The Brides of Rollrock Island

The Brides of Rollrock Island, by Margo Lanagan

On remote Rollrock Island, men make their living - and fetch their wives - from the sea.  The witch Misskaella knows how to find the girl at the heart of a seal.  She'll coax a beauty from the beast for any man, for a price.  And what man wouldn't want a sea-wife, to have and to hold, and to keep by his side forever?

But though he may tell himself that he is the master, one look in his new bride's eyes will transform him just as much as it changes her.  Both will be ensnared - and the witch will look on, laughing. 

I've re-started this review, like, five times, and you all are damn lucky that I did because this morning I was high on some fabulous music, and that never turns out well.  A whole lotta shakin' goin' on.  I've gotten pretty far from the mood I was in when I finished this book, a week ago.  I definitely thought that more time would assist in my writing a "review" but clearly that was a wash. 

Moving on:  So TBoRI, henceforth to be abbreviated to. . . Bride Island.  Because nothing says appreciation like being too lazy to fully type out a title.  And I did appreciate this book!  Actually, I had bypassed it in the library because the description and the cover (I know, I know, never judge a book by its cover, what up) kinda said "melodramatic teen girl dramaz" and I was not in the mood for it.  But my momma recommended it, and momma says, baby do. 

The book starts with a brief vignette, before going back in time to Misskaella's youth - the constant teasing and comments from her siblings and townsfolk, condemning her for her otherness (apparently, the entire island is redheaded and kinky, except for Misskaella, which begs the question of how closely related they all are that a recessive gene is town gossip). So anyhow, Misskaella doesn't really fit in, and people give her crap all the time about how she is shaped like a seal, which means that when she is left without financial support, she doesn't really care two hoots about the probable negative consequences to creating human ladies out of seals for the horny menfolk.  (This review is getting out of hand, y'all. BUT I CAN'T STOP).

Okay, the good part of this book is that things will happen, and you'll kinda go, "How are we going to extricate ourselves from this sitch?" Because each step in this path just gets more and more untenable.  From drawing brides out of the seals, to the women abandoning their former husbands on the island, to the sealbaby hybrids growing up and there being no daughters and and and.  It's just not a workable long term plan is what I'm saying.  And yet each new development comes naturally, and never at any point do you go, Well, If I had a deus ex machina, I could get away with some crazy shit too.  It's of a piece.  There is not one false note, one piece which removes you from the story and makes you question it.  To be awfully maudlin, you are wrapped up in the tale as much as the mams are wrapped up in skins. 

TBoRI is an interesting look at gender politics.  I maintain that the reason the men were so transfixed by the selkies is that there was witch magic involved as well, but my mother thinks that the men were simply weak willed.  The difference between an optimist and a pessimist, I think.  It's hard to forget that horrifying scene wherein the men begin bringing back the selkies wholesale, and the father reveals that he's been stashing this selkie in a small back shed next to the house where his wife and children live.  It definitely hearkens to those awful sex slavery cases in real life, and Connie Willis' All My Darling Daughters, where you're sacrificing a creature not fully human to sexual abuse and base desires. Some people complain that of all the perspectives in the narrative (variously the witch, a child, and a man) there is none which comes from the brides themselves.  I think it's well done, because the brides themselves are so wholly disenfranchised, so completely without recourse or a voice in the chain of events which occur.  One of the only times we see a selkie taking her own initiative, she is running into the sea, killing herself over her heartbreak. 

When you finish, you feel as though you've learned something, but it's hard to say exactly what that is - be kinder, perhaps, to the ones around you, don't hold onto to something so hard that you choke the life out of it - if you love something, set it free.  Even after the great pied piper migration, after things begin re-setting themselves, you wonder at whether things have really changed. It's clear that some men are still so hard as to be glad that their former brides are being hunted as animals and rendered down, as Lanagan puts it. 

The book is balanced such that it's poetical enough to seem a dream, but real enough to stick with you after you close it.  It's the mark of a well-written book that a simple, toss-away phrase in the first page strikes you so much that you hold it in mind for the rest of the book.  When I was looking for it again, I almost couldn't find it, it was so wrapped up in a paragraph.  It's a far cry from some books which are only keeping me half interested, skimming and skipping over the prose. You feel salted afterwards, so real is the sea breeze.

So, TBoRI is a wonder, sure enough, though as I expressed to my mother, it did not make me sob, and therefore, was not close to catching Jellicoe Road in my heart.  It is hard enough to forget, that's for sure.  And certainly not a teen melodrama at all. And let that be a lesson to you: listen to your mama, and if she yearns for the sea, let her be.

Cinder

Cinder, by Marissa Meyer

Sixteen year-old Cinder is considered a technological mistake by most of society and a burden by her step-mother.  Being cyborg does have its benefits, though: Cinder's brain interface has given her an uncanny ability to fix things (robots, hovers, her own malfunctioning parts) making her the best mechanic in New Beijing.  This reputation brings Prince Kai himself to her weekly market booth, needing her to repair a broken android before the annual ball.  He jokingly calls it a "matter of national security," but Cinder suspects it's more serious than he's letting on.

Although eager to impress the prince, Cinder's intentions are derailed when her younger sister, and only human friend, is infected with the fatal plague that's been devastating Earth for a decade.  Blaming Cinder for her daughter's illness, Cinder's step-mother volunteers Cinder for plague research an "honor" that no one has survived.  But it doesn't take long for scientists to discover something unusual about their new guinea pig.  Something others would kill for.

Okay, is it sad that this now counts as more posts in one month than in all of last year?  What a shallow pool!  Anyhow, Cinder!  I will say this: I was not particularly heartened by the reviews I read of this, but what I realllllly wanted to read was the forthcoming sequel, Scarlet (which will not be published until,  hmm, February, although that has not stopped an alarming number of young ladies from posting gif-filled reviews on goodreads based on ARCs.  Screw cyborgs, in the future, all communication will take place via gifs) but you gotta read Cinder first, so read it I did.

Okay, so, just to forewarn you, this review is going to be a lot of "spoilers" (it's in quotes for a reason), and a lot of "I want my fairy tale fantasies to have more reality, myah!" (just go ahead and imagine that whole sentence in Skeletor-voice).  So, Cinder (for reasons other than the fact that hundreds of adaptations and variations have been published on roughly the same storyline for hundreds of years) is pretty predictable.  The basic facts as we expect them to be in a Cinderella story are: unwanted daughter/loses out on doing something fun/but has a good heart/earns a reward/gets a She's All That style makeover/and some male attention/usually while also giving everyone who was mean to her a karmic kick in the pants.  So when you set your story in a futuristic world where people live on the Moon (more on that LATER) and a plague has been sweeping the world, and cyborgs are real, and so on, you give yourself a lot of opportunity to surprise your readers.  But intentionally or not, Meyer gives the equivalent of a flashing red beacon to the fact that Cinder is this missing princess from the Moon:

They said [Queen Levana had] killed her niece, her only threat to the throne.  Princess Selene had only been three years old when a fire caught in her nursery, killing her and her nanny. 

Some conspiracy theorists thought the princess had survived and was still alive somewhere, waiting for the right time to reclaim her crown and end Levana's rule of tyranny, but Cinder knew it was only desperation that fueled these rumors.  After all, they'd found traces of the child's flesh in the ashes.

Anyone who doesn't read that (which pops up pretty early on, only 11% of the way through the book) and immediately go, "Well, we've got a missing princess there, and a young lady missing a pound of flesh here....I think I might know where this is going," should maybe consider getting their gullibility meter checked.  And once we know that, it becomes less fun, and more of a drag to keep waiting and waiting for Cinder to figure it out, which: 45% of the book until she finds out that she's from the Moon (they say "Lunar" in the book, but I think saying she's from the Moon more accurately expresses how odd I find this concept.  And how did they not notice Moon refugees flying in from outer space and landing on Earth? That's never really explained.  I mean, we watch every asteroid and meteoroid that gets even fifty thousand miles away, I'd think that we'd have a grasp on people actually landing within our atmosphere by the time this book takes place.  Plus, where do people live on the Moon? Is it all indoors? Have they transformed the Moon's atmosphere, because otherwise, how are people movable between both locations?  And how come Prince Kai appears to never have seen a Moon spaceship, or Moon building materials before?  Hasn't he been going to school?  Do we not have cameras anymore? What is going on?!?!) and 98% of the book until she finds out she's the missing princess herself, which is just - by the time that penny drops, I was ready to pull my hair out.  Or someone else's hair, but same thing, really.

So, really, the one thing I was surprised by was that her sister (and the king!) actually die of the plague.  DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING, DID YOU?  After all that, she gets down to Peony in time to hear her last words but not shove the antidote down her throat. I will be real here folks: this reminded me of nothing more than The Hunger Games: a young teenage woman, beset by a dystopic society, will do anything to save her younger, flower-named sister, who is unfailingly gentle and kind, and is, in the end, unable to do so.  But you know what?  I read two chapters of the Hunger Games and was immediately wrapped up in Katniss' attempts to protect Primrose (so much so that when I found out she doesn't survive the series, I put off reading the third book in the trilogy for over two years) whereas here, I felt nothing when Peony died.  That's in part because I am also part cyborg and thus unable to feel human feelings, but also because Cinder just does not engender the same quality of urgency and emotion that The Hunger Games does. 

OH!  And the other thing, that is brought up (justly) in other reviews, but which I wanted to touch on as well here: what world is this, where they have a deadly plague, but absolutely no quarantine measures?  I mean,  not even checkpoints for different sections of the city - Cinder just waltzes back after hiding out when her neighbor comes down with it.  You know who else has that kind of disease prevention mastery?  The CDA in Monsters Inc.  Which is a cartoon movie about monsters.  As another reviewer said: no wonder they have a problem with this disease.  Also, what what what is this place that just allows a seventeen year old prince whose mother is dead and whose father is currently dying to just go waltzing about random marketplaces?  This is not Aladdin, y'all, and maybe I should be worried about how many kid's movies have made their way into Cinder.  Cinder does have the feel of a mish-mash (and I can't tell you how distracting it was to have "Kai" from the Snow Queen fairy tale, pop up as the prince in this Cinderella story): in addition to everything else I talked about above, for some reason the evil queen kept reminding me of the Wizard of Oz. 

It's okay, the book keeps moving along briskly enough that you don't really stop to bitch about all this when reading it.  But the constant need to overlook thickheaded narration, weird reality holes, and reminders of other media takes its toll on the overall experience.  Cinder did not really keep me rapt, and having read it, I'm not at all on tenterhooks about how Cinder is going to get out of the prison she winds up in at the end of the book.  In fact, knowing that she eventually meets up with Scarlet, the main character in the sequel, makes me less interested in reading it.  Meyer has a really interesting idea here, and I want it to really shine, the way that it can.  For now, though, it's got a wee bit too much polishing that still needs to be done.   

No Crystal Stair

No Crystal Stair: A documentary novel of the life and work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller, by Vaunda Michaux Nelson

Lewis Michaux was born to do things his own way.  When a white banker advised him to sell fried chicken, not books, because "Negroes don't read," Lewis took five books and one hundred dollars and built a bookstore.  It soon became the intellectual center of Harlem, a refuge for everyone form Muhammed Ali to Malcolm X.

No Crystal Stair covers Lewis Michaux's life from 1906 to his death in 1976, and while it is interesting, stylistically, it's a bit of a light read, considering it's a biography of a man who lived through two world wars, one great depression, and civil rights era, not to mention his establishment of a long-standing business and friendship with Malcolm X.  Vaunda Nelson is Lewis Michaux's grand-niece, and she writes the story from the perspective of various people's reactions to and about events in Lewis Michaux's life.  Interspersed with those sections (which are generally not much more than a page long) are illustrations, pictures, and FBI file notes.  It's especially appropriate for children (and me) as it doesn't wind up spending too long in any one place, keeping the reader's interest and moving along briskly. 

It's a nice book, but it doesn't have a lot of depth to it - it offers a glimpse of the various times and momentous events in Lewis Michaux's life, but aside from his apparently plentiful charm as a salesman, skimps on details of his personality and personal life.  It's more of a celebration of life than any real look at how this man achieved what he did.  In fact, I could have stood to have this be longer, if Nelson had included more details about how, exactly, Michaux expanded from five books to a store, what he did while he struggled to get the storefront going, and so on.  It's hard to get the sense of the journey that he made, especially in light of the fact that the creation of the National Memorial African Bookstore didn't truly begin until Michaux was over 40 years old. I was more intrigued by the bookseller aspect than the African American history one, so I was disappointed by the glossing over of those details.

It is a fun read though, if only for the cameos by black celebrities through time.  It's the Forrest Gump of African American culture.  Which is the point, really: that one man dedicated his life to creating and fostering the culture of a marginalized people and succeeded beyond anyone's dreams (except perhaps his own).  It is a "moving tribute", as PW puts it, one which could and should be in every school library: but someday I'd be interested in seeing what an adult biography of the man would net.  No Crystal Stair, unlike the Langston Hughes poem from which it takes its name, is limited by its intended audience, even as it may inspire them to greater and larger things.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See

In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she’s painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.

This is a book club book. And I mean that in an only mildly derogatory sense of the phrase. Book club books are, well, like pornography, hard to describe, but you know 'em when you see 'em. They're generally fiction, about people and relationships rather than say, thrillers or mysteries. Often, women will be the main character(s), and uh, the more I try to pin these types of books down, the more likely I am to rile up either (a) book group members, or (b) the authors of these types of books. I don't want to imply that any single book group is like this, but I just want to classify a certain set of books and when I read this set of books I automatically think, "book group book". I hope you know what I mean. It's not meant to be a slur on quality, but probably it's more about accessibility, and the way in which the book often gives people things to think about, but does it sort of non-aggressively, so that the members of your book group don't wind up screaming at each other over chips 'n' dip.

It's probably becoming very apparent that I have never actually been part of a book group, but I hear that stereotyping based off of representations of things in the media is very popular these days. For my part, I would rather have a book group for really difficult books, like Joyce's Ulysses, which I totally read without understanding a single thing that was going on, although it did not ruin my enjoyment of the book AT ALL. And I mean that in the sense that I enjoyed it muchly.

Anyhoo. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is not, despite the title, a teen mystery à la Nancy Drew. I know, so misleading! It begins with the 80 year old Lily telling us that she is filled with guilt, regret, shame over something that happened with her "old same" Snow Flower, before winding us all the way back to the beginning of the tale. It starts with Lily's footbinding, as a matchmaker "discovers" that Lily's feet are perfectly proportioned to become the smallest (and thus, most beautiful) lotus feet in the area. Since Lily's fortunes are now on the rise, without a single thing being done, she's also considered for the prestigious position of laotong with another girl.

And just as a side note, See's done a really great job explaining all this background and cultural placement without reading like a very dry history book. It's entirely focused on the women's inner world so the need to get the details right about things like the placement of the women's room and who sleeps in it, and how the rituals of matchmaking proceed is very important. Not only that, but these types of details are the ones most often forgotten over the years as historians record the big earthshaking events, but rarely the day-to-day activities of women. So it's a pleasure to get this peek into Lily's world, even if I myself could have read even more about the minutiae of Lily's life. See strikes a nice balance between simply relaying information and storytelling.

Anyhow, Lily is found a candidate for laotong - Snow Flower - a girl who fits the signs from a larger, more prosperous family and village. The girls bind themselves together, promising to never let another come between them, and settle in for a life-long friendship. Okay, now SPOILERY SPOILERS!

The promise lasts about as long as it takes Lily to realize that Snow Flower has been lying to her for the past six or so years, and is actually the daughter of a dedicated opium smoker who has ruined her family's fortunes. Lily is devastated to find out (at her wedding) that Snow Flower is really hitching her wagon to Lily's rising star rather than the reverse. This part was a little tricky for me - the full secret and reveal came as a surprise to me, even though there were hints all throughout (but as you know I'm very slow to pick up on hints), so it was nice that just when you thought Snow Flower was already at her lowest low point, you find out some other horribly sad fact about her life and future. Lily, on the other hand, is a little snot. It's not completely unexpected, and it's true that Lily might deserve to feel betrayed, but it's the first crack in their friendship, and it's aggravating to see Lily, who had previously thought that Snow Flower was head and shoulders above her but welcoming her anyhow, not really be so willing to extend the same courtesy to Snow Flower. It's our first glimpse at the Lady that Lily becomes - righteous but cold.

To Lily's credit though, the two young women stay close for the next several years - or at least, as close as they can be given that Lily is married to the head honcho and Snow Flower is married to local unclean butcher, and both of them have mothers-in-law from hell. They go through a couple of year like that, havin' babies (or miscarryin', on Snow Flower's part) and visiting every so often, until the Taiping revolution, in which millions and millions of people were slaughtered. Lily is caught out at Snow Flower's house when this happens, so instead of leaving with her family, she has to climb a mountain with Snow Flower and her abusive husband and small children in the dead of winter. Once up there, Lily does her best to keep the whole family alive, by using her position as Lady to get more food for Snow Flower's scrawny firstborn son, but things sour after Snow Flower's second, heartier son dies, and her husband beats her, buries her son without her, and makes her miscarry another child. Lily compounds Snow Flower's misery by high-and-mightily telling her that her husband is a terrible person and Snow Flower should get over it by being the best wife she can be and having another child right away. What a gem of a friend!

This is really when things get sad: Snow Flower's fortunes, which never were high to begin with, fall even further as she gets beaten regularly and falls swiftly into depression, while Lily, who never had much in the way of difficulties, except possibly a loveless relationship with her husband, gets a moment of joyful reunion with him after they make it back down the mountain. It's sad because you can see what's coming, even though Lily can't: her constant nagging and nitpicking at Snow Flower are the only way she can care for Snow Flower - she can't relate to her, she can't sympathize with her, because their lives are so different now. In Lily's mind, following the rules means a happy life, since that's always worked for her, but Lily doesn't realize how lucky she is, and how justice should be tempered with mercy. So Snow Flower tells Lily that she needs another support group and Lily blackballs the shit out of her, ruining her status in the town.

Eventually Lily does realize where she went wrong, and repents, but it's still a tragedy. The book is supposed to be about this deep friendship, but I honestly think Lily stops being a real friend to Snow Flower the moment she realizes that Snow Flower isn't the high-falutin' person Lily thought she was when she was 7, which is more the matchmaker's fault than Snow Flower's. Lily's life isn't the easiest either, but she has so much when Snow Flower has so little, and Lily always seems very immature throughout - very much the angry teenager who stomps through the house and slams the door when you won't let her stay out until 11 pm.

It's a very compelling book, and I gobbled it right up, and like I said earlier, the setting and details are well done. It was really interesting to read about a time in which women basically did not go outdoors, ever, and hardly walked, and the culture which built up around footbinding (which obviously creates a lot of societal stratification, as seen in SFatSF). It's true that the women's lives might seem limited in scope, but See's managed to bring out the deep emotions and joys and sorrows that women of the time and place experienced. What's sad is that even female friendship, which is possibly the one real comfort these women got, was bound by these rules and regulations, and in many cases limited to their girlhood.

I do feel like the system that created the laotongs was the same that led, in part, to its destruction. And the book is a big warning on the perils of miscommunication. I know this review is more of a synopsis than my usual, but I will say that I enjoyed it very much, even if it was bound by the limitations of the "book club" type.

Code Name: Verity

Codename: Verity, by Elizabeth Wein 

Oct. 11th, 1943—A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.

When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage and failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy? 

Happy New Year!  I've decided to celebrate a day off in the middle of the week by reading about young female spies getting tortured in World War II.  I think I've talked before about the overabundance of WWII kid's fic out there, but Codename Verity is a worthy addition to any collection.  My mother, bless her heart, read it before giving it to me with her recommendation, but I wasn't feeling it the last time I picked it up, several months ago.  It was one of those things where I'd heard too much about the book, and had gotten the impression that there was some "twist" to it, and I was taking everything with such grains of salt I couldn't concentrate on the story.

Which is: a plane with two travelers is shot and crashes, but not before one passenger parachutes out: Verity, an English (Scottish) spy, meant to join up with the French Resistance on a secret mission,  gets discovered not more than a week after she lands, captured and unable to talk her way out of it without the necessary faked papers, which were accidentally switched with that of her pilot and best friend, Maddie Brodatt. The first half of the book is the story of the two girls' (I keep saying girls, even though they're clearly old enough to have excelled at their respective dirty jobs) mutual history to the fatal crash-landing.

This is where I got tripped up: the idea that this Verity character would be writing the truth for the Germans was so implausible, that I was really strung out thinking - was this a lie? Was this?  In fact, I was pretty sure throughout most of that first section, that Verity was not Queenie, but Maddie herself, pretending to be the other girl for some unknown reason.  Lest you be led astray as I was, let me reassure you: Maddie is Maddie and Verity is Queenie (aka Julie).  I was also ticked off by the leniency with which Verity was (apparently) given to write her story: she goes off on a lot of tangents, most of which serve no purpose other than (as we discover later) as coded messages to the Resistance.  Given that Verity could not have reasonably expected the papers to make it back to the Resistance (at least, not with any real confidence, especially in the beginning), it seems odd that she would have (and could have) written her papers with two such disparate audiences in mind.  I suppose she was hopeful on the off chance they could get smuggled out, but then why did the Germans permit it?  Very odd.

Because I didn't see much point in anything Verity wrote, I was therefore less impressed at her repression of more relevant facts relating to the secret mission.  Since she clearly had to have known more than just what was in the record, it's hard for me to say that she did a great job not telling any of that.  Well, obviously, she was tortured.  But they kept her alive for weeks, ostensibly for the purpose of this written record of key information, and they don't even attempt to get the basis for her mission in France?  Not that it would have mattered in the long run, since she would have lied about it, but it hurts the story, I think, for the reader not to be convinced along with the Germans, of a cover story.  Most of what Verity writes is true, but useless (and the parts that aren't true I found pointless - lies about it being a Beaufort plane, not a Lysander one - eh?).  I was expecting relevant lies.

What is impressive is how well Ms. Wein manages to convey the friendship between Maddie and Verity, even though they aren't together for most of the book: they meet, train up in separate locations, then spend a few missions traveling together before their final fateful trek to France, whereupon they are immediately separated. However, they share a boundless love for each other, which comes across clearly in each narration in the book.  Maddie's final sacrifice is heart-breaking, and I will confess, I did start crying, though the book continues for so much longer that I was quite dry-eyed by the last page.  It is refreshing that this is not just another one of those teen love-triangle books, of which there are far too many (girl falls in love with boy, but they cannot be together due to: a dystopian society/sudden onset lycanthropy/he's actually 300 years older than her and that's super creepy, stop acting like it's not).

I think a reader would benefit from multiple readings: Verity's narration, in particular, contains multitudes, which I could not begin to unpick today.  It also contains quite a lot of mechanical talk about airplanes, especially at first.  It's like the whale chapters in Moby Dick - you just have to get through them, but lordy are they ever a drag.  The author is a pilot herself, and it does show.  Stylistically, I think it would also benefit from not underlining certain sentences about the Gestapo headquarters - you'll see what I mean.  It does make things jump out at you (as it's intended to), but given that we're treated to a run-down of it all later anyway, I think it would be doing more of a service to readers to make them go back to find it themselves. 

I thought it was a good book, a worthwhile book, but the feeling of being manipulated was not worth the pay-off of finding out what Verity was lying about.  Perhaps when I'm feeling less raw about it, I'll return to it.  Because that's the thing: this book does kick you in the stomach.  I'm still reeling from it.  It's not a very comfortable read, but I do sort of feel like finding an online discussion of it, sort of like joining a support group: CNV Survivors, we'll get t-shirts made. 

John Green Double Header Sunday

I just want you all to know, before we begin, that I am in the midst of day 4 of what is going to be a twelve day streak of unbearably hot and muggy weather, and that I am sitting on the floor on a pile of cushions (I've always doubted the fact that heat rises, since I've never felt any difference, but apparently it has to be roughly as hot as Tatooine before there's a measurable benefit to sitting on the floor), typing away while the thermostat slowly creeps higher and higher.  Actually, what I really want to do is complain about my utility bills and my hatred of air conditioner window units, but since that's neither relevant nor interesting, I suppose I will talk about these books. 


The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

Despite a tumor shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis.  But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

Let's get the elephant out of room right off the bat, okay?  How many of you were shocked, shocked, that the book did not end in the midst of a sentence?  I know, right?  I had the experience of reading this entire book in increments while in the bathroom, so, as you can imagine, it took me awhile (I was going alright, until it got warm enough that I had to open my bathroom window for the breeze to get in, and then I stopped turning on the light when I was in there because I didn't want to neighbors to see in, and it's pretty hard to read in the dark).  So anyway, in the months between when I first read that section about how An Imperial Affliction ends, and the end of this book, I totally built it up in my head that this one was going to go out in the middle of a sentence, and I have to tell you, I was super excited about it.  Like, at first, yes, I hate open-ended books (see below), but you know, when you have a few weeks to prepare yourself for it, you kind of get a little disappointed when it turns out to end on a period.

I told you about the bathroom thing in part because of that, but also to explain why I didn't cry at the end, they way you're supposed to.  It's like that scene in The Princess Bride (and how sad is it that I had to look up whether it was "a" princess bride or "the" princess bride, like, yeah, there's a bunch of 'em roaming around, can't throw a stone without hitting one) where Westley dies, and our narrator has to build a wall around his heart before he can go on with the story, except with this book, the ratio of heartbreaking stuff to time to prepare for it was super one-sided, and I definitely had time to clear each hurdle before the next one popped up, although I gotta say, my grinch-like heart did twinge a few times.

It is a sad book, I mean, it's at the crossroads of, books where kids die, and books where your true love goes away, plus like, books where your hero turns out to be a humbug, times cancer, so you know it's not going to end well.  But, obviously (or at least, obviously to me), it's about the fact that there's more underneath the surface, and even though they might end up being that kid who died of cancer, that's not who they were.  The other thing that stuck out to me was their wish to leave a mark, to make a difference in the world.  It's a theme that's somewhat echoed in An Abundance of Katherines, but it makes more sense here, where they know that there's only a little time to make that mark.  I don't remember thinking about that at all when I was growing up, but it is something that's on my mind more and more; this idea that you want people to remember you, you want to have done something, accomplished something, lived life like an adventure and not just a routine.  And it's true, though, that you could do none of those things, and still leave grief behind you when you go.  You don't have to have created something wondrous to be an important person.

This whole book is basically that line in the poem, "Tis better to have loved and lost/than never to have loved at all." (Tennyson, bitches).  It's also that movie French Kiss, which isn't quite as literary as Tennyson, but is vastly more enjoyable, where Meg Ryan goes on about how you can't protect yourself from getting hurt - "There's no home safe enough, there's no country nice enough, there's no relationship secure enough. You're just setting yourself up for an even bigger fall, and having an incredibly boring time in the process."  You are going to be hurt, but as Augustus Waters says, you can choose who hurts you.

Yay, let's move on to characters: they were pretty cool, yo.  I appreciated the wit in this story, the facility each person had with language.  It's not realistic, really, but it's similar to the way scripted television approximates life (and here I'm thinking more Buffy than, say Pretty Little Liars), an approximation, but a funny one, one that you wish you could be half as cool as.  It was interesting to me (as a person who does not have cancer, nor knows any one younger than sixty who has had cancer) to see that Hazel was about as irritated by the schmaltzy stuff as I would have been.  Possibly even more so, since I would have tried at least to have some reverence for people who are in imminent danger of dying.  I guess though, that's the thing - once you're the one doing the dying, you don't feel the same urge to give them leeway in being ridiculous.

One thing I did not appreciate was the return of Peter Van Houten.  I really enjoyed the way he was a complete asshole to these kids, but I thought the fact that he had secret pain and that's why he was a big old jerk was just too convenient.  Or, well, not convenient, but coincidental, I guess.  But not that either, more like a weird mix of those plus . . . . okay, I have to pause this, because a fly is swimming in my cherry water/vanilla ice cream float remnants.  Well, not so much swimming as "drowning" I think, since it keeps sitting up and then just sort of flailing.  I have to go take care of this.  The only thing worse than a hardened residue of ice cream at the bottom of a glass is a hardened residue of ice cream and a dead fly at the bottom of a glass. 

I don't want to sound cruel or anything, but that fly did not take long at all to die. 

Moving on, I did like the book, but even though it discussed a lot of meaningful things, I still felt like it only brushed the surface, maybe even because it discussed these things.  Sometimes, it's felt more deeply when there are no words to use, and that did happen here as well, and I understand that part of the point was that they had to use humor and words to cover up the fear and pain, or go mad, but sometimes you just want a good breakdown.  I guess my problem was the same from the very beginning: I wanted a sudden shock of half-written sentence, not the slow realization of a goodbye note. 

But it's still very good, and funny, and not at all forgettable or hard to keep track of from one page to the next, which is essential in a book that you're reading in two minute increments, I've come to find.



An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type is girls named Katherine.  And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped.  Nineteen times, to be exact.  On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and on over-weight Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines.  Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and may finally win him the girl.

The weirdest thing about this book, is the way that all of Hassan's dialogue, I heard with Aasif Mandvi's accent, which is terrible, since I know that Mr. Mandvi has to deal with "brown-typing" (I put that in quotes, not trying to imply that I don't believe it happens, just that I'm not sure whether that's a real word or one I made up, but even if it is made up, I think it gets the idea across pretty well).  Although now that I think about it, that's not a weird thing about the book so much as it is a weird thing about me.

I found myself vaguely dissatisfied with this book.  Unlike The Fault in Our Stars, I read it all in one day, today, in fact, so it was a much brisker experience.

[PSA: It has now reached the late afternoon/early evening portion of the day, in which everything just sort of heats up like an oven, especially the room where the computer is, and literally every pore on my body is emitting sweat, so what I'm basically trying to say is that if there are typos in this section, fuck you, man, I'm not staying up here any longer than I have to. Forewarned is forearmed.]

The thing about these books that I'm reading, apparently, is that I want them to be one thing, and then they turn out to be something else, and then I get pissy about it.  For example, I wanted this book to be a hilarious road trip book about Colin and Hassan, where they travel the country and meet weird people and see weird places and then wind up back in Chicago and go to college.  Instead, they have a one-chapter road trip, and wind up staying in Tennessee for the rest of the book, which is okay, I guess.  I dunno, maybe if Colin hadn't ended up with Lindsey?  I just want him to realize that he doesn't have to be in a relationship, with a Katherine or without.  I'm all, power to Hassan, because he seems like someone who isn't hung up on himself.  Unlike Colin, who is worried he's already peaked at age thirteen.  I just didn't finish the book with any faith that this relationship is going to be any better than his previous ones, besides the fact that she's named Lindsey, not Katherine.  Also, he's apparently going to school at Northwestern, and she's going to go be a paramedic, so they're basically going to be breaking up as soon as he goes back home anyway, right?

I guess I'm just confused.  What was the end result of the book?  Besides the realization that you cannot actually chart a relationship (which, if Colin honestly did need to come to that realization, then that is just plain sad) I guess the point is that even if Colin wasn't the dumpee in all those relationships, the important thing was that he had believed he was. I could definitely have done without that sub-plot.  It just baffled me that Lindsey found Colin in any way attractive, although we are talking about the same girl who wanted to date a guy who gave her dog food as a valentine.

Even though I was bored by all the Lindsey/Colin scenes, I did enjoy most everything else, especially the pig-hunt. Every one loves a feral pig, amirite?  This one had the same snappy dialogue as The Fault in Our Stars, but the central character and relationship was not as entertaining, like I said.  Plus, you got me all upset because it just ends while they're all in Tennessee still, like, is Hollis going to pay them $1,000 a week now that they know the factory is going under (and why would she offer such an exorbitant rate anyway?), and is The Other Colin still intent on beating them up, and what the the relationship theorem say about Hassan and Katrina's short-lived fling?   

 I do think this would be a visually entertaining book (as The Fault in Our Stars could be; they're both very cinematic) so if, as the notes say, it is going to be made into a movie, I think it could be delightful.  It's not a bad way to spend a hot Sunday afternoon, that's for sure.

Bitterblue

Bitterblue, by Kristen Cashore

In a world where a small percentage of people have an extreme skill called a Grace, King Leck's Grace allowed him to tell lies that everyone believed. When Bitterblue became queen at ten years old, she thought her father's murder meant the end of his violent, sociopathic influence.

She was wrong.

Bitterblue isn't going to make much sense if you haven't read Graceling, or Fire, to a lesser degree.   It's not the book I hoped it would be after the first two, but that doesn't mean it's a terrible book.  And certainly once you've read the Graceling and Fire you will have to read this one, if only to find out how Bitterblue turns out [spoiler alert: she's a dick].

It begins with Bitterblue, age 18, deciding she needs, like Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, to see a bit more of the world and winds up, like Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, meeting with some less-than-upstanding citizens, who she befriends and romances, etc. etc.  It's the weakest of the trilogy, although my mother and I disagree as to which of the other two books we prefer more.

Both Graceling and Fire revolve more around a straightforward action-adventure plot, with character interaction taking center stage.  Bitterblue is more of a mystery book, and there are so many new characters introduced, it can be difficult to keep them all straight, especially Bitterblue's four elderly advisers, Rune, Runnemood, Darby, and Thiel. 

Overall, I just wasn't as pleased with this entry.  It does suffer from such an excellent first and second entry, and the anticipation of waiting months to read this.  I remember feeling a similar feeling when I first started reading Fire, but I was won over by the end of that, which I wasn't, quite, here.  For one thing, I think Ms. Cashore had enough material for two more books, and the way that it's all squished into Bitterblue means that she (and the reader) are juggling a few too many plot lines at once, until they all start wrapping themselves up quite suddenly.  Bitterblue starts the book with a lot of questions, mostly about why her cabinet is acting so strangely, why people are attacking her friends, why things are being stolen that were never there in the first place, and why no one will tell her the truth about anything that happened during Leck's reign.  Unfortunately, it's structured so that we're asking more and more questions, and getting no answers, until everything is unraveled at once.  It's like a balloon popping in your face, yes, it's quite exciting, but not something particularly enjoyable.  I wound up feeling exhausted after everyone's secrets were out in the open.

Tied in with that is the secondary problem that Bitterblue suffers from, which is the problem of telling, not showing.  There were several times in there where two characters would be having a conversation between themselves, and, well, like this one, where Bitterblue wants to know who knifed her new-found friend Teddy in the gut:

"Teddy, who did attack you?"

Teddy answered this with a quiet smile, then said, "What did Saf mean about you asking your third question?"

And that's it! This is one of the questions that Bitterblue writes down as one of the mysteries she totes around for the first half of the book, and we don't even get to hear the answer.  Plus, it's something that comes up again and again, since Teddy was apparently the victim of a faction out to stop people from bringing up the past, and who turn out to be the big "villains" of the book.  Why would this clue be so off-screen?  Bitterblue doesn't even acknowledge it, she doesn't bring it up again at all, not even to say, "Hmm, that name means nothing to me, but I'll keep my ear to the ground."  Come on, anything!**

 [Interjection Time!  As you may know, often I can be a little slow myself, and it's only after writing something all out that I realize I am completely wrong.  In this case, I think a bit of linguistic confusion was the cause of the problem.  Looking back on it now, it's pretty clear to me that "answered with a quiet smile" means that he didn't say anything, just smiled and moved on.  HOWEVER, I want to maintain that it could also be read as "answered with a quiet smile" meaning that he answered her question while smiling.  Obviously I took it the second way.  I would take this section out and replace it with one that actually supports my point, but I am, too lazy to care about the quality of my output. Which is why I am a reader, not a writer.  And a lover, not a fighter.  And a count, not a saint!]

That brings me to my next beef: Bitterblue is kind of (a) a jerk and (b) stupid.  I didn't want to say stupid, but she's got blinders on the size of Texas, which has the same effect.  She knows (since she was there and all) that her father basically mind-raped (and rape-raped) his constituents for decades.  She herself has nightmares about his handwriting.  And yet, she uses people's experiences during that time as like, a conversational tool, a I'm-tired-of-losing-this-argument-so-I'm-going-to-say-the-most-hurtful-thing-I-can-to-you kind of a thing.  For example, when her adviser, Thiel, is trying to get her to talk about the fact that she maybe should be thinking about marrying someone, she goes,

"There's something I'd like to discuss," she said. "Do you remember the time you came into my mother's rooms to say something to my father that made him angry and he brought you downstairs through the hidden door? What did he do to you down there?"

and then later, when he shuts down and leaves, like she wanted:

Left along, Bitterblue shuffled papers, signed things, sneezed at the dust - tried, and failed, to talk herself out of a small shame.  She'd done it on purpose.  She'd known full well that he wouldn't be able to bear her question.  In fact, almost all of the men who worked in her offices, from her advisers to her ministers and clerks to her personal guard - those who had been Leck's men - flinched away from direct reminders of the time of Leck's reign - flinched away, or fell apart.  It was the weapon she always used when one of them pushed her too far, for it was the only weapon she had that worked.  She suspected that there'd be no more marriage talk for a while.

Wow, can you be more of an asshole, Bitterblue? "Let's talk about that time you watched my father kidnap and torture hundreds of little girls and perform experiments on them and kill them so I don't have to answer questions about boys."  I'm getting ticked thinking about it again.  Plus, she keeps doing it, like, what does she hope to accomplish?  Thiel does snap, eventually, and hits her with some truth she maybe could have figured out a few hundred pages ago, so, uh, great plan? 

The fact of it is that her entire kingdom is suffering from some mass PTSD and she goes around using that as a weapon.  Even after someone has to tell her that of course, her father couldn't have accomplished all this theft and kidnapping on his own, he had to have people helping him, she still doesn't ease up on her interrogation techniques.  Even after she finds out that he appointed four doctors to be his advisers, in all likelihood so that when he cut people open, they'd be there to sew them back up and keep 'em alive, she doesn't take a moment to go, "well, gosh, maybe they're suppressing some seriously heavy shit, let's get them to a therapist, stat." Nope, it's all, "When you lie to me in an effort not to talk about that time my father mind-controlled you in raping little girls, you lose my trust." I'm not surprised that she's down to only one adviser by the end of the book, I'm surprised she has any. 

It's a somewhat similar storyline to the one in the Miles Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold, specifically the first two (Shards of Honor+Barrayar=Cordelia's Honor).  That also concerns a man who was kept as the puppet of a psychopath, and forced to deal with the resulting mental anguish in the fallout. People are a lot more understanding in that book than this one.  And yes, I know Bitterblue is only 18, but she lived it as well.  She watched her mother live through it, and she's not unintelligent.  She should know better.  She should also maybe not have waited eight years to even peek through her father's old rooms or the other closed-off areas of the castle.

That's really the problem (and the difference between Bitterblue and Graceling or Fire).  In Bitterblue, when there's a problem, Bitterblue can't really go out and do something about it - she basically assigns people to collect information for her, instead.  In the other books, even when Katsa or Fire wasn't really accomplishing anything, at least there was visible progress.  This is a claustrophobic book, and I think it suffers from the main character being so restricted in her movements.  There's a lot to explore here, and it's telling that a lot of big discoveries (the river of bones, the Dells, the re-taking of the crown) take place completely off-page.  I'm sure it was a deliberate choice, but it should have been explored a little more.  What's weird is that we spend the whole book in Bitterblue's head, but I still feel like I don't know her all that well, not as well as Katsa and Fire, or even secondary characters in the earlier books. 

Besides follow-up-itis, Bitterblue also has the problem that the reader knows all about the Dells (from reading Fire), so that when Bitterblue finds out that her father's fantastical stories may have, in this case, actually been true, the reader is all, finally, instead of whu-uh?  There's a feeling of impatience instead of wonder, which makes me peevish, as I'm sure will come as a big shock to anyone reading this. 

Plus, the book kinda ends abruptly, so I'm left wondering about all these loose ends I have - like who put the red language dictionary on Death's shelf?  Was that explained, and I just missed it?  What is going on with that revolution up in Estill? What about Bitterblue's sadly depleted cabinet? I felt like the other two books had a lot more closure than this one, even though it's ostensibly the final book.

There's just such a rich story here, that I don't feel like this book does justice to it.  The idea of a mad king and the reconstruction and restoration of trust is a grand topic, and I felt like it got obscured in the frenetic introduction of new plot points and characters. Oh well, I'm off to re-read Graceling!


To sum up, I leave you with the immortal words of Martin Blank:

"A psychopath kills for no reason. I kill for money, it's a job... that didn't come out right."

World War I for Kids

I had an itch to watch War Horse, which, as I described it to a friend before I had seen it, is about a boy and his horse, and the horse goes off to war, and the boy goes off to find him. And then I told her that I was pretty confident the horse survives, although I couldn't be sure about whether there was any maiming involved, because this is a war movie after all, and maiming has become the go-to shorthand for writers when they don't want to kill off a main character (because wouldn't that be depressing) but they don't want them to be visibly unharmed, like shell-shock and PTSD aren't enough, let's cut off one of their legs, too. And she looked all horrified about the direction this was taking, and long story short, I ended up watching it by myself. Good times!

Anyhow, I prepared for this experience by watching episode 1 of the second season of Downton Abbey, and making a list of things I know about WWI, which, due to the vagaries of a school system which favors memorization over retention, have basically all come from children's books. What's weird is that there are a ton of books about WWII, children's books especially, but not so much about the Great War, which you would think would be a lot more child-friendly than say, the war which resulted in such works as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which, for all of its faults, definitely leaves you with the haunting image of a neatly folded pile of clothes.

I also want to confess my sins: I originally included A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett on this list, because I was remembering that 1995 movie version where Sara's father has mustard gas poisoning and Sara herself is this well-fed blonde beauty, and she winds up screaming at him while he's trying to recuperate, like, don't you think he's been through enough without some urchin accusing him of being her father? And why do the movies insist on keeping her father alive? What is the point of that? Anyway, leaving all that aside, the book couldn't possibly take place during the war, since it was only written in 1905. Although I do love the scenes from the Ramayana.

Without further ado, here is a (short) list of children's books about WWI:

The Good Master & The Singing Tree, by Kate Seredy

Jancsi is overjoyed to hear that his cousin from Budapest is coming to spend the summer on his father's ranch on the Hungarian plains. But their summer proves more adventurous than he had hoped when headstrong Kate arrives, as together they share horseback races across the plains, country fairs and festivals, and a dangerous run-in with the gypsies.

(The Good Master, from Barnes & Noble)

Life on the Hungarian plains is changing quickly for Jancsi and his cousin Kate. Father has given Jancsi permission to be in charge of his own herd, and Kate has begun to think about going to dances. Jancsi hardly even recognizes Kate when she appears at Peter and Mari's wedding wearing nearly as many petticoats as the older girls wear. And Jancsi himself, astride his prized horse, doesn't seem to Kate to be quite so boyish anymore. Then, when Hungary must send troops to fight in the Great War and Jancsi's father is called to battle, the two cousins must grow up all the sooner in order to take care of the farm and all the relatives, Russian soldiers, and German war orphans who take refuge there.

(The Singing Tree, from Barnes & Noble)

Okay, technically, only The Singing Tree is about WWI, but it's really a two book series, and they're each only like, 100 pages, so it won't hurt you at all to read The Good Master, too. It's actually a really interesting look at Hungarian farm life in the early 1900s, with the beehive stove, and the egg-dying, and the horse-herding. It's a fun kid's book about Jancsi, and his wild cousin Kate, who isn't mean or bad-tempered, just a little imp, so you don't get irritated with her. It's definitely where I first heard of the term "pins" used for legs, which I used the other day and confused someone, since they hadn't grown up in 1915, and had no idea what I was talking about.

The Singing Tree is a much more mature book, but only because the author doesn't shy away from the fact that the war exists and has changed everything. The war itself doesn't touch the children's lives much, although the house becomes a sort of halfway home for war strays, including not only German soldiers, but also Russian prisoners of war, since, as you may recall, Austria-Hungary was allied with Germany, not with the "good side" that most kid's books use as a viewpoint. It's too easy to think of one side being good or bad, especially in light of the atrocities committed in the second World War, while forgetting that there were innocents on both sides, and that often, soldiers on both sides were farmers whose lives were upended by the decisions of powerful men.

[Aside: I think this is something that War Horse does well - the humanization of both armies, as seen through the eyes of this horse. The horse goes through a variety of owners, English, German, French, and it's never the case of owner mistreatment, like in Black Beauty, or King of the Wind. I mean, yes, there are terrible things that happen to him, but it's always the case that the people who have the responsibility of the horse(s) try to protect them as best they can, no matter which side they are fighting for.]

The Singing Tree is a sweet book, and definitely a rosier-than-strictly-accurate view of the war, since all the prisoners and soldiers get along, and are relatively unscathed and happy to be at the farm. There are some very serious moments, including those dealing with an AWOL soldier, but for the most part, it is a sweet and moving coming-of-age story. There is also a particularly bittersweet chapter, in which Kate's father, I believe, comes home and tells the story of a christmas miracle on the front lines, but has to acknowledge that after the story, darkness returned, and men picked up their guns once more.


Rilla of Ingleside, by L.M. Montgomery

Anne's children were almost grown up, except for pretty, high-spirited Rilla. No one could resist her bright hazel eyes and dazzling smile. Rilla, almost fifteen, can't think any further ahead than going to her very first dance at the Four Winds lighthouse and getting her first kiss from handsome Kenneth Ford. But undreamed-of challenges await the irrepressible Rilla when the world of Ingleside becomes endangered by a far-off war. Her brothers go off to fight, and Rilla brings home an orphaned newborn in a soup tureen. She is swept into a drama that tests her courage and leaves her changed forever.
(from Amazon and B&N)

Now, okay, this one is also part of a series, but honestly, I'm not going to make you read all seven Anne of Green Gables books before this one. Mostly because like, the sixth one is all about Anne's mid-life crisis, and one of my favorite games is to see whether there are any pages in the book without ellipses (I think there's one or two?). Most of them have multiples! If you don't read the earlier books, you won't have any idea who all these people are, and probably won't care about whether they live or die, but I have found that to be true even when I did know who they were, so I wouldn't stress about it.

Rilla of Ingleside is about Anne's daughter, Rilla (no shit!) who lives, not coincidentally, at Ingleside. It starts in 1914, when Rilla is about 15 or so, and abruptly plunges into war. The book covers the whole four year period, so there is some serious time-compression involved, although I wouldn't say that any part feels rushed, and Rilla's maturity comes at a natural pace.

This one is also about the home front, although it's for older readers than The Singing Tree, even though this home front is a lot further away from any action than Hungary. There is some death in this book, although all off-screen, and there is a semi-orphaned child (whose father is at the front) that Rilla takes care of. There is also more news of the war in this book, as basically the entire rest of Rilla's siblings are working for the war effort in one way or another, while Rilla stays at home and organizes Red Cross events and buys ugly hats. In fact, there's a lot more detail than necessary, as LMM seems to think that the readers will be just as familiar with Kitchener and the Kaiser and Verdun and Courcelette and Bucharest and Jutland and Wilson and so on as she is. I'm sure that was true when it came out, but people today are so much less informed about the war, it can be kinda confusing, like you're missing the context for a lot of these references.

I remember not liking this much when I first read it, as I was mostly interested in the romance between Rilla and Kenneth, and there, frankly, isn't a whole lot, since he's at war most of the book. But I did re-read it more recently, and I was able to enjoy Rilla for her own sake, as the desperately proud and stubborn teenager, that everyone else seems determined to bring down to earth. She's got a pretty good attitude about herself, and I do relate to her scene in the movie theater.

[Another aside: I don't generally feel the need to yell things at the screen, but I had to tell you, I had the most god-awful urge during the Quiévrechain advance in War Horse to scream at the British cavalry, "You're all going to die! Stop! Go home!" which would have not only been disruptive, but also, in light of what happened next, a bit of a spoiler. If one can spoil the plot of WWI, that is.]

A Countess Below Stairs, by Eva Ibbotson

After the Russian revolution turns her world topsy-turvy, Anna, a young Russian countess, has no choice but to flee to England. Penniless, Anna hides her aristocratic background and takes a job as servant in the household of the esteemed Westerholme family, armed only with an outdated housekeeping manual and sheer determination. Desperate to keep her past a secret, Anna is nearly overwhelmed by her new duties—not to mention her instant attraction to Rupert, the handsome earl of Westerholme. To make matters worse, Rupert appears to be falling for her as well. As their attraction grows stronger, Anna finds it more and more difficult to keep her most dearly held secrets from unraveling. And then there’s the small matter of Rupert’s beautiful and nasty fiancée. . . .

This is sort of cheating, since it doesn't take place quite during the war, but immediately after, in 1919. Rupert actually comes home after recovering in a hospital, and Anna's family is fleeing the fall out of the events of 1917. This is a pretty unrealistic book, and even though there are serious topics involved, the parties all sort of brush them aside in favor of romantic hijinks and pratfalls. For instance, when Anna is telling Rupert about the death of her father in the war, and then mentions, almost as an afterthought, that during the revolution, the soldiers were killing the officers, so they try to be glad he died before his own men could shoot him. Wait, what?!

I know it's part of Anna's charm that she is supposed to be unsinkable in the face of tragedy and obstacles, but to be honest, that sounds like a lot more interesting book right there, albeit one possibly not for children. Instead of getting the full scoop on that, we're treated to love triangle between Rupert and Anna and Muriel, Rupert's hilariously over-the-top evil fiancee. And when I say "hilarious" I don't mean she's funny, only that she's ridiculous, and an insult to three-dimensional villains everywhere. She has literally, not one redeeming feature. She's racist, she's snobby, she's a eugenicist, she's practically an adulterer, she's selfish and unaware, she's petty, etc., etc., etc. No, wait, one redeeming feature: she's got a great bosom. Great call, Rupert. I really respect your taste.

I mean, there's just no tension there, since it's absurd that anyone would allow this farce of an engagement to actually proceed to marriage. It's just not even a legitimate concern, just a stage prop for shenanigans and set-pieces involving the black sheep cousins pretending to be loony. And you know, I can generally handle a bit of non-realism in a teen novel, but this is taking it way too far. Even Disney wouldn't have had the long-missing nanny turn up with millions in sapphires and emeralds after a mysterious and ominous four year absence. Okay, maybe Disney would have. But it's the same reasoning that leads to Sara Crewe's father reappearing alive and (mostly) well, having gotten convenient amnesia for most of the book. It's not necessary to the story, and it cheats it a little. Well, it might have been necessary in this book, since Rupert desperately needed the funds to get the house back on its feet, but it still feels like cheating.

I guess I like A Countess Below Stairs alright, but more because I like the idea of it, rather than the execution, a problem I seem to have with all of Ms. Ibbotson's works. On top of all that, I barely got to talk about WWI for this book. It's there, it's the basis for the book, and why everyone is where they are, but it also has more of a deus ex feel, so as to provide a convenient excuse of PTSD nightmares for when Anna and Rupert need to have a secluded little heart-to-heart.



And that really is a surprisingly short list. I do feel like I am leaving books off, so if there are others, leave a note in the comments, if you like, so perhaps the next time I list what I know about WWI, the extent of my knowledge won't end with christmas cease-fires and white feathers.

Fairy Princesses: Double Header Review Day

Darkfever, by Karen Marie Moning

MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands…. (Amazon)

I have been somewhat out of sorts of late; in the kind of fey mood where I pick up a book, only to put it down again 20 pages later, and unable to read anything besides old and worn favorites. I have also been playing a lot of games on my kindle instead. BUT! I recently downloaded a book which seemed like it had a lot of potential (It was marked down to $1.99) and a book I requested from the library several months ago (no exaggeration) finally came in, so I got back on that horse, and well, here I am!

All of that was an introduction to letting you know that I was displeased, although I am generous enough to say that it may, possible, be a result of the mood, and not the books. And then again, maybe not. Let’s sharpen our claws!

First up was Darkfever. This is the first in a series, about a girl whose sister dies while studying abroad in Dublin. Given the mysterious and horrific circumstances of her death, our heroine, MacKayla, is incensed when the police declare that they have no leads and are closing the case. She sets off on her own to investigate, and winds up in over her head, entangling herself in the world of the Fae, and in a search for an object of power, a long-lost book which holds the key to the end of the world. It sounds super-fun, if not the most thought-provoking treatise in the world, right? WRONG. It’s a good thing this was on my kindle, because I was tempted to throw the book a few times. I literally rolled my eyes when I was reading it. Here, in alphabetical order, is my list of complaints:

1. MacKayla
2. MacKayla
3. MacKayla
4. MacKayla

Like, holy crap, I really wanted her to die. In my opinion, hoping the heroine dies is not the mark of a hugely successful character. Things I hated about her: the way that she always talks about what she wears, and how beautiful she is. That’s not a joke. At one point, while trying to disguise herself, she says that she could never be ugly, but she’s going to shoot for average. And her attitude! She makes one mention of how grief must have turned her mind to mush, but her actions and behavior are systematically ridiculous. She is in the midst of trying to figure out the cause of her sister’s brutal murder, so she wanders around town, asking people about the very thing that got her sister killed, and then shacks up with the first person who knows anything about what she’s talking about. My reaction to that would be, “So this sinsar dubh that my sister mentions in her last, desperate attempt to warn me – you know all about it? And you followed me to my hostel and spied on me, and told me that you’d be willing to kill for it? I think maybe I will not take you up on that invitation to stay at your creepy bookstore, on the edge of an abandoned city block.”

Honestly, you’d have to be pretty stupid to trust this guy (“Jericho Barrons” Don’t even get me started), and yet that is exactly what Mac appears to do – she tells him all about her sister, and the clues she finds, and lets him tote her around and use her as a magical sniffer-dog. I guess maybe that could be a strategy too, though, like, hey, if he is my sister’s murderer, I’m going to pretend to be in cahoots with him, so he thinks we’re on the same team, and doesn’t kill me, too! Except that Mac is not so much “pretending” as she “going along with everything he says, even if he gives no explanation as to his own motivations and goals, and generally keeps her in the dark about everything.”

Oh, but Mac is an individual, a spunky, fun, feisty woman. You can tell by the way that she disobeys like, the one obviously sensible order from Mr. Barrons to dress appropriately and instead wears a long peach skirt and rose colored fuzzy sweater to a vampire’s lair. Because she is an Independent Lady. Not only is this ho-bag tagging along with some random dude who has given her no reason to trust him and about a hundred reasons not to, she’s also ignoring any good advice he’s giving her. Which is to say: when your sister has been murdered, and you’re looking for her killer, and you’ve been sucked into an underground world with magical beings, most of whom seem to want you for nefarious purposes, or just plain want to kill you, and you’re going around stealing priceless artifacts from very bad men, don’t you think the very last thing you should be doing is dressing like you’re rainbow brite at a mime party? As in, YOU’RE DRAWING A LOT OF ATTENTION TO YOURSELF, GENIUS.

That’s not some awesome “damn the man, grrrl power” moment. That’s asinine. That is. . . I am still angry about it.

Moving on: Mac’s assumptions. Someone needs to sit this girl down and have a long talk about how when you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME. Or, really, in this case, she is making an ASS out of HER and HER. And sort of me, a little, because I am the fool who’s still reading. There is a point, in the story, in which she says, after seeing her protector walk through an alley without getting harassed by these bad-guy Shade-creatures, “There were really only two possibilities I could think of: either Barrons was lying to me about the Shades, or he’d struck some kind of dark bargain with the life-sucking Fae. Whichever it was, I finally had my answer to whether or not I could trust him. That would be a great, big NOT.”

Okay, first of all, now you realize you shouldn’t be trusting him? Not when he put you in a wrestling hold and bruised your ribs? Or choked you? Or how about the fact that you have no idea who this guy is, because he has given you no background information? Or the conversation you overheard in which his – uh, sex toy/bookseller? – tells him to stop using you? No, those all seem perfectly trustworthy.

Second of all, those are the only two possibilities? I feel like Murray, in Clueless, when Cher and Dionne are talking about Christian, and how Cher almost had sex with him, and he goes, “Yo, are you bitches blind or something? Your man Christian is a cake boy.” Yo, Mac, are you blind or something? There are a lot more possibilities than that. Liiiiiiiike, maybe the Shades know this guy is stronger than them and they don’t want to get into a fight and die. Or he’s wearing the magical equivalent of a protective hamster ball. Or these are his employees, and they’re kinda dim about the whole “not eating guests” thing. It could be anything! Sherlock Holmes, you are not.

As I said, this is the first book in the series, and I could not believe that people would actually recommend it, but upon reading the reviews, the consensus is that in the second book, MacKayla doesn’t display the same dimwitted fuckery that she does in this one. Although, obviously, that’s a pretty low bar to meet. And yet, the power of the reviews is such that I am almost tempted to get the second one and see if it improves as much as people say. Like, one million happy readers can’t be wrong. Can they?

It’s such a terrible temptation – MacKayla has a lot of potential to be awesome, and not the shallow dipshit she was, and I’m already sort of swayed, from reading the prologue to the second book, which mentions all the super cool things, without all the not so bright stuff.

P.S. I totally read the second book (Faefever or Moonfever or Bloodfever or Kittenfever or Clownfever or some such nonsense. I can't keep them straight) since I wrote this review, and it's true - Mac does turn out to be much more awesome in the second book. However, there's apparently some sort of gang rape scene in the third, so I have no idea how Mac continues to develop as a person, since I am in the mood to not read about that.

The Ordinary Princess, by Mary Margaret Kaye

Along with Wit, Charm, Health, and Courage, Princess Amy of Phantasmorania receives a special fairy christening gift: Ordinariness. Unlike her six beautiful sisters, she has brown hair and freckles, and would rather have adventures than play the harp, embroider tapestries . . . or become a Queen. When her royal parents try to marry her off, Amy runs away and, because she's so ordinary, easily becomes the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid at a neighboring palace. And there . . . much to everyone's surprise . . . she meets a prince just as ordinary (and special) as she is!(Amazon)

The second book I read was The Ordinary Princess, because there’s nothing like reading about being mind-controlled to strip in public and present yourself for rape to get you in the mood for a children’s book! Just kidding, I was super titillated by that section of Darkfever. It’s like Ms. Moning read my mind.

So, movingonbeforeyoustarttobelieveme, The Ordinary Princess! I didn’t like it. It sounds sweet – a princess is given the gift of ordinariness, and she sets out to find her fortune. But it ostensibly celebrated ordinary people and pursuits, while giving them lives that were anything but. Look, I get that peeling potatoes can be a refreshing change of pace from the bright lights of the paparazzo, but maybe try working for more than two months before you start singing the praises of the proletariat, sister. If Princess Amy were truly ordinary, then she would have really been up the creek when she gets fired.

Let me put this into perspective for you: Amy, while picnicking one day, falls in with a group of young ladies who tell her that her days playing in the countryside are numbered, since the royal family is importing a dragon to entice young knights to fight for the privilege of the princess’ hand (and get shanghaied into marriage before they get a good look at her ordinary face). They tell her this, and add, “Ho-hum, I suppose that’s nice for them, but if only this dragon weren’t going to single-handedly destroy the countryside and eat all the livestock.” Wow, I like that attitude: Yes, the rulers of my kingdom are going to ravage the country and ruin our lives, but it’s all in an effort to get their daughter married off in some sort of underhanded scheme, so whatever.

And so Amy leaves town, and lives in the woods for awhile (why not), until her clothing falls apart and her fairy godmother tells her she needs to work, so she can get paid, and buy a dress. Amy toddles off, and gets a job right away as maid in the castle, and loves it, for whatever reason. Here is the thing, her godmother asks her, “Isn’t it great to be ordinary, isn’t it soooooo much better than being pretty?” And Amy is all, “Yeah, it’s the best!” But Amy’s been working all of six weeks at that point. That is less than half of a summer vacation. And when Amy (rightfully) gets fired, she has a fall-back position of being a fucking princess. So, I think she’s out of her gourd. Plus, how could anyone get behind a job that requires a year’s wages for a single common dress? No, really, they pay her 2 pfennigs a week, and a dress is 100 pfennigs, so she’d have to work for a year to get a new dress. And frankly, a dress you wear everyday is not going to last much more than a year. So Amy is in a job that basically pays for the clothes on her back and nothing else. What is she going to do when she’s too old to wash dishes, and carry pots, and clean things? Who’s going to want to be ordinary then, huh?

P.S. These reviews may be somewhat scattershot, since I wrote them in a fit of pique (obviously) and then went about my business for awhile, and didn't bother to edit them for posting. But I stand by every word, even if I can't remember what they were.

Atomic Element 26! Double Header Review Day

Iron Duke, by Meljean Brook

It's been nine years since the Horde, an oppressive empire from Asia, were run out of England. However, detective inspector Lady Wilhelmina Wentworth will never be able to escape their cruelty: her mother was raped during the invasion, and Mina is half Horde. Mina crosses paths with the revered Iron Duke Rhys Trahaearn, a former pirate captain who was instrumental in fighting the Horde, when a dead body is tossed on his estate. What begins as lust sparks into full-blown romance as the two learn more about the nefarious Black Guard and catch a murderous madman. Airships, zombies, nanotechnology, outlandish secondary characters, and a complicated heroine round out the novel. - Publisher's Weekly

This week's theme is two-fold: first, the obvious metallic royalty thing going on, which I find amusing, since it sounds like they belong to a single series, but in fact have nothing in common. I would totally read The Iron Dowager Queen, too! The other theme is procrastination, i.e., I read these books so long ago, I had to return them to the library, since they do not let me renew books more than once down here in this god-forsaken wasteland, but I've been putting off writing about them, until I had other things I wanted to put off more. Don't judge me, juggling onerous tasks is how I got so spry and nimble! Also, I know that doesn't make sense and I don't care. WHAT.

The Iron Duke, which I have typed as The Iron King twice now, is a really fascinating alternate history steampunk book, and although there are a few instances where I was kinda scratching my head, for the most part Ms. Brook does a good job of absorbing you into the story, and giving you enough world-building to get you interested, but not enough to overwhelm you. In Iron Duke, nanotechnology of some sort was introduced to foodstuffs imported into England (sugar, particularly), and once all the population had sufficient intake, they were activated, so that the people were controlled by the Horde, and kept insensate, apart from the brief periods of frenzy, which were basically induced orgies, meant to control the population growth.

As a brief aside, was the Horde supposed to be Asian, like, the Golden Horde? This was never explained to my satisfaction, and I will be honest with you, at first I thought they were aliens, and this was some sort of sci-fi thing, but I kinda got the impression that they were actually humans. Plus, they're sexually compatible with the English (rrrrawr), but visually separate, since people can tell from looking at Mina that's she's a hybrid. Or a half-breed. A mule. More zippers, mule! (I said, don't judge).

[PS I was just reviewing this for editing, and I realized that blurb up there totally says that the Horde is from Asia. HAHAHAHAHA, obviously my reading comprehension leaves a little something to be desired. But it's not clear in the book, is my point, nyah.]

Anyhow, Mina is pretty awesome, like the Mina from the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, who is based on the Dracula Mina (I was about to say Batman's Mina. I should not be writing this post, for real, yo), who is, by all accounts, also pretty kickass. To sum up: naming your child Wilhelmina is still a horrible thing to do to them. She is on a police force of some sort, that part's only partially important, because we get right to the good stuff right away: a body that fell on the Duke's property, who has been dropped from such a height as to break every bone in his body, and leave him a gelatinous sack. Also, he was frozen when he was dropped! DUN DUN DUN!

I will be honest, I only partially followed the plotline, mostly because it didn't really make much sense, and because not knowing it only slightly impeded my enjoyment of the book. This ain't no War and Peace, y'all, I don't need to remember why this pirate lady went out of her way to drop a guy on the Duke's house, which seems really stupid, since the last thing I would want is some pissed off Ironman bent on revenge chasing me around on a dirigible. In a dirigible? On a dirigible. DIRIGIBLES! One thing this book has lots of is dirigibles! Or uh, airships? Either way, a method of transportation I have no desire to try out, especially after reading this book. And seriously, how could the Duke, who is, apparently, entirely iron inside his insides, not have to like, stay in one place on the ship? Wouldn't that much iron, wandering around deck, trying to make out with people, be like, super unsteady, and tip that sucker over?

I just looked it up, and answers.com (which is a very reliable source) says that cast iron weighs 450 pounds per cubic foot. So, if he's like, five cubic feet (google failed me on my "how much cubic feet per person" inquiry, which I do have to admit is probably not asked very often, and should probably be restricted to the even more esoteric, "how many cubic feet are all the bones in the human body", which makes me sound like a serial killer), then he weighs well over 2000 pounds. You know what else weighs 2000 pounds? A small car. Can you imagine trying to have sex with a car on top of you? Really? You need help. Even if he's only like, one cubic foot worth of iron, that's still like, the same as a big fucking llama. I got sidetracked, I apologize.

So the Duke sees Mina, and thinks she's a hot piece, which he is one hundred percent correct about, and decides he's going to follow her around town, trying to mack on her, and generally being about even money in the helpful:horny odds. Now, I do have to mention, the one truly not good part of the book, is where he rapes her. I KNOW. I didn't want to say it like that, but it kinda is like that, no getting around it. She says no, he continues, because, and I forget this exactly, he's like, in some sort of sex-haze, and doesn't realize no means no. And he realizes later, and prostrates himself, and she forgives him, and they fuck off into the sunset. It's bullshit, but I got through it, and liked everything else, so my experience of the book was not ruined. It's just. . . it's rape, man, and FOR NO GOOD REASON. I have no idea why that scene was written like that. It really made me dislike the Duke, whereas I had been ambivalent before, and the eventual rehabilitation of his character just doesn't seem worth the total smear job.

Like, The Iron Duke really needed not to be a romance book, because all the non-romance parts (besides the bewildering plotlines, which I accept some blame for, I have a short memory) were great, and all the romance parts kinda skeeved me out. The world that Ms. Brook created is delightful, all the nuances, and details, and stuff, even if it's got some holes. I just wanted Mina to team up with the Duke without all the angst, and then for them to go off and like, hunt krakens and bulldoze zombies and solve crimes. I don't think that's too much to ask.





The Iron King, by Julie Kagawa

Meghan Chase has a secret destiny—one she could never have imagined…

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school…or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth—that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart. - From Amazon

This book is totally not like the Iron Duke, in that this is a) a teen book, b) not steampunk, c) set in Louisiana and faery, not Europe and airships, and d) not exciting. Two things this book is sorely lacking: ass-kicking and exploding zombies.

I apologize in advance, not only am I sickish (this - a runny nose and sore throat - is usually about as sick as I ever get, so I milk it for all it's worth), and have a long day ahead of me tomorrow, I also didn't have much to say about this book even right after I read it, so I'm doubly short on words now. I was very excited about the premise, and also because I got the first two chapters on my kindle, and it was very tantalizing. But now I've read the whole thing, and I am very let down. First, the characters are kinda paper-boardy. Cardboardy. Two-dimensional. Meghan is flat, Robin is flat, and honestly, I skimmed the last half of the book. I didn't want to! It was just. . . not gripping, and kinda telegraphed, so I got bored waiting for everyone to do what I knew they'd end up doing, like, twenty pages back. Except that time Meghan gets drunk on fairy juice. Did not see that coming.

But things like that were part of my discontent with the Iron King: the events didn't really flow, they seemed more like, squares on a gameboard, like now you have a chase scene, now you have a dance scene, now you have your three main characters face-off and wow, I'm bored just trying to describe it. I feel badly, since it's not a bad book, I just sorta was expecting better, and it's so bland. It was a let-down.

Plus, you gotta compare it to that other book about going into fairyland to switch a changeling back, Heir to Sevenwaters, by Juliet Marillier, and this one just does not compare. Not that the changeling isn't frightening. That's some Omen shit right there. I've been trying to think of something else to say about this book, and it's just not coming. It really is that bland. So I am going to bed. I hope you'll all join me for the next installment, The Iron Maharaja.