New Arrivals: Picture Book: Dragon's Extraordinary Egg, Debi Gliori

Too cute for words.

Dragon's Extraordinary Egg
Debi Gliori
ISBN: 9780802737595
First published in UK as "Dragon Loves Penguin"
Textural, close-up views, colorful drawn characters reminds strongly of Mo Willems' Pigeon books.

A penguin is telling her young chick a bedtime story.  This story is epic and filled with mystery and fantasy - a clan of dragons lives on top of a frozen volcano, while penguins live down below on the ice.  An eggless dragon spies an abandoned egg on the ice, adopts it, raises it, and teaches the very undragon-like creature (spoilers: its a penguin) how to live happily among dragons, until one day when the penguin notices a certain change in the temperature that the thicker-scaled siblings and friends don't notice.  At the end, a character returns in a surprise cameo, revealing a much closer relationship between the current happily-listening chick and the amazing story (or history) being told.

A bit on the long side for storytime, sadly.  It's hard to get adoption-friendly stories that aren't polemics or utterly treacly (sorry, I Love You Like Crazy Cakes, but the shoe fits) or really specific.  This one is just cute and outre enough to be enjoyable for most kids, but with a special pop of meaning for anyone adopted (or really, anyone who feels like they just don't fit in with their family).

The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic, Emily Croy Barker

The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic, Emily Croy Barker
ISBN: 9780670023660

Read November 11, 2013

Fantasy.

If this is a Guide, then it's one of those Guides that leads by negative example.  The beginning of the story is fairly bland, very wordy, very slow, (very much after the example of Harkness's Shadow of Night set) and frankly, kind of off-putting.  Nora is a real wallflower, with no character attributes to speak of, and she's certainly not a heavy thinker.  

Her shallow and passive acceptance of life takes a turn for the worse when she steps through (actually, even worse, dismisses the gate guardian of) a portal between worlds, finding herself magically back in a 1960s-inspired fantasy world of the rich and famous.

You guys, she LITERALLY DRINKS THE KOOL-AID.  Literally.  Like clockwork, all of the tropes of being taken by the fae occur (you can tick them off as they very obviously happen) and poor little Nora hasn't got even the foggiest glimpse of a clue.  

This is irritating, to say the very least.

Finally, Nora's clue-bat to the head appears in the daylight appearance of her half-dragon (maybe?) husband!! (yes, really) who attacks her because she gets jealous of his attentions.  She's rescued by a deus ex magician, a crusty old fellow, and then it rapidly degenerates into Pride and Prejudice, Now with Extra Magic Flavor! (tm)

Please don't get me wrong - it's at least as readable as the Shadow of Night sets, but there's just so much a girl can take of a clueless lead, and Nora really does her best to hit all the low notes.  

Finally, there's the interesting matter of the magic, which falls squarely into what I consider my anime-addicted husband's realm of things: unrestricted, unexplained, and unstoppable.  Need something?  Magic will fix it!  What's the cost?  Eh... *handwaves*  No good.  I prefer my magic to fall in with the Sanderson Rules - limited, expensive (or difficult) and explicated.  

The ending leaves the ONLY TWO other interesting female characters dead, and Nora safely back with her family in our own world (who think she was abducted by Norwegian hippies) while she pines for her magical love, having realized her feelings too late.  

Regardless of pique, I'll probably pick up the second, in hopes that we find out what happens with the crazy mouse-man from the very beginning.  Sadly, no one else is nearly as interesting. 

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick; Joe Schreiber

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick, Joe Schreiber.  ISBN: 9781547577388

Read Sept 25, 2013

YA thriller.  Perry Stormaire is trying to live his life. His overbearing high-power-lawyer father is trying to control his choices, his band, his swimming, his college options.  His mother is trying to recreate her own childhood, and that's where Gobi comes in.  Mom's lifelong friendship with her own foreign exchange student means that she has high expectations of Gobi and Perry.  Sadly, Gobi is sallow, shy, and quiet.  A wallflower.  Now, on her last night in America (also Perry's prom, also Perry's band's first gig in New York) she's decided that she wants a taste of the American life, and Perry has to take Gobi to the prom.  On the plus side, Dad sweetens the deal with the Jag!

Sadly, no one in the family has quite realized just how world-changing Gobi's visit will be, and it will all take place on this one last night.  

The story is told with chapter-headings taken from college-application essay-questions, which is a fun quirk.  Perry's "voice" is wry, self-deprecatory, and ironically aware.  Gobi is almost a force of nature in contrast: the perfect la femme nikita, goddess of vengeance, the incarnation of Death.

Lots of standard YA ground is covered; the family scandal, the father-son conflict, seeing beyond the physical, social awareness, revenge vs vengeance, but they're all dealt with in tiny little flashes between violence and thrills and car-chases.  

Nifty read, totally implausible, lots of fun.

The Land that Time Forgot, Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Land that Time Forgot, Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Nelson Doubleday, 1946

(no ISBN; hardcover book-club edition, movie tie-in trilogy compilation.)

Individual titles of the series: The Land that Time Forgot, The People that Time Forgot, Out of Time's Abyss.  Originally published in 1918.

I love the Barsoom books, and Tarzan is just fun, but somehow I never got around to these, so when I saw this absolutely awesome yellow and red hc published to promote the film (which I also want to see now, because I like hurting myself) I just had to have it.   (again, props to the Greenville Really Big Book Sale!)

Somewhere near Antarctica, there's a giant cliff-walled island.  Inside that undiscovered country is the freakiest weird-ass version of evolution I've ever seen in science fiction.  I won't spoil it, but it's seriously weird, and really impressive as a world-building conceit.  I have to give the guy props for going there in 1918 - I have neighbors in South Carolina in 2013 who can't deal with the concept, so it's a little dizzy-making to think about how ahead of the curve Burroughs was. 

Usual quibbles apply - the men are heroes, the women are victims (but at least once in each book they save themselves temporarily, or serve more of a function than looking pretty or delicate) and the villains are villainous.  The one scene with the cowboy "taming" a wild horse made me flashback to Jean Auel and my eyes near about rolled out of my head, but otherwise it was fun, fast, and seriously weird.  

The writing and plotting is about on the same level as the Barsoom series, but a little more manageable due to the length differences.  This is like a nice evening meal, that is more like an enormous southern Thanksgiving.  Either way, you're going to be eating good for a while.   

The Humming Room, Ellen Potter

The Humming Room
Ellen Potter
ISBN: 978-0312-644383
Feiwel and Friends, 2012

What an interesting book this was.  Way too short for my tastes.

Potter has taken the bare bones of the Secret Garden, transferred them to modern times in Upstate New York, and slimmed the story down to a tight 182 pages.

I have to say that her version is quite fun (an old sanitarium is the house, the garden is a central greenhouse surrounded by the interior rounded wall of the building, Dickon has become a wild child called the Faigne, and sallow Mary has been transformed into shifty magpie Roo) but I really do wish that it were a YA or adult book instead of Juvie.  I can't imagine this story having quite so much resonance for an audience not familiar with The Secret Garden itself, but that story is a beast, clocking in at over 350 pages. 

So I'm left with a bit of a twinge, because while I really enjoyed this interpretation, I have to say that it really doesn't quite have an audience.  I don't think it's quite captivating enough on it's own merits to incite readers to tackle The Secret Garden, which is both old and huge, and I really don't think that anyone will find this more than a tantalizing tease of a mouthfull after they've devoured all of the rich details and fine storycrafting of The Secret Garden.

So... I really don't know what to say.  Perhaps a lush graphic novel (similar to the work Young Kim did with the Twilight graphic novels) to embrace the setting and character changes and make the brevity a virtue? 

In all actuality, I would suggest to the author that she consider an adult adaptation - the exact reverse of what Patterson did with The Lake House and the subsequent Maximum Ride series.  This tiny little book has such an interesting quality to it, and I really think that many grown-up readers who are nostalgic for The Secret Garden would quite enjoy a really intense and deeply realized re-tread. There are moments here which feel very similar to the breathlessly magical impact of the Night Circus, but they're all just tiny little snatches, and then you're whisked along again.   

Austenland, Midnight In Austenland, Shannon Hale

Austenland
2007, Bloomsbury, ISBN: 9781596912854
Midnight in Austenland
2012, Bloomsbury, ISBN: 9781608196258

These were a bit of a tangent for me, but I have to say that I enjoyed them more than I thought I would. 

Shannon Hale is the author of several Juvenile fairy-tale-esque stories that I have enjoyed - most particularly Princess Academy, The Books of Bayern, and the graphic novels Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack.  (I recommend them all - they are amazing.)

With this duo, Hale sets off into a (presumably imaginary) world where rich young (or not so young) things bored or tormented by modern life and modern loves sequester themselves in the Regency version of an SCA convention, proceed to be romanced (carefully and properly) by handsome young actors in tight Regency pants, and enjoy a few weeks respite from the raging modernity by relaxing in a world where class and gender roles are rigidly imposed. 

Ooookay.  Sure.  On the surface, that sounds a little kooky, but lets be honest here - this seems perfectly logical to me.  There have been umpteen different revivals and restagings of Austen's works, women like being romanced, and just about everyone can have fun with a costume party if they let themselves. 


In Austenland, our first protagonist is Jane Hayes.  She works in marketing, and she's never had a "real" boyfriend.  When her elderly aunt notices a certain DVD hiding in her potted plants, Jane is sent off on an adventure to clear the romantic preconceptions from her mind and heart once and for all, so she can settle into a rational life with realistic expectations of love that don't involve beautifully-worded protestations of infatuation or incidents of feet-sweeping-off-of.  No one who reads this sort of book will be in the least surprised that this doesn't exactly go according to plan.

In Midnight in Austenland, after having settled our first protagonist (no spoilers) we're treated to a brokenhearted recent divorcee who, while extremely intelligent in many ways, is totally blinded to the reality of the trainwreck that was her marriage.  This vacation to fantasy Austenland is an attempt to see herself as something more than an abandoned woman and a mother.  Her hopes of finding herself are thwarted from the start as a series of unfortunate and perplexing events culminate in a possible murder!  Are the actors simply outdoing themselves, or is something truly afoot?

These are not high literature.  They are not classics, they are not treasures of the nation (I would argue strenuously that Rapunzel's Revenge IS) and they are not intellectual reads.  They are pure, unadulterated Austen-flavored fluff.  I enjoyed the hell out of both of them! 

Raiders' Ransom, Emily Diamand

This is the beginning of a series.

Set in post-apocalyptic flooded England (similar idea to Ship Breaker, but very different feel) there are 10 remaining counties of England, ruled by an idiotic Prime Minister - everything else has been lost to the sea or to Greater Scotland.  (Imagine this set in America, with everything north of the Mason-Dixon Line suddenly part of Expanded Canada.  What shock!  What horror!) 

Anyway - the poor suckers stuck in those last Ten Counties suffer mostly in silence, working fishing boats and trying to keep up with their taxes.  Technology is forbidden.  Up north, the sinful Scots use all sorts of tech, but they're in league with the devil, so that's why. 

Lilly and her seacat only want a nice peaceful fisher life - her, her seacat, and her sweetheart Andy (who will hopefully marry her and still let her go fishing!) living together until the far future.  Yeah right.

Raiders attack, stealing the PM's daughter (who was stowed at the fishing village with her exiled aunt), and Lilly sets off on a quest to retrieve the girl and save her village from impression or hanging from the asanine PM himself.  (Getting the impression throughout this book that the author isn't too fond of politicians.) 

In the alternate viewpoint, Zeph is the younger son of the boss of the Angel Isling gang of raiders.  They fled London in the great flooding, and now they prowl around, stealing from the Scots and the fishing villages alike ("no one helped us escape, so we don't owe them any loyalty" is the idea here).  Family is everything, and life is brutal, with slaves and captives galore, and turf-wars over status and position.  His dad just stole the PM's daughter!  The Boss is actually looking forward to starting a war with the PM - he can't wait to fight it out and prove once and for all that the Raiders are the true Englishmen!

By some miracle, Lilly and Zeph, along with the seacat and an intriguing "jewel," meet up with each other and have to figure out how to survive the chaos wrought by one small theft of one small girl.

Not a world-stopping read - there were some technical difficulties.  There were some really interesting characters picked up and then dropped nearly instantly (Lilly's "uncle" comes to mind) but with a series, I'm willing to give that a chance to repair itself over time (still, for a single installment, it was a bit abrupt).  The plot was strangely herky-jerky, and more than a tad unrealistic in all of the chance meetings and lucky breaks - but so is most juvenile fiction.  Even the world was strangely ad hoc - the PM and bureaucrats were described as well off, but if all they have is a tiny collection of fishing villages, where does that come from?  Likewise, despite religious protestations and enforced borders, technology from Scotland wouldn't be entirely unknown to desperate natives just a few miles down the pike.  Similarly, London itself is totally flooded - or maybe just a muddy mess, or maybe only flooded at high tide.  Lots of questions unanswered about how things work in this world. 

I did appreciate that the dual narratives were very clear and demonstrably different.  I really like knowing who is "speaking" from the very first, and clear character concepts are absolutely necessary for that sort of writing convention.  Also - seacats.  Great idea.  I love cats, and the idea of strange little grey kittens latching on to someone and helping them navigate over undersea obstacles and by forcasting weather changes - really neat concept!

Overall, pretty good - Not an amazing read, but I am looking forward to the sequel.

Axe Cop; Axe Cop: Bad Guy Earth, by Malachai and Ethan Nicolle

Ok, webcomic people may know this, but Axe Cop is totally awesome!

I've got Volumes One and Two from Dark Horse, and I have to say, they make much more sense when they're all bound together in print and I can read them all in one go.  Much like Girl Genius, so much is going on, and so much of it is UTTER MADNESS, that it helps to have a chance to look back in print and go - wait, what now?  Ohhh, ok.  That's hard to do in webcomic format.

So Malachai is this kid, about 7 now, but between 5 and 6 when he came up with this.  His big brother Ethan, a cartoonist, came home for the holidays, and this is what they came up with together.  Smash internet hit, and awesome little-kid physics and causality.  Brilliant.

I don't even know where to start explaining the idea... there's a cop, with an axe, and he routinely recruits strange super-powered weirdos to be his team, and they kill a lot of bad guys, and aliens (which are always bad guys) and sharks (likewise) and sometimes robots (ditto).

I think my favorite panels are the "Ask Axe Cop" segments, and my favorite character is Uni-Man (especially after he bulks up and has his secret hideout).

For any more details, you really just need to go look it up for yourself.  Please Do NOT do so at work, or in the presence of people you don't want to see you snerk your drink out your nose. 

All Hail Eris!  All Hail Discordia!

Scarlet Angelina Wolverton-Manning, Jacqueline Ogburn, Brian Ajhar

This delightful picture book from Dial isn't exactly new - it's from 1994, but I just discovered it!

Scarlet Angelina is the only child of her doting (and fabulously wealthy) parents, scions of what must have been equally fabulously wealthy lineages; the Mannings and the Wolvertons.  She's got huge eyes, a lovely big white smile, and family pets have an unfortunate tendency to go missing around her.  She also eats rare steaks for dinner, and has to be home before the moon comes up.

She's also just been kidnapped.  Sadly, poor Ralph doesn't quite realize just what he's gotten himself into, and as the moon rises over the graveyard, he finds that he doesn't have quite as much time to count his ransom money as he thought he did.

He also learns that when a little girl has a strict bedtime - it's usually best to abide by it.

GGGGRRRRRRR!

Previously Published Review: The Multiplying Glass, Ann Phillips

Pre-teen English girl Elizabeth (no nicknames please) is on vacation with her grandparents and their annoying and overly spoiled lapdog for the summer. It has been raining nearly non-stop, and so Elizabeth takes refuge in the storeroom of a neighbor's junk shop.

There in the back, she finds a tri-fold mirror, and when she looks in, the reflections in the side panels aren't quite her. When one winks at her, she begins an adventure with her two shadow-people, Liza and Liz. One is proper and dutiful (and a little snobby and stuck-up) and the other is a little hellion, demanding and childish, but also playful and fun.

Elizabeth isn't the only one who knows about the mirror's shadow people, and she soon meets and befriends a few neighbor children.

When everything goes horribly wrong (as it usually does in these sorts of tales) her new friends are there for her, and Elizabeth learns that the shadowy parts of our selves, the ones we keep hidden away, usually aren't the nice parts.

This may be a book that you remember from your childhood. Some scenes which stuck out to me when re-reading:
Elizabeth, Liza, and Liz dancing in the storeroom.
The playacting with Robin and Elizabeth, and all their shadows.
The "grotto" in the cellar.
Petsy, the spoiled and grumpy lapdog.
Elizabeth dancing in the Shakespeare play, with Robin playing the fool as Puck.

Ups and Downs:
Ups:
Quick pacing, clear narration (not always easy with two sets of three incarnations of narrators), interesting and individual characters, really nifty storyline idea.

Downs:
A little too hazy for my tastes on the specifics of the shadow-people as well as a bit sloppy in following the established "rules" for their interactions with the world. As a minor downside, there were several side-plots established for their contribution to the main plot, and then dropped like a hot rock afterwards - I would have liked to see a little completion in those plots as well.

Previously Published Review: A Pack of Lies, Geraldine McCaughrean

Found "A Pack of Lies" through serendipity just recently, and truly enjoyed it.

This is a perfect set of short tales for any over-imaginative or puzzle-solving child, young adult, or adult who doesn't mind reading "kid's stuff." I wouldn't recommend it for much younger than 8 in general, but some younger children will enjoy it also.

In the frame story, British teenage girl Ailsa is shaken free of her boring life by the strange appearance of a man during her field trip to the library. Without a name, an ID number, or a place to live, he might have just dropped from the sky.

He's strangely persuasive, and very well-read, and he's just the person to help Ailsa and her mother sell the strange knick-nacks and furniture in their Second-Hand Shop. He works for free, but he tells any customer who will listen the most amazing pack of lies about the items they are interested in. The stories he tells are fantastic, but not really fantasy. Perhaps they may even be true!

The real question is, what is MCC really trying to sell, and to whom?

The frame story is quite fun, with hints and clues scattered about, and the slow dawning of realization in at least one of the characters makes a sobering counterpoint to the overall lighthearted tone. The stories themselves (eleven inside the frame) are fairly solid.

In order, we get
1) An Irish Tall Tale
2) An Indian Morality Tale
3) A Chinese Love Story
4) A Bizarre "Manners" Poem (also a morality tale)
5) A High-Seas Adventure
6) A Welsh Character Study
7) A Regency Suspense/Horror Story
8) A Funny "Inept Investigator" Crime Procedural
9) A Papist Tragedy
10) A Tragic War-Story/Relationship Study
11) A Hysterical Transylvanian "Horror" Tale

Of them all, the weakest to me are the Poem (not bad, but not really as scathing or funny as it could have been, and really there's just not much there), and the Transylvanian Tale, which is sad, because it was quite funny. However, it was the most fanstasical of them all, and where in a true horror/suspense story, the fantastic elements are more accepted, here, in a comic sense, they were more glaring, and didn't quite seem to fit with the rest of the stories.

This is a perfect one for bedtime reading for kids old enough to be read to, but too old for 'storybooks.' Each story is just long enough (and interesting enough) for some good bedtime reading, and none are the sorts of stories that raise fears or deep thoughts.