Category: Reviews

Bloody Jack–at School, at Sea, and on the River

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews, Young Adult2 Comments
Mississippi Jack
Book 5, which has 14 discs in all

I have been continuing through the audio adventures of Jacky Faber by L. A. Meyer, read by Katherine Kellgren, and am now halfway through the series.  They continue enormous fun, and are great to listen to one after another, as they tend to directly follow each other chronologically–though I’ve decided to take a break for a while after the fifth one.

I reviewed the first audiobook here, Bloody Jack, about how a London street urchin disguises herself as a boy to join a Royal Navy ship, hoping to “better her condition.”  Along the way, she meets close comrades and gains the nickname “Bloody Jack”–which, as Jacky likes to say, is not her fault.  Mostly.

I’ll try to refrain from spoilers, but I will tell you that her deception is found out by the end of the book.  Book Two, Curse of the Blue Tattoo, picks up with Jacky being dropped off in Boston at The Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls, where the formidable Mistress Pimm will try–with mixed success–to turn her into a proper lady.  We get to meet two of my favorite characters in this volume.  First, Amy Trevelyne, Jacky’s dearest friend, who comes out of her shell under Jacky’s influence, and who tries–with mixed success!–to rein in Jacky’s wilder impulses.  Second, we meet Jacky’s nemesis, Miss Clarissa Worthington Howe (of the Virginia Howes), who is very much the fine lady–but can hold her in a fight too, with words or claws.  This book also has an element of mystery to it, as Jacky gets involved exploring the death of a serving girl, and the very creepy minister who lives next door.

Book Three, Under the Jolly Roger, sees Jacky at sea again.  Through a series of mishaps, she ends up on the H.M.S. Wolverine, commanded by mad Captain Blodgett.  Jacky’s gender is discovered and her virtue is sorely threatened, but as usual she carries on with aplomb.  This book is really two plots, and Part Two sees Jacky setting up as a privateer–and fighting at the Battle of Trafalgar in the climax.  I remember when I read this one the first time, I had to stop reading it before I went to bed.  Too exciting!

We meet another favorite character here, Higgins, Jacky’s ever faithful man servant.  I can’t tell you how delighted I was listening when Higgins first turned up!  It’s been a long time and I’d forgotten exactly how he got into the story.  Higgins is a prim and proper gentleman’s gentleman, who nevertheless has a taste for adventure.  He faithfully follows Jacky through her madcap adventures, always ready to offer a wise word, a tut of disapproval, a cup of tea or a hot bath.  Just to clarify here, it becomes quickly apparent (though never said in so many words) that Higgins is gay, which makes him one of the few men Jacky doesn’t flirt with.

Book Four, In the Belly of the Bloodhound, sends Jacky back to Boston and school, trying to lay low and avoid the British intelligence officers pursuing her for piracy.  The plan to stay out of trouble goes awry when Jacky and the girls of the school are abducted by slavers, and carried towards South Africa aboard the Bloodhound.  This is my favorite book in the series to date.  Jacky is certainly not going to take slavery lying down, and she martials the girls into a fighting force.  I love the girls of The Lawson Peabody School, and I love watching them grow ever stronger and more confident.  We get a lot of Clarissa, as well as little Rebecca Adams (granddaughter of John Adams) and Dolly Fraser–who later marries Mr. Madison.  Along with getting a wonderful cast of brave girls in this book, Jacky doesn’t meet any pretty boys–meaning for once she has to curtail her sparking.

Jacky lights out West in Book Five, Mississippi Jack, commanding a showboat down the river along with Higgins and a host of familiar and new characters.  Jacky meets Native Americans (including this unnamed Indian woman who went west with that expedition…) and the delightful, hilarious, roaring river man Mike Fink.

As I think about my plot summaries, I realize I’ve left off a major character–Mr. Jaimy Fletcher, who is doomed throughout this series to chase along always a few steps behind Jacky, his fiancee.  Meyer often intersperses Jacky’s adventures with letters (literal or mental) from Jaimy to Jacky, updating what’s occurring with him.  And here I come to my biggest criticism of the series.  On my first read-through, I recall being pretty neutral about Jaimy.  On this second pass, I have to say I think he’s all wrong for her.  They meet as children in the first book and are faithful to each other (mostly) for nine subsequent books…but honestly, I’m not convinced of their relationship’s validity because they’re so rarely actually together.

A bigger problem–Jaimy keeps wanting Jacky to settle down.  And that’s just not who she is.  I don’t have a problem with Higgins or Amy, who clearly value Jacky for her high spirits and just wish she would restrain some of her more dangerous impulses.  Jaimy wants to marry Jacky and install her in a cottage somewhere while he goes to sea and she…I don’t know, raises babies?  I don’t believe Jaimy loves Jacky for who she is; he’s imagined the girl he thinks he wants, and for some inexplicable reason has given her Jacky’s face.  I’d like to believe Meyer will eventually break the two of them up…but I just don’t see it happening.  So I have to hope Jaimy will mature a bit.  As of book ten, he’s still working on it.

As I mentioned, I’ve been listening to the audiobooks on this pass through–the books are great as paper novels, and they’re also wonderful on audio, thanks to the delightful talents of Katherine Kellgren.  She gives us Jacky’s Cockney accent, brings believability to her melodrama, and makes me like Jacky’s singing much more than I ever did on paper.  She also gives us excellent voices for a vast cast of characters, with accents from British to American to deep South to Irish to French, with characters who are male, female, young, old–or even bellowing Mike Fink.  She even makes different characters sound different while singing.  All in all, I’m a big fan.

But I’m a fan of the whole series.  On paper or audio, I highly recommend following the adventures of Bloody Jack!

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

Other reviews:
Gallivanting Girl Books
The Lostent Wife
The Magic of Ink
Anyone else?

When The Beating of Your Heart Echoes the Beating of the Drums…

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews10 Comments

les-miserables-jean-valjean-movie-posterYou may recall that I wrote a Very Long Review of my theatre experience with Les Miserables.  So perhaps you’ve been expecting a review of the movie, which just opened on Christmas.  I went to see it this weekend, thoroughly enjoyed it, and yet also have…complicated feelings.  Hopefully a review will help me unpack this.  So here we go–and there will be spoilers, because you can’t talk about anything important in Les Mis without spoilers.

Very brief and abbreviated plotline, in case you need some context as we go forward: Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is an ex-convict, arrested for stealing a loaf of bread, who attempts to remake his life–which involves running out on his parole.  He’s perpetually hunted by Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), who believes that criminals never change and it’s his duty to bring Valjean to justice.  Valjean’s path crosses with Fantine (Anne Hathaway), who is driven to prostitution to provide for her daughter, Cosette, who’s being raised by the truly horrible yet comical innkeepers, the Thenardiers (Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen).  Valjean ends up taking care of Cosette.  When she grows up, Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) falls in love with Marius (Eddie Remayne), a revolutionary whose friends are at the heart of an uprising in Paris.  My favorite characters are on their own sideplots: Eponine (Samantha Barks), the Thenardiers’ daughter, who also falls in love with Marius; and Gavroche (Daniel Huttlestone), a street urchin in the middle of the revolution.

So that was the brief overview.  It’s a long movie!  But so much happens and it’s all carried along with such wonderful songs that it really didn’t feel very long.  Hobbit is only about ten minutes longer, but felt much longer.

A few general comments before I get into the depths of the characters–this is an intense movie, and they did not skimp when it came to intense make-up.  And by that, I mean that they must have gone through barrels of dirt.  There is a long series of poverty-stricken, devastated or ill people, and they brought it all intensely to life with make-up and costumes.  Almost every actor looks horrible at some point–and that’s exactly how it should be.

And the soundtrack–the songs are amazing.  Period.  I could tell you about how wonderful each one is as we go along, but let’s just assume they’re all amazing and leave it at that.

Now, let’s dig into the characters.  There are some very surprising names in the cast here, but I thought the actors all did wonderful jobs.  Hugh Jackman carries the biggest burden of this movie, and he absolutely lived up to it.  The singing was excellent, there are intense moments, and he played a deep, conflicted Valjean. Continue reading “When The Beating of Your Heart Echoes the Beating of the Drums…” →

The Insights of Father Time

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews4 Comments

Time KeeperI was very much intrigued when I heard about Mitch Albom’s new book, The Time Keeper.  Like his other books, it’s a slim volume with a fable-like quality, as much philosophy as fiction, presenting characters who are learning something about their lives.

The Time Keeper is the intertwined story of Dor, Victor and Sarah.  Dor lived long, long ago, and was the first person to ever think of measuring the passing of days–the first one to grasp the concept of time.  He becomes Father Time, sitting for millenium in a cave, listening to the voices of all the people oppressed by the desire for more or less time, while remembering his own beloved, lost wife.  In the present day, Victor is consumed by business, and it’s made him the 14th richest man in the world.  That still can’t buy him a cure for his cancer and kidney failure.  He decides to seize another lifetime and, without telling his wife, makes plans to be cryogenically frozen.  Sarah is an unpopular teenager who thinks she’s finally met the boy of her dreams–only to be devastated when things turn out badly.

Victor wants more time and Sarah wants to throw her time away.  Father Time enters into the modern world to help them both, and to change his own fate in the process.

In the end, I’m not sure how I feel about this.  It’s an easy, fast read (not that I’m in a hurry or anything…) that’s deceptively simple.  There are some wonderful philosophical notes, most especially about the hazard of counting time instead of experiencing it.  The irony did occur to me when I settled down to start reading this, first moving my clock so I could be aware of the time while I read!  I like a lot of what Dor learns, about the dangers of being consumed by counting time and never stopping to just feel life.  There’s a certain element of It’s a Wonderful Life to the story for all three characters, of never seeing the people and the good things in your own life.

On the other hand, my practical side points out that we do actually need to count time and have clocks–that it does actually make sense to read for half an hour so that I can go to bed and get enough sleep and not be tired in the morning because I have to get up for something that starts at a certain time…  I’m reminded of a quote from Henry David Thoreau: “Little is to be expected of that day…to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor.”  In other words, it’s much better to wake up on our own than with an alarm clock.  While he’s not exactly wrong, I also must say it’s easy for Thoreau to say that when he lived out at Walden Pond and had no job to get to.  And I would bet that if he wanted a hot meal from Mrs. Emerson, she expected him to come to dinner on time!

Still, on the whole, I think Albom has some good points in here about time, and I do like how Dor’s story develops.  I’m more mixed about Sarah’s and Victor’s stories.  They both come to valuable revelations about their lives and their relationships, and there’s a heartwarming ending and a perfectly good message about valuing people.  But I’m not sure either of them really learned that much about time.  Victor perhaps, as he was focusing his time on the wrong things.  Sarah’s problems only very distantly relate to time at all.  Which leaves me saying that it was a very nice story that was not quite what it was presented as.

Conclusion: this is a lovely modern fable, well-written and engaging.  But only one out of three plotlines really focuses on the philosophy of time.  If what you really want is complex insight about dealing with a far too busy world, look elsewhere.  But if you enjoy Albom’s writing and if a slightly Frank Capra-like modern fable appeals to you, it’s a good read.

And evidently the 146 people behind me in line at the library hold list feel the idea appeals to them!  As you may imagine, I returned this one very quickly…

Author’s Site: http://mitchalbom.com/

Other reviews:
Dauntless
Confessions of a Book Addict
Wander Woman
Hardly Harley
And of course, lots of others.  Tell me about yours!

Christmas Round-up of Reviews

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews1 Comment

Happy Christmas Eve!  I will most likely be watching The Charlie Brown Christmas Special some time today, to put me in the proper mood.  I’ve written about a lot of favorite Christmas movies and stories in the past, so I thought this year I’d do a round-up of past reviews with a Christmas theme.

Books

Sometimes there’s nothing like the classics, and you can’t go wrong with A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  So much in it has become so iconic, and it’s a wonderful read–from “Marley was dead” right up to “God bless us every one!”

Not at all a classic, this year I’m rereading The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig, a delightful Regency spy story set at Christmas, with a guest appearance by Jane Austen, featuring a heroine who grows into the role, and a stumbling but well-meaning hero named Turnip.  It’s funny and romantic and very Christmassy.

Movies

As mentioned, Charlie Brown is probably at the top of my must-see Christmas movies.  It’s just the most insightful 20-minute cartoon I’ve ever seen.  And a good deal more insightful than many more “impressive” movies!

Next on the list is It’s A Wonderful Life, especially the last hour.  It’s just barely related to Christmas in plot, but much more so in the themes of family and redemption and what really matters in life…beautiful.  So moving.  I don’t always watch the entire movie, but I try to find time to at least watch the last hour.

I covered several movies in a Favorites Friday last year, most notably Holiday Inn and White Christmas.  They’re not quite so insightful, but they’re light and they’re fun in the best tradition of the old musicals.  How can you go wrong with Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas”?  And he does–in both movies!  Plus Holiday Inn treats you to proof that Fred Astaire can even stumble gracefully.

I wrote out Christmas card envelopes this year while watching You Can’t Take It With You, which has nothing at all to do with Christmas except for the themes.  It’s another Frank Capra movie with half the cast of It’s a Wonderful Life, including an unrecognizable Lionel Barrymore and a quite recognizable Jimmy Stewart.

I seem to have a shortage of Christmas books!  So–what Christmas books should I be adding to my list?

The Private–and Public–Life of Elizabeth I

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews2 Comments

LegacyI think you know that I love Susan Kay’s Phantom.  But I won’t gush on about it (for the third time); I mention it only as context for why I decided to read Susan Kay’s Legacy.  And to acknowledge that I set the bar unattainably high for this book.  I didn’t really expect it to be another Phantom–but can you blame me for hoping?  Well, it wasn’t another Phantom (but nothing is) and while it was good, in the end I feel a bit…mixed.

There are actually some resemblances between the two books.  Just as Phantom explores the life of the Phantom of the Opera, from pre-birth to post-death, Legacy explores the life of Queen Elizabeth I, from Anne Boleyn’s first flirtation with King Henry VIII, all the way up to Elizabeth’s death.  We follow Elizabeth from a precocious child to an adrift young girl, to a clever woman in mortal peril from shifting politics, to a masterful queen, to a legend (or even a goddess) in her own time.  And we see the various men who orbited around the Virgin Queen.

While the focus is on Elizabeth, just as it was always on Erik, Legacy has a wider-angle lens.  Phantom has a scope across decades and continents, but Legacy plays with the intrigues of courts and the ups-and-downs of European history for nearly a century.  Kay spent 15 years writing Legacy and it shows, in good ways and bad.  It’s obviously meticulously researched, and while I appreciate and am impressed by the historical details…it also means that it’s a book about history as much as it is about Elizabeth.  So if you like British history (and I do), this is masterfully presented–but it also removes us from the characters to some extent.

The characters are also difficult.  You may tell me that the Phantom of the Opera should not be relatable–but Kay’s version is.  Legacy is populated by the royal court of England, and almost without exception they are self-serving, conniving, power-driven individuals with very little loyalty and few qualms about selling one another out for political advantage–even if the one they’re sacrificing is a sibling or a wife.  I fully believe this is based in real history so I’m not claiming it’s not plausible–but it doesn’t make for a group of characters that I’m going to get attached to.

The book is interesting all the way through, but it was a good 300 pages (or about halfway) before I much started caring about anyone.  I did eventually care about Elizabeth, and about the two most constant men in her life–childhood friend and quasi-husband Robin Dudley, and chief advisor Lord Burghley.  They’re the two people Elizabeth comes closest to having genuine relationships with, and I think that fact goes a long way towards my caring about all three.  The third man in Elizabeth’s life is the Earl of Essex, but you’ll have to wait quite a while for him to arrive!

Part of the difficulty getting engaged with the characters may have been the point of view.  Phantom alternates first-person narration, so you always know exactly who’s talking to you.  Legacy is omniscient, or a frequently-changing third-person limited (I have trouble telling those two apart) so we’re not as grounded in any one character.  The center is Elizabeth, but we get her story from constantly shifting eyes.

And there’s a lot of narration telling us the history.  The book isn’t dull history, or entirely history–there are romantic moments and moments of high drama and emotional tension.  But there’s also a lot of history.  Often very interesting history…but somewhat heavy history too.

The end of the book is ultimately quite sad, and if you know the course of Elizabeth’s life, that’s inevitable.  Because it’s history, I don’t think it’s giving much away to say she starts to lose her grip by the end.  Kay tells it well and it’s moving–although I realized that the end of Phantom is heart-breaking, tragic and beautiful, while the end of Legacy is just sad.

So the final verdict?  It’s a masterful piece of historical fiction–but be prepared that you have to be just as interested in the historical as in the fiction if you pick up this book.

Other reviews:
QG’s Book Reviews
The Misadventures of Moppet
A Girl Walks into a Bookstore
Rosebush Maze (also offering Phantom comparisons)
Confessions of an Avid Reader (who felt there was not enough history…so opinions may vary!)
Whew, popular book!  Anyone else?