Author: cherylmahoney

I'm a book review blogger and writer. I have published four novels, The Wanderers; The Storyteller and Her Sisters; and The People the Fairies Forget; and The Lioness and the Spellspinners. All can be found on Amazon as an ebook and paperback. In my day job, I'm a Marketing Specialist. Find me on Twitter (@MarvelousTales) and GoodReads (MarvelousTales).

The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Written and Read by Roald Dahl

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews16 Comments

Fantastic Mr. FoxLast week, I found myself with a long drive coming up and no audiobooks on hand!  So I dropped by my library and impulsively picked up The Fantastic Mr. Fox, without realizing that it was actually read by Roald Dahl himself.  I’m calling a talking fox appropriate for Once Upon a Time too.  I had a good time listening–but also came to the conclusion that I’m just too old for this story.

I had seen the movie already (and by the way, great choice of casting with George Clooney as the voice of Mr. Fox) and found the book to be more or less the same storyline.  Boggis, Bunce and Bean are poultry farmers, and rather an unpleasant bunch.  Mr. Fox routinely steals from the three of them to feed his family, until Boggis, Bunce and Bean strike back, first with guns and then trying to dig or starve the Fox family out of their hole.

It’s an enjoyable, exciting story, with lots of Dahl’s flair for language and rhyme.  There are tense moments and humorous moments and a few gross moments, of the kind aimed at kids.  All in all, it is fun.  And I might have quite liked it if I had read it when I was younger and more willing to take matters at face-value.

But.  The trouble is, I can’t get behind Mr. Fox as a hero.  Because he is stealing from Boggis, Bunce and Bean.  Dahl tells us that they’re terrible people, but I don’t see much actual evidence of that.  Yes, they’re rather rude, unhygenic, and ruthless in hunting down the Fox family…but you can’t steal from someone just because they’re rude and don’t bathe often enough.  This isn’t Robin Hood stealing from the oppressive Sheriff of Nottingham.

Even the villains’ ruthlessness towards the foxes is an uncertain indicator, because it’s not quite clear what they understand about the foxes’ intelligence and level of civilization.  Using lethal force to defend property is going too far, but that’s when applied to humans.  Shepherds and farmers have defended crops and livestock from predators since time immemorial.  As an animal lover, I’d rather they let the animals live, but I can’t say they’re evil if they take extreme measures.

So while I’m supposed to be cheering on crafty Mr. Fox, I never could quite avoid seeing Boggis, Bunce and Bean as honest (if unpleasant) businessmen taking necessary steps to defend their livelihoods from a persistent and unrepentant thief.

The situation is made worse because at one point Badger asks Mr. Fox if the stealing bothers him.  Mr. Fox jumps on something of a soapbox about how he’s only trying to keep his family from starving (because they’re under seige at this point) and after all, Boggis, Bunce and Bean want to kill him and he doesn’t want to do any such thing to them, so stealing is comparatively minor.  Which is all well and good except he’s ignoring the larger cause and effect.  He didn’t start stealing because they were hunting him.  They started hunting him because he was stealing.

I should note that I do like the occasional roguish hero–Captain Jack Sparrow is one of my all-time favorite characters.  But Mr. Fox does not have the charm of a Captain Jack, or the noble ideals of a Robin Hood, and at the end of the day…he was just not that fantastic.

But the audiobook only took an hour of my life (while driving), and it was well worth the time just to satisfy my curiosity about the book.  And I did enjoy listening–even if it had some issues!

The best part, though, was that the book was read by Roald Dahl.  And somehow, he just sounded the way I would expect Roald Dahl to sound. 🙂

Author’s Site: http://www.roalddahl.com/

Other reviews:
Tor.com
Reading to Know
Strange and Random Happenstance
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Fantastic Mr. Fox (CD)

Stardust Read-Along, Part One

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations11 Comments

Welcome to the Stardust Read-Along!  As part of Once Upon a Time, we’re reading Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, a lovely semi-fairy tale about Tristran, who sets out across the Wall into the land of Faerie, searching for a fallen star…who turns out to be a girl, one who is very unhappy about having fallen out of the sky!

Carl sent around a number of great questions, and I’ve chosen several to discuss.

We have spent a little time with Tristran and even less time with the star.  What are your initial thoughts/impressions of our two protagonists?

I forgot how fiery (hee!) she is–and I love it!  But I had also forgotten how unfeeling Tristran is.  The star tells him she’s sitting there with a broken leg, and he does nothing at all until the next morning.  Really?  Not feeling all that fond of Tristran at the moment.  I can forgive him his infatuation with the annoying village girl, and I enjoy a nice, inept trying-to-be-hero type, but his lack of empathy is bothering me.  But at least he feels bad about it…so I trust he’s going to grow.

In Chapter Three, just after the section with the brothers in Stormhold, Neil Gaiman gives us a description of Faerie that includes “each land that has been forced off the map by explorers and the brave going out and proving it wasn’t there…”.  What imaginary lands do you then hope are a part of Faerie?

I loved this quote.  I flagged it when I came to it, and jotted it in my book of quotes.  I suppose I want all the obvious places to be there–Neverland and Wonderland and Oz, Atlantis and Tortall and Middle Earth, and Florin and Guilder, and the countries in Ella Enchanted whose names are escaping me…

We do not get to spend a great deal of time in the market but while there we are given a number of interesting descriptions of the wares being bartered or sold.  Which if any of them caught your eye, either as items you would like to possess or ones you would most certainly hope to avoid.

I think any time you’re in a fairy market, you have to be very, very careful about what they’re asking you to pay!  Mostly I wanted to comment how it reminds me of the market in Neverwhere as well.  It’s like this is a more rural version!

I suspect Neil Gaiman is influenced by a number of fairy and folk tales in Stardust.  Are there any elements of the story that made a particular impression and/or reminded you of other fairy stories you have read or are familiar with?

Stardust mostly strikes me as a book that has an air of fairy tale about it, rather than being any particular retelling.  A set of seven princes, a girl imprisoned by a witch, the hero on the quest…all very fairy-tale-ish.  And I love the Babylon Candle element.  I swear I thought up a magic spell involving the “How many miles to Babylon?” song for a story before I ever even read this book.

The first chapter especially feels so very fairy tale-like.  With possible tweaks to the very last page, it could almost exist as an entirely independent story, and make a lovely fairy tale.

That’s possibly my favorite part so far…so maybe we’ll just end there!  I look forward to seeing everyone else’s thoughts about the book. 🙂

Good Omens from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews22 Comments

Good OmensTerry Pratchett is the funniest of authors and Neil Gaiman seems to be one of the coolest of people, so I’ve no idea why I didn’t read their co-authored Good Omens long ago…but I finally have, and it was wonderful!  And right on time for Once Upon a Time.

I realized after I opened the first page that I had almost no idea what this one was actually about.  Because, I mean, Pratchett and Gaiman–who cares what the plot is?  But in case you’re curious (and to add coherence to the rest of this review), I’ll give you an overview.

The book centers in large part around Crowley and Aziraphale, a demon and an angel, respectively, though the two have more in common than you might think.  Both have been on Earth for the past 6,000 years and have developed a solid working relationship in the process.  When the Antichrist is born, heralding the end of the world in eleven years, Crowley and Aziraphale both realize that they find Earth far more interesting than either Heaven or Hell, and set about to prevent the end of the world.

Meanwhile, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are gathering, the last of the Army of Witchhunters is vigorously and ineptly pursuing his calling, and Anathema Device (witch) is following dictates set down by her ancestor in the Book, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.  And the Antichrist turns out to be a very nice young man.

The plot doesn’t even begin to do justice to the madness and hilarity of this book.  I don’t think there’s any way to discuss it very coherently, so perhaps a few representative examples…  Every cassette tape left in Crowley’s car for more than a week or so turns into something by Queen.  The Four Horsemen ride to the Apocalypse on motor bikes, accompanied by four more conventional Hell’s Angels, arguing about what horrible thing they want to be (including “People Covered in Fish,” for instance).  When the Antichrist (whose name, by the way, is Adam) starts latching onto some wild, part New Age, part urban legend concepts that he doesn’t quite understand, Atlantis rises and Tibetan monks start popping up out of holes everywhere.

The book is incredibly clever too.  Take the Four Horsemen–Famine goes around spreading his particular evil through fad diets and nutritionless fast food.  Pollution has replaced Pestilence, after penicillin was invented and Pestilence retired in a huff.  War makes a living first as an arms dealer and then as a war correspondent–who always gets to places just before war breaks out.  And Death, well…he’s not quite as funny as the Discworld Death, but he does speak in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.

This book is all the more remarkable for being about a battle between angels and demons, drawing heavily from the Book of Revelations and occasionally Genesis, and pulls it off without being proselytizing or judgmental.  I wouldn’t recommend this as a source for theology, but it’s never offensive either–and I’m a practicing Catholic who found The Da Vinci Code deeply bothersome (for a number of reasons, scholarship as much as anything).

I could keep rambling on about this, but just take my word for it–it’s hilarious.  If you like either of these authors or think you might, then read it.  I mean, there’s a book-loving angel, a demon who “did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards,” a whole lot of footnotes, and Death.  And according to Wikipedia, once upon a time someone thought about casting Johnny Depp as Crowley, and now I so want to see that movie made!

Authors’ Sites: http://terrypratchettbooks.com/ and http://neilgaiman.com/

Other reviews:
Charley R’s Leaning Tower of Plot
Amidst the Meadow of Mind
Books, Writing, Tea
Death, Books and Tea (trend?)
Anyone else?

Buy it here: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Saturday Snapshot: Whimsical Wisteria

On By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot12 Comments

It must be spring again–the wisteria is back in bloom.  Such a very pretty flower–it’s too bad it lasts so briefly!  I haven’t managed to snap a picture yet this year, but it’s the right season to trot out a few shots from previous springs around my neighborhood…

Wisteria (1)

Wisteria (2)

I don’t suppose there’s anything TOO whimsical about the pictures…but I couldn’t resist the alliteration opportunity!

Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots. 🙂

2013 Reading Challenges – First Update

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations6 Comments

Three months into the year already?  Really?  Must be time for an update on reading challenges…

All links go to reviews, and if you’re curious about any unreviewed books, just ask!

The Chunkster Challenge

In my efforts to overcome my fear of long books, I’m trying to read some of the LOOONG books I’ve been putting off…

1) Walden by Henry David Thoreau–on audio, but I’m counting it

2) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (reviews Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)

My March Chunkster plans went awry when I discovered Good Omens is not nearly as long as I always thought!  I’m set up for more chunksters though, as I read The Hobbit as a prelude to Lord of the Rings.  I’m also midway through The House on Durrow Street by Galen Beckett, which comes in at nearly 700 pages.

FTSRC

Finishing the Series

I’m continuing to work through series, after great efforts last year to reduce my number of partially-read series.  I’m making a more reduced attempt in 2013, and have made some progress…

1) The Pink Carnation series by Lauren Willig
Total books: 9 (to date)
When I began the series: February, 2011
Read prior to 2013: 7
Read in 2013: The Orchid Affair
Still to read: One book, though another’s due out in August

2) Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card
Total books: 6
When I began the series: February, 2012
Read prior to 2013: 1
Read in 2013: Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide
Still to read: Three books

3) The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
Total books: 2 (to date)
When I began the series: June, 2012
Read prior to 2013: 1
Read in 2013: Scarlet
Status: Up to date!

Books to Reread

Revisiting Old Friends

I have also been resolving to reread some beloved books, and have raided my own bookshelves here and there.  Some revisited favorites include:

1) Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat by L. M. Montgomery

2) A Voice from the Border by Pamela Smith Hill

3) Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

4) Star Trek: Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

5) Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman

6) Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

7) Chalice by Robin McKinley

Stainless Steel Droppings: Carl’s “Experiences”

I had an excellent time with the January-February Sci Fi Experience, and went through a big stack of books.  Read my wrap-up post here.  In late March we launched the Once Upon a Time “Challenge,” and I’m already making my way through multitudes of fantasy.  I’ll post a complete list at the end of the challenge.

So far, it’s been a more low-key year in challenges…but I’ve been reading some excellent books in the process!