2009, Viking Adult

Filed under: Fantasy

Quentin is a gifted student and a sullen teen. Though he’s nearly an adult, he chooses somewhat childish methods of escapism: sleight of hand tricks and Narnia-esque novels set in a land called Fillory. When he is unexpectedly summoned to a secretive college for magicians, Brakebills, he quickly learns magic and other worlds are quite real.

This book was billed as as Harry Potter for adults, and at first, that’s exactly what I got. Turns out, I didn’t much care for that. For the first few chapters, The Magicians is a somewhat fun romp in the mode of Harry Potter: there’s plenty of making friends and learning magic at an enchanted institution. There’s some sexuality and drug use mixed in, but it’s more or less a Potter knockoff. It’s entertaining, but it got stale fast and is somewhat forgettable.

The novel really begins to take off once Quentin and his classmates graduate. Unlike most fantasy stories of this ilk (the Harry Potter series, The Neverending Story, etc), the empowered Brakebills students don’t exit their insular community into a world in desperate need of saving. Instead they are unleashed on a world that is probably better off without them.

Quentin and his friends realize every teenager’s dream. They have almost limitless superhuman powers, unending wealth, and the freedom to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, with zero consequence. The friends soon sink into a depressing hedonism. Power slowly cripples and consumes them much like alcoholism (to which, consequently, they also succumb). Eventually, Quentin makes a series of wrong decisions, putting in jeopardy the things that should most matter to him.  His stubborn avoidance of responsibility and commitment to immature justifications exacerbate the issues. This is when he becomes irreparably unlikeable. This is also when he becomes immensely interesting.

The group of young magicians, on the verge of their own self-destruction, desperately search for some meaning to their lives. When an opportunity comes to adventure, they go, with little regard for the consequences of their actions. They think playing hero can define them, and allow them to fulfill some part of themselves they can’t grasp, yet feel entitled to. Needless to say, they mess things up pretty bad.

All those scenes where Rowling’s hero wants to cave, give up: what if he did? What if he didn’t have that superhuman drive for greatness? How would the story differ? What would happen next? The Magicians turns the wish fulfillment of most fantasy books like this on its head. It is dark, brooding, and, at times, depressing. And because of that, of how very differently it ends than it begins, it is a pretty good book too.

Similar reads: The Book of Lost Things (Connolly), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Rowling), The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis)

Author: David Petersen

2008/2009 Archaia Studios Press

Filed Under Graphic Novels, Fantasy

I used to love Brian Jaques’s Redwall series when I was younger (and I’d probably still love it if I went back now to read it, which I now may), so when I saw the cover of Mouse Guard Winter 1152 depicting the cloaked and armed mice trudging determinedly through the snow, I couldn’t help but get it. This review is actually of two books, Winter and Fall, both quite short.

While the premise of the series seems almost identical to that of the Redwall series, Petersen actually creates a pretty unique and compelling scenario for his world. Unlike Jaques’s mice, who more or less live in a human universe all their own (i.e. trees and rivers are of the same proportions they would be to human characters), the mice of Mouse Guard live in a world where they are the smallest beings. They inhabit oak trees and rock walls converted to great halls, and the non-mouse foes (crabs, an owl) they face are many times larger than they in size.

What I liked most, though, is that for the most part, the foes are other mice. Mouse Guard is set after a great war with weasels has been over for enough years to be slipping into legend. The guard mice, once heroes, now travel between the isolated mice cities and act as emissaries, or as body guards to trades mice. The first compilation (each season collects a run of individual comics), Fall, concerns sabotage and insurrection: a faction of rebel mice, fearing oligarchy, attempt to overthrow the guard mice and establish a monarchical government. It does a nice job (as any first entry in a series should do) of presenting a complete beginning, middle, and satisfying end. Winter works more as an establishing point for a longer running series, opening the world and revealing a much broader setting for the fiction.

I enjoyed the art style a lot. There are lots of bold lines and colors, and the characters have a sort of badass-Beatrix-Potter look to them. The landscapes and action scenes are also a pleasure to look at. Neither of these Mouse Guard compilation quite manages to be the sprawling epic a novel could be, but they do lay the groundwork for a series that may accomplish that. I found these books to provide a nice, if brief diversion, and I’d be interested in revisiting Petersen’s fiction in the future.

Similar Reads: Salamandastron (Jaques), Watership Down (Adams), The Arrival (Tan)

2008, Vintage Books

Filed Under Literary, Fantasy

In Soon I Will Be Invincible, the world’s greatest villain, Dr. Impossible, has once again escaped from prison and the diabolical genius is about to embark on his latest scheme to take over the world. As usual, standing in his way is a league of superheroes, in this case the Champions. Nothing terribly original so far, right?  Wrong.

Austin Grossman does nothing short of re-invigorate the superhero story and takes great strides in legitimizing the comics genre as a subject worthy of literary pursuit. Grossman greatest achievement is adding depth and richness to his characters in an arena where characters are usually reduced to superficial props that set a stage for epic battles and the showcasing of ludicrous powers. As is evident in the title of the book, and the chapter titles within, such as “Riddle Me This,” “Welcome to My Island”, and “But Before I Kill You”, there is a good deal of playfulness and send-up at work, but Grossman’s use of comic book clichés is more an act of celebration rather than of subversion.

The story alternates between two first person perspectives, one from an agent of good, Fatale, and the other from an agent of evil, Dr. Impossible.

Fatale is a cyborg whose implants and prosthetics are so advanced they could be futuristic (perhaps even invented by Dr. Impossible himself). From her perspective we get a behind-the-scenes look at a superhero squad, and it isn’t very glamorous.  There are in-fighting and leadership issues, a failed romance, and a mysterious love triangle.  The entire group is out of practice when it comes to confronting such a formidable foe as Dr. Impossible and the Champions suffer from an inferiority complex when they are compared to the now-retired, original gang of world-saving superheroes, the Super Squadron.  

Not only is their most powerful hero missing and unlikely to return, the heroes are forced to work with a former super-villain who has somewhat suspiciously (she’s had a long-term relationship with Dr. Impossible) decided to change sides.  The Champions certainly seem to be up against it, especially having to invite a newcomer to the group to replace the greatest android of all time, Galatea, who had to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the heroes and the world from an alien horde.

Grossman does an admirable job of humanizing Fatale and grants her a depth we are not accustomed to seeing in the portrayal of superheroes.  Despite her confidence in her own abilities, she did black-ops for the NSA prior to her hero invitation, she is insecure about how she will be received by a league of such awesome power and renown.  Fatale also grapples with how her cybernetic implants affect her humanity, her femininity, her sexuality, a mysterious past, and, ultimately, her identity.

Despite his accomplishments in creating a complicated superhero, Grossman’s novel really shines in his portrayal of Dr. Impossible.  Not only does he provide a unique perspective to the superhero world by telling a story from the point of view of an arch-villain, he invests Dr. Impossible with depth. A self-proclaimed genius of unimaginable reach suffers from what is playfully described as Malign Hypercognition Disorder.  We quickly follow him through his awkward youth and the years he spent at a school for the gifted, the breeding ground for many of the world’s future heroes.  A disastrously failed experiment in college not only turns him into an outcast, it creates CoreFire, his arch-nemesis. Grossman also humanizes Dr. Impossible by introducing two failed opportunities for love, one with a college classmate, and the other with a remarkably similar woman, an arch-villain known as Lily.

From the beginning of the novel, Dr. Impossible’s life is characterized by hardship and thwarted dreams.  He exhausts himself to escape a seemingly inescapable prison; he struggles to regain his confidence as he discovers his aging and diminished physical skills are now pitted against younger and stronger heroes.  Since his latest imprisonment he has fallen from power in the criminal underworld and has difficulty finding a reliable ally in his struggle to regain both stature and the resources needed to once again try to take over the world.  Grossman’s rendering of the villain’s plight and struggles soon aligns the reader to his cause and even though this temptation is tempered by the counter-story of the heroine Fatale, by the end, one can’t help but want Dr. Impossible to finally overcome the odds and realize his dastardly vision, if at least fleetingly.

One of Grossman’s most entertaining moments comes when Dr. Impossible first confronts the Champions.  As told from the perspective of the villain we get a sympathetic account of his frustration and exasperation with having to do battle against creatures of unimaginable power and limitless strength.  While Dr. Impossible is imbued with some superhuman properties that make him tougher and stronger than the average human, his powers are no match for those of the heroes. Some of the heroes simply cannot be hurt, and the ones that can be hurt never seem to die; and he is always outnumbered.  He must rely on cunning, intelligence, the wild weapons he is able to invent, and healthy dose of luck.

While a casual first person narrative delivered by both perspectives makes for an easy read and fits with the language typical of the genre, it was troublesome that for two such widely different characters their language would be so similar.  Dr. Impossible, an incredible genius, seems to think and communicate in rather simple, mundane language. Granted, choosing to create a unique first person voice that aptly captures the musings and calculations of a mad genius could possibly create a rather confusing narrative, it seems that Grossman could have put greater effort into distinguishing Dr. Impossible from Fatale.  Such a difference, short of choosing to deliver one of the stories in third person, would further embellish the effect he is trying to create in adding depth to what are typically shallow characters.  Instead, having two similar voices for two dissimilar characters only reinforces the notion that these types of characters are in fact shallow.

One other flaw with the language in the stories is that Grossman sometimes becomes repetitive, with story elements recurring in the text almost verbatim.  Again, this repetition, even when it is only a partial re-telling works against the concept of creating depth to these characters and their worlds and pushes the story back towards the shallow cliché that Grossman is trying to deepen.

Regardless of this stylistic critique, the language Grossman employs does provide for a brisk and entertaining read.  The author has done a superb job in bringing depth and character to an otherwise shallow and exhausted subject.  Any reader with a passing interest in comics to the most zealot fanatic will appreciate the inventiveness Grossman attaches to the comic book world while successfully maintaining and working within all of its celebrate clichés.

Similar Book: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon

Author: Lord Dunsany

Public Domain, 1912

Best ebook deal: free

Filed under Literary, Fantasy, Short Stories

It’s always great when a book turns out to be nothing at all what you were expecting, and all the better for it. I’d never heard of Lord Dunsany (aka Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany) before, but apparently he’s a big deal in fantasy. This collection is ecclectic and creative, with stories that delve into many wonderous locales and involve a wide spectrum of characters and situations. Though there are centaurs and man-eating gibbelins and fantastical locales such as The City of Never, the fantasy Dunsany presents is not of the sword and sorcery variety I expected to encounter.

In fact, the creativity of the different fantasy worlds this books offers is to credit for most of the book’s charm. You can draw a direct line from stories like “The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap” and “The Wonderful Window” to contemporary fabulists like Steven Millhauser. The stories are original, unique, and mostly devoid or typical fantasy tropes. And are quite delightful for it.

The characters are finely constructed and complex. At times we find them in familiar situations, yet they sometimes arrive with compelling motivations, or approach what might seem like mundane situations–albeit in an imaginary land–with unique approaches.  The excellent play with narrative scope helps accentuate this. Perhaps this falls on my lap as a relatively inexperienced reader of fantasy, but I expected a lot of tidy, “once upon a time” stories with clearly marked beginning, middle, and end points. Instead most of them begin in medias res, and usually in a different and unrelated universe as the previous story.

My favorite stories are those based in a more fabulist mode, like the two I mentioned above. There is also fare here that falls slightly more in line with what you might expect from a collection of fantasy stories, such as “The Bride of the Man-Horse” and “Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon of Romance.” In general I found the titles charming, even if they are a bit too much to the point, as is the case with “The Probable Adventure of the Three Literary Men.”

Though at times the language can feel a bit dated and dry, it is on the whole a strong collection of stories by an author who those readers not versed in classic fantasy may never have heard of. The stories are quick and interesting enough to capture anyone’s attention long enough to tickle their imagination.

Other books: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (Burton, trans.), Dangerous Laughter (Millhauser)

Author: Neil Gaiman

Harper Collins, 2002

Best ebook deal: ebooks.com (only $3!)

Filed under: Young Adult, Literary, Fantasy

Neil Gaiman has a real knack for macabre young adult fiction. His characters are fleshed out and idosyncratic, his settings unique and vivid, and his plotting and pacing pitch perfect. This is the second of his novels I’ve read in two weeks, and this description holds true for both. They both won Hugos amongst other awards as well, so I’m not alone in thinking this.

Though it isn’t a direct adaptation like The Graveyard Book is, Coraline is a wonderful amalgamation of Alice in Wonderland and Hansel and Gretel with a substantial amount of creative originality stirred in. It is a short and marvelous story that at times channels Tim Burton and Roald Dahl, and at times surpasses them.

Coraline Jones has just moved with her parents to a creepy old house in the country. The building is divided into flats, with two eccentric biddies and their scottie dog living in one other apartment and a bizarre foreigner who converses with mice living in the attic. A black tabby prowles the gothic old garden outside. Coraline soon grows bored in this new places, and her parents are two preoccupied to entertain her, so she takes to exploring. She soon finds a curious little door in the parlor. Yet once she finds they key and opens the small door, she finds it only hides a brick wall.

That night she is awakened and enticed by a shadow back to the little door, and this time she finds behind it a passageway, which she enters. On the other side Coraline finds herself in what looks like the exact same house and the exact same room. Yet things are not exactly the same, they are slightly twisted and off. She soon meets her “Other Mother” and “Other Father,” who are exactly like her real parents except they are more attentive to her. And they have buttons sewed into where their eyes should be.

They give her nice things and delicious food, and as she explores this strange place she meets other “Others” and sees exciting and wonderful things. Coraline befriends the black tabby who has also wandered into the Other Mother’s world, and who can speak (or at least can be understood by Coraline) in this realm. Yet despite all the strange and wonderful things, a noticeable grotesqueness permeates the world. When the Other Mother asks Coraline to stay with her forever while offering two buttons and a threaded needle, Coraline realizes just how sinister and dangerous a place she has stumbled upon.

The Other Mother kidnaps Coraline’s real parents and imprisons them somewhere secret, and so Coraline and her feline companion set out on an adventure to rescue her missing parents as well as free the souls of three children who have previously fallen prey to the Other Mother in her wicked trap.

This book is short, but makes up for this with an exciting and imaginative story. As with The Graveyard Book, the characters are all finely crafted and a pleasure to read, and the setting is even more finely rendered. This book also gets a bit darker than most YA (sewing up eyes, for instance), which I appreciate. I’d recommend this book to any fan of young adult or macabre fiction, and for anyone who read and enjoyed The Graveyard Book, picking this up should be a no-brainer.

Similar Books: Alice in Wonderland (Carroll) Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Grimm and Grimm), The Graveyard Book (Gaiman), The Collected Works of Poe (Poe).

Also, the recent animated film was pretty entertaining and a great adaptation, though I could do without the 3D gimmickry.

This book has been chosen as a Great Read.

Author: Neil Gaiman

Harper Collins, 2008

Best ebook deal: Sony eBook Store

Filed under: Young Adult, Literary, Fantasy

I guess I chose a pretty good time to read and review this book, as it was just awarded the Hugo Award (to compliment the Newbery and Locus awards it already has won), making this as good a time to talk about this great novel as ever.

As you might infer from the title, The Graveyard Book takes its inspiration from Kipling’s classic children’s’ novel, The Jungle Book. Nobody (Bod) Owens is an orphan raised in a graveyard by its otherworldly denizens. One of Gaiman’s greatest achievements with this novel is the cohesive and enthralling world he creates. He quickly establishes the different lore and hierarchies within the world of the dead, and never once was I confused about the rules of this fictional world that very early on felt as robust and immersive as that of Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

Within this novel, Gaiman creates some of the most amusing characters I’ve come across in YA fiction. The deceased who live in the graveyard Bod calls home are quirky characters of many different varieties, from a stern Roman and a cheeky witch burned at the stake and buried in the potter’s field, to a flamboyant poet who chose to be buried with his unpublished poetry as a final dig to harsh critics who couldn’t care less. Bod himself is a great bildungsroman protagonist, curious and occasionally petulant, yet kind-hearted and slightly tortured.

At times the book’s adventures are slightly tangential to the main plot, such as the bumbling trek through the land of the ghouls (clearly inspired by Mowgli and the monkey kidnappers). This never detracts from things though, as it allows the reader’s knowledge of this world to expand in unexpected directions in the same manner it is happening to Bod. The central plot concerns The Man Jack, killer of Bod’s biological parents, as he searches for the child he failed to kill–I won’t, of course, reveal his motivations.

Beneath the adventuresome episodes and driving conflict is a wonderful coming of age story. Bod is a boy caught between two worlds. When he is home he is granted free reign of the graveyard, and his guardian, Silas, teaches him different skills used by the dead, such as “fading” from site, passing through walls, and “dream walking.” Yet Bod is not dead, so he can never fully connect with the dead he lives amongst. He ages when his childhood friends don’t, and he has a future, something the dead can never have.

However Bod doesn’t fit into the world of the living either. He is odd and forgettable to them (in part because he must fade regularly and try to keep under Jack’s radar). He makes only one friend, Scarlet Amber Perkins, who’s family moves away when her parents become worried of the time she spends playing in the graveyard. So Bod is a strange and solitary boy, left to explore two worlds (that of the living and that of the dead) in search of himself.

It’s really a great book; I enjoyed it so much I’ve plunged straightaway into Coraline, Gaiman’s first children’s book (and an excellent movie). Anyone who enjoys young adult fiction will love The Graveyard Book, and its great cast of characters, excellent plotting, pacing, suspense, and engrossing setting should appeal to a wide audience of readers even if they don’t regularly read YA books. Gaiman’s novel is deserving of all the critical recognition it is receiving, just as it is deserving of even more readers.

Similar Books: The Jungle Book (Kipling), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling), Great Expectations (Dickens)

Author: China Miéville

Del Rey, 2009

Best ebook deal: Sony’s eBook Store

Filed under: Fantasy, Mystery

On the one hand, The City & The City is a straightforward mystery about a murder that has (of course) ties to larger forces at work. On the other hand, it presents the mystery of the world in which it takes place. This second mystery has the potential to be philosophical, allegorical, and richly entertaining in the grand tradition of the best magical realists. Unfortunately, Miéville barely scratches its surface, and so the whole novel feels unsatisfying and frustratingly unrealized.

The two cities of the title are Besźel and Ul Qoma, city-state neighbors roughly somewhere near Eastern Europe in an alternate history version of the approximate present. At some point, evidently, something happened, and now there’s a stringent set of absurd fascist laws that make life tricky to say the least.

I’m not saying more because it feels like I’m giving too much away―and that’s not good. Evidently, Miéville requested that reviewers not spoil the “twist” of the novel; the problem is that that twist is actually the premise, and once you figure out what’s going on, there’s nowhere else to go, nothing further happens.

The real mystery of this world should be how these circumstances were established in the first place, and why the citizenry puts up with such an admittedly ridiculous way of life. Those are questions that Miéville doesn’t have answers for. If he had made the psychology of these people intrinsic to the murder mystery, this book could have been brilliant.

Unfortunately, the mystery doesn’t rely on or care why this odd relationship between the cities formed, only that it formed. The result is a Jerry Bruckheimer-ish novel: an interesting world wasted as merely a backdrop for a formulaic story.

The hero of The City & The City is Inspector Tyador Borlú, of Besźel’s Extreme Crime Squad. As you might sense just from that sentence, Miéville relies a lot on bizarre nomenclature and weird-looking names to convey that this is a different world. That’s another symptom of too much care paid to the surface of things.

Inspector Borlú is a bland, humorless man, who seems to be the only half-competent, half-caring detective in a sea of hapless, vicious cops. He occasionally deigns to crack a joke, but then often seems to regret it, such as this passage where Borlú, speaking first, briefs a subordinate and then ruminates on his own words:

“She probably used proxies and a cleaner-upper online too, because there was bugger-all of interest in her cache.”

“You have no idea what you’re saying, do you, boss?”

“None at all. I had the techies write it all out phonetically for me.” Perhaps one day we would be finished with I-don’t-understand-the-internet jokes.

In this way, Borlú continually sours any fun we might have watching him work.

Also in play is Miéville’s or Borlú’s bad tendency to put expository notes between em dashes in the middle of sentences, notes which make it―because they often come smack in the middle of phrases, and are quite long and overly detailed, and actually refer to clauses in the second half of the sentence, the section after the note itself―difficult to read a lot of those sentences on the first try.

All this makes it a chore to get through the first third of this book. It picks up from there, and from about page 100 to page 280 (before a quite lackluster ending), there’s a pretty good murder mystery, with a few pretty good twists and kinks, thanks to the weird intertwining of Besźel and Ul Qoma.

The entire novel, though, has a dark specter hanging over its head.

Borlú, like many of the characters in City, is unthoughtful and almost robotic in his acceptance of living conditions in Besźel. Most people in these cities not only fail to question the ridiculous laws, they rigidly obey them, despite the fact that the fascist shadow government rarely actually prosecutes citizens for most transgressions.

The problem of rationale is not solved as City goes along, but rather exacerbated. At the end of the novel, there’s even less reason for the status quo and even more questions of motivation. It’s a story of surfaces and facades: if you look for foundation, you’ll be disappointed.

I suppose City could be charitably interpreted as a story of fascism told not from the perspective of the freedom fighters or the overlords, but from middle management, from the cogs in the fascist system that don’t question or resist but simply, meekly obey. That’s interesting as an idea, but in practice, it’s not all that compelling.

If you’re a big Miéville fan, or you don’t mind a plot full of holes, there’s a decent mystery here, despite the lack of character. But don’t expect the earth-shattering genre-bending masterpiece that City is widely purported to be. Most of its power lies in Miéville simply withholding information from the reader (and requesting interviewers do the same), and that’s not a very pleasant gimmick to be on the receiving end of.

Similar books: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman; The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon; and, though I’ve never read the book, I was reminded of the movie Children of Men—here’s a link to the book, it sounds quite different

Author: Nahoko Uehashi, translated from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano

Arthur A. Levine, 2009

Best ebook deal: Not Available

The first Moribito had all the trappings of a great YA adventure story. I bought it on a whim and found myself quite surprised at how good it was. A lot of the things that Moribito did well, relatively deep political undercurrents, strong characterization, quick action and sprawling adventure, its sequel does well too. Yet something feels a little off. Not unlike Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Moribito II feels like a story with familiar characters who are forced to be somewhere they shouldn’t. The story works, but it doesn’t feel as organic as the first, and the structural supports its predecessor so nicely blended and wove here show through and draw the reader out.

In this second adventure, Balsa returns to her homeland to clear her adoptive father’s name. He fled the land to save Balsa’s life, allowing his honor to be sullied by conniving and power hungry brothers. When she meets a young warrior and his sister in a legendary cave, she is re-thrust into a political drama set in motion when she first departed the land as a child. The story is strong and well thought out, featuring a plot by nobles to utilize the local spiritual lore in order to usurp the kingdom.

Much of the mystery and suspense that propelled the first story is lacking in this plot however. Where before Balsa was putting together the plot pieces while protecting a young fleeing prince, most of this story takes place in the same village, and most of the information is readily available to the reader from the start. So we are left to observe how different characters act upon different levels of knowledge, which is less satisfying in a YA adventure that it is in a more complex and literary book (such as The Voyage of the Narwal, which is an excellent example of such narrative suspense).

Also slightly irksome are the oddly utilized supernatural elements. Like in the first installment, the magical elements of the book that are subtly implemented (in this case mostly relegated to the segments within the Mountain King’s caves in the beginning and end of the book), work exceedingly well and help craft a compelling and unique setting. Here however, there are certain elements, namely the Brownie-esque ermine riders, that seem to have been included just because the other though some such element needed to be there. They are neither charming nor crucial to the story, and the book would be beter off without them.

This is not a bad book by any means. Like the first, it is a sound adventure with strong characters and plotting. (Also like the first, the artistic presentation of the book is excellently beautiful). However, Moribito II is seriously lacking in innovation and creativity. There are eight installments in the series (only two so far in English), so here’s hoping the coming installments focus more on adventure and expanding the beautiful world Uehara has created, on Balsa’s progression rather than on trying to link the novels through a revisiting of a past better left mysterious.

Other Books: Moribito – Guardian of the Spirit (Uehashi), Martin the Warrior (Jaques), The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkein)

Author: D.W. Gol

Eloquent Books, 2008

Best ebook deal: Not Available

I love reading small-run books. I always have the feeling I’m in on a secret when I read a book most readers have never heard of. This feeling is tinged with sadness though, as there are so many good books that just don’t get the attention they deserve. Though they sometimes lack the precise polish of books put through big editing factories, independently published and small-run books are often more creative and original than mainstream fare. There’s also something charming about reading a labor of love that feels more like the author’s uncompromised vision than an attempt at character branding or serialization (as often seems the case with middling YA).

Purple Butterflies is just this kind of book: it is both creative and charming. And you’ve probably never heard of it.

This novel is geared toward a young female reader, though any fan of young adult literature will find this to be an enjoyable read. It is well paced and structurally satisfying, though it is in many ways a conventional work, sticking to the young-outcast-empowered-through-magic mold. Obese fourteen-year-old Darby (cruelly referred to as “Fatty” by many, including her vicious and abusive uncle) learns her uncanny ability to communicate with animals is due to fairy blood in her veins. And while this grants her power, it also burdens her with the heavy task of protecting the planet.

Most impressive about this book is the creativity of the mythos. Golden cleverly blends fairy tale mythology (fairies, ogres, warlocks) and Greco-Roman mythology (Titans) with biblical lore (fallen angels) and evolution (including an archaeopteryx). The blend is deftly executed and makes for a compelling, almost political backstory: good and evil battle for the planet amid a much more domestic environmental battle over real estate development. It never gets too preachy, which is commendable when dealing with such material, and the action carrying the themes is engaging and fun. Solid characterization (especially of Darby’s friend Lucy and aunt Sharon) rounds things out nicely.

My only complaint is that Darby’s transformation makes her effortlessly beautiful, undermining her character development. This is a slight gripe though, and I can forgive the planet’s savior a bit of exercise ethic. All in all Purple Butterflies is a fun and creative book, and will make an excellent choice for any young female reader hungry for new reading material.

Other Books: Rowan of the Wood (Rose & Rose), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Rowling), Maniac Magee (Spinelli)

Authors: Christine & Ethan Rose

Dalton Publishing, 2008.

Best eBook Deal: Free from Feedbooks

I tend to be skeptical of anything that is offered free without stipulation, especially over the internet. I came across Rowan of the Wood while perusing the Feedbooks catalogue on my iPhone Stanza app.  I was pleased to learn that not only is this a complete book and a not sample segment nor littered with random advertisements, but it’s also a surprisingly good young adult book.

Rowan opens a tad slowly and Harry Potter-y (well, I shouldn’t give old JKR too much credit.  Let’s say convential: Bookish orphan who is often bullied escapes into books until he and his outcast friends find empowerment thanks to a nudge from the supernatural), but soon finds its stride. The authors inject some nice bits of history into the tale that allow the story a fair share of freshness in a genre where books can quickly become stale.

Actually, my biggest gripe with this book is that they didn’t explore the historial elements enough. A large section of this book is backstory spanning more than a millennia, and because of this the book had the potential to be sprawling and rather epic and vast.  I’ll summarize the plot in  nutshell so you can see what I mean:

Rowan and Fiana are a Druid priest and priestess whose wedding is crashed by a murderous Christian raid. In order to save them, Rowan hides his bride and clan in the ethereal Otherworld. He is unable to escape with them however and becomes trapped in this own magic wand.  Fourteen hundred years of being carried around the world in a relic, he is released by a nerdy California orphan, Cullen. To Rowan the millennia and a half felt like a day. Fiana however, wandered the globe during that time, searching relentlessly for her love. At first she extended her life by Druidish magic, helping people with her magic from era to era, but ultimately sold her soul and became a homicidal vampire in order to extend her lifetime, and her search, indefinitely. Needless to say, Fiana dipped into some rather wicked and Faustian evil and Rowan’s reunion with her is not what he’d expected.

Most of the chapters occur in the present and concern Rowan and Cullen, but there are chapters that follow Fiana through the ages: we see her escape an Inquisitorial witch burning and travel transatlantic to the New World at the turn of the century, to name two. This is where the book could really have benefited from some extra girth, as all this happens rather quickly.  More time and page space here would really help express Fiana’s doomed loneliness as she wanders long spans of time alone and also help the reader realize that pining, broken-hearted anguish that is described but never quite conveyed satisfactorily. This falling short also causes the ending to read a little anti-climactic, though by no means a letdown.

Rowan of the Wood is billed as the first of a five-part series, and here’s hoping the authors wisely use that space to craft a lore all their own, spending a little more time with the characters and their histories in order to flesh things out on the pages a bit more. If they do, it could make for a charming little series rather than the cookie cutter, piggy backing shlock that many young adult series sink to in order to float the publishers’ bottom lines.  But this book is good (and the ebook version is being given away free, with no strings, to garner interest for the series) so it’s worth a download.

Other books to read: The Neverending Story (Ende), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling), Last Action Hero (Tine)