Tag: Books

Another Day, Another Monster

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult5 Comments

I felt terribly clever putting Rick Riordan’s newest book, The Serpent’s Shadow, on reserve at the library a month before it was coming out.  That meant I was only #23 in line! 🙂 They bought enough copies that I actually got mine quickly–and I already returned it for the 150 people now waiting.

If you don’t recognize the name, Rick Riordan is the author of the very popular Percy Jackson series.  The Serpent’s Shadow is the final book in The Kane Chronicles, his Egyptian mythology trilogy.  (Read my review of the first one.)  The trilogy follows Carter and Sadie Kane, a brother and sister who are learning their powers as Egyptian magicians, and practicing forbidden magic by engaging with the Egyptian gods (who are far more metaphysical than their Greek counterparts).  In the third book, Sadie and Carter have to face Apophis, a monster serpent determined to destroy the world and return it to pre-creation-type chaos.

As is typical for Riordan, the book is set in a compressed time period (I think only two or three days), there’s a clear deadline for the end of the world, and the characters have to pursue quests to get the pieces they need to fight the monster.  It’s a structure that I think works well–sometimes he can be a little episodic, but mostly I thought this was tied together well, had a good drive and focus, and both the looming deadline and the present crises kept the tension level high.

The story is told through alternating first-person narration.  The frame story is that an audio recording was mysteriously sent to Mr. Riordan, and throughout the recording Sadie and Carter have been passing the microphone back and forth.  I really enjoyed Carter in this book.  Throughout the trilogy, circumstances have been forcing him to take on more and more responsibility, and by the third book he’s coming into his role as a leader.  He’s still unsure of himself though, and that made him very human and relatable.

If Carter had been the only narrator, I would have loved this book.  I still liked it…but Sadie just irritated me completely.  She’s conceited, obnoxious, and has this incredibly aggravating tendency to view her personal life as of equal importance to the end of the world.  There are two guys she has crushes on, I have no idea what either sees in her, and I can’t help feeling that deciding between them is just not as important as the imminent destruction of the universe.  Especially when I wasn’t that drawn into her relationship with either guy.  (To give Riordan credit, I liked the romance in Percy Jackson better, and Carter also has romantic troubles that are better balanced with the larger looming threat.)  Some of Sadie’s most conceited, most relationship-drama lines are perhaps meant sarcastically or tongue-in-cheek, but it doesn’t come across that way enough for me.  I remember Sadie bugging me a bit in the previous books, but it was much more so this time.

However–it’s a problem but not an insurmountable one.  I did enjoy the book.  I sighed a little whenever I turned a chapter to see Sadie was narrating the next one, but even her sections had good aspects to them.  And it’s a good book, lots of excitement and lots of irreverent mythology humor, which Riordan is so good at.

This winds up the Kane Chronicles trilogy, but there were some very blatant hints at the end about new problems with “other gods.”  I’m seeing a Greek/Egyptian crossover coming, which seems like it would be enormous fun!  I’d definitely read that…even if Sadie is one of the narrators.

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

Other reviews:
Lost in a Book
21st Century Once Upon a Time
Knight Reader
Anyone else?

Friday Fairy Tale Round-Up: Cinderella

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews14 Comments

Last week I looked at a list of “Twelve Dancing Princesses” retellings, and this week I thought I’d look at what might be the best-known fairy tale in this culture–Cinderella.  I suspect if I really tried to gather up every version I’ve read, this would become completely unmanagable!  So, I’m highlighting the major ones and recent reads instead.  🙂

One thing I found interesting in searching out the “originals” (with due acknowledgement to earlier oral tradition) is that “Cinderella” is one of the few stories that’s in both Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm.  Between the two of them, they seem to account for almost every major fairy tale in Western culture, so maybe both of them presenting “Cinderella” is part of the key to its popularity.  And, of course, it plays right into the dream that life can be better–that no matter how dreadful your circumstances, everything can change (and the cynic in me says, without you even needing to do anything!)

Later versions have mostly been pretty consistent with the older ones, in the major strokes at least.  Cinderella is a kind, beautiful girl who is downtrodden by her nasty, ugly stepmother and stepsisters.  When the prince throws a ball to find a bride, Cinderella desperately wants to go.  And she does, aided by some kind of magic–either a fairy godmother, or the spirit of her deceased mother.  Cinderella charms the prince but has to leave early, and the prince uses her dropped slipper to identify her–which is a truly bizarre way to find anyone.

I have a lot of problems with the original Cinderella–the incredibly passive main character, the absentee fairy godmother, the prince who apparently can’t recognize his “true love,” and the really weird slipper element.  But often the strange bits of the story are exactly what new authors can use to spin off a brilliant retelling…

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine tackles Cinderella’s passiveness head-on.  Levine’s Ella is brave and determined, but cursed by an obedience spell.  She has to find her own strength to overcome it, and the story is more about her quest to take control of her life than it is to win the prince–who is a childhood friend, not a stranger at a ball.  There’s a movie version too, but don’t see it.  It bears very little resemblance to Levine’s wonderful book.

Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix plays with how hard it would be to go from scullery maid to princess.  This is another smart and determined Ella, who made her own way to the ball, only to realize afterwards that the life of a princess is not what she expected–and that the prince isn’t either.

The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines is another one that looks at the story after the ball.  This Cinderella (Danielle, actually) got her prince and he is charming–but then he’s abducted by her evil stepsister.  Fortunately, a couple other fairy tale princesses are on hand to help get him back.  This is a great twist on the usual themes of fairy tales, with some truly awesome princesses.  I just read the sequel, so stay tuned for a review of both soon!

Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George tells the story from a very different point of view–a princess visiting the court, who notices how really creepy it is when everyone, especially the prince, are suddenly enamored of this mysterious woman in the glass slippers.  Because really–why exactly is everyone so blown away?

Disney’s Cinderella is probably the version everyone knows best, and it’s pretty close to Perrault.  It’s a cute fluff of a cartoon, although the mice are the best part.  Cinderella and her prince are pretty bland, and I just can’t take them seriously when they start singing, “So This Is Love.”  No, it’s attraction.  I can’t believe you got all that far exploring the depths of human emotion in just one dance.

Silver Woven in My Hair by Shirley Rousseau Murphy is, with Ella Enchanted, my other favorite retelling.  It somehow creates a very real, very practical world, tells about it with gossamer-beautiful writing, and even without magic is utterly enchanting.  Thursey has dreams, but they’re real ones.  Her friends are real people and she falls in love with a real man, not a shining prince out of a daydream.

There must be more Cinderellas out there–any recommendations?

Quotable Rene Descartes

On By cherylmahoneyIn Quotable2 Comments

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of the past centuries.”

– Rene Descartes

Gender Equality in Discworld

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews14 Comments

So far, I’ve seen Terry Pratchett be hysterically funny while tackling subjects like racial tension, politically-motivated war, business competition, and murder investigations.  In my most recent Discworld read, Equal Rites, he took on gender equality–and if not hysterically funny, he was at the least quite amusing.

This is a new one for me but not for him, as it’s actually the third book in the Discworld series.  Unfortunately, it shows.  It took a few books for Pratchett to quite work out Discworld, and there seems to be universal agreement that the first couple are simply not as funny.  It’s true for the third one too–it’s funny, but something’s off.  Timing, style, character…I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s just not AS funny.  Don’t get me wrong here–that still makes it one of the funniest books I’ve read this year.  It pales only in comparison to the rest of the series.

I read this one because it’s the first book focusing on the Witches, one of the groups of major recurring characters within Discworld (along with the Wizards, the City Guard, and Death).  I read Maskerade, another Witches book, long before I read any other Discworld (it’s that Phantom connection), and I hadn’t read any Witches books since, so I couldn’t quite put Maskerade in context.  This helped a bit, though there’s much more to read.

As to the actual plot…a dying wizard passes his power on to what he thinks is a newborn boy–but turns out to be a girl.  This is a problem because girls never become wizards.  When Esk gets older, strange occurrences start happening around her–as when she turns her brother into a frog.  Her family sends her to the local witch, Granny Weatherwax, who starts teaching her witchcraft.  But Esk still has all this wizard power hovering around her, and eventually they set off for Unseen University, where all the wizards are trained, to see what can be done about a girl wizard.

There are certainly funny moments.  Granny is an excellent character, although she’s not quite there yet.  She’s a major character in Maskerade too, and she’s funnier then–but she’s funny here.  There’s chaos and there’s mayhem and there’s at least a bit of commentary on gender rights.

It’s a good book–but I only recommend it if you’re really interested in reading as much Discworld as possible.  If you want a fantasy novel about gender equality, read Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness quartet.  If you want to read one book in Discworld, read Going Postal (and if you want to read a few more, check out my post here).  As for me, I’ve got my eye on another Witches novel, Lords and Ladies, which I’ve been told is a retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream…

Author’s Site: http://www.terrypratchett.co.uk/

Other reviews:
Confessions of an English Literature Eater
Eyrie
Cubilone’s Dimension
Yours?

Pirates!

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews4 Comments

Rarely can my interest in a book be so perfectly expressed by its title as in the case of Pirates! by Celia Rees.  I mean, why was I interested?  Pirates!  It’s all rather self-evident.

But this is also a Dusty Bookshelf book, so despite the pirates(!) it took me some time to get to it somehow.  Backstory:

How did I get it?  Bookswap with my book club.  I’d been seeing it at bookstores and the library for ages but somehow never got to it, so when it wandered past me available for free, I thought…pirates!  And took it home.

How long was it on the shelf?  Since February 2011…I read it in April, so 14 months.  Ouch.

Am I keeping it?  No…I enjoyed it, and I enjoy the title way too much, but I didn’t quite love it enough to keep it.

What, you ask, is the book about?  Besides pirates, of course.  It’s about Nancy, the tom-boyish daughter of a wealthy English merchant, who after her father’s death finds herself packed off to the family plantation in Jamaica.  There she bonds with Minerva, a slave who becomes like a sister to her.  The two girls flee into the wilderness when Nancy realizes she’s being forced towards a marriage with the terrifyingly cruel Bartholome, another merchant and plantation owner.  Nancy and Minerva find a friendly band of pirates and join the crew, though Nancy is still dreaming about her childhood sweetheart–who just happens to have joined the British Navy.

It’s a fun story and an exciting premise, and I loved reading a novel about female pirates in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy.  I mean, I wrote a novel with that premise–it’s kind of an area of interest for me!  I may be too familiar with it, though, because I kept feeling sort of like I’d already read this.  I’m reasonably sure I haven’t actually read it, but I can think of several books with similar elements.

There were some things a bit more unusual.  I liked the bond between Nancy and Minerva.  I liked the twin focus on both piracy and slavery.  I’ve read books about one or the other, but rarely seen them together, even though they were both going on in the same time and place, and even in the same shipping lanes.  I studied Jamaican history for a class in college and was fascinated by the Maroons, a group of escaped slaves and other society outcasts who lived inland in Jamaica.  I was also shocked that I’d done a lot of research on piracy (same time and place!) and never heard about them.  Somehow the stories don’t usually overlap–but they did here, as Nancy and Minerva got in with both groups, and I enjoyed seeing that.

I loved the references to historical pirates.  None of them showed up, even in cameos, but they were talked about, including Anne Bonney and Mary Read, the only two real life female pirates from the Golden Age.  This is actually set a few years after most of the greats had died, in the last year or two of the Golden Age (so that’s about 1724).

This was mostly historical fiction, not fantasy.  Bartholome has an uncanny ability to track Nancy after she runs away, and Nancy has some oddly prescient dreams about him, but I wouldn’t really define this as fantasy.  It’s more a suggestion that some of the native folklore has a little bit of truth in it.

This was an enjoyable book, good characters and an excellent setting…and I really don’t know why I liked it without loving it.  But at least now I know more about that tantalizing title–Pirates!

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

Other reviews:
Curvy Writer
Em’s Bookshelf
Mommy Brain
Anyone else?