Category: Young Adult

Persephone Today

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Ruminations, Young Adult4 Comments

I seem to be on a mythology theme this week.  Heading back towards the Greek isles, in a way, after The Red Pyramid I read Abandon by Meg Cabot.

I’ve read a fair bit of Meg Cabot; she’s a good option when I feel like something light, fluffy and bubbly that I can read in a day or so.  Abandon turned out to be a very different Meg Cabot book.

Abandon is a retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth.  In case you don’t know it, Hades, the god of the dead and Lord of the Underworld, kidnapped Persephone, who if she isn’t the goddess of flowers (I can’t remember for sure) nevertheless gives that distinct impression.  Depending on the version, Persephone and Hades may or may not fall in love.  Ultimately, Persephone ends up dividing her time between the Underworld with Hades and being with her mother, the goddess of harvest, up on Earth.

Abandon retells this, loosely, in the present day.  The lead character, Pierce, is a teenager who had a near-death experience.  While she was dead, she met the Lord of the Underworld (who conveniently looks like an attractive 19-year-old man).  He isn’t Hades, but he has the same job.  He chooses Pierce to be his consort, but Pierce flees, the EMTs bring her back, and she tries to get on with her life.  Except that she’s convinced he is following her, hoping to bring her back to the Underworld.

The funny thing is, I very much enjoyed this while I was reading it.  Then afterwards I started thinking about all the flaws–well, the one big overarching flaw, really.  So I’m not sure where I come down on this one, except that I do feel sufficiently positive that I’ll probably try the sequel when it comes out.

I really like the concept of this, and the plot, though far-fetched in spots, is reasonably good.  It’s the characters that bring me to that big overarching flaw.

One character thing I do love–I love that the dark, brooding, fearsome and mysterious Lord of the Underworld is named John.  Not a dark, mysterious name–just John.  That’s fun.  And John is actually a decent character.  I like dark, brooding heroes with good hearts, so he at least has potential.  Although the more I think about it, the more I think I’m just assuming he has a good heart in there somewhere because it’s the only way this will work at all, not because there’s actually much evidence for it.

But John is all right.  The real problem, the big problem, is Pierce.  She’s one of those bland, underdeveloped heroines.  Other than an understandable obsession with death since her accident, and a concern for animals and other people, Pierce has almost no personality.

I made a possibly unfortunate comparison, and realized there’s a lot of similarity to Twilight–brooding, handsome, not-human hero falls obsessively in love with ordinary, undistinguished girl for no particularly compelling reason.  Edward thought Bella’s blood smelled good.  And John was totally blown away when Pierce asked how he was.

No, really!  She accidentally spooked his horse, he fell off, and she asked if he was all right.  Granted, he’s a death deity, who mostly deals with people who are dealing with the fact of their own recent demise, so he doesn’t get this sort of thing very often–but it doesn’t make her Mother Teresa!  Nor does it seem a reasonable basis for deciding that this is the person you want to–literally–spend eternity with.

Pierce does demonstrate caring for others at other times, but Cabot must have a poor opinion of humanity if she thinks it’s enough to mark Pierce out as an extraordinarily kind and giving person.  The times when Pierce does go over the top trying to help people, it’s either meddling, or totally stupid and ill-advised.

I think one reason this didn’t strike me much as I was reading is that the book went by so fast, I felt like I was still just starting when I was halfway through.  So it didn’t occur to me how undeveloped a character Pierce is until I got to the end–and she was still undeveloped.  It is part of a proposed series, so maybe she’ll get more depth in the next book…but she had an entire book, she could have gotten deeper here.

I do recommend Abandon–I enjoyed reading it–but don’t expect to find a new favorite character in the heroine.  Despite the similarity in how they met their heroes, Pierce is no Jane Eyre.

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

Revisiting Diana Wynne Jones

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult3 Comments

After Diana Wynne Jones’ death a few weeks ago, I–like many people–wanted to go back and read some of her work.  I decided to revisit Fire and Hemlock.  This was a reread, and I selected it in part because I had some trouble with it the first time around–but thought at the time that I might like it better on a second read.

This book is a bit difficult to describe without giving things away.  It begins with Polly, who is 19 and looking at a book of fantasy stories.  One of them, a story about a man with two sets of memories, triggers a series of hidden memories for her.  The book jumps back to when Polly was ten, and moves forward exploring these hidden memories.  They start when Polly gate-crashed a funeral at the mysterious Hunsdon House next door to her grandmother’s, and met Tom Lynn.

At this point I ought to describe Tom; this is also where I had trouble the first read-through.  Ten-year-old Polly views Tom as much, much older than her, and Diana aids and abets this impression for the reader.  I think he’s described as “stooped” at some point, he definitely is described as having an “elderly hairstyle,” and he’s a recently-divorced cello player.  None of this says “young man” to me.  The divorce alone would probably make me assume thirties at least, and everything else had me putting him as minimum mid-forties, and only the relatively young-sounding ex-wife would keep me from assuming he was much older.

I’m about to reveal what was probably supposed to be a twist–so I’m sorry for a spoiler, but it was a twist that thoroughly derailed me, and I would’ve done better had it been spoiled.  Hundreds of pages in, we find out that Polly as a child was a very poor judge of age, and Tom was much younger than she led us to believe.  This becomes important to the ending, which is why I had such trouble the first time.  This time I really tried to implant in my mental image the idea that he was young, to the point that I was mentally chanting “he’s twenty, he’s twenty” on occasion.  Later evidence in the book suggests he was probably early twenties.  So if you read this, keep that in mind–it might help.  And pay no attention to the cover, it has a horrible depiction of Tom.

Back to the plot.  Tom and Polly, despite their not-quite-as-big-as-I-thought age difference, become fast friends, making up stories about their alter ego selves who are heroes in training.  It all becomes more fantastical when the stories they make up begin to come true.  Meanwhile, the Leroys, who own Hunsdon House and include Tom’s ex-wife, have some kind of sinister hold on Tom, and continually warn Polly away.  Nineteen-year-old Polly has to solve the mystery, and determine what happened four years previously that changed, not only her memory, but apparently actual events.

I’m not really sure what kind of review this is.  Because I really enjoyed the book.  There’s so much in here that’s wonderful–characters, mystery, fantastic adventures, humor.  And yet…the end doesn’t quite pull together for me.  The basic mystery is cleared up, there’s essential resolution, but I feel like an extra twenty pages explaining what just happened would be very helpful.  I love Diana Wynne Jones’ books–love, love, love them–but every so often one of them is more convoluted and confusing than the others.

So I guess it’s a mixed review.  I recommend it…but if you try reading it, remember–he’s young!

Author’s Site: http://www.dianawynnejones.com/dwjflash.htm

And official fansite: http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/

A Treasure in a Warehouse

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Young Adult3 Comments

My library had a warehouse sale recently, and I came home with ten new books (for $12.50!  I love my library.)  It was a glorious sale.  There are few things better in book buying, for me, then stumbling across a J. M. Barrie book that isn’t about Peter Pan and looks like it’s from 1900 (although I can’t find a publishing date on it!) and then realizing that the librarians will let me take this treasure home to keep for a mere two dollars.  Lovely.  But almost as good is finding a book I’ve been meaning to get around to buying for, I don’t know, three years, and that one can go home right now for only a buck.

That book I’d been meaning to buy was A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voigt.  I started reading it the same day I bought it.  I really don’t know why I took this long to purchase it (except possibly because brick-and-mortar bookstores never had it when I looked, and I was wary of buying on Amazon because I didn’t want to inadvertantly end up with a particular edition I knew I didn’t like).

A Solitary Blue is a wonderful, beautiful book.  I love the way Voigt writes about emotions.  A friend who went to the sale with me asked what the book was about, and I flailed a bit trying to answer.  I had read it before, that wasn’t the issue, but it’s much more a character-development book than a plot-driven one.

Here goes a best-attempt at “what it’s about.”  Jeff’s mother, Melody, is beautiful and charming and fascinating–and she walked out when Jeff was seven years old.  As Jeff grows up, we watch the development of his relationship with his father, a very reserved college professor, and with Melody as she moves unexpectedly in and out of his life.

It’s Jeff’s thoughts and feelings that make me love this book.  When he’s small, his mother is the center of his world.  Voigt writes wonderful descriptions about how Jeff feels around her.

“Jeff watched and listened, basking in his own feelings: of being with his own mother, who wrapped her love around him; of being–strange as it seemed–home, where he was welcome; of waking up to a world where his help was needed to right what was wrong; of lying on soft grass under trees hundreds of years old beside walls that his ancestors had built; of being logy with the perfumed heat of the day.”

When Jeff gets older, he sees through Melody’s charm to realize how irresponsible and self-absorbed she really is–and the descriptions of how he feels in his disappointment and betrayal are beautiful too.

“He felt so bad–sorry for himself, and angry at himself for losing her–and helpless.  He didn’t know what he should have done, what he could have done.  He felt as if he had been broken into thousands of little pieces.  Broken and then dropped into some dark place.  Some dark place where he was always going to stay.”

I think the reader sees through Melody sooner than Jeff does, so we can see the tragedy coming.  But, despite some sad parts, it’s an ultimately positive story, as Jeff learns and grows and comes out of both the sun of Melody’s approval, and the darkness of her disregard.

The title refers to a blue heron, a bird Jeff sees alone on an island one day, and which becomes symbolic for Jeff himself, and for a few other characters too.

A Solitary Blue is part of a larger series, but I think it could stand alone.  The larger series is about the Tillerman family and their friends, and the Tillermans have only a supporting role in this one.  I recommend the rest of the series too, but this one is my favorite.

Author’s site: http://cynthiavoigt.com/

Sleeping Beauty, Awake and Fighting

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult2 Comments

What if Sleeping Beauty didn’t turn out the way all those fairies at her christening intended?  That’s one element–and my favorite–of Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley.

There’s a line in The People the Fairies Forget when Tarry wonders what christening-gifted people would be like without the enchantments.  How does it change a person to be enchanted to be compassionate?  In my book, Sleeping Beauty is only a minor character, and is about what you’d expect her to be like if you’ve ever read Charles Perrault.

But Rosie isn’t.  Rosie is Sleeping Beauty in Spindle’s End, and is wonderfully NOT what she’s supposed to be.  She has long eyelashes and fair skin and golden hair, but she keeps the hair cut short so it doesn’t have the chance to fall into ringlets (and ends up a fuzzy, curly mass).  She hates dancing and embroidery, so it doesn’t matter that she’s enchanted to be good at them.  Her laugh may resemble a bell, but it must be a very large and unusual bell.  And most importantly, she is wonderfully, obstinately, stubbornly herself.  She’s not at all sure she even wants to be a princess, and she’s not going to just take a curse lying down.

McKinley does in Spindle’s End some of my favorite things about retold fairy tales.  We all know this story–princess cursed to prick her finger and die, fairies carry her off into the woods to keep her safe, spindles get destroyed, etc.  But she’s retold it with lots of clever, unexpected, practical twists.  What was Sleeping Beauty’s relationship with those fairies, considering they’re the only family she’s ever known?  Does she have her own plans for her life?  What’s it like to get princess-ness dropped into your lap one day?  And how do all those christening gifts turn out?

The gifts are wonderful, Rosie is wonderful, and the fairies–very practical fairies who are human-sized, don’t shed sparkles, don’t have wings, but do some impressive magic–are wonderful too.

I hate to say it, but one reservation here–I’ve never found the romance wonderful.  There is one, but it’s never felt right to me.  I’ve read this at least twice, so the most recent time I knew the romance was coming.  I really, really tried to see it coming, to anticipate it and wrap my head around it, but…while there are one or two cute moments, on the whole it just didn’t feel right.

It may be me.  It’s the kind of romance I often have trouble with.  Sometimes books like to create a friendship between a girl and an older man, which then turns into a romance when the girl grows up.  Once in a while it works for me.  Usually it doesn’t.  (On that subject, as a minor spoiler to the unwritten sequel of Red’s Girl, Red and Tamara are never going to be romantically involved.  Ever.)

But don’t let this turn you off the book.  Because honestly, I think Rosie’s relationships with her “aunts” (the two fairies) and her best friend are the more important ones than the romance, and they’re all very good.

And I love practical fairy tales.  The book opens with some lovely pages about how magic works in this country, and it’s this fantastic combination of total fantasy mixed with practical details about how people go about living their lives with this magic around them.  Magic sort of accumulates around cooking pots, for example, and fairies have to disenchant them every so often, by laying a finger on them.  Absent-minded fairies tend to have burn-scars on their fingers.  And when the evil fairy’s curse goes out, a decree is issued to lop off the tips of the spindles on all the spinning wheels.  How much more reasonable than burning every spinning wheel, and decimating the cloth industry!

My particular fairy tale retold is all about pulling out the most absurd bits of fairy tales and having more practical-minded characters try to work around them.  But I love retold fairy tales that work around those more absurd bits and make them make sense.  And I so enjoy McKinley’s rational, funny, sweet retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” that is the original story…but not quite the way Perrault told it.

Meeting Old Friends, and New, in Tortall and Other Lands

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult3 Comments

When I did my end-of-year round-up of reading, I also mentioned the book I was most looking forward to in 2011: Tortall and Other Lands, by Tamora Pierce.  I finished it recently, and was pleased to find that it didn’t disappoint.

I admit I was a little worried about that “Other Lands” part of the title.  I was hoping she wouldn’t throw us one Tortall story, and then write about unfamiliar places for the rest of the collection.  But I should have had more faith–she gave us a great collection with a high number of stories in Tortall (or nearby countries), and the ones that were in other lands were good ones too.

The book is probably most appealing to people who already know Tortall, as several of the stories, especially the longest ones, revisit characters we’ve already met.  For fans of The Immortals series, Kitten the baby dragon gets her own story.  For fans of her Trickster series, we get to read a story about Nawat, Aly and their children.  Other stories feature minor characters from other books, or at least recognizable creatures–the Darkings, wonderful, funny inkblot-like creatures, are back in force.

The non-Tortall stories didn’t make a huge impression on me, but I remember them as enjoyable.  And how do you create a world as vivid in twenty pages as has been created in, let’s see, going on 18 books now.  Two of the stories, the last ones in the book, are set in the…well, I hate to say “real world” because it seems insulting to these other so vivid worlds, but let’s say the world you and I (I assume!) live in most of the time.  One was, I think, the first non-fantasy thing I’ve ever read by her–and I’ve read everything (really–I just checked her website bibliography to make sure!)  The other was a fantasy in the present-day, and darker than most.  A small warning that I think this one had an older target audience than most.

That story led me to an interesting observation on the distinction between Juvenile (or perhaps young YA) and higher level YA or adult fiction.  For the younger readers, people will still be shot by an arrow, but it will be in the shoulder, or just a vague, unmentioned place that may cause death.  In older-level books, you’re more apt to have someone be shot in the eye.  Or really any specific, gruesome location.  I never thought about that as a distinction before, but I think it’s true.

But I digress.  So watch out for “Huntress,” it’s dark.  And I highly recommend “Nawat” and “The Dragon’s Tale” and “Lost.”  And really all of the collection, but those three were my favorites.  And I enjoyed a little snippet of background on how Tamora Pierce wrote The Song of the Lioness quartet to begin with.

I would have loved a short story about Alanna, the heroine of The Song of the Lioness, but no such luck.  I’ve been hoping for a story about Alanna and her squire–they’re in The Protector of the Small series, and seem to have had wonderful adventures–but I’ll have to go on hoping for that.

No matter.  It’s a wonderful collection all the same.  If you’ve read my gushing earlier post about Tamora Pierce’s books, I’m sure it doesn’t surprise you that I felt that way!  A fun note also–that best friend I mentioned in that post, who I met because we both were reading Tamora Pierce, loaned me Tortall and Other Lands.  So we’re both still reading her, almost ten years later.

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

…and Blog: http://tammypierce.livejournal.com/ Just discovered this while I was writing this review!  (I swear I’ve tried to find a blog by her in the past…) Kind of thrilled to discover it.  🙂  And to discover that she uses her cat as her avatar…