Tuesday Storytime: Friendly Fantasy Creatures

Julia's House for Lost Creatures
Ben Hatke
ISBN: 9781596438668
By the author of Zita the Spacegirl. Julia's house is built onto a giant tortoise, and it's moved in to a lovely spot by the sea - but things are too lonely! So Julia puts out a sign advertising space for Lost creatures, and boy do they show up in droves. The company is great, but the extra housework and messes not so much. How will Julia solve her problem and keep her new friends at her house?

Ribbit!
Rodrigo Folgueira, illustrated by Poly Bernatene
ISBN: 9780307981462
The frog family are distressed by a large pink visitor that only says "Ribbit!" and they work themselves (and a lot of rubbernecking forest creatures) up into a frenzy worrying about this strange pig and what terrible things it could possibly want with them. Finally the Wise Old Beetle offers some common sense, but it's too late for the frogs - or, maybe not? Are frogs afraid of heights? "Tweet tweet!"

If I Had a Gryphon
Vikki Vansickle, illustrated by Cale Atkinson
ISBN: 9781770498099
A dark brown girl laments in rhyming couplets about how ANY fantastical pet would be a better option than her current disappointing hamster. Until she gets a bit further into the scenarios, and realizes that perhaps a fantastical pet may have some significant downsides. Cute and quick, despite covering a lot of ground. Reads VERY fast.

Tuesday Storytime. Excellent Eggs

This was supposed to be the storytime for the Tuesday after Easter, but we had a slight technical difficulty and so it got used today. Example #three-million-and-one for why I do slightly off-note storytimes when I can for holidays or themed days; I can re-use general egg storytimes, but Easter storytimes are a little harder to explain three weeks after the fact. :)


An Egg is Quiet
Dianna Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long
ISBN: 9780811844284
Beautiful nonfiction picture book showcasing the diversity and beauty of eggs. Really lovely and lyrical and fantastic; while being absolutely grounded in reality and information. Perfect layout to choose what age-group or complexity-level to engage with, which makes it a great school pick.

Egg
Kevin Henkes
ISBN: 9780062408723
Almost wordless picture book with comic-book framing on several pages (it's like a gentle version of a Mo Willems Pigeon book) tell the story of four eggs and their slightly diverging paths through life. The "mystery" got a lot of traction from my audience, and there were several exlaims of shock and interest. Always a great thing to get from a storybook.

The Egg
M. P. Robertson
ISBN: 0803725469
While I appreciate the mystery of the egg-hatching as much as anyone (especially when it makes an impact like it did today on an appreciative audience) I have to say that this particular book for some reason is THE HARDEST to find when you don't remember the author's name! Librarian Problems. Anyway. George (first clue) finds a GIANT egg under his mom's favorite chicken (love that detail) and proceeds to play mommy for the fantastic find. A really sweet and funny and beautifully illustrated fairy tale ensues, and one that's actually short enough to read during storytime! One of my all-time favorite picture books, even if I do forget the author's name all the time.

YA Fantasy: Skyborn, David Dalglish

Skyborn (first of a trilogy)
David Dalglish
ISBN: 9780316302685
Floating islands, religious oppression, spunky war-orphans.

Part of my ongoing research into "floating islands in the sky" stories, and this first book started out very neatly, but it's headed into religious territory that I don't feel particularly inclined to pursue.  I've got the feeling of the writing and the world-building pretty well from the first book.  I very much enjoyed the focus on their version of military academy, and on the training in magic and tactics and their equipment, and I also thought Dalglish did a very good job of describing aerial combat.  If it wasn't for the religious overtones building up through the book, I would probably have stuck with the series just because it's decently written and interesting politically, but oh well.

Juv Fantasy: Dragon Slippers, Jessica Day George

Dragon Slippers

Jessica Day George (Tuesdays at the Castle)

ISBN: 978159990575

Coming-of-age, betrayal and friendships, and very nice dragons, with a side order of creepy.

I really loved Tuesdays at the Castle, and I don't know why I assumed it was George's first book, but I just discovered the truly excellent Dragon Slippers, and I'm very glad I did.  Great storytelling, excellent characters (both good and bad) and a lovely take on dragon-kind and dragon hoards.

Creel's family is dead, so she and her brother are being raised by her aunt and uncle.  Sadly, no one really has any money, so auntie gets the bright idea to have Creel captured by the local dragon, rescued by the local lord's son, and carried off to a glorious life in the manor house (whereupon manorial favor (ie, money) will shower down upon the rest of the household (meaning auntie).  Creel, like most of us reading this devious plot, attempts to point out the many and manifest errors in logic, but auntie is firm, and Creel figures the old dragon is probably dead anyway, so she'll hang out for a bit, then come back home and her aunt will move on to a new wild scheme.

But the dragon is NOT dead, and Creel finds herself set off on an adventure that has her struggling to use her wits and her talents (embroidery and design) to support herself in a wide and wild world that doesn't particularly care about her.  

Creel is sharp and smart, clever and hard-working, and she's aided by (and hampered by) a well-written supporting cast (human and dragon).  She plans, she acts, and she is unafraid to speak up for herself (even when it doesn't necessarily work out well for her).  

The story gets a little dark and parts of it are downright creepy towards the end, but the overall tragic/terrible details are blurry and distant - think Prince Caspian, or the weirder parts of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Anyone who's more than one book into Harry Potter ought to be just fine as well.     

Fantasy: The Aeronaut's Windlass (Cinder Spires #1) Jim Butcher

The Aeronaut's Windlass (Cinder Spires #1)
Jim Butcher
ISBN: 9780451466808
Epic fantasy in a claustrophobic but sheltered high-rise "spire" housing a city above the dangerous misty surface world.

A bit odd to read, because I found people and scenes and characters from everywhere just casually dropped in.  Auri is there, Brienne of Tarth (at least physically), Horatio Hornblower, just re-skinned and in different circumstances.  It's not exactly a complaint - I like those characters, it's just odd to see them there.  Like having a very recognizable actor can sometimes make it hard for suspension of disbelief when I'm watching a movie, these characters sometimes made it hard for this particular world to seem quite real to me.

The story is fun and winds along well.  Much closer to Furies than to Dresden if you're curious.  I'm looking forward to the next installment, but I'm not aching for it or desperately waiting to learn what happens next.  The talking cats helped quite a lot.

Graphic Novel: The Nameless City

The Nameless City
Faith Erin Hicks
colors by Jordie Bellaire
ISBN: 9781626721579
Original fantasy graphic novel, first of hopefully a long-running series.
Read June 28, 2016

The Nameless City has been conquered serially by outsiders for as long as history remembers.  The invaders always pick a new name for it, but for people who live here, the city is nameless, and the need to name it is a sure mark of an outsider.  The Dao are the current masters here, and Kaidu has been sent over by his mother to be a part of the new empire.  He doesn't fit in with the war-mongering kids that he's training with, but he does find a friend - of sorts - in the city street smart Rat.

Love all the colors of people, and the close look at colonialism and oppression, and the limitations of people in power trying to keep power and perhaps do some good as well.

I'm really looking forward to the second book!

YA Fantasy: Vessel, Sarah Beth Durst

Vessel
Sarah Beth Durst
ISBN: 9781442423763
Follows the adventures of a girl fated to die and allow her clan's goddess to claim her body, when the goddess never shows up.


Nicely plotted, and the romantic entanglements didn't make me want to stab anyone in the eyes, so that's always a benefit.  Lots of really good world-building, and an interesting take on how bad things happen in a world with active gods all over the place. Not so thrilled that the eventual villain is revealed as a mad depressed person.

Very enjoyable.

Fantasy: Elemental Masters: A Study in Sable, Mercedes Lackey

A Study in Sable (Elemental Masters)
Mercedes Lackey
ISBN: 9780756408725
Germanic opera divas, Sherlock Holmes, and the Watson couple as Elemental Magicians.

So much fun, so fluffy.  I'm still bemused by the cover flaps giving the entire storyline away, as they did with the other most recent book with the Native American plotline.  Very odd, but that was the one off note in an otherwise quite satisfying read (although the call-backs to the Selkie book were a bit heavy-handed).

Graphic Novel: Feathers, by Jorge Corona & Jen Hickman

Feathers
writer & illustrator: George Corona
colors: Jen Hickman
letters: Deron Bennett
ISBN: 9781608867530
Order vs Chaos, white vs black feathers, street urchins, and a scary cowled figure trailing blood-red mind-controlling music.

Poe was left with his foster father as a small feathered infant boy.  His father wishes to keep him secret and safe, but Poe sneaks out during the daylight hours to help the Mice - the street children of the wild Maze outside the giant walls of the orderly City.  Bianca is a bored spoiled child of the city, and she runs away during a trip out into the Maze.  Paired up with Poe, the two children discover a sinister plot that threatens all the children of the city - inside and out.  Further, Poe discovers more about his heritage and two mysterious "narrator" figures hint at further stories to come.

Something very "Steamboy" about the bare-bones plot of a strange boy - an outsider even among outsiders - joining forces with an upper-crust girl against semi-mystical forces of evil, but beyond that overarching association, it's a fun story that reads quickly and very clearly with a smallish cast of quite neatly individualized characters who all serve important character or plot functions.

The panels are clear and generally easily followed, but some of the action scenes are a bit muddled or unclear, and we're left to consult the character dialogue to figure out what happened.  I really like the inclusion at the end of the process pages and original pitch along with commentary from the author/illustrator to show his thought-process in developing the story and the character appearances.  

Juv Fantasy: Magic at Wychwood, Sally Watson, illustrated by Frank Bozzo

Magic at Wychwood
Sally Watson, illustrated by Frank Bozzo
ISBN: 0394914686 (library binding)
Read May 27, 2016
Juv Classic Fantasy.  Very similar in feel and spunk to the more recent Tuesdays at the Castle.


This was a cute little short read, again found while helping a patron find an old childhood read.  This one is about a royal family, in particular the youngest daughter: spunky, redheaded, un-ladylike Princess Elaine, and their various adventures concerning magical happenings in and around the castle.  Extremely laid back, no real peril (people do get changed into animals and inanimate things, but everything always comes right in the end).  Elaine is a delightful hero, and her big brother Arthur takes the stage a few times also, and he is determinedly chivalrous and delightful in his adherence to the Code, especially when everyone else in the family is being much more sensible.

Very cute, and a great choice for bedtime serial readings - each "chapter" is a self-contained story that only slightly builds on the ones before it, up til the very end when everything gets tied off delightfully.

Juvenile Fantasy Mystery (classic?): The Diamond in the Window, Jane Langton

The Diamond in the Window
Jane Langton, illustrated by Erik Blegvad
ISBN: none
Pubdata: Harper and Row, NY, 1962
Read May 4, 2016

This is the starting point of a series of 8 children's novels written between 1962 and 2008 that focus on the Hall family children, starting in this book with Eleanor and Edward. They live with their Aunt Lily and Uncle Fred (Fred and Lily are brother and sister, not married). Their parents are dead (of course) and one day while exploring the old rickety mansion, they discover a hidden attic room and a mysterious sad case involving even more of Lily and Fred's siblings.  It seems that long ago, when Lily was a young woman, her youngest two siblings (a boy and girl named Edward and Eleanor: crucially and luckily nicknamed Ned and Nora) and her beau, a maharaja from India (yes really) all simply up and vanished one night, and no one could ever find them. Now the house is on the hook for back taxes, and the current set of siblings are off and running to solve the mystery and save the house.

It's cute, but it's dated, and the endless references to Lousia (Alcott) and Henry (Thoreau) and Walt (Whitman) are meant to be enriching, but end up as somewhat tiresome: although a few of the dream sequences involving the Alcott sisters as children, and showing Walden in his cabin are sweet and deftly done.  I can see how the book sticks in the mind (I discovered it when a patron was searching for it, half-remembered from their own childhood) because the dreams are creepy and unsettling and visually evocative, and the scenario is just wild enough to not quite be preposterous.  The ending is quick and utterly mundane, and everyone is happily settled down in the best possible fashion.  I'm glad I read it and made ms Langton's accquaintance, but I don't think I'll continue with the series - it's not quite my style, even though sections were very enjoyable.

Fairy Tales: Proud Knight, Fair Lady: The Twelve Lais of Marie de France

Proud Knight, Fair Lady: The Twelve Lais of Marie de France
Marie de France, translated by Naomi Lewis, illustrated by Angela Barrett
ISBN: 0670826561
Twelve early-medieval "fairy tales" about knights and maidens and courtly love.
Read April 12, 2016

So these are some of our earliest western fantasy/romance books, y'all.  Marie lived and wrote somewhere in the 1160s-1220s, and she wrote (possibly) quite a lot, most likely under the protection and encouragement of the otherwise unlamented Henry (Plantagenet) the Second.  We don't know who she was, but these Lais reveal a quick mind, good understanding of narrative convention and of interesting subject matters, and a fairly sharp humor.

So what we've got mainly are stories about courtly love.  Usually this is between people who are not married, and what I find interesting here is the utter lack of time spent on moralizing about why and how and when they're wrong and bad for their actions.  The affairs are often described to the audience as wrong, and the lovers often endure horrible suffering for their pains, but the people themselves (unless they are villainous) are held up as good ladies and gentlemen throughout, and in many more of the stories than I would have expected, the love affair itself is considered a courtly and acceptable thing: so long as the lovers remained in the bonds of considerate behavior and didn't flout their love in public or try to have their spouses killed off.  

I'm also interested in the very mundane and realistic portrayals of life which are interspersed with the obviously fantasical and what we would consider fairy-tale.  A good half of the stories have some touch of the fantastic. In Guigemar, we've got a magic boat, a knot and a belt that can only be unfastened by true love's touch, and a magic white hind with antlers (the male deer is the hart, and usually the one with antlers, making this even more interesting).  In Bisclavret we've got a werewolf who is a devoted and loyal knight who is the one betrayed, which is all sorts of unusual.  Lanval is a Galahad figure who feels no urge to love until he sees (what isn't explicitly stated to be, but cannot be anything but) an elven/faery maiden in the forest.  Les Deus Amanz is more like a folktale, but does have a purported magic potion: made by a wise and learned old Duchess no less! Yonec tells of a hostage wife succored (and seduced) by a hawk-knight shapeshifter. And Eliduc has a miraculous Juliet-like death swoon lasting days reversed by the judicious application of magical restorative berries (and the most forgiving and understanding wife EVER).      

The stories themselves are very short, and I think they're shorter still in the original verse format.  This translation puts them into a more modern "short story" narrative format that makes them feel much like the carefully-constructed "stand-alone" stories that are made from ancient myths and religious narratives; the ones that don't actually stand alone, but were often looked at originally in light of the entire cosmology and literary/religious/cultural tradition that the audiences were familiar with.  Likewise here I often get the impression that at least part of the clever commentary is lost to me because I don't know what exactly Marie is skewering, although her skills (and that of the translator) mean that I do know something's up.

It's interesting to read stories that are so good, but from a time when "good stories" required very different things than they do now.  It's odd to me that the characters are mainly nonexistent, or are archetypes: the virtuous young girl, the brave and true knight, the good king, the jealous wife... The plots are likewise fundamentally archetypical: the courtly affair, the doomed love (several of those), the restoration of the fortunes of the virtuous, the rewards of constancy in love.  Active plotting is likewise off the menu: characters don't often set out to do things, but have things either happen to them, or they're presented as dragged along by the hands of fate - especially in the falling-in-love arena, which is presented as an unstoppable and utterly expected and totally unavoidable progression based on being in the same space as the lovely representative of the opposite gender.

What's really most fascinating is that all those things we're told are necessary for a good story, but here are twelve interesting ones (some admittedly moreso than others, but still) that don't have any of that. What do they have instead?  Details in situations, personal grace notes, odd moralistic touches or olive branches towards human nature.  Focus on specific core ideals and motivations: love, jealousy, pique, greed, fear.  A flair for the dramatic: the procession of ever-more-beautiful pairs of girls to the court as Arthur fumes and the council dithers and poor Lanval suffers in self-inflicted silence.  A sense of humor: a wife's bitchy jealous commentary ends her up in a bind of her own making when she talks shit she knows isn't true about twins and adultery.  (And perhaps a not so subtle mockery of readers who might also believe that old canard?  The barb is pointed enough to withstand the additional targets.)  

Anyway; the stories aren't earth-shattering, and for most fairy-tale lovers or romance readers (or anyone who has read the Once and Future King waaaay too many times, these will seem quite familar and enjoyable.  Several of them are interesting and niggling enough that I wonder if anyone has taken them as the germ of an actual novel or fantasy.  It would be a fitting tribute, I think, to a passionate and talented author from so long ago.

Juvenile Fantasy: The Girl, The Dragon, and the Wild Magic, Dave Luckett

The Girl, The Dragon, and the Wild Magic (Rhianna trilogy)
Dave Luckett
ISBN: 0439411874
Scholastic paperback (originally published in Australia)
Read April 12, 2016


This is a cute little standalone juvenile fantasy, perfect for a reluctant reading young lady, or perhaps as a stepping stone to the Alanna books (Song of the Lioness series, Tamora Pierce) or The Hero and the Crown/The Blue Sword (Robin McKinley).

Rhianna is really bad at magic.  The rules are inconsistent and the logic is fuzzy, and all of her attempts at spellcasting end in catastrophic failure.  Makes sense, because for most people, too little magic is the problem, and for Rhianna, a rare Wild Magic talent means that her problems stem from too much magic - and therefore not enough control.  Her talent is pulling the raw power from the entire countryside, and until she can learn control herself, the court wizard works out a catch-and-release mechanism - which unfortunately a covetous local wizard and his nasty son turn against both Rhianna and the locals.  Comeuppance is swift and karmic, when his foolhardy and greedy nature calls a dragon to town, giving Rhianna a chance to show off how well she can do in a situation where more magic is a help rather than a hindrance.

Cute, sweet, innocent, and easily readable.  There are two sequels:
The Girl, the Apprentice, and the Dogs of Iron
The Girl, the Queen, and the Castle

New Arrival: Wordless Picture Book: The Only Child, by Guojing

The Only Child
Guojing
ISBN: 9780553497045
The author draws on the lonely memories of a childhood as a Chinese "only" to create a fantastical cloud-land fable of isolation and being lost.

Guojing includes a short preface that tells how as a six year old child, she got lost traveling between her parents and grandmother's houses.  In reality, the forlorn author trekked through the cold until she found familiar landmarks, making her way safely back to her family on her own.  In her imaginative wordless picture book (almost a graphic novel in the format of the panels and narrative pacing) a much-younger-seeming child has the same initial experience, but instead of a boring trudge down empty roads, this child wanders into the forest and is aided by a beautiful elk, then introduced to a magical land in the clouds where otters float on clouds, and the insides of blue whales are inky universes filled with stars and wonders.

Interstices show the worried parents setting off in search (cued by a delightfully pithy letter "Gone to visit Grandma" left behind) and worriedly fretting as the bus travels along, before jumping back to the fantasy world up in the clouds.  Adventure time over, while the tired roly-poly child sleeps, the magical elk journeys back to the real world to find her home, and when she awakes, leads her straight into the arms of her family.

Beautiful and haunting and sweet, and oh-so perfectly captures that universal poignant feeling of isolation and loneliness.  

Magical Western: Wake of Vultures, Lila Bowen (Delilah Dawson)

Wake of Vultures
Lila Bowen
ISBN: 9780316264310
Read January 31, 2016
Nettie is half-black and half "injun" and she's been treated like a slave all her life, but that all changes when she stakes a lecherous vampire one night.

First off, Lila Bowen is actually Delilah Dawson, who I've had the pleasure of meeting a few times, and also have read her YA books HIT and Servants of the Storm.  With this pseudonym, she heads out into slightly (only slightly) grimmer territory with the magical western story of Nettie Lonesome, who discovers that the black and white "facts" she learned from her disreputable and abusive "adoptive parents" don't match reality all that well.

The night Nettie dispatches a fearsome predator in the back yard, her eyes are opened to the wild and demanding magical world.  She'll have to stretch and grow and learn a whole lot to make it through to the classic western showdown.

I sadly can't say a whole lot about this book without giving bits of it away, but I have to say that having Nettie so backwards and isolated and fundamentalist in her thinking gives Bowen a great way to "tell" about the weird west that she's created without it being an "as you know, Bob" situation.  Nettie truly doesn't know a damn thing, but she's been tasked with a terrifying mission, and if she doesn't figure out what's going down pretty quick, she's sunk.

The supporting characters are believable and most are carefully drawn to be at least somewhat three-dimensional, given limitations of space.  No one (with the positive exception of a mentor, and perhaps unsurprisingly the negative portrayal of the "adoptive parents" and big bad at the end) is presented in an unremittingly good or bad light - people have their positive and negative traits without those traits becoming shorthands for identifying white or black hats.  Nettie herself finds her prejudices and stereotypes challenged and countermanded constantly through the book, and other characters have their own assumptions shattered as well.  Sometimes they react positively, occasionally not.  Despite the grim nature of the quest narrative, the overall sense of the character base is supportive and caring, which I figure is probably the most magical aspect of the whole story, but I'm not going to complain too hard, because it really becomes necessary to balance out the grim and gruesome evil that Nettie is forced to confront.

Also, can I say how forever grateful and happy I am that this is the first book in a series, but the storyline is totally and completely resolved.  There IS a cliffhanger, but it's one that I don't actually mind.  You'll have to read it to get the joke.  :)  

2015 Review Round-Up: Fantasy Novella: Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente

Six-Gun Snow White
Catherynne M. Valente
ISBN: 9781481444729
Sets Snow White in the American West, with a side-plot giving the Wicked Queen actual motivation.
Read December 2015

This was an interesting and powerful retelling, and I finished it off quickly.  I loved the addition of the sub-plot that gave the stepmother/wicked queen an actual motive for Snow's heart, and the interesting twisty development that ensued.  I thought that the "six-gun" motif was undertilised and somewhat forgotten as the story progressed, and especially the detail of the gemstones seemed to fall by the wayside.  Likewise the ending of the story felt a bit rushed, and the epilogue was peculiar.  I had the oddest feeling that the story beforehand, all wild west and openly magical and folkloric, was the reality, and that the glimpse of modern life with professors and physics and apartments was the fantasy, all hazy and unreal.  It was the strangest sensation of disjointed impressions I've ever gotten from a story that I liked.

Despite all that, it was a glorious magical (grim, depressing, hellish) world to visit for a short while, and Snow was a captivating protagonist to follow.

2015 Review Round-Up: Historical Fantasy/Steampunk: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
Natasha Pulley
ISBN: 9781620408339
Sumptuous cover hints at a rich and clockwork-detailed plot, filled with multifaceted characters.
Read November 2015

The most interesting thing about this book is how Pulley manages to keep you from deciding which characters are good guys and which characters are bad guys for the ENTIRE BOOK.  It's nothing short of a magic trick all of itself, and it makes the perfect cherry on top of this confection of a story.  It's rich and mellow and tooth-achingly dense, and just jammed full of atmosphere like plummy preserves inside an overstuffed tart.  From the very first paragraphs, you realise that you're in for something enjoyable, but it's the absolute opposite of a light quick read - it's dense and full of philosophy and humanity and the big important questions of free will and fate and predestination.  Yet even so it doesn't feel like a slog - it all just seems naturally flowing from the premise, which I'm not even going to hint at here, because it's so amazingly absurd and complicatedly simple.  If you like peculiar characters studies, and atmospheric steampunky London, you'll be right at home here.

2015 Review Round-Up: YA Fantasy: Court of Fives, Kate Elliott

Court of Fives
Kate Elliott
ISBN: 9780316364195
Read September 2015

This is Elliott's first YA, and I found it really enjoyable, although the set-up to the inevitable series relies on the ever-exasperating trope of characters feeling betrayed because they didn't actually communicate with each other for whatever shoehorned reason the author imagines to keep them from communicating so that they can feel betrayed.  I hate to feel personally offended by this when it is a common trope and not even unique to YA, it just bugs the ever living crap out of me.

That said - despite ending on a note that personally pissed me right off, this was a very good story, and an enjoyable read, and I've been recommending it to people.

Our fantasy world is pretty small: a single city, with stories and legends of other places that come into play later on, but I like that we're tightly focused on the here and now, because that place is exceptionally well-crafted and interesting.  The city was somewhat recently conquered, and the indigenous people are now very much second-class citizens.  Their folkways and traditions are outlawed, they're barred from the nobility and from the army, and even having one as a concubine can be a social millstone.  Which is unfortunate for our story, as our main character Jessamy, along with her sisters, are the result of one such relationship - even worse is that her father, a respected military leader, actually loves his concubine, and would even marry her if it were legal.  Of course all this leads to grief, and that rich backstory provided a lot of interesting food for thought while reading.

Despite all that class-based melodrama, the real action comes in the American Ninja Warrior-style martial arts competitions that are staged throughout the city: the Fives games.  Gyms sponsor promising athletic youths (male and female both - which I loved) who compete against each other in an obstacle-course area.  Winners are feted and upwardly mobile, middle tiers can somewhat comfortably retire into training the next generation of athletes, losers generally end up unpleasantly dead in the arena somehow.  Jessamy is of course, obsessed with this game, and naturally quite good at it (I adore that Elliot has her taking after her father in many respects - a very nice touch).

The magic is low-key, and the world building is fantastic.  I'm very much looking forward to the next one in the series, and I hope that the "relationship troubles built on miscommunications" aren't a death knell for characters I actually like.

2015 Review Round-Up: Graphic Novel: The Graveyard Book (Volumes 1&2) Neil Gaiman et al

The Graveyard Book: Volume 1
Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell
Kevin Nowlan, P. Craig Russell, Tony Harris, Scott Hampton, Galen Showman, Jill Thompson, Stephen B. Scott
ISBN: 9780062194817

The Graveyard Book: Volume 2
Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell
David LaFuente, Scott Hampton, P. Craig Russell, Kevin Nowlan, Galen Showman
ISBN: 9780062194831
Both Read October 2015

The graphic novel adaptation of the epic fantastical and ghostly re-telling of the Jungle Book.

Just go read it.  It's Neil Gaiman, and it's beautiful.  I would recommend reading the actual book first - it makes things clearer and deeper to have that background to draw from, and it makes for a nice sense of anticipation about what the various artists are going to choose to do to depict various people and scenes.  This was the October read for our library's Graphic Novel Book Club, and it was a big hit.  Everyone enjoyed the story, even though most people didn't realize it was an homage to the Jungle Book (which you should also read, but remember that Kipling was an AWFUL racist.)

Bod wanders away from a gristly scene, and takes refuge in a cemetery, under the protection of the Grey Lady, the cemetery ghosts, and the mysterious nocturnal caretaker Silas.  These grim beings form a protective family for Bod to grow and develop, but all too soon he is going to learn about the wider world, and once he leaves the cemetery grounds, he's dangerously vulnerable to the strange man Jack who hunts him relentlessly.

2015 Review Round-Up: Fantasy Novella: The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Patrick Rothfuss

The Slow Regard of Silent Things
Patrick Rothfuss
ISBN: 9780756410438
Lyrical and quirky novella set in the Kingkiller Chronicles universe, focused on Auri.
Read August 23, 2015

This book is just like Auri - it's not quite right in the head, but it's sweet and endearing and a little bit scary around the edges, and if you expect too much of it - if you WANT too much - it'll break and twist under you, but if you can just slip into it and glide along the broken and shattered road, you'll have delightful company, and perhaps feel a little less alone in your own brokenness and peculiarity.