Tag: Books

Rapunzel in Her…Satellite?

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction, Young Adult8 Comments

The long-awaited Cress by Marissa Meyer finally reached me from the library!  And still in time for Once Upon a Time. 🙂  Technically it’s sci fi, not fantasy…but it’s a fairy tale retelling, so I’m saying it counts.  Cress is the third book in The Lunar Chronicles (read about the first two here) so spoilers may follow for the earlier books.

Cress picks up right after Scarlet, and continues the story of Cinder and her friends.  We also get our new title character, Cress, who we saw only briefly in the earlier books.  Cress has spent the past several years trapped in a satellite orbiting the Earth, forced to use her brilliant computer skills to spy on behalf of the Lunar queen.  She manages to make contact with Cinder–but a rescue attempt goes horribly wrong, ending with Wolf badly wounded, Scarlet abducted, and Cress and Thorne crash-landing into the Sahara Desert.  Meanwhile, Prince Kai’s plans to marry the Lunar queen in a desperate attempt to avert war are moving ahead all too quickly.

There are a lot of plot threads going on here, but Meyer manages to move very adeptly between different characters, giving us time with all of them.  I would have liked a little more time with Scarlet (because I love Scarlet!), but completely understand that something had to go in this already-long book.

It’s okay that I didn’t get much Scarlet because I loved Cress too.  She is naive and idealistic and a little bit awkward, because after all, she spent years locked away alone in a satellite.  She’s so thrilled by everything on Earth, seeing so much beauty in ordinary things.  I loved Cress’ growth through the book, gaining more insight and understanding as she interacts with more people.

And Cress and Thorne are just so much fun!  I really enjoyed the romance in Scarlet and this one is just as good, while being completely different.  Thorne has been putting on this heroic rogue persona, which everyone else sees through…but Cress is isolated and naive and develops a major crush on him.  The evolution of Cress’ feelings about Thorne as she gets to know him as a real person is just lovely.

And Thorne…is neither as heroic as Cress thought he was, or as bad as he pretends to be.  He’s a lot like Han Solo, circa A New Hope…except possibly a Han Solo who watched Star Wars and knows exactly what image he’s trying to present, without being entirely sure himself that he would come back to help blow up the Death Star (sorry, spoiler…) Anyway–such a great character, and these two may be my favorite romantic couple for this year.

As in the previous two books, there are some nice fairy tale tie-ins.  Cress, of course, is Rapunzel, from being trapped in her satellite to having her name be inspired by a variety of lettuce.  She also has very long hair that’s cut when she leaves her “tower,” and her “prince” goes blind at the same time.  I love how Meyer puts a sci fi twist on fairy tale elements throughout this series!

Cress has a lot of action and a lot of excitement and a lot of movement forward in the brewing revolution against the Lunar queen.  But there are very few conclusions, and I find myself more anxious for Book Four than I was for Book Three.  Because Cress and Thorne have not really figured their romance out, and the revolution has not come to a boil, and this book left me desperately curious about Book Four’s title character, Princess Winter.

So now I have to sadly wait until next year for the concluding volume.  But at least I can be happy that this series has gone through three out of four books without losing steam and, very possibly, getting better with every installment.  Making me so very hopeful for the final one!

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

Other reviews:
Reading Is Fun Again
Pandora’s Books
Consumed By Books
And…there are many more!  Tell me about yours and I’ll add a link. 🙂

Buy it here: Cress

The Hardest Books To Scale

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations24 Comments

I was musing on bookish topics to write about today, and decided to go see what other clever people have come up with!  By which I mean that I went to look at the list of past Top Ten Tuesday topics on The Broke and the Bookish.  Bringing me today’s topic…my personal list of most intimidating books!

I have already conquered…

1) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell – In page count, this is the longest book I’ve ever read (though I would imagine that it runs neck-and-neck with Les Mis, depending on the edition).  I managed to read it when I was about twelve or so.  It was my second attempt on the book, and when I began again I thought I’d just try to read farther than I had before…and then, having already seen and loved the movie, I thought I’d just try to read to this plot point, or that plot point…and I got to the end that way!  Now I’ve been meaning to reread it for quite a while…

2) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo – Technically I skipped the parts that wandered off into historical background–but I read most of it.  It’s just that when Hugo is good, he’s very good–but then other times he wants to spend thirty pages on the history of Parisian sewers.

3) The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien – I attempted Fellowship twice, never got farther than Tom Bombadil, and spent the following ten years convinced these were impossible to wade through.  I finally read them during my Chunkster Challenge last year, and found out they weren’t nearly as slow or dense as I feared.  Although I do think it helped watching Jackson’s trilogy, so at least I knew where we were going all the time.

4) Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy – This was an assigned book the summer before I went into freshman year of high school.  They assigned the same summer books to all the grades, and because I was an incoming freshman I was both too young for the book, and unaware that it didn’t really matter if we read the assigned reading!  Unlike the previous three on the list, this one was not worth the effort…and among my high school friends, we still speak of it with dread!

I may read some day…

5) Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke – This is probably just silly, because after all, it’s a fantasy and I have no reason to expect the writing to be especially difficult.  It’s just so thick though!  And I made the mistake of getting it from the library during a particularly intense semester at college, returned it unread, and that set up bad resonances around the title for me.

6) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon – A massive, multi-volume history text, this is far outside my normal reading.  But I do like Roman history quite a bit, and L. M. Montgomery read it twice and commented very favorably in her journal and…well, for me, that feels rather like having a very close, very well-read friend recommend something.

7) Vanity Fair by W. M. Thackeray – This is one of the Big Classics I don’t have a burning desire to read, but I would like to have read.  There are lots of Classics I’m comfortable not reading, but this particular one L. M. Montgomery especially liked, and…see above.

8) A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill – Another multi-volume history text…but I enjoy British history immensely, and there are few historical figures I like better than Winston Churchill.  And while I’ve never read any of his history writing, he wrote the loveliest letters to his wife!  I read a collection of their letters and…yeah, his history books are probably not remotely the same thing. 🙂

So much for my book confessions!  What intimidating books have you successfully overcome?  Do you have any you still may attempt one day?

Dreamhunter and Dreamquake

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews5 Comments

In a happy overlapping of challenges, I recently completed a long-time half-read duet of books, and got another read in for Once Upon a Time!  I first read Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox several years ago, and never managed to get to the second book.  So I reread the first one a few months ago, then read Dreamquake during April.

The two books are set in an island country near the beginning of the 20th-century…with a crucial difference from the world we know.  Certain people are able to enter The Place, a barren wasteland overlapping the normal world, and much larger within than its external geography.  Among those who can reach The Place, some have the ability to catch dreams, and then to return to the normal world and share these dreams with others.  Devoted cousins Laura and Rose both expect to become dreamhunters when they turn 15, legally old enough to try.  Laura’s father discovered The Place 20 years earlier, and Rose’s mother is a famous dreamhunter.  But only Laura has the ability to enter The Place, dividing the cousins just as mysteries and intrigues start to build up around them.  Laura’s father disappears, presumed dead, and Laura begins seeing a darker message within the dreams.

The concept of these books is so fascinating!  Knox has created a complex magical system around the dreams and how they work.  Dreams are grounded geographically in The Place, so dreamhunters can sleep in certain places and expect to catch certain dreams.  Dreamhunters have individual talents and abilities, like putting everyone around them to sleep when they sleep, or the ability to alter faces in dream characters.

Layered on the magical system is an economic system.  Dreams have become a business, with dreamhunters utilizing their talents at hospitals to soothe the sick, or in specially built Dream Palaces as entertainment.  On the darker side, dreams can be used for more sordid entertainment, or even as punishment.  I love all the detail around how a society decides to handle this extraordinary magic, turning it into an integrated part of the economy.

The concept was my favorite part, but the characters are solid as well.  Although we get glimpses of many characters, Laura and Rose stand out the strongest.  Rose is a natural leader, fierce, loyal and insightful.  Laura seems to be the more fragile of the two, physically and emotionally, but she’s the one who steps up to undertake an extraordinary task.

After rereading Dreamhunter, it amazes me that I didn’t go on immediately to the second book on my first read.  Dreamhunter ends with a climactic moment, but very little resolution.  Dreamquake picks up in the same moment…and gets hard to discuss without a lot of spoilers!  The tension and the stakes rise throughout the book.  What seemed like a vague social issue in the first book rises to a government conspiracy in the second.  The dreams also grow more and more sinister, with a more urgent message to impart.

Dreamquake becomes a fantastic puzzle.  It grows increasingly clear that some dreams are connected to each other, forming a larger narrative with a message at its heart.  I loved threading together the different pieces of the story, and learning the mystery behind The Place.  There was one important dream that fit in thematically but never fit into the narrative and that disappointed me a bit–but that was a minor flaw.

I originally started reading these because someone recommended Vintner’s Luck to me, but the library didn’t have it so I got a different Elizabeth Knox book.  Now that I’ve finally finished these two, and since they were so good, I think I ought to look into Vintner’s Luck again…

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

Other reviews:
The Book Smugglers
Gwenda Bond
Please Don’t Read This Book (who despite the name, recommended the books…)
Anyone else?

Buy them here: Dreamhunter and Dreamquake (I should note that Amazon has a blurb from Stephenie Meyer front and center for these books.  If that makes you want to read them, great; but if it doesn’t, don’t hold the quote source against them…)

Very Unusual Creatures

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews3 Comments

I feel sure I must have read something by Eva Ibbotson before…she’s one of those names that floats around in fantasy.  But I can’t come up with anything, so it seems that Ogre of Oglefort is my first Ibbotson.  There may be more! 🙂 As you can already guess from the title, this is another one for Once Upon a Time.

The Hag is a witch who runs a boardinghouse for Unusual Creatures.  When her familiar goes on strike, she lets herself be persuaded by Ivo, an orphan boy, that he can fill in, at least for the Summer Meeting of Unusual Creatures.  But while they’re at the convention, the Hag, Ivo and their friends, Ulf the troll and Dr. Brainsweller the wizard, are charged by the Fates with a quest: to rescue Princess Mirella from the Ogre of Oglefort.  They reluctantly set out…only to find, when they arrive, that the Ogre is the victim, harangued by unhappy people who want him to turn them into animals.  Soon they find themselves defending the castle against an invading army, some nasty ghosts, and the Ogre’s awful Aunts.

All in all, this is a cute and fun fantasy, very much on the lighter side.  It reminds me (and I don’t say this lightly!) of some of Diana Wynne Jones’ younger-targeted books.  I think Ivo is about ten, and that’s probably a good reading age too, or a little bit younger.  It’s a good adventure for that age, and a quick, fun read for adults.

Besides being just generally fun, older readers will likely also appreciate the theme that runs through the book about individuality.  Most of the characters are in some way misfits, or at least contrary to what’s expected of their type.

Princess Mirella is more interested in animals (even bugs!) than dancing and betrothals.  The troll ends up nursing the sick Ogre.  Dr. Brainsweller is extremely educated as a wizard but very inept in normal life, and eventually realizes that wizardry is not really what he cares about most.  The Hag is a very kind witch, and Ivo is looking for a very different life than the one he has in the orphanage.

This theme is paired very nicely with the second theme about finding a home and a family.  Everyone wants to be their true selves, and to find a place and people where they will be accepted.  The main characters swiftly form a (slightly unusual) family, and start creating a home at Oglefort.  The adventures and conflicts that follow largely center around defending that home.

With delightful twists on traditional character-types, humor, adventure and deeper underlying themes, this one is definitely recommended!  Has anyone else read other Ibbotson books?  What should I try next?

Other reviews:
Good Books, Good Wine
Ms. Tami Reads
Charlotte’s Library
Anyone else?

Buy it here: The Ogre of Oglefort

The Storyteller and Her Sisters – Cover Reveal!

On By cherylmahoneyIn Novel News6 Comments

I’ve been promising the companion novel to The Wanderers will be out this fall–and so far I’m still slated for an October release.  While I work on final revisions for The Storyteller and Her Sisters, I also put some time towards a cover…and naturally I wanted to give the first view to my lovely blog readers!

Storyteller Cover 1 - SmallThe Storyteller and Her Sisters is the second novel in my Beyond the Tales series–but it’s a companion novel, not a sequel.  Readers of the first book already met Lyra and her eleven sisters (and know something about their worn-out dancing slippers), but the storyteller has much more to share–and new readers should have no problem starting with this book, if they prefer princesses to talking cats!

I’ve made some updates to the Novel News tab too, so wander (or dance…) over there if you’d like to read an excerpt from Storyteller!