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.

The False Princess

The False Princess, by Eilis O'Neal

Princess and heir to the throne of Thorvaldor, Nalia has led a privileged life at court. But everything changes when she learns, just after her sixteenth birthday, that she is a false princess, a stand-in for the real Nalia, who has been hidden away for her protection. Cast out with little more than the clothes on her back, the girl now called Sinda must leave behind the city, her best friend Kiernan, and the only life she's ever known.

Sent to live with her only surviving relative, Sinda proves inept at even the simplest tasks. Then she discovers that long-suppressed, dangerous magic runs through her veins, and she realizes that she will never learn to be just a simple village girl. Sinda returns to the city to seek answers. Instead, she rediscovers the boy who refused to forsake her, and uncovers a secret that could change the course of Thorvaldor's history forever.

I apologize y'all. I have been sitting on this book (not literally) for a couple of weeks, because it's been so difficult to find time to write out a review. It's a madhouse! A MADHOUSE! Good, the insanity didn't take long. Regardless and irregardless, contrariwise, the fact remains that time has passed, and I'd already forgotten the heroine's name. It happens every time! Names are generally the first thing I will forget about a less-than-memorable book (unless they put it right in the title, Princess Ben), and even in books I like, occasionally. Sometimes I'll get ahead of the curve and skip the step of learning them in the first place.

I have not, however, forgotten the plot of the book yet, so let's get this show on the road before I finish my slow descent into senility. Nalia-now-Sinda gets called before the King and Queen and the two senior magicians, who inform her that she's not the princess, but actually the most elaborate body double ever, and she is being sent back off to live with whatever remains of her family. She gets shuffled off to her aunt's place, and tries to fit in, feeling sorry and sorrier for herself, until she almost burns the house down and realizes she's magical. Since, apparently, uncontrolled magic is a danger to everyone around her, you'd think that the kingdom would be prepared to handle novice magicians, but instead of accepting her into their special magic school, or something else constructive, like uh, imprisoning her or sending her away from the crowds of people in the capital, they let her cry about her rejection until this old woman magician, Philantha, shows up randomly and decides to train her.

Good thing Philantha showed up! Because otherwise, she would have had to do what all those other poor, magic-filled kids did . . . . which I assume, based on Sinda's fears, involved blowing themselves and everyone around them up. This obviously doesn't concern the king and queen at all, since they've allowed this state of affairs to continue, but it seems kinda reckless. Say, as reckless as allowing someone to take your child away and pretend she's a novice nun and steal part of her soul while you slot in a peasant baby in her place. Because THAT plan was a guaranteed winner, amirite? What could possibly go wrong there?

So anyhow, Sinda hooks up with Kiernan, and they. . . something something, I can't remember how it ends, but your mother's a whore. No, just kidding, they discover that Nalia 2.0, electric boogaloo, is also not the real princess, so they go haring off to find the third to complete the set.

I didn't mind the book, it is, as they say, mostly harmless, and it's an interesting concept. My issues are that the plot hinges way too much on deus ex machinas and leaps of logic that aren't earned by the characters. For instance, the key to the identity of the dirty double crosser relies on a chance statement that this oracle wished her family could have seen her be invested, or whatever it is they do to oracles down there. How Sinda and Kiernan get from that to the fact that it was a relative who asked her to give a false prophecy, I have no idea. It's not like the oracle was like, "OH, how I wish that MY FAMILY was here. I would do anything for them! They are the only people I trust in the WHOLE WORLD."

And plus, if Nalia 2.0 has to undergo constant upkeep on the spell to keep her and everyone else thinking she's the princess, then didn't Sinda have to do the same thing? Were they wiping her memory like that every week? Because that is never addressed, and I gotta tell you, it would be my first concern. Like, sure, not in the initial overload of information, but somewhere down the line, as she's picking flowers for her auntie, you'd think the wheels would be turning, and she'd go, "WAIT A SECOND. Those fuckers hypnotized me into forgetting I was wandering around getting magical maintenance done!" And then check to see if she was missing a kidney. And what exactly does this spell do, besides giving the double a birthmark? Because, honestly, I feel a tattoo would be simpler. I get that parts of the real princess's soul were transferred, but I'm missing the reason for it - I mean, was it just for the benefit of wandering magicians who felt the urge to check out the princess's aura? Because it didn't give Sinda any royal abilities, which you'd think would be kinda the point of going through this exercise to begin with.

So, obviously, I have issues. But it's not a terrible book, even if you do get a little tired of Sinda's does-he-doesn't-he attitude toward Kiernan, like, he does. Trust me, he does. It's just that I feel like the author was trying to accomplish more than just a inoffensive teen fantasy. There's stirrings of social reform in there, but it's all a little dulled. I think it could benefit from a tightening up. All in all, it doesn't quite stand-out from any of the other teen fantasy books out there, it's not wretched, it's not great.

Hush

Hush, by"Eishes Chayil"

Inside the closed community of Borough Park, where Brooklyn's Chassidim live, the rules of life - everything from how to dress to whom to marry - are very clear, determined to the last detail by an ancient script written thousands of years before. Then young Gittel witnesses an unspeakable act of violence against her best friend, Devory, an act that goes against everything she's been taught as a Jew. For the first time in her life, there are no guidelines to tell her what to do, so she remains silent. But even inaction has consequences, and sometimes they are deadly.

Now a teenager, Gittel is racked with guilt over the choices she made and those that were forced upon her by the community she once trusted. She must question everything about herself - her own innocence, her memories of the past, and the beliefs of her sect - to find peace for Devory and for herself.

Hush bears a lot of similarities to Fox Girl - starting with the opening narration. In Fox Girl, Hyun Jin dreams of her friend Sookie, from years past; in Hush, Gittel speaks to her best friend, Devory, whom we are told is dead. I really enjoyed Hush, and I hope that anyone reading this will not be dissuaded from picking it up when I say it resembles Fox Girl once again, as it deals with child sexual abuse, albeit in a radically different setting. Hush is set in a Jewish Orthodox community in New York in 2008, although it could easily have taken place anytime in the last fifty years, as the readers realize how little this community has changed, and indeed how they make this immutability a canon of their religious and social lives. The particular Chassidim (perhaps more commonly known as Hasidic Jews) in Hush are fictionalized (as is the author's name - Eishes Chayil is a pseudonym meaning Woman of Valor), but that a large pocket of such people live in Borough Park in Brooklyn is not. In fact, if you watch The Daily Show, you may recall an episode about the erection of an eruv in Westhampton Beach in March of this year, which is a boundary line enclosing a Chassidic community space. They also made the news last month, in much sadder circumstances, when a young Chassidic boy was found dismembered after a two-day long search after he missing on his way home from school. And now that I've made you all depressed, time to talk about Hush!

Besides being a moving book about child abuse and trauma, it's also an engrossing peek into an entirely different kind of world (at least for me, and I dunno about you all, but I doubt very much I have a large, or even existent, Hasidic readership. Feel free to lambast me about it in the comments). It is a world so divorced from my own experiences, I did doubt at times that it was even possible. How could one maintain such ignorance and such isolation in this period of over-sharing and intrusiveness? Gittel, to us, has only a child's knowledge of the world - she doesn't know facts about the human body that I learned by the time I was ten - and one of craziest (and most hilarious) scenes in the book is when she gets into an argument with her husband about the fact that she has breasts. Cause, you know, he's never seen 'em on a Chassidish woman before. At last, the bra's true purpose of destroying the very fabric of society is revealed!

Hush is actually two halves - the first is set in 2008 and flashes back to 1999, when Devory and Gittel are nine years old. The second half takes place entirely in the present, from 2008 to 2010. Hush concerns itself more with the aftereffects of the trauma than the trauma itself. We see the terrible burden that being the survivor has placed on Gittel. The problem here is not that no one cares about what is being done to their children, but that in a community which prides itself on adherence to rules they have been following for thousands of years, and a vast gulf between their world and the outside world, there is no outlet for this situation. It is a shameful secret which brings more condemnation on those who tell their stories and rock the boat than on those who commit the assault. These things are hushed up, not to protect the perpetrators, but to protect the innocent.

The results are predictably catastrophic. With no way to comprehend what she has seen, and no outlet for her questions and her story, Gittel turns all her guilt inward. Even though she was only a child, and even though she did her best to speak for Devory, she winds up blaming herself for not doing more, for not bringing the wrath of the community down on her, if it would have saved her friend. One thing I particularly liked about this book was the loving relationship Gittel had with her own family, especially her father. Her parents don't repress her out of malice, but out of love, out of the knowledge that Gittel's future will be forever stained if the truth comes out. And even though you shrink from a community which has such beliefs that they would punish the victim over the abuser, by the end of the book, you realize that this isn't because of any ill-motive, but because they see this as one more threat to their way of life, a way of life that they have all fought hard to maintain. It is the great irony of the book that such terrible actions come from a place of love. I've tagged this entry as "tragedy" but it isn't, really, because by the end of the book, Gittel has spoken, and she has opened a light into this world, and it has not destroyed them all.

The first half of the book is Gittel coming to terms herself with what happened, and finally being able to name it as rape. I liked the second half better, since it had more humor, but this part was compelling and necessary to realize the impact that it had on her, years later. Gittel was in the position of seeing Devory's cries for help, but being unable to do anything about them. You feel though her not only the trauma of having seen this horror, but having everyone pretend that it did not happen, which compounds the original horror tenfold. It is only through her goyim (non-Jewish) neighbor that she gathers the courage to speak to a social worker about it.

The second half deals with Gittel's marriage, and her publication of the truth. I will admit, I cried a bit when Gittel wrote her public letter to Devory. Which is the greater crime, the rape of a nine-year old child, or the systematic repression of the truth? I can only hope that a similar sea change is sweeping the Orthodox community, as it is only with knowledge and openness that such crimes can be combated.

I was incredibly fascinated with all the details of Gittel's life - the ban on pets and televisions, the one-track future for the girls, the ritualized cleaning, the expensive hats, the arranged marriages, and the pressure to bear children. Gittel and her husband are two perfectly reasonable, nice people, and yet the rigid guidelines of their lives put them so much at odds. The only thing keeping them together is this common faith, and yet that same faith prohibits even a comforting touch, or a frank discussion. It's a wonder to think that more people don't go round the twist.

Hush is certainly eye-opening, and it's an incredible account simply of what it means to be a Hasidic girl in New York. It also manages to make the Chassidim sympthetic, which is harder than it sounds, given that they have allowed child sexual abuse to flourish under their watch, out of fear. Gittel is also a charming narrator, and you get a feel for her character - stubborn and just as difficult as any adolescent going through puberty, and yet godly and strong in her faith. I was exceptionally pleased for her when her husband turned out to be such a stand up fellow. There is such a danger of abuse, given that this faith and community rests on the fragile pact each member has made to abide by the rules, which are obviously not designed for slackers.

The author has the ability to find the humor in the odd situations her characters' background puts them in, like when Gittel and her parents get so excited about a possible match they forget to ask his name or even if he speaks English, or when Gittel gets into a debate with her cousin about which sect is holier, the litvish or the Chassidish, and it devolves into an argument about whether a husband ought to help his wife with the dishes. As it turns out, nine year-olds are nine year-olds and teenagers are teenagers no matter if they grow up to get married at eighteen, or go on to a co-ed dormitory in college. Everyone has had that experience of accidentally turning out the lights on Shabbos, and everyone has sulked about the resultant scolding.

At last, we end on a message of forgiveness and hope, and of a bright future for Gittel, in which the memory of Devory has finally been sapped of its bitterness. Gittel says that the day of marriage is when a Jew is reborn, but it seems to me that Gittel gets reborn the day she's finally able to say goodbye to Devory.





And a final note to apologize if I screwed up any of them tenses of terms - I'm not sure about the endings on some of the words, so I sort of went with what made sense at the time.

The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an individualistic young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision. The book follows his battle to practice what the public sees as modern architecture, which he believes to be superior, despite an establishment centered on tradition-worship. How others in the novel relate to Roark demonstrates Rand's various archetypes of human character, all of which are variants between Roark, the author's ideal man of independent-mindedness and integrity, and what she described as the "second-handers."

The problem with critiquing Ayn Rand is that she anticipates most of your arguments and makes fun of them in her books. You wind up feeling ridiculous for calling her out on her lack of empathy or humanity when it is clear that she abhors both. And anyway, it would be a waste of time since she demonstrably believes that any critiques which do not value her are simply products of erroneous beliefs. Which is a convenient Catch-22 she’s got going on there. Though, to be fair, she probably wouldn’t accept praise either, unless it was given in the appropriately selfish frame of mind.

What’s frustrating about Ayn Rand (besides her cardboard characters, who are not people so much as they are things, and who serve to merely act out some weird Kabuki play of melodrama rather than make any pretense of behaving like real people, mostly because there are no people who are like the characters in her novels) is her absolute adherence to an unworkable scheme. She, naturally, will make no attempts to make it workable, as that would be compromise, and compromise above all things is terrible to her. I feel like there are kernels of something real and important in there, but they are completely obscured by the medium – Ayn Rand and fiction do not go well together. It’s the flimsiest façade for her philosophical bent, which just aggravates me. You know the phrase, golf is a good walk ruined? The Fountainhead is a good book ruined.

And yes, I get that she basically grew up destitute because of Communism, and that would make anyone a hardened Objectivist, but she makes it such an unpleasant experience. There's a little afterword in my copy in which some of her notes during the writing of the book are printed, and there's an excerpt there about ease of access to a library, and Rand goes, "Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?" Because we don't have enough problems as it is, but we need to make it harder for people to educate themselves. I get where she's coming from, I do, and it can be frustrating that people have all these opportunities that they don't take advantage of, but it's not a great idea to get all pissy about it and effectively say, "You don't want to go up some steps to the library? Fine, wallow in illiteracy!" because the only thing that does is create more imbeciles. Rand's books are full of that idea though, the one that says, "You're not appreciating me the way I ought to be appreciated? Fine, I'm going to go sit in a hollow cave and sulk about it until you realize how much you need me!" In Atlas Shrugged, it all worked out, because people "realized" how much they needed the geniuses, so the populance were properly abject when they all emerged from the cave, but in real life? The only thing you've done is create people who have no need for you at all, because they can along just fine without you. Just because we don't have savants shipping the steel across the country doesn't mean it won't get done. Just not as efficiently, maybe. Books will still be written, houses still put up.


You might ask, why am I reading this book when I obviously don’t enjoy it? Well, I’m reading it for a book group. Also, I didn’t think I would find it as tiresome as I have, because I’ve read Atlas Shrugged before, and I found it entertaining and provocative. Part of my weariness with The Fountainhead is because I’ve seen it all before (if you’ve read one Ayn Rand you’ve read them all), and part of it is because I’m no longer fourteen. Ayn Rand would say it’s because I’ve already betrayed my own soul (this is not speculation, it’s in the foreword to my edition of The Fountainhead), but I think it’s just because I’ve met a lot of selfish people and the shine as worn off. You’re old hat now, Rand.

Ayn Rand is hard to like, because she does not respect you. In her mind, why should she? You haven’t proven yourself to her at all. She’s like the Kanye West of philosophy, except really unlikable, because she doesn’t even seem to be having fun looking down from her throne. At least Kanye knows how silly he sounds. But when Rand lords it over you, it’s a duty, not a pleasure. It’s certainly an interesting paradox, as to why when Kanye sings, “There’s a thousand yous, there’s only one of me,” that you can’t help but like him for it, even though you know he probably believes it, but when Ayn Rand says, "You have already betrayed your own soul because you compromise with others," you're like, "Right back atcha, beeyotch!"

Let’s get to the meat of the book. It’s about Howard Roark, who is an architect, wonderful or ruinous depending on who you ask, and all the people who seem oddly determined to put him down. Why? Who knows. Because people of genius are like the flames to which moths are drawn, I suppose. Rand likes to have her characters monologue for entire chapters about their creeds, but honestly, I still couldn’t quite fathom what Toohey (the Big Bad) gained from his shenanigans. I mean, possibly power over the people, but what did that get him? Just the satisfaction of being puppetmaster? I mean, no one even acknowledges that he is the one in control. That’s gotta be lonely. And that seems like a completely disproportionate workload in order to get the string-pulling power that he has. Maybe it’s just my objectivist showing, but he goes to all this effort to make sure that all artistic impulses in New York . . . come out mediocre? Just to . . . prove he can? What? I mean, couldn’t he just as easily manipulate the people into making nice things, and then at least have something decent to read, or watch?

Anyhow, Roark builds some stuff, and gets some praise, some criticism for it, he hooks up with (by which I mean rapes) Dominique Francon, who then spends the rest of the book married to other people, because she – I dunno, wants to prove how miserable she can be, I guess- and then builds a housing project which he blows up after too many other people try to put decorations on it, and then he goes on trial for it. But it’s just a kangaroo court because it is a trial of PUBLIC OPINION, and honestly, I can’t imagine that the state is not going to appeal a “not guilty” verdict when the perpetrator admits right off the bat that they did it.

Rand’s ideas are also still a little bit cloudy in this book, because she spends a lot of time complaining about collectivism, but demonstrates that just about all the forces against Roark can be attributed to one man. Maybe she just hates how easily people can be led by the nose. I’m trying to elucidate the exact reasons why I don’t exactly follow Rand’s philosophy, but everything I type out seems both obvious and beside the point.

Certainly Rand’s methods of communicating her ideas are pretty abrasive and unattractive. And all her relationships have a weird D/s tinge to them or are, in this book at least, admittedly outright rape (I can’t remember exactly if it was rape in Atlas Shrugged, but it was definitely not quite vanilla) and since I can’t imagine what purpose it serves the plot or characters (except maybe that if you have the courage of your convictions, raping people is a fine idea) so it really just comes across as Rand’s personal preferences, which is gross. I don’t want to know her sex life. TMI, Ayn, TMI.

Tam Lin

Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean

The classic story about the headstrong Janet who defies Tam Lin to walk in her own land of Carterhaugh and thenmust battle with the Queen of Faery herself for possession of her lover's mortal body and soul in the twentieth century. Set in a small Midwestern college in Vietnam-era America, Tam Lin is a contemporary fantasy about a heroine poised in that twilight between youth and passion.

This review is about Tam Lin, or as I like to call it, The Evolution of an Asshole. Not in the scatological sense. More like in the four-letter word sense. Janet Carter is a real dipstick. I'm not saying she's not realistic, I mean, we all know someone who was that person in college, heck, I was that person. But even I think it's kind of rank to be all,"I know you just got broken up with in a shitty way, but I hate even pretending to be sympathetic so much I have to trade off the job with someone else," and then turn around and use them for their dorm room. That scene where Janet gets told she's really not all that big hearted was pretty much the high point of the book for me. Suck it, Janet!

But Janet truly does become a much nicer person by the end of the book - four years down the line, and she finally learns not to be such a holier-than-thou snot. This is the second time I tried to read the book, and I gotta tell you, it was painful at first. Pamela Dean makes the weird decision to spend progressively less and less time on Janet's life as we approach the climax of the book, so we get about 180 pages on the first month, then another 130 on the rest of the first year, then 60 on the entire second year, then a mere 20 on the third year, then the whole last year takes up about 55 pages. And I'm pretty sure that's only because Dean had to stuff 80% of the plot into that, otherwise it'd be, like, four pages. What's even more obnoxious about it is that Janet as a freshman isn't nearly as fun to read about as Janet as a senior. Janet as a freshman is that kid who thinks that anyone who isn't exactly like them is barely even worth pretending to be nice to. Janet as a senior actually has feelings besides superiority, canyoubelieveit?

As you might have been able to tell, I was not a huge fan of the book. And I don't even know why, because this has been recommended by so many writers and readers that I trust. I just did not like it. It doesn't help that all of the characters felt supercilious and unsympathetic, and that (as discussed above) the book feels lopsided, so that the point to which it is building is almost an afterthought, like a snapshot of a more exciting story tacked on to a long treatise on how Janet Carter spent her freshman year. Plus, I was annoyed at how Janet managed to be friends with Nick and Robin, because let's face it, these guys are some real pieces of work. I don't care how many times you've been to college, when you attend a play, you sit your ass down and you shut the fuck up. People who talk and sigh loudly and wiggle around to impress upon you that how much greater their opinion of the play is than the play itself are jerkwads. Don't feed into their childish demands for attention. I once took this guy to a play (WHY, KATIE, WHY) and he basically did this thing, you know, the whole, my boredom with sitting here is more important than other people's experiences thing, and I pretty much never spoke to him again. I drove him back to his place in silence, my hands gripped tightly behind the wheel lest I be tempted to strangle him.

There was one line I particularly liked, because it swept me off into a frenzy of pleasurable imaginings, i.e., ones that distracted me from the actual story. I'm talking about the one where one of the guys is all, "Life's too short to be petty." Now, that's not a statement that I've never heard before, but this time it got me wondering, does this mean that if life were longer, it would be okay to be petty? So that people who live forever are incredibly nitpicky? Does this explain why vampires are always attracted to teenage girls in the novels? Is it just like cleaving unto like? I've always thought if I had a lot of time on my hands I would be pretty chill about the whole thing and not get fussed about the little details, but maybe not. Maybe I would be like, "You returned my book with dog eared pages? I'ma get you arrested for making pot brownies."

And I just could not get behind all the literary quotes in the book. I am not an English major. In fact, I hate English classes, mostly because most English teachers are fans of the "But what does Hamlet's talk with Yorick's skull mean?" school of thought whereas I am more of the, "It means Hamlet's off his rocker," school. And the more irksome I find a character, the less inclined I am to examine their motivations (I loathe Hamlet, and for that matter most of Shakespeare's 'great' tragedies. I cannot and will not give up my abiding loyalty to Titus Andronicus and The Comedy of Errors, which my eighth grade teacher infuriatingly dismissed as "bathroom humour." Someday I will get you back for that comment, Ms. Banks. Of course, when I was younger I also liked Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom best, so maybe my taste is suspect). So all the deep character-revealing excerpts from poems and such that they all quote was just wasted on me. It was all tedious. Like that scene in Gattaca that my mother and I like to do to each other, where Jude Law just drawls, "I'm bored of talking to you. I'm bored." Gosh, that movie is good. And I hate that Janet quotes all these long passages. Robin and Nick also bother me, yes, but I am willing to give them a pass because when I'm five hundred years old maybe I'll have memorized Spenser's entire canon, who knows. But Janet? Uh uh. No one who is not actually (so many actuallys in this post!) a five hundred year old poet would have all that memorized. Heck, I couldn't even get the Jude Law quote right when I first typed it!

I will say that the end of the book is pretty fun, though. I don't think it's worth slogging through the beginning, but maybe it's better to have a terrible beginning and a good ending than a good beginning and a terrible ending. I'm still confused about all the pregnant girls who committed suicide though. Is Dean suggesting that these guys knocked the girls up and then the girls were so upset they committed suicide? Or that the girls couldn't manage to rescue the boys so they committed suicide after their lovers' deaths? It was weird. And how come nobody noticed that all the classics majors are like, seven year seniors? Doesn't it worry the dean of the school that no one in the classics program is graduating on time? And how is it possible to switch from Classics to English and yet still have to take three additional years of credits, how does nothing from Classics fulfill the English requirements? It's not like you're switching from film production to chemistry.

I have no more to say on this book. It's boring, I'm bored.