Stardate: My Wrist Hurts -- A Book A Friend Recommended

Over this summer, during the week of my birthday, I got a visit from one of my very best friends in the world. This friend had Recommended A Book long ages ago, and just prior to this visit, I had ordered the book. During the visit, I read the book. I'm very glad, but also a little unhappy, because ouch.

Teeth has teeth. Teeth in its prose, in its characterization, in its plot twists, in the way it bites your heart in half. It's that kind of book.

I can't figure out where to start. What about the characters? The characters who are desperately real, even though Mostkowitz's prose is that kind of pseudo magical realism that I tend to despise? They all have their own voices, their own stories, their own struggles, their own way of hurting you. Rudy? I frickin' loved the kid. Teeth? Let me take him home and care for him and help him. Diana? What a fascinating girl; I wish she'd had more page time, maybe her own novel. Rudy's relationship with his family is so important to the novel, too; it's not as important as that between Rudy and Teeth, but it's never shoved to the side. It's part of the situation and part of the conflict, and it's done incredibly.

The concept is as mythical as this gray, windy, stormy novel deserves. An island full of fish that magically make a sick person better? Well, why the heck not? Teeth isn't marketed as a modern-day fairytale, but it should be, because that's exactly the vibe that I get. A bloody, mature fairytale. (Could you find this in the YA section? Beware, because language and themes of sexual abuse abound.) A quasi-love story, the magic of the earth and of love. I'm speaking in metaphors because it's hard to talk about this book straight (haha) - it just sort of slips out of your hands. Like a little silver fish.

As much as her characters hurt me, I think it's Moskowitz's atmosphere that sticks with me most. How she maintains this consistency with the feeling of the island - the wind, the gray, the clouds, the thunderous ocean, the rocks, the sea spray, the cold sand, the dark, the damp - it's beautiful in a brutal way, and it's impossible not to remember it and to feel it. The screaming that she describes... haunting. Haunting, that's the right word.

Can you handle swearing and more mature subject content in your mermaid tales? Please read Teeth. It's worth the bite.

Stardate: Third Time's the Charm -- A Book Published This Year

While I had that little side challenge going with a newly-published book every month, I needed to save something special for this category. Something that I knew I'd love. Something like the sequel to Rachel Hartman's incredible debut Seraphina. 

Seraphina ended satisfactorily, but with plenty of room to expand, to take the story further, to press the boundaries of Hartman's lovely worldbuilding and character development. That's exactly what Shadow Scale did.

Seraphina and Co. travel a lot in Shadow Scale. It's not a boring story, though; Hartman knows how to use judiciously the "so we rode for a month and ended up dirty and hungry in an inn somewhere" trick of all fantasy writers everywhere. But she also sprinkles the travels with their own significances, something that keeps the book rolling at a quick but never hurried pace.

The mythology deepens beautifully in Shadow Scale, shedding light on dragons but also even more on the half-dragons that Seraphina knows exists with her. I absolutely love the half-dragons, by the way, and how they work. No half-dragon is the same, and some are humanoid while some are... well. I suggest reading. But they're all their own persons, and the journey to meet them was so much fun! Hartman manages to characterize these minor half-dragons, significant points in this particular story but rarely given so much space, briefly and potently so that you remember them all in between interacting with them again.

Speaking of deepening mythology - the religious system of Seraphina's world expands, too. Did it expand. Hartman gives  hints about what's going on, but it takes you the whole book to really get the whole picture. And the whole picture is amazing. I won't spoil a thing, because the way it's written is just really, really cool.

As I admitted in a previous review, I'm a character person, but the worldbuilding that went into Seraphina/Shadow Scale is mind-boggling. It might not be as detailed as some - stand down, LOTR fans, I know you're slavering at the jaws now - but Hartman gives the reader a spectacular feeling of realism that you just can't shake. Everything is consistent and lifelike, and all the senses are engaged. Taste? Smell? Sight? Feeling? Sound? All of them! Her style is amazing and I'm always a little bit jealous when I think about it.

While the ending was a bit rushed - a little more explanation and set-up would have been nice - I'm glad to say that Seraphina had a great conclusion in Shadow Scale. Rachel Hartman is a genuine talent and I can't wait to see what she does next.

Stardate: It's Not So Bad Yet -- A Book I Actually Did Read In School (And Many Times After)

Hey, guys. It's time for me to make an insufferable confession. I read every single book I was supposed to read in school. It's true. I'm an arrogant little nerd driven by perfectionism and a slightly obsessive need for completion. However, this is not to say that I enjoyed all or even most of them. Sadly, I hated most of them, or at least resented them for not being much fun. There is one, though, a Book That I Actually Did Read For School and have since come back to over and over and over.

Cyrano de Bergerac is a masterpiece. I really approach this review with fear and trembling because, of all books, Cyrano deserves a great review.

Cyrano de Bergerac, the character, is a magnetic character, a wonderful person who is simultaneously a fascinating, flawed character. How often do you see a character who is both good in the moral and the technical sense? I can probably count them on my fingers. He's brave, generous, selfless, loving, prideful, reckless, brilliant, melodramatic - and we can never forget his inferiority complex the size of France. I've read a couple translations of Cyrano at this point, and none of them ever disappoint in capturing Cyrano's voice, his mesmerizing, enchanting, blood-pounding voice. I don't think you can ruin Cyrano. He's too strong a presence for that.

The story is simple, straightforward - ugly boy loves a beautiful girl, beautiful girl loves a beautiful boy, ugly boy helps beautiful but rather slow boy woo the beautiful girl, girl and boy marry, ugly boy is, as usual, the dream wingman but ultimately left alone, romantically speaking. And then a bit more, but in case no one's read it yet, I won't say anymore.

I see a lot of people insulting Roxanne and Christian, but stop! Don't do that! Let the characters breathe. See them as people. Roxanne isn't vapid, shallow, selfish - she's a girl in love, a girl who also loves her cousin. Cyrano hides his love well! She couldn't know. She has beautiful lines, and she's no doormat love interest. That scene where she rides into the soldiers' camp to bring them food and cheer? She's incredible! And Christian - poor Christian. Maybe his speeches pale in comparison to Cyrano making up and reciting an impromptu poem at a stubborn actor, but stop comparing him. Listen to how honest he is. Do you ever doubt that he truly loves Roxanne? I can't. He's too straightforward, too sincere. And he's a sweetheart, and brave in his own way. (Also, the utter hilarity of his 'nose' scene when Cyrano's trying to tell a story. What a kid.)

The less we say about the final scene, the better. I don't have enough kleenex on hand to take care of the soppy, teary mess I'll become.

Cyrano de Bergerac is the kind of literature I'd call a gateway drug. Want to get someone into the classics? Bypass the 400-page Dickens and Austen novels, put down the Faulkner and - yes, though my heart breaks - even the Shakespeare. Give someone Cyrano (probably the Penguin edition - great readability). It's simple, brief, and beautiful - utterly beautiful. 

Stardate: Here We Go -- A Book That Became A Movie

I actually read this one way back when I was doing good on those deadlines and such. Then, as Yeats said, things fell apart. I had really wanted to actually watch the movie the book was based on before I reviewed it, so I could compare, but alas. All I have to give is a review of one Book That Became A Movie, Neil Gaiman's Stardust.

I have to rally my memory a bit to remember how I enjoyed this book, which is a pretty clear indicator on its own. I know, I know, this is Gaiman. Beloved by all. Stardust is one of his most popular, too (hence the movie, I suppose) and I really wanted to love it.

Going back over the brief Goodreads review I wrote for it, I recall that, though this is supposed to be a romantic novel - at least in some parts - I really didn't enjoy the romance at all. Tristan was kind of an ass, to be honest, in all but the most literal Narnian sense. Yvaine was a great character, I thought, but for her to like Tristan sort of bothered me.

I had the same problem with Stardust that I had with another of Gaiman's popular offerings, Neverwhere. The concept was nice - great, even - and there's nothing wrong with his prose at all. But I'm a character person, through and through, and Gaiman's style keeps the reader at such a distance. It's not necessarily a bad thing - obviously, enough people love it! - but it's something that pushes me away.

My favorite parts of the book were the bits about the ghost prince-brothers. Fantastic. It was clever enough to be entertaining throughout, and since they weren't the main focus of the novel, the aesthetic distance actually enhanced the comedy.

It's not like Stardust is a long book - far from it - but it's just so slow, and I can't remember anything that really happens, except a drawn-out beginning and Tristan and Yvaine running from things. I really wish I could remember more, but all that's there is a vague sense of entertainment and a much more concrete sense of being bored and slightly let down.

(Also, this is an offensively short review. Apologies.)

What more can I say about a book I can't remember after only a few months? Not much, I'm afraid. Sorry, Gaiman. But I still have American Gods on my to-read list - maybe his grittier stuff will be up my alley.

And we're back.

College is a disruptive part of life. Hence, my unannounced hiatus.

However, finals are upon us, and my workload is lessening drastically. Tomorrow's my last day of tutoring, and I only have two short essays to write by next Tuesday, which I've already started working on. I've got nothing much to do at the end of a busy but, for the most part, rewarding night.

Except catch up on reviews.

That's right! While I'm not sure if I can finish the "Read One Newly-Released Book For Each Month" challenge, I am still up and swinging at that "Review One Book A Week" challenge.  Over the past months, I've actually read enough books to fill in enough holes in my list to where I might be able to cram in the last handful - eight, to be precise - over Christmas break.

That's four more Wednesdays and two books to a Wednesday. Doable? Absolutely.

That's sixteen - count them, sixteen - that I could write tonight. Doable? I'll rev up the coffee machine and see.

Joyous reviewing!

7/1/15 - A Book From My Childhood

Wink, wink. That book I mentioned in the RYFBM? That's this one. The first day of July, and thus the first day of RYFBM, collided precipitously on the challenge of A Book From My Childhood, and thus I give you: Two Princesses of Bamarre, by Gail Carson Levine.

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If you're a girl and of a certain age, there's a huge possibility that you've read at least one Levine book. She was the fairytale lady (at least until Shannon Hale came around and made it into the fairytale pack). Maybe, like me, you might have read many of her books. Most people get into Ella Enchanted first. Me, Bamarre was my first Levine experience.

Two Princesses is a simple, straightforward story: there's a sickness across all the land, the Gray Death. The eponymous princesses are polar opposites. Meryl is strong, foolhardy, a fighter in every sense of the word; Addie is timid, cowardly, and delicate, preferring needlepoint to swordpoint. Meryl wants to quest to find the Gray Death's cure; Addie wants her to stay at home, where Meryl will be safe with her.

Meryl gets the Gray Death. Addie goes on Meryl's quest, armed with fabric, shoes, and flowers. Not even being facetious.

It's a wonderful, precious little story. There are dragons! There are elves who tell tales! There's an Beowulf-ish sort of hero/origin epic that impacts the story in amazing ways! There's an adorable wizard love interest! There's sister bonding! Suck it, Frozen. (Just kidding. I love Frozen. So sue me.)

Levine's particular style of writing for this story is dead-on. Addie's perspective is unique, real, and heartfelt, a far cry from the brashly artificial Strong Female Charactery(TM) kind of heroes that get all the street cred. She grows in courage for her sister, and yet never gives up the things that make her Addie. I love Addie. I also love Meryl, and Rhys the young adorable wizard love. I even love Vollys, the dragon. 

And I love Drualt, that Beowulfy hero guy in the poem. That poem is great, too, by the way: Rise up, Bamarre! Go forth, Bamarre, the timid with the strong! I get goosebumps.

Quaint, precious, nearly perfect. If you ever need a good fairytale, read Two Princesses of Bamarre.

July 1 - RYFBM!

It's July 1st! (Pretend for my sake.) And we all know what that means - or, if we don't, we're about to find out!

My BFF Persy and I run a sort-of monthly review blog over at the Moonlit Library of the Underworld.  A while back, Persy started a tradition - Reread Your Favorite Books Month, every July! (It used to be something else when we were a little more innocent. It's RYFBM now.)

Anyway, it being July now, the tradition continues! It continues a little more slowly for me, since I have two challenges, a tower of library books, and three stacks of unread owned books, but continue it does.

Every week, along with my Challenge Book and occasionally the Month Book, I'll be rereading a favorite book or two. Sometimes these books might even be the Challenge Book! (Hint hint. Look out for the next review.)

It doesn't matter if all you read are old favorites this month, or if you're only able to get around to one or two. The idea is to have an excuse to enjoy your darlings all over again! Just have fun with it.

What books are you rereading for RYFBM?

Joyous Reading!

6/24/15 - April Book

Are you ready for a rant, kids? Because that's what we're getting for the April Book review!

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I already wrote a full review on my Goodreads page, so I'm just going to give you a few of the highlights. If you want to read it, go check it out! (And friend me, too! I can never have too many reading buddies.)

Maybe it's because I'm a huge character person - I could not care less about plot as long as the characters are delightful - but nothing about these characters made me root for them. At all. Elias is a whiny, self-righteous pig 90% of the time and I have no idea who he's supposed to be the other 10% of the time; Laia is like a sheet of cheap watercolor paper that you accidentally sprayed too much water on and now your floor is wet and it's all disgusting and floppy and even when it looks right it looks... wrong, and when you try to paint on it to make it pretty, it looks like inappropriate body parts. Keenan - who the heck is Keenan? He has red hair, I can tell you that. And he's got some kind of pain. Because... ??????????????????? Helene was the best character in the entire book - a tough survivor with a general's brain, sort of like a leveled-up Annabeth Chase. But she still gets sidelined as the Incomprehensible Beautiful Single Female in a crowd of BOOOOYYYZZZZZZZZ and Tahir never. lets. us. forget. that. she. is. a. female. You would think Helene was a mop of shining beautiful curling silver-blond hair on a broomstick, from all her descriptions.

Helene's treatment makes me particularly angry. This is the closest thing to a real character that we have in the book - a good, well-rounded character, with thoughts and motivations of her own - and yet she is constantly downgraded to nothing but her gender. The flippant and casual threats of rape are tossed around her just as much as they are around Laia, a slave girl. One of her major conflicts is dealing with a psychotic rapist antagonist, and yet Helene - a girl literally raised for violence, courage, and hardness - is reduced to fear and cringing? BULLCRAP. Her "pretty blonde hair" makes her less intimidating when she's furious? BULLCRAP! She gets hormonally jealous of a slave girl when Elias is 20 years old and has probably been fooling around with slaves and prostitutes for years? 

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It's all the same shtick we've been forcefed for 10+ years. It's the "I see sparks fly" line from the T-Swizzle song set on repeat for seven hours. For all the attempts that are made in the name of Beauty and the Beast, in the name of "love comes from the inside," all I hear is a lot about how beautiful Laia is (she has to cover herself up with a cloak or else she'll get raped) and about how strong Elias is. Laia can apparently see the "hard lines of Elias's stomach" even while he is clothed and "at a distance," presumably at night at a town festival of sorts. Anatomy, man. It's a conspiracy. 

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Nothing ever comes of the mythological bent. Some wraiths are part of the Trials that Helene and Elias go through, but Elias doesn't fight them. It sounds like the Commandant (the kick-ass Main Villain who actually WORKS, God bless) has a business agreement with one of the creatures, but that's tacked into a verbal info-dump in the last 100 or so pages and promptly forgotten. And, most inexplicably, Laia is plagued by... fear wraiths? Anxiety wraiths? Guilt wraiths? I don't know. They're just there and they torment her until she just can't bear to hear... words. And she lays screaming on the ground or in corners. I don't know why. I mean, it's not like everyone else in this godforsaken world is free from guilt. Good grief, Laia's wraiths made me want to stab myself because it was so mind-bogglingly unimportant! Nothing came of those flipping wraiths! They made no difference - if you took them out the story would be the same - I'm so angry at those dumb wraiths for causing maybe twenty or thirty extra pages of USELESS ANGST for a character I couldn't care less about! In fact, the wraiths made me hate Laia even more. 

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BONUS:

I stopped updating at about 70%. My will had left me. It probably goes without saying: I do not recommend this book.

6/22/15 - A Book With Nonhuman Characters

I admit it. I am a Loki fan. But wait, hear me out - before you peg me as a simple crying fangirl (which is hardly the whole truth), let me regale you with the hipster chorus of the centuries: I liked him before he was cool. Or at least before he was Tom Hiddleston (sigh of appreciation); I think Loki has always been cool at the mythological table in the reading cafeteria.

Anyway, a handful of years back, I was way into Norse mythology. I have a ton of books - both Eddas, Padraic Colum's retellings, Kevin Crossley-Holland's retellings, Roger Green's retellings... I was a fan. If there were any story that could make me laugh every time I read it, it was Thrym's Wedding. (Bruce Coville, Thor's Wedding Day. I have it.) I also read Runemarks, which is not a novelization of the web game, but Joanne Harris's middle-grade (but still hefty) story about the Norse gods in the present day. At least, I think it's present-day. Present-ish? Old but not ancient times? Anyway. Harris wrote Loki as a significant side character in that, and, as I recall, he was pretty brilliant.

So I was excited when I found out that Harris had a new, adult project coming out that focused primarily on the legendary trickster. With gods and strange Chaos-demons as the main characters, it well fit the category of A Book With Nonhuman Characters.

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(If you can, get the first edition cover; it's much nicer than the one I got here in America at the library.)

As I said in the last review, expectation is a significant mood-killer when you're reading something that you've been dying to get your hands on (for over a year, in this particular instance). With The Gospel of Loki, I was expecting something along the lines of Runemarks - a new take on an old tale, a cool new adventure for the old gods. Something unexpected for my Loki passion to chew on for a while.

My experience with Norse retellings, however, came back to bite me. Harris retells the stories of the Norse pantheon from Loki's point of view... with almost no alterations. There is, of course, Loki's larger-than-life personality to account for it, and the look into his brain does cast some small original light onto the events. But, at the end of each chapter, it's just the stories that the Eddas have told and that the others have copied.

Don't get me wrong - Harris can write. And her Loki voice is nothing if not consistent, and consistently tricksterly. There's an amusing blend of archaic and modern, which I know grated on some Goodreads reviewers, but which I found suitable for a god telling his story in the modern day. The book was hardly a pain to read; I enjoyed it, sometimes quite a lot. (I still laughed at Harris's version of Thrym's Wedding.)

But it's a small book, not even 300 pages, and they're almost all dedicated to retellings. 

What I did appreciate was the ending, even if it did skim more than I would have liked. It finally, finally gets at Loki's psyche, the emotions behind his actions during Ragnarok. It was new, it was unique! And then the real ending - wow. That was a good ending, and more than made up for the lack of real punch in the previous chapters.

So, all in all, it's a recommendation. If you're for Norse mythology, have at it! If you're not so much for Norse mythology but want to attempt it, have at it; this is not the worst place to start. If you love Loki, have at it! Really, just have at it. Don't set your originality hopes too high, but otherwise, have at it.

6/18/15 - May Book

Due to complications with the reading schedule, you get the May Book review before you get the April Book review. Surprise!

Take a story with a fascinating premise, the promise of graphic novel panels as well as ordinary novel pages, and then give it a title like I Am Princess X, and you have instantly raised the expectations for your story.

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Look at that cover! So modern, so in-your-face, so rad. I've heard of Cherie Priest, though I've not yet read any of her books. I'm working on that. I know she writes mainly for adults, so I'm holding out the hope that her adult work is better. Because, sadly, Princess X was a bit of a let-down.

I expected something QUIRKY with capital letters, something atmospheric and mysterious and engaging - something like a more polished version of The Kneebone Boy, maybe. If you don't know the gist of the story, you should check out Goodreads's summary. But, as it turns out, I Am Princess X is more like a simple mystery-slash-scavenger-hunt than a vaguely postmodern experimental story. Spoiler alert: there aren't even any supernatural/paranormal aspects to it! Sad day. 

Sometimes resisting the call of "supernatural explanation" is very, very good for stories. Dragging in the paranormal can easily turn into getting an easy out. But the thing is, I don't think it would have been, for this story. The graphic novel part of the book, the comics that the MC and her missing best friend, has an incredible dark fairytale feeling to it; the art is good, the storyline is better, and the elements of the tale are the best. Creative, striking the perfect balance between unique and traditional - I loved these sections of the story.

But none of the story actually translated to the real-world mystery, except in the most mundane of ways. That was the biggest letdown.

Maybe it's my fault that I didn't enjoy the story more. Expectation is often the biggest killer in a book-reader relationship. But something in me still says that the story could have been more. You know that feeling you get when you're watching The Wizard of Oz and they pull back the curtain, and there, instead of a GRAND AND MAGNIFICENT WIZARD, it's just a little old man in a phonebooth?

Yeah. I Am Princess X is that little old man. Read it for the graphic novel; leave the curtain untouched.