone's seen it I'd love to hear their opinions.

ETA: Saw the movie, and it was awful. Don't see it.

Buy The City of Ember

Booking Through Thursday: Why Buy?

2008-11-13T11:45:00.000-08:00

I’ve asked, in the past, about whether you more often buy your books, or
get them from libraries. What I want to know today, is, WHY BUY?

Even if you are a die-hard fan of the public library system, I’m
betting you have at least ONE permanent resident of your bookshelves in your
house. I’m betting that no real book-lover can go through life without owning at
least one book. So … why that one? What made you buy the books that you actually
own, even though your usual preference is to borrow and return them?

If you usually buy your books, tell me why. Why buy instead of borrow? Why
shell out your hard-earned dollars for something you could get for free?

Well, I'm a librarian. At any given time I have about 50 books checked out, waiting for me to read them. (Some of those are things I've picked up for family members, but still.) I also currently have 514 books that I've bought in my room, exact number courtesy of LibraryThing.

This happens for several reasons:

1) There are some books my library doesn't have. When I see a book that just looks sooo good and calls to me from the shelf at the bookstore and I KNOW I would have seen it if the library had it, I just HAVE to buy it. (Why I'm even in the bookstore when I have so many other books to read is a discussion unto itself.)

2) If I've read a book from the library and loved it, I mean really loved it, when it's the BEST BOOK EVER, I have to buy it and keep it so I can read it whenever I want, and no other people can get their grimy paws on it. Also, I have paralyzing fears that the book might go out of print and I'd never be able to find it again and the world would have lost a thing of beauty. Or the library might sell it and I wouldn't be able to remember the title.

3) Which leads nicely into my last point. I buy a lot of books from the library book sale. Friends, a lot of books. This is partly because they're dirt cheap and I just can't resist, but also I'll see a book and think "Wow, I'd like to check that out," but then I realize that I CAN'T! It's in the book sale! So I buy it to read eventually since it's dirt cheap.

And there you have it. The three best reasons to buy books, in addition to checking them out at the library.

Find more responses to Booking Through Thursday here!

Review- The Sandman Vol. 1 by Neil Gaiman

2008-11-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

You may remember my glowing review of Watchmen several weeks ago. (Review is here.) You may remember me saying that I don't usually read graphic novels because I don't usually understand them. You may remember how very very much I loved Watchmen.

Well, a good friend of mine got the same earful of happiness after I read Watchmen, and she, being a comic book buff, promptly gave me recommendations! The Sandman was on the top of her list. And friends... it's awesome. I freely admit that I had trouble following it for the first half, falling prey to my usual nemeses: Not being able to remember which characters were which and not being able to tell what was going on in the frame. But something in it really appealed to me, and in the middle of the book, suddenly it started making sense. A lot of sense.

I love anthropomorphic personifications. Maybe that's a weird sentence, but I do. Once I could really grasp that this is a book about personifications, then I had a handle to hold on to while I figured the rest of the book out. And these personifications are like no others. They're actually SCARY. Most of the time when something is made human, it loses a sense of Otherness and we start to oversympathize. But, while these characters could be sympathized with, (boy could they, I think I'm in love with Dream) they never stopped being something larger than life.

The disjointedness of the plot and art were probably what I had to get used to the most, but I really like them now. There are a lot of sudden transitions and flipping back and forth between scenes. There's a lot of thick black and bold, dark colors. That's the mood of the story, and it's wonderful. Even I, a person of no squeamish tendencies, had one or two gross-out moments (warning for those of more delicate sensibilities,) but it reassures me when a story doesn't shy away from the bad stuff. When the bad guys are bad.

I have three favorite scenes. The first: the duel in Hell. This was when I really scooted up to the edge of my seat and started paying attention. I thought "Hey, I better keep an eye on this Dream guy, he knows his stuff." He had me at "I am h--" ...well, I won't spoil.

The second: Toward the end, when Dream was with Doctor Destiny for the last time. This scene was the one that showed me how incredible Dream really is, how powerful but still with a huge grasp of the way things really are.

The last: The final chapter. Because Death was in it, and she was scary!

So. This was the first volume of eleven. I'm discovering that there's a real intensity that can be achieved in the graphic novel form, like a story distilled into only the most important images and dialogue, and I look forward to reading the rest!

Buy The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

Booking Through Thursday: Gifts

2008-11-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

What, if any, memorable or special book have you ever gotten as a present?
Birthday or otherwise. What made it so notable? The person who gave it? The book
itself? The “gift aura?”

Well, I get a lot of gift cards, so I count the books I buy with them as presents from the gift-card-giver, but that's not quite the same thing... I can't think of anything really special so I'm just going to rattle off a few gifts I've gotten:

I got the first Get Fuzzy collection for my last birthday from my brother; my astronomy teacher last summer gave me this for no apparent reason; my Grandmother's given me a gazillion (appreciated) books on art; my sister gave me The Black Book of Secrets a good long time ago and I'm, er, building up anticipation for it (read: I haven't read it yet but I want to, I do!); and the one that I do actually remember and treasure now that I think about it, my parents gave me set of gorgeous, gilt-edged, leatherbound books containing Anna Karenina, War of the Worlds, A Tale of Two Cities, The Jungle Book, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, A Christmas Carol, Sense and Sensibility, and The Wind in the Willows. Awesome, right? Totally. (I have a serious predilection for leatherbound books. SERIOUS predilection.)

Go here for more responses!

Review: Zorgamazoo by Robert Paul Weston

2008-10-31T13:24:00.000-07:00

It's Dr. Seuss for (much?) older kids! And maybe adults!

No, wait, hear me out, it really is!

Zorgamazoo is a novel in rhyming, Dr. Seuss-like poetry, following the adventures of Katrina Katrell, an adventurous young girl, and Mortimer Yorgle, a decidedly unadventures zorgle who has been chosen to find the missing zorgles of Zorgamazoo. Heartwarming and hilarious hijinx ensue!

The poetry is really perfect, using infectious rhythm and unique words to suck you in and keep you from looking at anything else. The form allows some things to be simply TOLD (With a bit of a song, it was Morty's belief, / he could cope a bit better with feelings of grief.) so that we can move on to the story, but at the same time we're allowed to stop and really explore something for a few verses before we move on, all without losing track of the rhythm.

The plot and characters have a really fun blend of expected--the girl who believes in her fantasies and runs away from her evil governess--and unexpected, in the zorgle who's FATHER is adventurous and is bucking the tradition by being cowardly. Each character has a particular freshness, uniqueness, and individual motivation and none of that is forgotten as the story goes on. Also, and I won't spoil, I really really love the ending.

This would make an excellent read-aloud and vocabulary builder for younger kids, a great introduction to some of the possibilities in poetry, or just an exciting adventure to read to yourself. (Personally I read some passages aloud to myself just because I liked the words so much.) If you or your kids liked Seuss, Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket, or The Edge Chronicles, this is the book for you.

What follows are some excerpts from the first few chapters of the book, just to get you hooked. Please note that these are taken from the ARC version, and may not be the final text. The final text was released on October 16th and is available to buy. You can visit zorgamazoo.com for more info on the book. And now:

Here is a story that's stranger than strange.
Before we begin you may want to arrange:

a blanket,
a cushion,
a comfortable seat,
and maybe some cocoa and something to eat.

I'll warn you, of course, before we commence,
my story is eerie and full of suspense,
brimming with danger and narrow escapes,
and creatures of many remarkable shapes.

. . .

So if you've no time for the whimsical things,
for pirates and gadgets and creatures and kings,
if you spurn the fantastic to never return,
then put this book down...

for it's not your concern.

Ah, you're still here. Then I'm grateful to you.
This book needs a reader, as all of them do.

. . .

Now Mortimer Yorgle, or "Morty" for short,
was a zorgle, perhaps, of a singular sort.
He was certainly pleasant, and friendly enough,
but his edges, I'd say, were a little bit rough.

For instance: His necktie was always
awry.
His trousers were striped with ridiculous dye.
On each of his hands he wore fingerless gloves,
and a rumpled-up raincoat was one of his loves.

Now read the book, for goodness' sake!

Buy Zorgamazoo

Booking Through Thursday: Conditioning

2008-10-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

Mariel suggested this week’s question.

Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in
pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers
bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?

Ack! No! My books are in pristine condition, and anyone who damages them is a heretic and blasphemer!

Actually, a lot of my books are ex-library or otherwise used, so they aren't in pristine condition and I don't worry about them so much. But the books I buy new I'm very careful with, and I never write in them or highlight or underline. In fact I've been known to spend several hours with a used book going through and erasing pencil marks. I always use a separate journal for any notetaking... My sister also had a good idea, she uses small Post-it notes to write on and sticks them in her books, so she can take them out again at will but the note is still with the passage.

Read other responses here!

Review: Jaws by Peter Benchley

2008-10-26T23:45:00.000-07:00

The famous precursor to the even more famous movie of the same name; the book that spurred on the deaths of thousands of innocent sharks; the book that makes people afraid to go swimming in chlorinated pools.

I'd seen the movie, and loved it. I'd read one of Benchley's other books, Beast, and loved it. (It's the squid one.) I love sharks and underwater monsters and the occasional horror movie to spice up my week.

With all that hype, I was kind of hoping the book would be, well, good. Sorry, folks... it wasn't. The pace dragged on for hundreds of pages at a time, layering on character development I didn't want for characters I didn't like, none of which resembled their movie counterparts in more than general ways. I found myself longing for the movie, because it was so much more straightforward and the characters were so much easier to connect with. And how can you be afraid of a shark that you hardly see or hear from for the middle third of the book?

If you're thinking about reading this, watch the movie or read Beast instead, You'll get a lot more satisfaction. All in all, it just didn't measure up.

Please note I reviewed this for the R.I.P. III challenge over at Stainless Steel Droppings. Since it generally failed to get me into the spirit, I'm off to read some Poe instead!

Buy Jaws

Review - Athens: A History by Robin Waterfield

2008-10-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

This is a nonfiction book that I read in relation to a paper I'm working on. It's a history of the city of Athens, from its founding to the modern day, published in 2004, 362 pages long including end material, and written by a man who lives in Greece and has translated about 20 texts from the Greek. I'll also mention that I'm learning to read New Testament Greek this year, so Greek history is that much more interesting.

I've read (relatively) widely about Athens and classical Greece; this stands out mostly for its modernity. It addresses issues that are most of interest to modern issues and the modern mind, and perhaps ascribes too much of that mindset to the Athenians themselves. Written for laymen, the prose is usually plain and clear, but with the occasional strange lapse into a conversational tone, and the author sometimes injects too much of his own opinion. He is very judgemental toward the treatment of women in classical Athens, but applauds the open homoeroticism contained in the games and symposia. Personally I'm a lot more interested in what the Athenians might have thought about those things that what the author thinks is politically correct today. (The currently accepted spellings, notation, research, and dates were also used, which was sometimes confusing to me but on the whole was helpful as an update.)

The writing is usually quickly paced, touching on the significant more than the detailed, and looks at the whole of Athenian history, not focusing only on the classical age. Each time period is approached from several angles and from a global perspective, which makes it easier to remember what happened when and tie it into the rest of world history. It's very apparent that Waterfield loves Athens, and his enthusiasm is part of what keeps the book fresh.

Overall this was a very interesting and helpful book, especially where recent discoveries are concerned, but I'd suggest reading it along with other books to get a more rounded picture of Athens. Here's a nice list provided by LibraryThing, if you're looking. Also, a good book of Greek mythology helps immensely -- try this one -- and some primary texts never go amiss.

Buy Athens: A History

Booking Through Thursday

2008-10-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

Monica suggested this one:
Got this idea from Literary Feline during her recent contest:

“Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you
cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes
narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s
just me.”

Well, that'll have to be Taran and Eilonwy from The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. But I'm also very fond of Yelena and Valek from Poison Study, by Maria V. Snyder. (Both of these are the best serieses ever and you should read them! Prydain is YA/juvenile fantasy and the Study series is adult/ya, fantasy/romance.)

For other responses to Booking Through Thursday, visit here!

Watchmen trailer 2

2008-10-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

This was shown at the Spike 2008 Scream Awards the other night. I wasn't there, but now I wish I had been...

Watchmen trailer

2008-10-15T18:25:00.000-07:00

I present for your viewing pleasure, the official trailer for the Watchmen movie. Does it look awesome? Oh yes. Will it be awesome? I hope so.

Review: Watchmen by Alan Moore

2008-10-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

I don't usually read comic books. Pardon me, graphic novels. It's not that I don't approve of the medium or the genre, it's just my brain won't process the format. I can't keep track of who's who, what's going on, or even who each speech bubble belongs to.

But, I love the comic book movies that have been coming out, and when I saw a trailer for Watchmen I was very interested. I'd never heard of it before, so I went to the Wikipedia article and read just enough about its reception to realize that I HAD to read it and see it in action.

And boy, was I impressed! This is seriously the best stuff I've read in a long, long time, and even though it's one of the most complicated stories I've seen, I didn't have any trouble following it.

For those of you who also have never heard of it, it's an alternate history set in 1985. Superheroes, or masked vigilantes which in this case don't have any superpowers, were once active but were then outlawed. The one notable exception is Doc Manhattan, who does possess superpowers and works for the government, and a possible second exception is Ozymandias, who is supposed to have "peak human" powers. The story begins with the murder of one of the costumed heroes, and proceeds with another hero's investigation. The book explores the idea of what it would really be like if there were superheroes in the world, but its basic theme can't be stated better than "Who watches the watchmen?"

The first things that struck me were the visuals, the cinematic quality of it all. The "camera" zooms, pans, and chooses angles in exactly the way needed to emphasize what's happening, but the fact that it isn't a camera allows for pauses and juxtaposition that can't really be done in film. The art itself was perfect and very detailed, giving everything a kind of uniqueness and realism and made each frame memorable. There are also multiple flashbacks, and at the end of every chapter a fictional primary document is included, which serves to expand the universe in time as well as space and make it seem all the more real. I could mention the frames that were the most striking, that are still burned into my retinas, but that would give away too many spoilers.

The second perfect thing is the characterization. Characterization is one of the things that I usually miss when I'm trying to read a comic, but Watchmen had a perfectly arranged balance of character exploration and plot. Neither overtakes the other, but both contribute to the story's progress. I was pleased to note that the romantic (or less than romantic) relationships between the characters were important and helped to move the story, they weren't just fanservice and they weren't boring. The characters range from Doc Manhattan, the inhuman character who has godlike powers, to Nite Owl, a kind of "average" superhero with a lot of gadgets, to Rorschach, the ultimate antihero.

The one most impressive feature is the sheer weight of all the subtle things going on at any given time. From the slowly counting doomsday clock, to the slow wash of blood through every chapter, to the chapter titles that are quotes by anyone from Bob Dylan to Albert Einstein. Every character is vital to the story. Every frame is vital to the story. Every poster on the wall means something, every incidental character means something, even a crazy dude carrying a sign is going to be important. (I totally pegged that one.) The atmosphere of the story, at first only barely noticeable, develops into an almost suffocating mixture of nostalgia and paranoia that pervades every action. And when the end finally comes... what are we to make of it?

Seriously. Read it. It's incredible.

Buy Watchmen