Short Reviews: August 2013. The Amaranth Enchantment, A Beautiful Friendship, Fire Season, The Whole-Brain Child

The Whole-Brain Child, Daniel J. Siegel (M.D.) & Tina Payne Bryson (Ph.D.).  ISBN: 9780553807912

Read August 15, 2013

Nonfiction: parenting, CBT/mindfulness, neuroscience.

Slight (149 pages, with comic strips, illustrations, and boxed text) and overly-optimistic volume on using mindfulness and awareness of brain development to guide child mental development and to simultaneously manage their behavior by using age-appropriate and helpful interventions and tools to build their self-awareness, self-control, empathy, and mental/emotional vocabulary.  The ideas are good and proven, but the authors do tend to give the impression that using these techniques will instantly result in a cooperative and pliant child through their cartoon before-and-after comparisons and their choices in real-life examples.  I'm not so optimistic, but I'm not knocking the techniques, just the presentation.  The subtitle is: Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, and I don't know that these ideas and techniques are quite so revolutionary as all that, but I admit that is a good title key-word to throw out to get attention in a glutted parenting-technique bookshelf.  Nifty for a reminder on how to help use stressful situations as "teachable moments" instead, but not worth purchasing. 

A Beautiful Friendship & Fire Season, David Weber & Jane Lindskold.
(re-read) August 11 & 12, 2013
Introducing these to my husband, who is working his way through the main Honor storyline and needed a break before the story splits into three branches.  I figured now is the best time to start the short stories to introduce all of the supporting cast that's been promoted to heading whole books, and he was wanting treecats, so I gave him the short stories A Beautiful Friendship (from More than Honor) and The Stray (from Worlds of Honor) to fill out the background.  He's on Beautiful Friendship the YA book today, and will probably get to Fire Season later this week.  I think after that I'll go with What Price Dreams (also in Worlds of Honor) immediately afterwards, and give him Treecat Wars when it comes out in October (after I finish devouring it myself, of course).  He reads a lot slower than me, so while he was working through the shorts, I of course had to re-read these two again since it had been a few months since Fire Season came out.  God I love treecats.

The Amaranth Enchantment, Julie Berry.  ISBN: 1599903342
(re-read)  August 8, 2013
YA (really JUV) fairy-tale-ish.  Lucinda's terrible life with her meanspirited Aunt and dishwater Uncle fractures almost instantly when the Lady Beryl, the Amaranth Witch, walks into Uncle's goldsmith shop.  Lucinda is a cipher of a character, and all of the fairy-tale tropes are followed to a T, including the "fairy" godmother, instant falling in love with the handsome prince, and a thief who isn't who he seems.  A strange and unexplained goat with dog-like characteristics is a puzzle, but that's the only odd note out of a story where every event (and person) is tied together into an intricate net of coincidences and interrelationships and causalities.  Pleasant enough while reading, the whole mess devolves into a multitude of thorny and irritating questions when thought about afterwards (where was the villain's guardian this whole time?)  (what is up with the goat?)  (why does the whole kingdom not know about a missing prince?) (why is everyone in the "other world" so damn selfish that poor Beryl has to get the shaft AGAIN?).  Pretty, but rather frustrating.

Secondhand Charm, Julie Berry

Secondhand Charm, Julie Berry.  ISBN: 9781599905112

Read August 13

 

So I re-read Amaranth Enchantment recently, and was reminded of how thin it really was - everything so twee and interconnected and massive plotholes unraveling at the slightest serious thought.  This one is MUCH better.  Not exactly what I had expected, and I'm a bit disappointed in that, but it was interesting and fun.

 

First off - the bad. 

 

The medicine/study is a red-herring.  It's teased as a story of a studious girl heading off to a medical university to become a healer, and that actually is right, as far as it goes.  Sadly, it's mostly the first-act mcguffin to get Evie out of her village and onto the road so that events can occur.  I would really have liked to see more evidence of the healing - instead of it simply being a magical gift, to instead show more of what she did with the Chancellor: actual herb-lore and medicine.  Without it, she's well on the way to turning into a boring magic dream girl.

 

The king is USELESS.  Doesn't he have parents?  Courtiers?  He's always on his own except for Annalise, which is somewhat suspect, considering all the flunkies she has around her.  Considering he's the lynchpin of the whole story, I found him a bit on the irritating side.

 

Coincidences again... like Amaranth, this story relies heavily on a smallish cast of characters who keep showing up in convenient (or inconvenient) times and places.  Unlike Amaranth, it actually somewhat works in this story without seriously violating suspension of disbelief, but it still was a bit heavy-handed (especially the circus).  

 

The meh.

 

Aiden.  Eh.  More a cipher than anything else, and honestly comes off as well as he does because the King is so flamingly useless in comparison. 

 

The continual "bad luck" of the initial journey.  This is somewhat in the line of the coincidental repeated meetings of the main cast, but it was less of an irritant while reading, and more of an after-the-read thought of how really unlikely that whole scenario was, and how it could have been changed easily without altering the plot. 

 

The good:

 

The representation of Evie's "companion" was excellent.  I loved that he didn't really know or think about or care about much beyond Evie the person.  I loved the impetuous nature that causes her problems that he then regrets, I love the beauty/terror dichotomy.  I love the co-dependent feel for that relationship; "if you really loved me you would...." Really lovely touchpoint through the whole story.  

 

I really like Annalise.  She is a perfect little sociopath, and her storyline was very nice.  Would have liked a bit more background on how her relationships got going, and how everyone else doesn't know that princesses of her realm are what they are, but those are niggling details.  Annalise was quite nice of herself.  I loved the complication that her relationship with Evie created for the climax, and that her total blissful inability to see that she was a sociopath made her a little less "one-dimensional-grandiose-evil."

 

Loved Grandfather.  That was a very clever touch, and one that isn't seen very often.  I figured something was off-kilter there, but I wasn't expecting it to twist the way it actually twisted.  That was quite enjoyable.

 

So overall, Secondhand Charm: Not amazing, but much better than Amaranth, and a sweet little heroine who gets where she's going through dogged determination, grit, and persistance.