Reviewing "The Mysterious Benedict Society" by Trenton Lee Stewart

When orphan Reynard “Reynie” Muldoon answers an enigmatic advertisement in the paper, he didn’t know what to expect. What he probably did NOT expect, however, was to be swept into an adventure involving three other uniquely-gifted children, a secret mission, dastardly worldwide conspiracies, subliminal messaging, abducted children (and secret agents), and lots and lots of riddles.

Expected or not, that’s what happened. After a few tests, Reynie found himself part of the Mysterious Benedict Society, a team of children hand-picked by the benevolent Mr. Benedict to carry out a vital mission: to go undercover at a shadowy Institute to stop some unidentified—but unquestionably horrible—plan from successfully unfolding.

Somehow, secret messages are being transmitted via television and radio* into people’s minds, and only Mr. Benedict has been able to discover them. Unfortunately, these messages have a protective fail-safe: they convince the people that hear these messages that the messages don’t exist. Only minds that are particularly focused on the truth can detect them at all…which is where the Mysterious Benedict Society comes in.

Reviewing Catherine Fisher's "Snow-Walker": Conclusion

I liked a lot of things about the Snow-Walker trilogy, and there were even more factors that I wanted to like. The concept is intriguing, but in execution the writing commits a major storytelling mistake: it tells more than shows. 

Reviewing "The Soul Thieves" - Book 3 of The Snow-Walker Trilogy

The first two books of The Snow-Walker Trilogy create a gradual climb in tension, leading to the ultimate showdown of Gudrun and Kari. When Gudrun puts a sleeping spell on the kingdom and steals the soul of their king’s fiancée, Kari sees it is a ploy to get him to come to her. Jessa, Kari and his warrior-guardian Brochael, Hakon (who is now training to be a warrior), and the poet Skapti set out into the forbidden north where the Snow Walkers live. 

Reviewing "The Empty Hand" - Book 2 of The Snow-Walker Trilogy

The Empty Hand retells Beowulf, which perhaps contributes to its being my favorite installment of the trilogy. In this novel, Gudrun has been banished from the kingdom, intent on having her revenge. She sends a magical, phantom-beast after her son Kari, eating anything and anyone who stands in its way. A secondary plotline follows Jessa as she tries to hunt down a thief, uncovering a treasonous plot in the process. Her cousin Thorkil is mentioned, but not seen again—perhaps because he was so boring in the first book he needed to be replaced. 

Review of "The Snow-Walker's Son" - Book 1 of The Snow-Walker Trilogy

In the first book of the Snow-Walker Trilogy, Catherine Fisher basically retells Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen in a Viking fantasy world. (But no, if you’re a rabid fan of Frozen you will not necessarily like this book, even if both stories are based off the same source material.)

The kingdom has been taken over by Gudrun, an evil sorceress of unknown origin, with white hair and icy eyes. Cousins Jessa and Thorkil are brought to the queen’s stronghold in order to sentence them to banishment. Why she doesn’t kill them, or has to bring them to be banished by her in person, I don’t know. Anyway, she banishes them not just into the wilderness, but to an abandoned castle where the queen’s own son (rumored to be a monster) has been held captive for over a dozen years. 

Reviewing Catherine Fisher's "Snow-Walker": Introduction

On a whim when visiting the library, I went to the YA section and picked out a book by Catherine Fisher. Years ago I had read her novel Incarceron and its sequel Sapphique, which I remember as being vivid speculative fiction in a steampunk-prison alternate universe. My library has several more of her books that for one reason or another I haven’t gotten around to reading...until now.  

Picking out a book is hard on two sides of the spectrum. On the shallow end, there seem to be so few books out there that are actually excellent; after a string of disappointments one begins to wonder if they’ve possibly read everything worth reading. On the deep end, there are so many books, all of them with the potential to be excellent—after all, you can’t judge a book by its cover, right?

Perfect Little Protagonists: from Edward Stratemeyer's "First at the North Pole"

In penning this volume I have had a twofold purpose in mind: the first to show what pure grit and determination can do under the most trying of circumstances, and the second to give my readers an insight into Esquimaux life and habits, and to relate what great explorers like Franklin, Kane, Hall, DeLong, Nansen, Cook, and Peary have done to open up this weird and mysterious portion of our globe.

~ Edward Stratemeyer, from his 1909 preface of First at the North Pole

This was the first novel I’d read by Edward Stratemeyer, and frankly it will probably also be the last.
First at the North Pole, or, Two Boys in the Arctic started out promising, introducing the main character Andy as an orphaned eighteen-year old in Maine, and his struggle to survive in a job recession and with the added dead-weight of his lazy Uncle Si. This uncle showed up out of the blue after his parents died, claimed he was his guardian, and settled into a drunken, loafish lifestyle all the while hypocritically cracking the whip over his honest-working nephew’s back. What’s worse, Uncle Si tries to keep Andy from befriending another orphaned youth, Chet, on the flimsy excuse that Chet’s father was accused of embezzlement and forgery, and had run off never to be seen again…which of course proved he was guilty!

The plot thickens when Andy finds out that he has inherited some land in Michigan, which might prove valuable to the mining corporations who want to take control of that territory. Of course the wheedling Uncle Si snoops through his nephew’s things (after sending him out to find a job), and decides to try to sell it to the first land shark that conveniently shows up pretty much the same time he finds the deeds to the land. Andy discovers the plot and runs away into the Maine winter, taking refuge with his friend Chet while he tries to figure out what to do. They have a few adventures in the woods, trying to hunt to survive and so on, and Andy even manages to lose his papers in the vast expanse of snowdrifts.

So far, so good. The story establishes the protagonist as a “good guy” with an oppressive uncle and difficult challenges ahead. But here the story wavers, because Stratemeyer suddenly remembers the title of his novel, and needs to figure out a way to redirect the plot northward rather than towards Michigan. So he introduces a professor and an explorer. They meet the boys (again, conveniently), and during their conversation the idea of travelling to the North Pole comes up.

Reviewing Gerald Morris's "The Squire's Tales" Series

The Squire’s Tales series by Gerald Morris is one of my all-time favorite books. Aside from talking about the first book I read of this series, The Ballad of Sir Dinadan, however, I haven’t discussed it on my blog.

Until now!

To be fair to the reader, I thought it best to wait until I’d reread all ten of the books. Although, there was also the ulterior motive of wanting to read them again anyway, and also the bonus that I could read these VERY fast and thus make serious headway in my 150-Books-a-Year-What-Was-I-Thinking goal for 2018. And because for once I actually had all the series on hand (the previous time I read the entire series, I had to wait for the author to actually publish them, so had entire years of waiting and rereading the first installments), I binge-read them this time, which made for a roller-coaster of emotions…for reasons that will be made clear, if you aren’t already aware of how the original legends conclude.

In this series Morris has taken on the monumental task of retelling the Arthurian (and related medieval European) legends. Many other people have tried, and most fail utterly to do justice to the complexities of the plots, characters, and themes of these ancient stories. While retellings are never quite the same in tone or faithfulness to the original stories, Morris gets closer than most.

Good Steampunk is Hard to Find

The obligatory introductory definition of Steampunk: Victorian Science Fiction. This is oversimplified, has many arguable diverging theories, and has many variations (alternate realities, possible futures, not to mention the many related or offshoot genres of Clockpunk, Gaslamp Fantasy, Dieselpunk, etc.), but when one has to explain Steampunk to someone in three words, “Victorian Science Fiction” is what I opt for.

Theoretically, Steampunk is one of my favorite genres. It combines my favorite TV genre (Sci Fi) with my favorite period of literature (roughly 1830-1915). Often Steampunk attempts to “recreate” the brand of sci fi that the original sci fi authors wrote, such as Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or H.G. Well’s The Time Machine. Other genres tend to get spliced in: Horror, akin to H.P Lovecraft, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; mystery (particularly Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories); and high adventure (such as the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs or H. Rider Haggard). Historical figures (whose true lives were larger than life) like Nikola Tesla are often fictionalized or at least used as guidelines for the technological wizards that often populate Steampunk stories.

Reviewing "The Swoop!" by P.G. Wodehouse

“It will be news to the Man in the Street to learn that, with the possible exception of the Black Hand, the Scouts are perhaps the most carefully-organised secret society in the world.”

The Swoop is one of the few PG Wodehouse stories that does not involve:

     a) A love-stricken chap

     b) A beautiful girl

     c) An overbearing aunt

     d) Theft or attempted theft at a stereotypical country house

In fact, it is very unlike most PG Wodehouse books I’ve read, in that it doesn’t include a lot of the twists and turns and mistaken identities and broken engagements and other convoluted situations from which Jeeves is ever extricating Bertie Wooster.

Instead, this story is about Clarence Chugwater and his fellow Boy Scouts as they oust an invasion on England from…well, everyone. Despite being different from the other books I’ve read by Wodehouse, there are still the hijinks, the lightning-quick wordplay, and the over-the-top characters.

Reading and Other Media

Perhaps ironic for a book review blogger to admit, but I feel rather out of touch when it comes to feeding my love of books with technology and social media. One of my friends keeps urging me to get into BookTube, where she says YouTubers discuss or review books via video. There are also podcasts, websites (such as Sparknotes, Amazon, Google Books, and Goodreads), blogs like this one, forums, and of course the zeitgeist-obligatory Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr pages.

I've seen many of these in passing, usually when searching for more information on a particular book. I'm more likely to delve deeper into things like Facebook or YouTube if a book is particularly obscure and therefore hard to find sources of criticism or reviews on it. While I really would be interested in spending more time surfing literary-related interwebs, I've come to the sad conclusion that I simply don't have enough time. One could, I think, spend all of one's reading time on reading (or listening or watching material) about reading or about books instead of actually reading those books. And, since I've got my own blog, it's more of a priority to read published material. 

Unless I were to pioneer a new trail and become a blogger who blogs about other people's blogs and reviews their book reviews. 

Prydain is NOT Middle Earth

There are several similarities between Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings:

Ø  Epic fantasy story-line with a theme of Good vs. Evil and the fate of the world is at stake.

Ø  Villain is a largely unseen enemy working behind the scenes or from afar. Arawn and Sauron even sound somewhat alike. Mordor and Annuvin are also alike in being a sort of realm of Death.

Ø  Though not uncommon in all fantasy novels or even ancient mythology, both series have special enchanted objects. Some, like the Ring of Power and the Black Cauldron, serve as MacGuffins for the characters to pursue. Eilonwy’s magic bauble and the Palantir are seemingly-innocuous magical objects that turn out to be much more powerful than the characters believe at first. And then there are the special swords: Narsil in The Lord of the Rings, and Drnwyn in The Chronicles of Prydain, both of which are meant for specific people to wield and are used as symbols of the power to defeat evil.

Ø  Both books involve “fantasy” beings such as wizards, dwarves, and giant animals (although Llyan is way preferable to Shelob in my humble opinion!). There are also the Cauldron-born, Huntsmen, and the Horned King, which could easily be compared with orcs (specifically Uruk-hai, as both the Cauldron-born and Uruk-hai are “manufactured” warriors), ring-wraiths, the Wraith-king.

Ø  Like the stewards of Gondor, the Sons of Don have kept the evil at bay for a long time before the story begins.

Ø  Caer Dallben, a sort of farming sanctuary, seems to share the same timeless safety as the Shire, and the value of simple living and fruitful labor that Taran eventually learns is a lot like the Hobbit mindset.

Ø  Many characters bear similar characteristics or serve similar roles:

o   Aside from Arawn – Sauron, the best example of this is the commonalities between the warrior-prince Gwydion and Ranger/heir apparent Aragorn.*

o   Eilonwy – Eowyn

o   Gurgi – Gollum

o   Doli – Gimli

o   Dallben – Gandalf

o   Magg – Wormtongue

o   King Pryderi – Saruman

Ø  SPOILER ALERT BELOW

No seriously I'm about to spoil the ending

I'm warning you

If you haven't read the book this is your last chance to stop here and not find out the ending

Okayyyy here goes:

Done Too Soon

Sadly, it happens more often than I would like to admit. You’re reading a great book—wonderful in fact—with an intriguing premise, a good cast of characters, and a nice grasp of Style. The only problem? The end. 

Now, the end of the book, if the book is good, is always the worst part. Because the goodness and enjoyment of the book ends when the story does. But the real tragedy is when a book’s end comes far, far too soon.

The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha is either the first or second Lloyd Alexander book I ever read. (It’s a tossup between this and The Arcadians, but since I read—er, devoured—both of them within a 48-hour period, but I can’t remember which one I technically opened first.) It holds a special place in my heart with all Lloyd Alexander books, because not only are they wonderful books, but because I discovered them by chance during a rather difficult, lonely time in my adolescence. Lukas-Kasha, the Arcadians, Prydain, Vesper Holly…all were a source of comfort and cheer that I needed badly.

"Yes yes"...no. Just...no: Reviewing Kenneth Oppel's "Every Hidden Thing"

In continuation of my poor fortune in reading, I was recently disappointed again. I finished the book at least, which is more than I can say for many of the volumes I’ve picked up at the library over the past month. 

The book is Kenneth Oppel’s Every Hidden Thing. The selling point? Romeo and Juliet looking for a dinosaur. Sounds awesome, right?

Actually the selling point for me was that it was by Oppel, who in my past experience has been one of the best YA authors I’ve had the pleasure to read. My favorite steampunk novels are the Airborn trilogy. I enjoyed the bat-fantasy series of started by Silverwing. I even enjoyed the creepy prequels to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Yet after the rather grim and dark content of the aforementioned Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein series, I was hoping for a return to the lighter action-filled adventures of a couple of lovestruck teens in the sun-scorched Badlands looking for dinosaurs at the dawn of paleontology. 

"Darkwing" by Kenneth Oppel

It’s the end of an era: the saurians who had been the dominant predator on Earth are dying out due to a mysterious sickness and through the machinations of all the other beasts, who have made a pact to exterminate this common threat by destroying any saurian eggs they find. About twenty years before Darkwing begins, however, a small group of chiropters who reject the pact and go to live on a secluded island as conscientious objectors. 

As our story begins, the young chiropter Dusk is about to make his first leap into the air. He’s a weak newborn, strangely built, and instinctively he wants to flap his sails like wings. As he grows up with his father Icaron, the leader of the island colony, his impulsive sister Sylph, and the rest of his family, Dusk is subjected to a great deal of pressure to conform or risk being shunned by his community. But Dusk is not like the others. Whereas in the story, the chiropters are a sort of pre-bat species (I immediately imagined them looking like sugar-gliders, though later in the book there are illustrations which contradict my mental image), Dusk is a true bat, with the ability to “see” in the dark and, much to the fear and confusion of the rest of his people, to fly. 

Reviewing Kenneth Oppel's "Silverwing" Trilogy

Long ago there was a war between the birds and the beasts. The bats, who shared attributes of both, abstained from taking a side, making them equally contemptible by both. In the present day, in an alternate reality not so far removed from our own, a young bat named Shade breaks the taboo that has kept the peace for years: he gets a glimpse of the sun. By breaking this law Shade brings down retribution from the birds onto his entire colony, and finds himself alone and without a home.

The Iron Ring by Lloyd Alexander: A Review

I love classics. They are probably my favorite “genre” of book to pick off the shelf, though of course classics can’t be defined into one particular genre of romance, suspense, mystery or tragedy. Yet no matter how many classics I read—the centuries-old stories lauded by contemporary and modern audiences and critics alike, written about by scholars, argued by academics, and force-fed to students—I always eventually return to Lloyd Alexander.

I had already read all of Jane Austen’s novels, David Copperfield, Robinson Crusoe, several Shakespearean dramas, Jane Eyre, and all of the Sherlock Holmes stories before I picked up my first Lloyd Alexander YA novel. But for a shy, introverted bookworm such as myself, it was akin to meeting a best friend. 

The Agency Series by Y.S. Lee: A Review

It is entirely possible that I read more contemporary YA and Juvenile books than I read contemporary Adult fiction. Keep in mind, though, that I read vastly more classic adult fiction than contemporary anything. Another reason I read more YA is because every stinking book seems to become a series. There are very few standalone novels in the teen section of my library. Perhaps this is a ploy to get teens hooked into reading more.  If so, I certainly hope it’s working. It certainly worked on me.

I most recently finished a YA quadrilogy by Y.S. Lee, entitled The Agency and with each volume having a subtitle (A Spy in the House, The Body at the Tower, The Traitor in the Tunnel, and Rivals in the City). At the top of each book is written “A Mary Quinn Mystery,” after the books’ heroine, so I suppose I’m supposed to use that as a guide for what I call this series. However, I much prefer calling it “The Agency Books.”  

To me, these books are less about the mystery of Mary Quinn figuring out whodunit, and more about espionage and the actual footwork of collecting evidence and stopping criminals, so although Mary Quinn is undoubtedly the center of these books, her work as an Agent is what makes these books notable.

Reviewing Gene Stratton Porter's “A Girl of the Limberlost”

Freckles is about a teenage boy looking for his identity and family. A Girl of the Limberlost is about a teenage girl who knows who she is, who knows who her relatives are, but is nevertheless still searching for those relationships. 

In many ways this sequel…well, isn’t a sequel. This second book exists in the same “world” as Freckles, but in it the Limberlost becomes almost a fairy tale environment. The danger is mostly gone from the days Freckles had to worry about the swamp sucking him up, or poisonous snakes, or the murderous Black Jack and his gang. Moving in and making herself at home in Freckle’s old garden” room comes highschooler Elnora Comstock. Freckles, his Swamp Angel, and the Bird Woman are all there, but they are almost like fairy godmothers to Elnora. 

Elnora is bright, hard-working, compassionate and generous. She lives at the edge of the Limberlost with her mother Katherine, who is cold, harsh, unloving and miserly. For the purposes of Elnora’s fairy-tale life, Kate Comstock fills the roll of “evil stepmother” for most of the book, and most of the plot hinges on their mercurial relationship. Against her mother’s wishes Elnora strives to educate and better herself, first by going to high school—though she finds herself a subject of ridicule for her hillbilly appearance—and then by earning money to go to college by helping the Bird Woman collect rare moths.

Reviewing Gene Stratton Porter's "Freckles"

During the cold, grey winter, it felt so good to get back in touch with nature that after reading Sterling North's Rascal I continued deeper into an imaginary forest by reading Freckles and its better-known sequel, A Girl of the Limberlost. Written by photographer, conservationist, and naturalist Gene Stratton Porter, these novels are set in the Limberlost, a marshy area of Indiana during the turn of the 20^th century. 

In Freckles, the titular character is a one-handed orphan boy of Irish descent, just old enough to be released from the care of an orphanage. Freckles has no money, training, education or family. He doesn’t even have a name beyond “Freckles,” which is solely due to the liberal sprinkling of said spots across his face. Because he has no education he has to look for physical labor to support himself, but because he was crippled as a baby, Freckles has the use of only one arm, and finding physical labor he can do one-handed makes his plight all the more hopeless. Being crippled and nameless is the main inner struggle Freckles has to undergo during the book. He’s convinced that his own mother crushed his arm, and the thought haunts him, making him doubt that anyone would ever want or love him.