Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. They had been best friends since they were six, spending hot Minneapolis summers and cold Minneapolis winters together, dreaming of Hogwarts and Oz, superheroes and baseball. Now that they were eleven, it was weird for a boy and a girl to be best friends. But they couldn't help it -- Hazel and Jack fit, in that way you only read about in books. And they didn't fit anywhere else.
And then, one day, Jack just stopped talking to Hazel. And while her mom tried to tell her that this sometimes happens to friends at this age, Hazel had read enough stories to know that it's never that simple. And it turns out she was right. Jack's heart had been frozen, and he had been taken into the woods by a woman dressed in white to live in a palace made of ice. Now it's up to Hazel to venture into the woods after him.
Anne Ursu, acclaimed author of the Cronus Chronicles, has written a stunningly original fairy tale of modern-day America. Inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson story "The Snow Queen," Breadcrumbs is in turn a remarkable middle-grade adventure, a dazzling ode to the power of fantasy, and a heartbreaking meditation on how growing up is as much a choice as it is something that happens to us.

~Print copy, 312 pages
Published: 2011 by Walden Pond Press

Well, darn. I should know better by now that I get restless over books about growing up.

I loved the writing of this book. Beautiful voice, kind of American-ish and reference-y. Hazel is a lovely character; very creative, and misunderstood, an outsider in fifth grade, but she never gave up being creative. She daydreams, reads stories, and thinks in story terms. Exactly how I was. And still am.

But she was always a little dependent on Jack. And while I have little experience in friendships, I didn't really see... why. They had adventures, she could always count on him to not judge her, but she seemed very focused on him. She looked into his classroom and made faces at him while his teacher's back was turned, she met him outside... at one point, she remembers how they were pretending to face down a dragon, and when she suggested that she rescued him, he refused.

Gender played a rather nuanced role in this, I think. It's not just growing up. Yes, she changes over the course of the story, as she sees things that are real, not fairy tales, that are horrible and somewhat depressing. She walks into a woods wanting to bring her friend back, and she finds that anyone who is looking for something goes in there, and not all of them remain sane. But some of the things dropped in there, it had a way of... I don't know. Looking at things nuanced.

Hazel was always there to comfort Jack, through his mother's fall into depression, but she's not enough. It's stated that he willingly goes with the white witch, over and over again. She's always trying to bring him up, she's always looking at his drawings and smiling at him and trying to remind him who he really is. And the only mention of Jack reciprocating this is when he gives her a baseball signed by a famous player, right after Hazel's dad leaves.

So there's that. And, while we're mentioning stuff like this, everyone around her keeps telling her it's weird that she and Jack are still friends, even her mother. That a boy and a girl can't be friends. And even I can see that in real life, and it makes me a little sick to my stomach to think about that. That things get separated in real life, and in books, and I know it's being realistic, but... along with what I mentioned above, it sort of curbed my taste for it. I think it is a thoughtful commentary on gender, except with perhaps a bit of bias towards the male side. (Not that I blame Miss Ursu. We all grew up in patriarchy, as much as it turns my stomach.)

But the setting was amazing, as well as plenty of the characters she meets in the lost woods. A forest, where people looking for something end up? And it does strange things to their minds? And they almost never find their way out, because they almost never find what they're looking for? Pretty cool. And like I said, written pretty well, too.

And, of course, I'm a sucker for fairy tale re-tellings. And the white witch, she wasn't some mustache-twirling evil villain, but neither was she some shades-of-gray villain, either. She's sort of... well, a cold-hearted woman, scientific, almost. It's said, in the book, she "lives in a palace of ice with a heart to match."

So, overall, I... don't even know what I would give this. I would recommend it to most people, I suppose, though only if asked. Mostly, these sorts of books I just keep in my head and ponder over, never specifically recommending or un-recommending to people. Kind of literary-ish and fantasy-ish at the same time, like a myth or a fable. And I am not entirely sure what I pull out of it.

I guess I give it a 3.25 stars. I did like it, but it doesn't rate as high as a 4 stars, an actual "I loved it."

    

Confessions and Comfort

Yes, it's Saturday. I meant this post for yesterday, but my laptop is still out for the count. I'm using my mother's laptop, and she's getting her master's degree online from Liberty University. So, she's on pretty much... always. She's asleep right now.

As you might know from my previous couple posts, I'm participating in Nanowrimo. Or was, until 5k words were lost and I had to switch to using the laptop of a busy woman. But it's not just that, is it? I can't write very well.

Why not? One laptop is as good as another, right? That's the mindset of pretty much everyone around me. But I can't get the words out. At best, I've managed about 1,300 words a day. Closer to 1,000 words, or none at all. In Nano, your target word count per day is 1,667 words.

So, why can't I do it? Why won't the words come? Well, as you can tell from the title of this post, it has to do with my comfort spot.

Let me describe to you the very different rooms of my house in which I find myself:

• My room is the size of a closet. In the corner, stuck between the door -- which actually hits the desk when opened far enough -- and a large, wooden dresser, is my desk. My bed, which takes up most of the room, is just far enough from the desk to make typing while sitting on it very difficult, so there's a small stool jammed between it and the desk, in order for me to not have to balance my laptop in my lap. Strewn across my desk are notebooks, embroidery thread, papers, and a couple of small bottles of paint.
• My mother's workroom, which was my childhood room, has pink and yellow walls, with Winnie the Pooh stickers and crayon scribblings all over them. Probably your average-sized bedroom, and my mom has collected what looks like thousands of crochet magazines over her lifetime. They're everywhere. Her desk is stuck between a bookshelf of Mom's religious reference books and a side table. There's a fish bowl with one of those little beta fish* and a clean mug (also, coincidentally, Winnie the Pooh) that contains all of her pens and pencils, along with a couple of those green Barnes and Noble straws poking out of it. Oh, and let's not forget to mention the hundreds of crosses that now decorate the wall.

I realize that was a pretty solid chunk of description, so let's get down to the main point: the two rooms are as different as night and day. My small, messy room with the furniture looking too large, compared with Mom's very religious-looking room whose walls haven't changed much since I was five years old.

Of course, since Mom has her Master's classes and likes to have her laptop in the same room with all her reference books, I can't just pick it up and take it to my room. Which is a problem.

To put it bluntly, the hundreds of crosses staring at me make me uncomfortable. The many, many Bibles** do, as well. And the reference books, which all have names like How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart) and Martin Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People (Schraam/Stjerna).

I told you -- A LOT of crosses.

It's not that I'm not religious. I am. Quite so. (Very hard not to be, especially when my former preschool doubles as my current baptist church.) It's just that... well, I'm too religious.

I know it's insane. Completely irrational. But during the summers of my childhood, I spent a week in the Pentecostal camp where my grandad lives. And they'd like to tell people that Harry Potter is evil, that fantasy is evil, because it worships magic and witchcraft or whatever.

And... even more beside the computer.

Which makes it kind of hard for me to write fantasy now, in front of an insane number of crosses. Even though I'm a Baptist and I believe that if God gave me the imagination, He probably wouldn't mind my fantasy. And anyways, evidence: C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were both Christian writers, who wrote fantasy, and their stuff is legendary. Pretty mainstream fiction, not the Christian fiction you find only in your typical Lifeway Christian store.

But I can't help feeling it. Feeling this irrational need to avoid fantasy, even though I love it, because when you put it that way...

I know God loves me. I know He wouldn't judge my fantasy writing -- sometimes I even get the hope that in Heaven, He has a giant library with every book in the world, and some of my books will be there, too. It's make-believe, imagination, a tool He gave humans for the purpose of imagining new worlds.

Perhaps, one day, I will write a book in which I suggest thematically that creating a real world, or at least one that feels real, should probably be left to God. Because right now, my world feels realer than the one around me, and I worry when I see those crosses. They remind me of the world around me, that my imagination is not everything here, and that, perhaps, magic needs to be subtler than spells and potions and spontaneous explosions, out here in the real world. I'm almost sad, at that. Like we've constrained something to a small box, to a subtle little area inside of our minds.

Perhaps this is why power goes to your head, when leaders create their own little world, their own society, when they rip down the old society and put up their own. 

This sort of commentary reels through my mind. I get antsy, can listen to music and swivel in the little swivel chair, and I can't write. Because it is truth unwrapped from its gauzy layer of fiction. And it doesn't make sense. Truth doesn't make sense. It makes feelings. And that's why it needs its little coating of fiction, because fiction does make sense, and it can keep the truth in its place.

I need my little comfort spot. I need the peace it brings, how it sets aside those antsy feelings and truth and lets my fingers stop shaking long enough to write.

And perhaps this all sounds a little out there, a little dreamy, like my mind's come untethered and I'm sending you images from the clouds. But I think a comfort spot is more than just comfort. It's a necessary break from the real world. The real world reminds me that there are people who think God wouldn't like my work. My comfort spot lets me know what I think in the matter.

I hope this makes sense to you.

Have a blessed day.

[EDIT: I hand-counted all of them. There are 113 crosses in my mother's workroom, give or take a couple. Still, a formidable number of crosses, wouldn't you agree?]



*Yea, his name is Jeffrey. After my Uncle Jeff, even though Uncle Jeff is from my Dad's side of the family.
**Let's put it this way: my aunts have seventy pairs of shoes and a Bible between them. My Mom has seventy Bibles and one pair of shoes.

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst, and Its Related Fairytale

Would you risk everything for a fairytale?
When Cassie was a little girl, her grandmother told her a fairy tale about her mother, who made a deal with the Polar Bear King and was swept away to the ends of the earth. Now that Cassie is older, she knows the story was a nice way of saying her mother had died. Cassie lives with her father at an Arctic research station, is determined to become a scientist, and has no time for make-believe.
Then, on her eighteenth birthday, Cassie comes face-to-face with a polar bear who speaks to her. He tells her that her mother is alive, imprisoned at the ends of the earth. And he can bring her back -- if Cassie will agree to be his bride. 
That is the beginning of Cassie's real-life fairy tale, one that sends her on an unbelievable journey across the brutal Arctic, through the Canadian boreal forest, and on the back of the North Wind to the land east of the sun and west of the moon. Before it is over, the world she knows will be swept away, and everything she holds dear will be taken from her -- until she discovers the true meaning of love and family in the magical realm of Ice.

~Print copy (library), 308 pages
Published: 2009 by Margaret K. McElderry Books

Yes, I know I promised I'd have this book review Wednesday, but I... well, this was a weird book, and not an entirely in my favorite way.

First of all, look at those words in the summary: fairy tale, magical realm. It makes this seems like fantasy-fantasy, the sort I'm used to, where people in the book admit that magic exists, as a force of nature, and that these bizarre happenings are because of this.

This book has more of a supernatural-y feel to it, with the Polar Bear King a "guardian of souls." He knows when a birth or death of a polar bear is happening, and goes out to collect the soul from a dying bear or give a soul to those being born. And he explains that he keeps his magical ice castle up with some theory on "rearranging molecules."

Perhaps it would be best to understand why I picked up this novel, and the fairytale behind it. Here is (somewhat) how the original tale -- the one I happen to love -- goes:

1. A girl is born in icy land, in a poor family. (In some versions, this girl was born with no name, because the girl's mother didn't want a girl.)
2. She meets a magical animal -- I think a bear, though possibly some other Arctic-icy-style animal -- and he asks her to marriage. In return, her family is helped with food and money and such things. Given the wretchedness of home, the pure-hearted maiden agrees. 
3. He takes her to his magical castle made of ice. On their wedding night, though, he turns into a human and sleeps beside her. He refuses to let her see his face, though. 
4. In the morning, he is back to talking animal form, and they spend an indeterminate amount of time laughing, joking, talking, and discussing intellectual stuffs. Maiden falls in love with him.
5. HOWEVER... *dun dun dun* She gets curious about what his face looks like, and one night, she takes out a candle and sneaks a peek at his human face while he's sleeping. He wakes up and gets upset.
6. It's revealed that he's under a spell from a Troll Queen, and if he married his true love, she couldn't see his face. Woe is me, he cries. The Troll Queen takes him away to be her husband, as part of his curse. (Honestly, I'm a bit fuzzy on this part. It was either a deal or a curse, or something like that.)
7. The Troll's castle is east of the sun and west of the moon, so far away that Maiden couldn't possibly get there. But she sneaks to a place where the Four Winds (North, South, East, West) meet, and she receives help from them. (And then there's something about getting help from an underground population of dwarves, or something like that -- or possibly I'm confusing another tale with this one).
8. She manages to get to the castle, rescue her husband, and the curse is broken. Yay! He's human again, and a prince to boot! Her family never suffers, she lives happily in love with her prince as the queen, and The End.

Yea, I'm a little fuzzy in some places, but that's the basic original tale. I really love this tale, and there aren't that many novels based off it (or at least not that many available to me). Notice no mention of souls, death-and-birth, and no research stations or poor families living in a wooden shack during the winter.

Cassie, while a decent main character, didn't... click with me. I wanted her to be like Emily Strange (Rob Reger, Emily the Strange quartet), or Jennifer Strange (Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer), but I kind of felt she had a life at the little research station she lived in. She should've stayed there, instead of proposing the deal for the Polar Bear King to rescue her mother.

Really, I felt like she was a smart, realistic girl who wasn't a daydreamy sort, like I am. And while there are mentions of how she takes research from her station and tries to predict the births of polar bears so her husband isn't so sad after stillbirths (described as Bear not getting there fast enough to give the baby a soul), she buys into this magical-realism thing pretty easily, like a daydreamer (like me) would.

Also, there's a little matter of the second half of the book the ending, which I won't mention. I will say that she's not exactly in a good spot to go traipsing off after Bear when she looks at his face. At the very least, she could've left sooner to find the North Wind, and that the passage of months in-between was used merely for conflict shock, not because she couldn't find an excuse to get away from Father Forest, a sexist overseer of a forest, who kept her a basic prisoner to do his chores.  Seriously, how can he portray himself as being a kindly figure and then make her do chores in such a condition? (Read the book, if you're curious about my outburst.)

The good things, though: it's a good fairytale. I like it. I'm not fond of romance, but this fairytale, like most fairy tales, draw me in. I don't know why. In this book, the romance made me press my lips together in an unidentifiable emotion -- disapproval, perhaps? -- but the hints of the fairytale were enough for me to not set the book down.

Also, the writing is good. None of that too-descriptive junk you see in Tolkien-knockoff fantasies, but enough description balanced with action to really the ice castle. It even includes description of an icy topiary garden out back.

Cassie, while I did like her, wasn't what I expected her to be. Yea, that's a better way of putting it. And while oftentimes I'm happy when a character doesn't meet my expectations, this time I was a little disappointed. Bear, while not really a main focus in this story -- he's more of a conflict-starter, and then as a goal to be reached when the Troll Queen captures him -- was a decent enough character. He seems to exist both to love Cassie and to start conflict with her, and didn't stand out as a flesh-and-blood character, or at least not like Cassie.

Still, overall this book isn't terrible. The fairytale that is this novel's bare bones is lovely, and I'm glad I came across it. But I'm not really fond of the mixing in of reality. I felt Cassie was too... modern, or academic, a girl to be pulled in by such things. The writing is good, and for people that love romance and only a little dash of magic that is explained away, it's certainly recommended. But I put it at about 3.25 stars, rounded down to an "okay."

          

Scottish Fairytales

I've spent the weekend bemoaning the loss of the internet and watching the first season of Once Upon a Time. (Our wifi was acting up for a few days. Meh.)

I also read a small book of Scottish fairy tales that I found among my mother's "library," so called because my mother as collected a LOT of novels over the years. So, here are a few summaries for you:

1. There's the one about the kelpie and the man who tried to capture it.
2. There's the one about the widower with a daughter and a son, and he married an evil stepmother to look after them. Then, the stepmother kills the little son, feeds it to the father, and his sister takes his bones and buries them in the garden, where he turns into a white bird, kills the stepmother, and flies off.
3. There's the one about the enchanted man whose only hope for getting out from the fairy queen's thrall is for a maiden who loves him to hold on when the queen turns him into a lion, a bear, (several other things) and a hot lead weight, and then to drop him down a well. 
4. There's the one about the prince who everyone thinks is sick, but really he's dancing in a fairy court every night -- until the stepdaughter of a neighboring king follows him quietly, steals a magic bird, and feeds it to the prince, taking away the spell.

I don't do well remembering things off the top of my head. And it's late for me, a school night, and I have a college essay to type up. (My AP Lit teacher wants a rough draft of the college essay we don't have to send to colleges until at least December. Yea, it sucks.)

Anyways, have a blessed Monday (if there is such a thing!)   

YA and Epic Fantasy

So, I've been traversing links to blog posts and psychological studies and whatnot, as I'm wont to do, when a link pops up in my Twitter from Mythic Scribes. Its title: Is YA the Death of Epic Fantasy?

I read the article, and it seems fairly innocuous. A narrator, who explains he has nothing against YA Fantasy, tells us that Epic Fantasy, which he describes pretty much just as Tolkien, is dwindling as YA Fantasy takes over the market.

But I hate this kind of thinking. It's so subtle that you want to agree with this narrator. You want to say, "Well, he's sort of right. People gravitate towards YA Fantasy, because it's easier to read, but the real stuff in the adult section, the 'Epic Fantasy,' ends up forgotten in a dusty corner."

The problem is, it recirculates the age-old opinion that YA is somehow less. It's less fantasy than epic fantasy, easier to understand, not as dark. The article describes it as:

  Now, I have nothing against YA Fantasy. I could even see myself writing one. Like many others, I love and aspire to the abilities of Rowling and others like her. And although her pieces became increasingly dark, they don’t contain the true grit of Epic Fantasy. Sometimes I want to see blood, smell death, and feel the sexual tension that might even be expressed in Chapter 1. I want a battle axe to split a skull and a brain matter to splatter across the page as I read. And, I want it all done with a vocabulary and structure that excludes some readers. Sorry.

Do you see me gritting my teeth and wincing?

YA fantasy can be just as sexual, just as bloody, just as "true grit" as epic fantasy. Even in Chapter 1. I've read many, many YA novels, ones that start out viscerally. That continue throughout the book to be visceral. It's YA Writing 101 -- show, don't tell. Make things tense; make things dark. Push the character as far out of their comfort zone as you can, leave them at rock bottom, and then you can pull them out. Maybe.

And, well, let's face it: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series started out as MG, not YA. So did the Percy Jackson series, which he also references. Yes, the elder generation started reading books like Tolkien in elementary school, but I remember that The Hobbit wasn't really offered in my elementary school library. We had these books that are marketed specifically for those younger readers of MG.

In fact, I was so hesitant about reading "older" books back then, that I still struggle with it today. They teach you that reading has levels, that some things are too smart or too dumb for you. Today, I feel self-conscious walking through the MG aisles of my B&N looking for books, because I could swear the parents and little kids are judging me. Sometimes I get the feeling that the adults in the YA aisle feel that I am judging them, even when I'm not.

But it's not true. "True grit" is as likely to be found in YA as it is in adult. The problems in the books -- the torture and the sexual tension and the brain matter -- are not portrayed less in YA, just different, from the perspective of a struggling teenager instead of a world-weary adult.

And, to bring up an example (never leave out evidence when making an argument!), here you go: one of the details that stuck out in my mind the most after reading If I Stay (Gayle Forman) was of the main character hovering over her body after the car accident, looking at the brain matter of one of her family members splayed across the road.

Is that true grit? You asked for brain matter, there's an example. And If I Stay is one of the relatively popular YA novels, not one of those obscure novels I dig out of the library.

Moving on to the vocabulary and structure. Yes, true that the YA market looks saturated with the World of Snark trope from the outside. But just earlier this summer, I read Princess Ben, a story with impressive vocabulary and structure. And there are plenty of others, waiting in libraries and bookstores everywhere, that do not employ the sometimes atrocious slang used in modern teenage circles.

And, in fact, it doesn't exclude readers. Grammar isn't the problem. It's the educational system that doesn't offer such epic books in school libraries, that cuts funding for the English department, and teaches kids to hate reading by requiring that they do so. It's the adults who don't read and set examples for their children, who don't take biweekly trips to a library or bookstore, who don't hit home the fact that language is the most powerful tool we have.

(I've been fortunate enough to have a mother who's even more of an avid reader than I am. and I'm sure there are plenty of parents or guardians or teachers who make an effort to connect a child with a love of reading. But too many don't or can't manage it.)

He mentions:

One thing that I always appreciated about Epic Fantasy was its exclusivity. Not everyone could read it.

 Perhaps it's because of a system, not because it's Epic Fantasy. True, it's not everyone's preference; but I would bet not many have access to shelves of fantasy in the first place. Fantasy is a lovely, misunderstood genre, whether YA or adult.

He also says of epic fantasy:

We continued reading fantasy in a society where fantasy authors wrote for adults and their novels were found in the normal fiction section of our local libraries and bookstores. Many of us expanded our interests, flocking to gaming and other pursuits. But our first love was what publishers label as Epic or High Fantasy. In this genre, we met our elven friends, our grumpy dwarven companions, and our nemesis the evil sorcerer.
Despite the unusual nature of our desired reading, it came with a certain quality. The lexicon, the syntax, and the high-literary value of many of these works was something that most ‘kids’ didn’t quite get. To read and understand them was a challenge and an accomplishment. Reading Tolkien as a kid while others were tackling Where the Red Fern Grows came with a knowledge that we were more advanced readers – if nothing else.

First of all, I've never read Where the Red Fern Grows, so I'm not sure what he means by that last statement, but I don't remember fantasy being a challenge. I've always been a proper-English sort of girl, so I can't attest to it, but I don't believe the high-literary value of the  novels was what I didn't get. Value was just not something anyone attributed to fantasy.

Let's put it this way: not once has my school -- elementary, middle, or high school -- actually had us read fantasy for a school project or during the curriculum. It sometimes comes close, like the mystical qualities the Scarlet Letter* seemed to have at times, but they never assigned it. Nor science-fiction, for that matter. I was ecstatic to be able to choose my own reading material for my AP Lit summer project, and promptly chose The Hobbit. Other than that... I kind of think the school system believes there is no value in it.

That high-literary quality, on the other hand... I know that feeling. The same term came to mind the first time I read Tolkien: a difficult book to read, but lovely to finish. It compared with every pretentious book they threw at us in school, but LoTR was still worth a grin, because it was fantastical, a true escape and other world. But no school seems to attribute the same term to the genre.

Most "kids" would be thrilled to read epic fantasy, if they had been taught the grammar skills to manage it. My lack of faith in the school system informs me that tackling Tolkien in 6th grade would've boosted my
self-esteem a lot more than the thin MG novel Crash (Jerry Spinelli) did. Not that Crash wasn't a lovely novel, it just wasn't challenging to a person like me.

(I know, this started out as a rant against adults who underestimate YA novels, and now has devolved into a rant about the educational system. In my defense, I am still in the public school system, and can attest to the atrocity of it, and the direct effect it can have on choice of reading material, and on grammar skills.)

I wasn't actively discouraged from reading "normal" fantasy or fiction. I just wasn't exposed to it. I wasn't given any chance to like it, apart from the spine of the books on my mother's bookshelves, which I was always slightly intimidated by. (They were grown-up books, they would imply. My mother would've let me read them, but I spent the majority of my childhood in school, where they assign easy, boring books marketed directly for the less-than-average intelligent, and that alone made me think it would be best to avoid the "real" and "smart" books they obviously didn't think I was capable of handling. And this was back when I believed they knew best.)

So, YA and MG are really all I had. It wasn't lowbrow; plenty of it has the "high-literary" quality. But I don't think it's threatening the adult fantasy, unless you think that because of the low exposure to adult fantasy, kids will grow up to be less inclined to read it. And you can't really blame that on YA, can you? You can only blame it on the people who didn't put The Hobbit in my hands when I was eight years old.

Have a blessed day. 

*That's sarcasm, by the way. The Scarlet Letter is one of the most scowl-worthy books I've ever come across, because it's dry, difficult to read, and not an escape at all. The most mystical references involve elaborate metaphors of the letter's aura of ignominy. 

Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock*

*Being a Wholly Truthful Account of her Various Discoveries and Misadventures, Recounted to the Best of Her Recollection, in Four Parts
Benevolence is not your typical princess -- and Princess Ben is certainly not your typical fairy tale.
With her parents lost to assassins, Princess Ben ends up under the thumb of conniving Queen Sophia. Starved and miserable, locked in the highest tower, Ben stumbles upon a mysterious enchanted room. So begins her secret education in the magical arts: mastering an obstinate flying broomstick, furtively emptying the castle pantries, setting her hair on fire... But Ben's private adventures are soon overwhelmed by a mortal threat to her kingdom. Can Ben save the country and herself from foul tyranny?

~Print copy (library), 344 pages
Published: 2008 by Houghton Mifflin Company

[I'm back on my normal blogging schedule, for those who care to know. Because, well... I care to know!]

Is it just me who looks at that title and thinks this is going to be about a transgendered princess? Because I certainly think that would make for some awesome, dramatic-and-tense fantasy.

But, alas, it is not. Ben is short for Benevolence. Not to say that this book isn't awesome in its own right, for Ben, it should be said bluntly, is fat. Interesting factoid: in medieval times (you know, where monarchy, as you apply it to fantasy, actually existed?), being fat was a sign of how rich you were. Skinny meant you couldn't afford to be fat, and fat meant you could afford to eat rich food often enough to get fat.

This book sort of looks down on her gluttony, but I think it's pleasing to come across a book out there with fat princesses. Because, you know, that would've actually paralleled real life; princesses, with all that rich food at banquets every week, really would've been fat.

So, that was definitely a good start. So, too, was the parallels to fairy tales: locked in a tower, parents killed by assassins and now under the rule of an evil "stepmother" -- though, really, she's not too evil. She's more of a woman under duress, and a lot more believable a villain. Which leads to another good thing: antagonists who are less cut cardboard and more real-life.

And the writing... THIS is good writing. It sounds sophisticated. Queen-like, because this is sort of Queen Ben's memoir of her past as a princess. Which is really good format for this novel because it reads lovely, has an explanation for reading lovely, and tells the story in a coherent way.

In fact, the whole first two parts were really quite interesting. It's the second two parts that left me a bit troubled.

First off, because there wasn't a slightest hint of romance in the first half, I kind of assumed it would be that -- non-romantic. Actually, she mentions several times that she never wants to get married. My kind of heroine! It's only in the second half that it becomes relevant, and I really don't appreciate it sprung on me. (Here's my opinion on romance.)

While the last parts did amuse me, and leave me at the edge of my seat in places, that romance, truth be told, kind of spoiled it. I realize in my mind that queens do have to get married, as do all monarchs, in order to procure a hereditary heir to the throne. But I did not want to indulge in that voice of reason, because I wanted to indulge in that disbelief that you have while reading. I mean, she mentioned she didn't want to get married! I didn't think she would consent to being married! But, spoiler alert -- as in all fairy tales, he gets the princess. (I won't mention who.)

The tales of the dragon in the nearby mountain, the evil country bent on dominating their smaller but more fertile kingdom, the Queen-who's-more-of-a-general... I loved those parts. The romance was disappointing.

And there's the small matter of setting. With the magic and the tales of a dragon, I'd believed this to be a made-up land. In the second half, though, the author drops hints of France and such in the matter, and suddenly I can't tell where this novel is located. Are these made-up warring kingdoms? Made-up kingdoms set in real life? Or real-life kingdoms I've never heard of? I still don't know, though I sort of suspect option #2.

So, overall, I thought it was lovely in some parts -- the writing, the fairy tale parallels, finding an actual fat princess -- and in others, not so much (mainly, setting and romance). I'm not really sure what I give it -- a 3.25 stars, really. I'd recommend it to people who like fairy tales, but who aren't so quirky as to suspend the whole romantic notion of fairy tales, like I do.

  

    

The Floating Island by Elizabeth Haydon*

*The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme: The Floating Island by Elizabeth Haydon.
(Long title.)

Long ago, in the Second Age of history, a young Nain explorer by the name of Ven Polypheme traveled much of the known and unknown world, recording his adventures. Recently discovered by archaeologists, a few fragments of his original journals are reproduced in this book. Great care has been taken to reconstruct the parts of the journal that did not survive, so that a whole story can be told...
Charles Magnus Ven Polypheme -- known as Ven -- is the youngest son of a long line of famous shipwrights. He dreams not of building ships, but of sailing them to far-off lands where magic thrives. Ven gets his chance when he is chosen to direct the Inspection of his family's latest ship -- and sets sail on the journey of a lifetime. 
Attacked by fire pirates, lost at sea, and near death, Ven is rescued by a passing ship on its way to the island of Serendair. Thankful to be alive, little does Ven know that the pirate attack -- and his subsequent rescue -- may not have been an accident. Shadowy figures are hunting for the famed Floating Island, the only source of the mystical Water of Life. They think Ven can lead them to this treasure and will stop at nothing to get it -- even murder.
In a narrative that alternates entries from his journals and drawings from his sketchbooks, Ven begins the famous chronicles of his exciting and exotic adventures -- adventures that would later earn him renown as the author if The Book of All Human Knowledge and All the World's Magic.
Hailed by reviewers and embraced by legions of fans, Elizabeth Haydon, bestselling author of the Symphony of Ages series, has created an unforgettable epic fantasy for a younger generation of readers.

~Print copy (library), 351 pages
Published: 2006 by Tom Doherty Associates (Starscape)

Whew, that was a long summary.

Of course I have problems with it -- I have problems with most back cover summaries -- but I shall not point out every last detail. (But I will mention the overabundance of hyphens in that thing. I type that stuff all out by hand into this post, you know.)

(Also, I'll say that for awhile after reading that summary that those books were real, before realizing, oh those books are made up famous, not real actual legendary books.)

Anyways, I liked the book. Since I finished it Saturday, and started reading the next book in the series (The Thief Queen's Daughter), I'm just going to make a list of Likes and Dislikes.

What I liked about this book:
~The characters. Some awesome ones include Ven (of course), his curate-in-training friend Clemency, the captain of the Serelinda Oliver Snodgrass and his wife, and the ever-loyal friend, Char.
~The world. I mean, a world that includes Spice Folk (fairies)! And merrows (mermaids)! And species like the Lirin, storytellers who take a vow of truth so the stories don't get mangled over the years! This world is really well thought out.
~How it's written. It switches back and forth between paragraphs of Ven's journal to longer paragraphs of 3rd POV. Well handled, and really does feel like a story pieced together between fragments of old journal.

What I disliked about this book:
~I don't know why, but it was a bit hard getting through this book. It took me 6 days to read 351 pages -- that's about 50 pages a day, instead of my usual 100. But I don't know what it was that caused this; it could have just been one of those weeks, where nothing was too appealing, even reading. (In fact, I felt kind of off all last week -- not physically sick, but more just emotionally sick. Probably a factor in my lack of obsessive reading.)

Really, I did like this book. It says up there that Haydon is a bestselling author and has legions of fans, but I was ten years old in 2006 and not really on the literary scene at the time. So, I can't really tell if this was a super-popular book at one time or another and I'm really late on the pickup; but it doesn't matter. I found it in the library now (well, a couple weeks ago), and I liked it now.

So, I recommend it now. To anyone who loves fantasy, or really anyone who wants something good to read next (as opposed to some fluffy romance that really isn't all that good when you look at it in retrospect. Ahem. Pardon my dislike of romance.) 4 stars.

    

The Ring of Five by Eoin McNamee

Something went wrong.
Danny Caulfield doesn't know how he ended up at a mysterious academy called Wilsons. A few of the students are pretty scary. Someone is trying to murder him. Even the ravens that haunt the school seem to be against him.
Yet he also finds friends: Les, an exceptional thief; Dixie, who has an unsettling talent; and Vandra, a physick with special powers.
It turns out that Danny is destined for a terrifying mission. As he embarks on his training, he is shocked and secretly thrilled to discover that he seems to have all the natural gifts of the perfect spy -- most importantly, the ability to betray. 
The Ring of Fire is the first book in a brilliant new trilogy by the author of The Navigator. Eoin McNamee's background as an author of adult thrillers informs this exhilarating, atmospheric adventure, which is full of surprises as well as fascinating questions about loyalty, destiny, and what it means to be a spy.

~Print copy (library), 345 pages
Published: 2010 by Wendy Lamb Books

First of all, let me start out that I don't know the Navigator series they're referring to in the summary there. This is important, because (shameful though it is) previous books I've read by an author can color how I view this one.

That being said, there is no other-book-ly influence on this story for me. I happened to enjoy it, for the most part.

(And did I mention? The author's Irish. Irish people are so awesome. The author of the Artemis Fowl series -- one of my most favorite series of all time -- is Irish. Weird coincidence -- AF's author's first name is Eoin, too.)

Les, Dixie, and Vandra all seem like lovely friends. I kinda wish I had such friends in real life. Danny is a bit iffy, but I liked him, too -- he wasn't evil and he wasn't good, but a mix. Like all the best people are.

The people are a bit strange. A good strange. Les is a winged Messenger, sort of like an angel but living and down to earth. He likes flying, even though most of the Messengers have given up flying as a "vulgar activity." Dixie is... what Dixie does, I suppose. Kinda daydreamy, can disappear and reappear at will. And Vandra is a vampire healer, who can suck the sickness out of any wound and get infected with it herself. (She can fight it off, though; she's a tough girl.)

That being said, the mysterious, magic-y aura in  this book makes me happy. I love magic-y books. That's why I read so much fantasy. Though this book isn't really fantasy... it's more thriller, or mystery, or something...

Back on topic. (Genre technically is on topic, but it's subjective in my view. You want to know what genre it is, read the book.)

The writing itself was kind of iffy. One thing that stuck out to me was the redundancy. Not repeated words -- rather, he repeated information. One character says something that's happening, and then it's followed with a "It was true. The.... [insert already-spoken event here]". That sort of thing. And sometimes things like reactions or emotions were stated instead of implied, but I don't really fault for that.

That stuff's easily written away, though. Right there in the summary, we know this author does adult thrillers; this book is either MG or YA.* So, the difference in age groups could easily have thrown someone off. Not that I imply the author would write terribly obvious because he thinks less of the YA group, or that he needed to "dumb it down", but perhaps the difference in writing style itself between the age groups** caused a few minor shifts in (writing-wise) modern-esque manners.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. The characters are good, the setting is solid (think of the magic-y aura! Meep!), and... I don't know... just that quality that makes you smile. The writing style showed some error that distracted my gaze, but I think it was definitely a worthwhile read for.. any age group, really. It took me longer than usual to read a book this size, but more because it's been a stressful week than because I had to drag myself through the book. I recommend it; 4 stars.

 

*My library has this book under YA, so I assume it's that. But I see so much romance in YA, and this book has none, that I don't know whether perhaps it was shelved in the wrong section. But rants on YA's increasingly homogenous nature at a later date.
**I could write a blog post on that. (That is how you know you're a writer/blogger -- when the first thing that pops into your head when you read "differences in writing styles across age groups" is whether you can write something on it.)  

Follow Friday #33

Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee.

Q: Write a letter to your favorite character. Rant, rave, or gush... just pretend like they are real and you just want to let them know a "few things".

Dear Emily Strange,

You. Are. Awesome. 'Nuff said.

You are a genius; you are a weird genius, who knows how to build a golem and an amnesia machine and a duplicator; you are an antisocial genius, who is destined to become a Dark Aunt with magical black rock...

In my book, you are one of those few lady characters who was written right. I love how you can invent the best things ever -- like, as I mentioned, a duplicator -- and how you have the wierdest, randomest talents.

I don't know why more people wouldn't want to be friends with a cat-loving, skateboard master, sewer-mural-painting prankster such as yourself. Their loss.

Sincerely,
JDanielleM.

(*Emily the Strange: the Lost Days by Rob Reger. Published: 2009 by HarperTeen. It's worth reading, guys.*)

Follow Friday #32

Happy First of February! (That alliterated! Sweet! =D Sorry, I love alliteration perhaps too much.) Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read.

Q: What is the first thing you would do if you woke up to find yourself in your favorite book?

It depends on which I'd get to wake up in. I have a lot of favorites, really. I have so many favorites, I have to separate them between my greater-favorites bookcase and my lesser-favorites bookcase. But of course, I am in love with fantasy, so I would probably first of all perform magic.

Magic is epic. If I woke up in Hogwarts, I'd try to levitate myself. (Or a feather, perhaps.) If I woke up in Inkheart (or Inkspell, really), I'd go sightseeing. (Fairies, underwater creatures, oh-goodness-the-possibilities...)

Or I'd go riding on a dragon. Find an invisible spell in some world. Capture a tooth fairy!*

It really, really, depends on the world. But you can bet your giraffe the first thing I'd do involves observing or performing magic. Your giraffe would be perfectly safe, and the person you bet against would mournfully hand over their panda bear. Or you could be nice and tell them they can keep their panda bear; there's really not enough space in your house for more than one bigger-than-a-human animal.

How about you? What would you do? What obscure books have you read that would be lovely (or at least epic; don't want to go into some of these book-conflicts!) to jump into? Have a blessed Friday!

*What the Dickens: the Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy by Maguire. Truck yea, I pick good books.

The Aviary by Kathleen O'Dell

Twelve-year-old Clara Dooley has spent her whole life in the crumbling Glendoveer mansion, home to a magician's widow, a cage full of exotic birds, and a decades-old mystery. Clara loves old Mrs. Glendoveer, but the birds in the aviary frighten her -- they always seem to screech and squall whenever she's near. And then one day, the mynah bird speaks, and the mystery starts to unravel.
Clara discovers dark secrets about the family, and about her own past. Somehow the birds in the aviary seem to be at the center of it all, and Clara can't shake the feeling that they are trying to tell her something...

~Print copy, 337 pages
Published: 2011 by Yearling

 Clara Dooley has a weak heart, and cannot leave the ancient Glendoveer mansion, where she spends her days reading and taking care of old Mrs. Glendoveer. But when Mrs. Glendoveer dies and the birds begin to speak to her, Clara needs to pry into the secrets surrounding Mrs. Glendoveer. Where are her children, who disappeared nigh on 50 years ago? Why does she keep those birds? How have those birds lived so long?

This book is MG, true, but as my mother tells me: "there are good books for everyone in every genre." (Perhaps not for erotica. But by "genre" she meant MG/YA/Adult, not specifics.)

I felt this book could appeal to if not everyone, then at least plenty of people. There's ghostly activity, a stronger-than-she-seems heroine (did anyone else think Winnie-the-Pooh right there?) and a decent amount of magic.

The characters were all pretty solid. Especially Clara and her best friend, Daphne. (They're not technically allowed to be friends, since Clara's mother wants her in isolation because of her "weak heart", but they're still friends. Read the book.)  They are not deterred from this mystery, even with the somewhat-sinister finding that the children were found dead in the nearby Lockhaven Bay... and the magician's right hand man, a hypnotist by the last name Booth, seems connected.

The mystery itself, while somewhat easy for me to guess at by mid-book, was pretty satisfying. It kept me on my toes, my imagination on alert. The ending, when all was said and done, both chilled and relieved me. I won't say more, for fear of spoilers.

The dialogue was somewhat stilted, of course, this book taking place in the late 1800s/early 1900s. I wasn't particularly fond of it, but I read books for the ideas, not the dialogue.

Overall, I loved this book. It was well worth the read. It wasn't one of my absolute favorites, but still worth the two days it took me to read it. 4 stars!

Follow Friday #30

Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee. This is my first F&F this year, guys. And it's an even number; 30, but still an even number. I love even numbers so much. *Contented sigh*

Q: If you could choose one supernatural being/creature to really exist, what would it be?

First off, let me define my difference between the fantasy creature and the supernatural creature.

Supernatural: a being (usually human) that was once dead, but is now "alive". Ex. Zombies, vampires.

Fantasy: 1. a creature who wields magic, and was never human to begin with. 2. a human that suddenly can wield magic, or who was born with magic. Ex. Dragons, witches.

Alright, now that that is sorted out, I can answer the question. Supernatural is kind of limited by that above definition, and I've never been a fan of the paranormal. But I would choose a ghost. Let me break "ghost" down for you: there's the evil type of ghost you want to exorcise, and the neutral ghost that is simply repeating their past actions on a loop. I would wish the second to exist, of course.

The fact is, the thought of a piece of history, a person who was there x amount of years ago when event y happened, who can walk around, doing the same things they did x amount of years ago, is kind of comforting. Not that they won't go to Heaven, but that they can take their time getting there: it's not straight to Heaven or H* for you. But this isn't everyone's belief, I know, and it's only a part of my reason.

My other reason is the hope that we could communicate with these ghosts. If you think people from other countries are interesting, then people from a different time period are even cooler. The stories they could tell! The details of the past I could learn! (And subsequently write into my book, because that is where a lot of the random-trivia-fluff ends up!)

Yes, I am super-specific about my definitions. It's part of my personality. (Not really: Freud or his daughter wrote something on the subject. There's the id, or your impulses; the ego, which allows you to find a safe way to act on this urge; and the superego, which allows you to find a moral way to act on that urge.) Ignore my specificity. Or accept my specificity with enthusiasm. You decide.

What (or who, since we're talking about sentient creatures) did you pick? I'd love to know. :) Have a blessed weekend! Don't talk to evil ghosts who need to be exorcised!

 

*Yea, I can't bring myself to say or type the Devil's-place. It feels weird even writing that.

The Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini

I apologize for the impromptu hiatus, guys. I have felt rather poorly for a week, and my internet gave out Friday/Saturday, and we started school up again. Meh.

Anyways, the point of this post is not to indulge in self-pity. After reading 400 pages this past weekend (as opposed to my normal 200-250 pages in a weekend), I have finished Inheritance! I am happy. And sad. And a little stunned.

I feel like I've been obsessing over this series since December. Nevertheless, I shall state what I loved about this series in a series of bullet points. And then the (short) list of what I didn't like. sort of like a normal book review, except this one staggered me and I don't know whether I should give it 5,000 stars or about two stars.

What I like:

• Putting down the last book of this series made me think. Not a second of oh-that-was-a-pleasant-read, but a full-blown epiphany on my own life. That is the sign of a good book, right there. I must have sat awake for an hour, just contemplating my own mortality, my loves, my home... and whether I would cope if I had to leave it all.
• Seriously, dragons. Elves. Magic. Evil king. I'm a sucker for high fantasy stuff like that. (Not because of LoTR, but because of... I can't remember. But I read LoTR over the summer, long after I required a love of fantasy.)
• I saw the characters develop over time. This isn't a series where you can pick up the third book and truly understand everything. Reading first book to last, I felt the true intricacies that linked everyone together and what made each individual tick.
• The setting is brilliantly thought out. This isn't my slap-down-a-map-and-go-from-there. (That is actually what I did for my novel: sketch a hasty map during math class one day and just rolled with it.) This is a setting where everything is unique and fresh: each city has its own unique structure, described to you; each mountain, each plain, each little town or foreign city all has a mood attached to it, whether it's a sinister mountain (Helgrind) or a beautiful, peaceful place (Ellesmera).
• There's little romance in it. There's friendship; sometimes there's desire. But there is no main romantic relationship that ensnares the plot, unless you count Roran's love for Katrina (read the book).

What I didn't like:

• I don't like the ending of the last book. It made me think. Thinking about mortality and loss makes my head and heart hurt. It's sort of a love-hate thing, which is why I included it in what I like, as well. I won't spoil the ending for you -- go spend a month reading all four books if you want to know what I mean.
• The length of these books. It can't be helped: if I were Paolini or his editors, I wouldn't have cut anything else, either. But still -- the shortest book was the first, Eragon, at about 590 pages. The longest was the last, Inheritance, which topped out at about 850 pages. This isn't a casual read; you need time and effort to put into it.
• ...I kind of wanted to see more of Solumbum the werecat. Such an interesting idea, werecats, and since I have a book of cat fairytales, I can tell it's inspired. The werecats don't really come into play until late in the series, though.

There's a lot of stuff going on in these books. Like I said, it really made me think; I'm still a bit staggered. My thoughts slide about, from mortality to schoolwork to my presonal beliefs to the future. Nowhere near my usual daydreams. Which is a pretty impressive feat; the last time I felt like this was when I finished the Artemis Fowl series, which I've been reading and re-reading for years. I first picked up Eragon in late 2011.

I'm not going to go into the whole "boy" books vs. "girl" books thing  (which is a stupid concept, if I want to sum up my opinion about it), but I would say that even as this book is about him becoming a man, it says a lot more about growing up in general. I would encourage anyone to pick up this book, regardless of gender.

I have a pile of homework that I was supposed to do over the weekend waiting for me. Have a blessed Monday, if such a thing exists! And if it doesn't, go search Narnia for it!

  

On Endings and Winnings

Happy last-day-of-the-year! I mean, New Year's Eve.
(For your amusement: yes, it took me several minutes to come up with the right name for today, despite the calander that hangs right beside my desk. I kept thinking it was Christmas Eve, for whatever reason.)

I wanted to post a book review today of the entire Inheritance series, because in a perfect world I would have managed to finish all four of this heavy series. (By heavy, I mean pagewise -- 600+ for each book, with the possible exception of the first, Eragon.)

Instead, I am about 100 pages into the last book. I have been reading this series for nigh on three weeks: and yes, I just used nigh. I am feeling somewhat ready to put down this series and pick up a new one.

On the other hand, it's been so long... jumping into another world feels weird when you're so immersed in the current one. That's one of the reasons I can't read two books at once -- trying to maintain two worlds simultaneously feels impossible. Putting down one book, after commiting yourself to it, is like the end of the year -- "the ending of an era, and the turning of a page" (Tim Mcgraw, "My Next Thirty Years"; yea, I just quoted a country song).

But this is not what I really wanted to talk about. The ending of a book, of a world, is universally recognized as emotionally traumatic (with the exception of those people who think readers are weird). For some reason, I feel like talking about battles and winning and/or losing.

As I read the first three books of Paolini's books -- not to pick on Paolini, or Eragon for that matter -- that the good guys seem to win every battle. In a war, you don't win every battle -- you win some, you lose, but you don't win all.

I wonder if this is a common trait in fantasy, and I when I look back at the (vast) amount of fantasy I've read, I kind of think this is common. I can't think of any particular book or series, I just can't help wonder if this is one of those things like having a king, or having dragons be fierce/evil, or having some quest for the Magical ____ [fill in the blank] to save the entire kingdom.

Again, I don't mean to pick on Paolini. His is probably not the first. But you have to lose occasionally. (And more than you lost a lot of soldiers, but you pulled through in the end. I mean an actual lose, as in you were forced to retreat while the other side cheers in relief and victory.)

I don't know who made it alright to pull this off, but there's only so far I'll suspend questions. With the Inheritance series, I'm willing to overlook this question and keep reading because of all the other stuff going on -- namely, magic and elves and quick-learn-everything! -- and because I've commited myself to the series and gosh-darn-it, I will finish reading it.

Anyways. My point is, you win some, you lose some. But you don't win all. I don't knwo why some things are fantasy traits, but if I ever end up writing a book involving war (which seems likely), I will have to find a way to balance the battles more evenly. Winning is cool, but I like losing almost more so than winning -- losing teaches you a lesson.

I think my little rant is over now, or at least I've exhausted my short attention span on this blog post. What do you think of this? Do you like winning or losing more?

And again, have a blessed New Year's Eve! :)


[EDIT: As of today (Sunday the 6th), I have made it through more of Inheritance, the last book -- they do lose a major battle. And I can think of a couple of skirmishes they lost that I didn't consider too important in the scheme of things (as compared with the whole "defeat Galbatorix" thing -- for example, the Ra'zac and Brom in the first book).

Also, I now think of a few more examples -- namely, Lord of the Rings and Sparta. Man, freakin' Sparta was outnumbered and defeated the Persians anyways *grumble grumble* But that's a real-world thing. Pardon my history geekiness. It might also be a movie, but I don't watch movies often and couldn't tell you for certain.

I now kind of think LoTR started this screw-reality thing, but that might just be because I want to beat Tolkien over the head with the Fellowship of the Ring, for making Frodo leave Sam like that.]