Month: July 2014

Book Review: While Mrs. Coverlet Was Away

On By cherylmahoneyIn Juvenile, Reviews7 Comments

I wish I knew why some books from childhood stayed in my memory, helpfully with titles intact, while others faded out. It well may be a question of how long they stayed in my library’s collection, considering I went to the same library from (roughly) birth to age eighteen. I can only assume that While Mrs. Coverlet Was Away by Mary Nash stayed in the collection for a long time, since it stayed in my memory.

The Mrs. Coverlet of the title is housekeeper to the three Persever children, whose mother has died and whose father is in New Zealand on business. When Mrs. Coverlet has to rush suddenly away on a family emergency, the three children decide that they can manage quite well on their own without any adults to interfere. They find it very easy to hide Mrs. Coverlet’s absence from their neighbors, but keeping enough money is more of a challenge—until they discover the key in youngest brother Toad’s strangely-colored cat, and in a concoction he cooks up with remarkable results.

This is a cute, quaint little book that I had fun revisiting. Although—they say that when you go back to a place you visited as a child it may seem smaller. And this book seemed shorter! I was sure that the question of the Toad’s cat wasn’t resolved until the end of the book (not halfway through), and that the townspeople became strangely energized by the Toad’s sauce for, well, quite a while (not a chapter or two). Continue reading “Book Review: While Mrs. Coverlet Was Away” →

Book Review: The Crown of Dalemark

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult9 Comments

The first three books of the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones seem for all the world like they have nothing much to do with each other—until we finally get to Book Four, The Crown of Dalemark, which ties it all together. The funny thing is, it didn’t come along until twenty years after the third book. It makes me wonder if Jones had the fourth book in mind all along, or if she looked back at three slightly-connected books and decided to bring them together.

The book opens with a return to a familiar character, Mitt, who in Drowned Ammet botched an assassination and escaped to the “free North” of Dalemark. Unfortunately, he now finds himself the victim of blackmailing by a northern Earl—his friends will suffer if he doesn’t assassinate Noreth, a noble girl who claims to be the daughter of the One, and plans to unite all of Dalemark.

In the second section, we jump some two hundred years into the future, to a much more modern-feeling Dalemark, and meet Maewen. She happens to be the perfect image of Noreth. A magician(ish) sends her back to Mitt’s time, to take the place of the disappeared Noreth. With hazy ideas of how the history of the time is meant to turn out, Maewen tries to lead her small band of followers, including Mitt and Moril, the minstrel from Cart and Cwidder, to ride the “green roads” and unite Dalemark. But the ancient evil we met in The Spellcoats is stalking them, and someone in Maewen’s band is a traitor.

I really wanted to love this book—and I ended up liking it, so that’s not really so bad. This is much longer than the first two books, and it has a much more sweeping, epic feel to it. We’re dealing with complex plots and significant events, and the fate of the country as well as the particular characters plainly hangs in the balance. Continue reading “Book Review: The Crown of Dalemark” →

2014 Reading Challenges, Mid-Year Update

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations2 Comments

Happy 4th of July!  And if it’s July 4th, that means that, impossibly enough, we’re halfway through 2014 already.  High time for an update on reading challenges–past time, in fact, because I got distracted and forgot to give my usual quarterly update at the end of March!  So today I have an update on the first six months of the year in reading.

Fairy Tales RetoldFairy Tales Retold Challenge

My goal here was 7-9 books for the official challenge (which only counts YA and Middle Grade), and 12-15 as a personal challenge, to leave some open slots for grown-up retellings.

  1. Frogged by Vivian Vande Velde (MG)
  2. Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley (YA)
  3. Enchanted by Alethea Kontis (YA)
  4. Hero by Alethea Kontis (YA)
  5. Half Upon a Time by James Riley (MG)
  6. Cress by Marissa Meyer (YA)
  7. Jack the Giant-Killer by Charles de Lint
  8. Princess of the Wild Swans by Diane Zahler (MG)

As usual, the Once Upon a Time Challenge was a big boost to my fairy tale reading! Continue reading “2014 Reading Challenges, Mid-Year Update” →

Book Review: The Spellcoats

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult5 Comments

My favorite book of Diana Wynne Jones’ Dalemark Quartet is Book Three: The Spellcoats.  Oddly enough, it exists completely separately from the previous two books, to the point that (barring one epilogue-type note at the end), you can’t tell you’re in the same series when you read it.  In fact, I read my library’s copy a couple of times without ever realizing it was part of something else!

The Spellcoats is set centuries (millennia?) before the previous two books in the quartet.  Tanaqui, a young woman who is a highly skilled weaver, lives with her father and her siblings along the Great River.  When invaders from across the sea plunge the country into war, Tanaqui and her siblings flee down the river, in danger from their own people because of their resemblence to the invaders.  At the mouth of the river they meet the true enemy, a powerful magician intent on stealing souls.  Tanaqui must learn about her family’s past and her own magic to save her family and the country that will, eventually, become Dalemark. Continue reading “Book Review: The Spellcoats” →