Month: December 2010

2010 End of the Year Round-up

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations4 Comments

A lot of blogs I follow are doing End of the Year Round-ups of the books they’ve read.  So for the last day of the year I thought I’d suspend Fiction Friday for a week and join the trend by posting a review of my year in reading…

1) Best Book  –  In some ways I have an easy answer here, because I reread two of my favorite books this year.  The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery, and my favorite Star Trek novel, First Frontier by Diane Carey and James I. Kirkland.  Barring those two, I think I’d have to go with Rapture of the Deep by L. A. Meyer, another installment in the Jacky Faber series.

2) Worst Book  –  The second half of The Time-Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.  I actually liked the first half, but then it went wildly downhill.  Right about when they started trying to have a child.  Just adopt, all right?  Really.

3) Most Disappointing Book  –  A tie here.  Sundays at Tiffany’s by James Patterson had this great premise about an imaginary friend.  I was looking for another White Darkness, and instead I got a badly written romance with a lame twist ending.  Second candidate is Beatnik Rutabagas from Beyond the Stars by Quentin Dodd.  Probably no one but Douglas Adams could live up to that title.  Dodd was plainly aspiring to be Douglas Adams but all he produced was a book of total randomness (and I like randomness!) with nothing at all to tie it together.

4) Most Surprising (in a Good Way)  –  The Far Side of Evil by Sylvia Louise Engdahl  –  This was a sequel to Enchantress from the Stars, and turned out to be both darker and more thought-provoking than I expected…in a good way!  Both excellent books, but very different from each other.

5) Best Series You Discovered – Golden and Grey by Louise Arnold  –  I found this only in the last month, and have really been having fun with it.  I’ll have a review up in the next week or so.

6) Most Hilarious Read  –  I read several Discworld books by Terry Pratchett this year, and I have to place all of them as the winners of this category, with honorable mention to A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag by Gordon Korman.  I might give it to Korman, but it wasn’t a new read, so it feels more fair to give it to the new (to me) books.

7) Most Beautifully Written  –  The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery  –  Her writing is always incredible, and this is one of her best.  There’s just no comparison with anyone else I’ve read this year.

8 ) Can’t Believe I Waited Until 2010 to Read It  –  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen  –  I actually did read this before, long ago in about seventh grade.  But I barely remembered it.  Unfortunately, since I read it when I was twelve, I had this impression it was a difficult read, which made it off-putting to pick it up again, even though I kept meaning to.  Finally I actually bought it, still didn’t get around to it for a long time, went through a period where I resolved to read all the books I owned but hadn’t read, and finally read it then…it’s a lot easier to read when you’re not twelve.  And it’s a lovely book.

9) You Mean I Didn’t Read That in 2010…?  The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean is my favorite book that I didn’t actually read this year.  I wrote a book review and watched the miniseries that inspired one of the characters and altogether feel like I have immersed myself in this novel…even though I listened to the audiobook in 2009, and haven’t actually read the novel since at least 2008.

10) Most Looking Forward To in 2011  –  Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales by Tamora Pierce  –  I don’t know much about it, but it sounds exciting!  She’s been a favorite author for many years, who does not publish nearly as frequently as I would like…

The Greek Gods in the Modern Day

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews1 Comment

I wish Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan had been around when I was twelve.  I went through a period when I was obsessed with Greek mythology, and I think I would have LOVED these books.  Or else I would have had fits over every tiny detail that was inaccurate–it could have tipped either way.  But since my 23-year-old self didn’t actually notice any inaccuracies, I’m guessing my 12-year-old self would have been a big fan.

I just read The Lightning Thief, the first book in the series, and while I don’t think I’m going to develop a raging obsession now, I did enjoy the book quite a bit.  The basic premise is that all the characters from Greek and Roman mythology have carried on into the modern world, still essentially doing what they’ve always done.  One of the things they’ve always done is to have children with mortals, which means there are still a lot of half-god children running around.  Percy Jackson finds out his absentee father is actually the water god Poseidon, just in time to get tangled up in a quest for Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt.  Its theft is perilously close to bringing on a war between the gods that could destroy the world as we know it.

I love the concept of these books.  I love the Greek gods brought into the modern day, and I’d really love to see more of how they’re fitting in with modernity.  Hermes has sneakers with wings and Ares rides a really tough motorcycle, for example.  I think it would be fantastic to find out, say, that Apollo (god of music) is completely obsessed with iTunes and thinks Rock Band is pretty awesome, or that Aphrodite (goddess of love) is actually running eHarmony.  How fun would that be?

Percy is good as a character; I can’t say he made a huge impression on me.  Maybe there’s too many slightly-screw-up characters who find themselves as heroes.  I’m not criticizing him as a character…but the one who I feel fonder towards is Grover, his satyr (half-goat) friend.  I think he’s more unique, as an environmentally-conscious satyr who really likes food, especially burritos and aluminum cans.  I also rather cherish the mental image of Grover careening through the air wearing Hermes’ out-of-control sneakers.

One criticism I do have of the book is that the quest felt a bit random.  Percy, Grover and their friend Annabeth set out, and along the way encounter several adventures, but they seem to just sort of bump into these adventures.  I would have liked to feel that there was a reason they were encountering the villains they were meeting, or going to the places they were reaching.  One caveat–I saw the movie first, and maybe I’m not the only one who felt this, because in the movie they definitely did have certain places to go and then set about going there.  This in turn may be why I felt particularly that they were a little aimless when I then read the book.

I actually haven’t heard Percy Jackson referred to as the next Harry Potter, the way everyone kept saying when Twilight became popular, even though it’s certainly closer in terms of themes and target audience.  I also think all three series have something in common, which may be a clue to why all three are popular.  It’s something Cleolinda Jones zeroed in on with her Twilight analysis, and that’s this element of suddenly finding your place.

You know you’ve been out of place and unpopular and kind of a screw-up your whole life?  That’s okay, you’re not really unworthy, you’re special!  And now you’re being transported to a new place where everyone realizes that what seemed like flaws are really gifts, and now you’re going to make new friends and be good at things and succeed like never before.  In some ways, Percy Jackson is even more transparent about this than Harry or Twilight (or Cinderella, for that matter).  Percy’s dyslexia is because his brain is wired for ancient Greek, and his ADD is to help him stay alive in battle.  When he goes to Camp Half-Blood, the training place for half-gods, he doesn’t become immediately popular (neither does Harry at Hogwarts, although Bella does in Forks), but he does become the prodigy of Chiron (trainer of Hercules, among others), and altogether begins to fit in.  And while I may poke at the idea a little bit as being a formula…it’s one that works very, very well.

A knowledge of Greek mythology would be helpful here, but I doubt it’s essential.  But you do need an interest, because by the time you’re done, you’ll have at least a little knowledge.  The Lightning Thief is a fun book, an exciting one, and even if I don’t love it as much as I might have at twelve, I plan to read the next one in the series.

Author’s site: http://www.percyjacksonbooks.com/

A Small Confession, and a Theory

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations1 Comment

I recently watched Twilight: Eclipse.

Considering my mixed feelings towards the Twilight franchise, telling people that usually feels like a confession, swiftly followed up by the explanation that I got it on Netflix (therefore: no money spent on it) and that it’s really a sort of morbid curiosity, you see.

So why am I talking about it here?  Because I had this revelation about why people like these books.

It’s pure, unadulterated wish-fulfillment.

Yes, yes, I know, that’s not news.  My previous post about Twilight even already touched on it a little.  But I don’t mean the wish-fulfillment about wanting the really attractive guy to fall in love with you.  I mean, that’s every romance ever written.  But something that really struck me about the movie…it’s all about the wish-fulfillment of wanting to be important to people.

Because Bella is enormously, overwhelmingly, impossibly important to EVERYONE.  This is true in the books too, but maybe it’s the more pared-down medium of the movie that suddenly made me sit up and say, “hey wait a minute, doesn’t anyone in this movie have any priority in their lives except Bella?”  And then I realized this story is the perfect fantasy come to life for anyone who has ever felt unimportant, unnoticed, lost in a crowd, felt like they didn’t know how to make themselves matter to other people…oh wait, that’s probably everyone at some point.  Especially pre-teens and teens who are still trying to find their place in the world.  And maybe that’s why this story is just so darn popular…

I mean, let’s break this down a bit.  (And I’m about to get into spoilers, so if you’re worried about that, stop reading!)  I have the movie uppermost in mind because I just watched it, but the book follows the same trajectory.

Edward is obsessively in love with Bella and apparently has nothing else in his life that matters.  This is a man who actually says things out loud like “You are the most important thing in my life” and “You are my reason for existing.”

Jacob comes across as a little more normal in his love for Bella, but he’s still very much in love with her, is willing to “fight for her” until “her heart stops beating” (that is, until she becomes a vampire) even though she’s clearly chosen Edward, and Jacob’s telepathic pack brothers all make a point of telling her that he thinks about her constantly.  Thanks, guys, she needed to be told how important she was.

The villain, Victoria, raises an army of vampires, commits mass-murder in Seattle, takes on the Cullen clan, risks the reprisal of the feared vampire law enforcers the Vulturi…so that she can kill Bella.  Negative attention, true, but still–Bella is incredibly important to her.

When it becomes apparent that someone is stalking Bella, the Cullens drop everything to go on guard duty to protect her.  You can chalk that up to…them being nice.  They care about Edward.  They make it their business to deal with rogue vampires in the area.  Or they want to protect Bella.  And somehow that last one comes off pretty strongly.  Rosalie grumbles about it a little, but she looks whiny as a consequence.

When the Cullens need help fighting the army of vampires, the werewolves jump into the fray…because Bella is in trouble.  Oh, and because fighting vampires is what they do.  But when Jacob points that out, it comes across more as, “don’t worry, we’ll be fine because fighting vampires is what we do,” not, “get over yourself, we’re not fighting them because of you.”  I think they’re fighting them because of her.

At one point Bella visits the Reservation, and is invited to join the council meeting and hear the ancient stories.  Jacob tells her it’s the first time an outsider has ever been invited.  Because Bella is just that special.

One of the vampire army members is a teenager from Forks who went missing.  His parents have been looking for him, and have been talking to Bella’s father, Charlie, the local sheriff.  Fairly unnecessarily, Charlie comments that he’d never stop looking if it was Bella.  (I’m more willing to give that one a pass; he’s her father, he’s supposed to feel that way…)

The only ones who don’t seem to be totally obsessed with Bella are her human friends.  And they’re always shunted off to the side.  This wasn’t in Eclipse, but in New Moon Bella goes totally off the deep end because Edward leaves and one of her friends–Angela?  Jessica?  I can’t even remember–can’t deal with Bella’s resulting weirdness.  As punishment for not making Bella the center of her life–the way Jacob did–AngelaorJessica gets banned from the rest of the series and now I can’t remember her name.

Bella keeps moaning in Eclipse about how everyone’s going to get hurt “because of me.”  And sure, no normal person wants their friends to get hurt, because of them or otherwise.  But to be surrounded by people who are, literally, willing to go to their deaths for you?  Who are willing to make you the center of their world?  Who look at you and say, yes, this is a person who is truly important, who matters, who we want to keep in the world and in our lives and who we recognize as special…  Wow.

Wish-fulfillment gone mad.

Especially since, me sitting over here outside the book, I can say that there’s nothing all that special about Bella.  Yeah, she’s nice enough.  I could probably talk to her about books.  But I don’t think I personally would be willing to take on an army of ravenous vampires for her.  Not without some other awfully good reason for it.

Maybe one reason I’m noticing this is because I just wrote a novel all about who does and doesn’t get noticed in stories.  Bella is clearly a Sleeping Beauty type, with legions of Fairy Godmothers falling over themselves to rescue her, from Edward and Jacob on down the list.  It does make me wonder if AngelaorJessica could use a Tarry to help her with her problems.  Or why the Cullens weren’t equally worried about the anonymous victims being attacked in Seattle–why aren’t they of equal value to Bella?  Oh right–because they’re not the heroine.

So anyway.  There’s my new theory on why Twilight is so popular.  The saying goes, “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.”  I think a lot of the world feels like just one person, and Twilight gives them a story where one person gets to be the world…to everyone.

Floriat Etona!

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews2 Comments
Eton College

Sometimes we don’t want to find out that our favorite villain had a troubled childhood.  Sometimes we don’t want those shades of gray.  It’s better to just have black be black and white be white, and good is good and bad is bad.

But Captain Hook was always an elegant and melancholy sort of villain anyway.  And I’ve read that in the earliest version of the play he went to his death shouting “Floriat Etona!” so all the historical grounding is there besides.

Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth by J. V. Hart rounds out my series on Peter Pan-related books with another prequel–a non-Barrie but successful one.  This gives us the boy who becomes Hook while he was at school at Eton, the prestigious school for boys.

Like Geraldine McCaughrean, J. V. Hart demonstrates a clear knowledge of the material he’s drawing from.  Hook’s first name is firmly established as James, which he signs Jas.  Hart tells us that his name is James Matthew B, and that he is the bastard son of a never-named Lord.  The name sounds to me like a none-too-subtle reference to James Matthew Barrie.  James’ best friend is Roger Peter Davies–again with the reference in the name, since Peter Pan was named after Peter Davies.  Roger swiftly acquires the nickname of Jolly Roger, and gives us the origin for the name of Hook’s pirate ship.

I find James a fascinating character.  He’s not exactly likable, yet I have to keep reminding myself that he’s the villain.  Hart has given us a character who can be dashing and gentlemanly, but also send a poisonous spider to inflict illness on an enemy.  James will go into the dark places the heroes won’t go, and perform the dastardly deeds a hero won’t do, and yet he also possesses the charm and the dashing airs that are usually reserved for the characters you want to cheer on unreservedly.  Hart has given us a villain who can fall in love, show deep loyalty to his best friend, and have dreams about a magical island–and yet who still has a dark side.  I don’t feel like he’s tried to make Hook out as a good guy…but he’s written about a very complex dark character.

He’s actually made me feel sad to know that, even though James will find his magical island one day, he’ll never get to rule it.

And then I have to stop and remind myself that I’m on Peter’s side.  That when it came down to it, I would root for Peter.  Because I would still root for Peter.  But I have to remind myself.  And I feel a little sad for Hook.

The first section (and majority) of the novel is set at Eton, where adventures center around conflicts with upperclassmen, the Wall Game (an extremely bizarre tradition), and James’ forbidden attraction for a foreign princess.  Later in the book James goes to sea, setting up his career as a pirate.  On the one hand, the adventures become in some ways more adventurous at that point, more in the style of Peter Pan, but I also think some of that conflict of James as the dashing villain is lost, as he becomes almost too much like a straightforward hero once he goes to sea.

This book makes me want to visit Eton one day.  I’m not exactly sure what I want to see there, aside from the memorial to Lawrence “Titus” Oates.  Apparently it’s good luck to rub his nose.  I swear I’m not making that up.  Anyway…even though I don’t know what I want to see, I would rather like to see the alma mater of Captain Hook.  Also the Davies boys, incidentally.

I’ve been hoping for a sequel to this novel.  The book itself sets you up to expect one.  Although there isn’t exactly a cliffhanger, much is left unresolved.  So far, nothing, and I haven’t been able to find any word on whether one might be expected.  Maybe one day…  This is J.V. Hart’s first and so far only novel, but he has written many screenplays, including Hook.  Less relevantly but most excitingly for me, he also wrote the screenplay for Muppet Treasure Island, which I have to say is the best version of the story I’ve ever found–even above the original.  Sorry, Robert Louis Stevenson.

If you’ve read Peter Pan and wondered about that scene where Hook’s wandering around the Jolly Roger and sighing because no little children like him, or noticed that Hook has this strange obsession with good and bad form, or wondered what Barrie was getting at when he made these veiled comments about Hook attending a very prestigious school…or even if you’ve never thought about any of that but just thought Hook was a pretty good character, Capt. Hook is a book worth looking into.

How the Klingons Stole Christmas

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday3 Comments

Once upon a time, I wrote a lot of Star Trek fanfiction.  And once upon a time, I decided it would be fun to rewrite “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” for the Star Trek universe.  So, in honor of the holiday, I’m going to be a bit geeky here, and share my retelling of the story–with respectful acknowledgement to Gene Roddenberry and Dr. Seuss, of course (two men who probably don’t come up in the same sentence all that often).

Happy Holidays to all!  And whether you celebrate Christmas or not, and whether you’re a Star Trek fan or not, I hope you get a laugh out of “How the Klingons Stole Christmas.”

************************

How the Klingons Stole Christmas

All the people in the Federation liked Christmas a lot,

But the Klingons on Quo’nos… the Klingons did not!

The Klingons hated the Federation, every alien race!
Now, please don’t ask why; they never stated their case.
It could be that their skull ridges affected their minds,
Or that their big boots weren’t quite the right size.
But I think the most likely reason may be,
That they had too much blood wine on a wild Klingon spree.

But,
Whatever the reason,
The wine or their boots,
The Klingons were all gathered, all in cahoots,
Planning a way, on the twenty-fourth of December,
To distress the Federation, down to every last member.
For they knew they were all preparing for their holiday toast,
And Christmas was when the Federation annoyed the Klingons the most!

Continue reading “How the Klingons Stole Christmas” →