April 13, 2008 at 9:35 pm · Filed under Books Etc
I’ve finished another challenge. Go, me! (This is an especially good thing, since I’ve got my eye on the Walter Mosley Challenge, since I’ve never read any of his book but they’re my dad’s favourites, and he’s encouraged me to read them many times.)
I really enjoyed the Eponymous Challenge. I read six books, rather than just four, because I decided not to count more than one book from a single author. I read:
- Freaks: Alive, on the Inside! » Annette Curtis Klause
- Greenwitch » Susan Cooper
- The Grey King » Susan Cooper
- The Goose Girl » Shannon Hale
- Enna Burning » Shannon Hale
- Speaker for the Dead » Orson Scott Card
I loved every single one of these. Speaker for the Dead was definitely my favourite, which isn’t surprising, since Ender’s Game is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
I read Annette Curtis Klause’s two other books (The Silver Kiss and Blood and Chocolate) a long time ago, but I think I like Freaks even better. Also it has a gorgeous cover, as do The Goose Girl and Enna Burning.
I think Greenwitch and The Grey King were my least favourites. This isn’t a reflection on Susan Cooper’s writing, which is excellent, just of their being the only kids’ books on the list. Much as I love children’s fiction, I rarely enjoy it quite as much as YA or adult fiction.
Tags: Eponymous Challenge
April 13, 2008 at 8:18 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
52. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (Science Fiction) 382 p.
I don’t know what to say about this book, because it’s so good, so wonderful, so human, in ways I don’t know how to articulate. But I’ll try.
Speaker for the Dead begins about 3,000 years after the end of Ender’s Game. It takes place on the small colony world of Lusitania, whose only human inhabitants are a small village of Brazilian-Portuguese Catholics. However, Lusitania is also home to the first sentient alien species humanity has encountered in the Bugger Wars three millenia earlier. Due to the time dilation effect of faster-than-light travel, Andrew Wiggin is still only 35 years old. When the call goes out for a speaker for the dead, he can’t resist travelling to Lusitania.
That’s a really inadequate summary, and it only touches on the plot, which, although excellent, isn’t at the core of the book. It’s the people and ideas that make Speaker for the Dead so special, that set it apart from other science fiction. OSC manages to explore some really compelling xenology and xenobiology (i.e. alien anthropology and biology), without sacrificing character development. Not all the people in Speaker for the Dead are human, but they are all interesting and complex and very, very real, because Card never takes the easy way out.
A good example of this is Bishop Pelegrino, the religious leader of the community. At first, he seems like the reactionary, righteous, slightly stupid Catholic priest recognizable from many other books, but Card is a better writer than to stop there. Although he does have these traits to some degree, they are far outweighed by his ability to be flexible, by his caring for his community, and by his compassion.
I love the world Card creates on Lusitania, because it’s just so interesting. The Piggies, of course, and the mystery of their society, but especially the human community of Milagre. I look forward to seeing more of both in the third book in the series, Xenocide. When I started this book, I didn’t think any sequel could come close to being as good as Ender’s Game, but I was wrong. As amazing as that book was, Speaker for the Dead somehow manages to live up to it. I can now number Orson Scott Card among my very favourite writers.
Pages read: 14,286
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Cardathon Challenge, Ender quartet, Enderverse, Eponymous Challenge, Orson Scott Card, Sci-Fi Classics Challenge
March 15, 2008 at 8:47 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Children's Literature, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
32. Enna Burning by Shannon Hale (Children’s Fantasy) 317 p.
Takes up a year or two after the events of The Goose Girl. It’s main character is Enna, a major character from the previous book. We learn that Enna left the capital and returned to the forest to take care of her brother and dying mother, although by the time the book starts, her mother is already gone.
Enna and her brother Leifer live a fairly contented life together, until Leifer finds a vellum scroll that teaches him to control fire. He attempts to control his power, but instead, it seems to control him, making him paranoid and quick to anger. When he sets Enna’s skirt on fire, she begins to realize just how dangerous Leifer’s abilities are.
Meanwhile, Bayern is invaded by Tira, one of its neighbours. Leifer is determined to use his abilities to fight for his country, and while he has some success, his efforts ultimately end in tragedy. Through a series of events, Enna reads the vellum and becomes a fire-witch herself, and slowly begins to lose control of herself and her power.
This is a more mature and complex book than The Goose Girl. In some ways, Enna’s inner life is more important than the plot, although the story is never dull or slow. There were times when I wanted to slap Enna for how stupid she was being, but it turned out there was a good reason for it.
Enna Burning is a worthy sequel to The Goose Girl, with even more adventure and political plotting, as well as the return of one of the more unsavoury magical powers ever conceived (and with an even more gorgeous cover!) I’m really looking forward to the release of the third Bayern book, River Secrets, in paperback later this year.
Pages read: 9,458
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Bayern, Cardathon Challenge, Eponymous Challenge, Shannon Hale
March 14, 2008 at 11:01 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Children's Literature, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
29. The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (Children’s Fantasy) 383 p.
Strangely enough, it was the name of the heroine’s horse—Falada—that reminded me that I knew the fairy tale this book is based on. I don’t know where I found my old, battered copy of Fifty Famous Fairy Tales, published in 1956, but it was a childhood favourite—although among the stories therein, The Goose Girl was one of the ones I hated most.
Not so Shannon Hale’s version of the story. It begins with the birth of the Crown Princess of Kildenree, called Ani. Largely ignored by her parents, she spends her first seven years in the company of her aunt, who teaches her to speak to birds, particularly the swans in the palace lake.
After her aunt’s death, Ani does her best to be what her mother wants her to be, a proper heir to the throne. Awkward and self-conscious, she hates her duties but wishes desperately to please her mother. Nothing she does is enough, as after her father’s death her younger brother becomes the heir.
No longer important in palace politics, Ani is abandoned by all save Selia, her lady-in-waiting. When Ani is sent to neighbouring Bayern, to be married to the Crown Prince, she is once again betrayed by someone she trusts. Although she escapes death, she has no means to get back to Kildenree or to prove her identity, and ends up working as a goose girl, herding the King’s geese.
Since I know the fairy tale very well, there was nothing in the overall plot that really surprised me, but that didn’t matter. Shannon Hale set out to breathe life and reality into an old story, and she succeeded. She made me love her characters, and she created a form of magic that intrigued me.
Before reading The Goose Girl, I’d read lots of glowing reviews, but this book more than met my high expectations.
Pages read: 8,497
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Bayern, Cardathon Challenge, Eponymous Challenge, Shannon Hale
March 12, 2008 at 3:33 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Children's Literature, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
27. The Grey King by Susan Cooper (Children’s Fantasy) 165 p.
Having been desperately ill, Will Stanton goes away to Wales to recover at his aunt and uncle’s farm. His illness has wiped all knowledge of the Old Ones from his mind, and he can recall only a few snatches of a poem which he knows is vitally important. All sorts of sinister things are going on in the Welsh countryside, and Will needs all his knowledge and power if he is going to find the harp of gold and wake the Sleepers.
Once again, Susan Cooper paints the setting with such rich and vibrant colour that I almost felt I was there. She also includes a surprising amount of Welsh, including a plethora of Welsh place-names, and even manages a fairly natural way of weaving a pronunciation guide into the text!
The only drawback, from my point of view, was the inclusion of a certain legend that I really would rather not have had used, but that’s entirely a matter of personal taste.
I think this is actually my favourite of the series so far. The tone felt more serious, and the story more real and immediate, than either of the others. For the first time, I felt as though Will and the other characters were truly acting on their own, rather than stumbling through a series of fated events or merely reacting to what the Dark was doing. For the first time, I was genuinely in suspense as to the book’s resolution.
I’m now especially eager to find out what Silver on the Tree has in store.
Pages read: 7,840
Sort of off-topic, I got a comment on this blog last week from an Indigo employee. Among other things, she corrected my earlier remark about Indigo’s children’s and young adult sections. When I was in the same store again today, I realized that she’s absolutely right; since the whole section was being moved around the last time I was there, the signs at the time were probably just mixed up.
I’m having a very good week so far. Aside from hearing that some of my students are showing noticeable improvement in the classroom and on tests, I also found a new favourite bookstore, just a couple of blocks from where I work. I not only found some books I’d pretty much given up home on, I discovered one of the most pleasant and best-organized used bookstores in the city. And none of the paperbacks (mass market and children’s trade) I bought was more than $4; most were $3.
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Eponymous Challenge, Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising
March 3, 2008 at 4:42 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
22. Freaks: Alive, on the Inside! by Annette Curtis Klause (YA Historical Fantasy) 328 p.
Not for the first time, Indigo’s strange shelving system led me to expect a different reading experience than I got. Indigo’s Teen section is, for some reason, labelled as being for ages 9-12. Since in my mind even a 12-year-old is a child, I always forget that the section holds a mix of both children’s fiction and what I consider to be young adult fiction. Which is what Freaks: Alive, on the Inside! most definitely is.
In 1899, seventeen-year-old Abel Dandy lives with his parents at Faeryland, a resort offering “the finest educational entertainments and display of oddities to be seen in one place.” With nothing extraordinary about him, his skill as a knife-thrower isn’t likely to achieve him his dream of performing.
Longing for excitement, Abel runs away to join a travelling circus, and finds more adventure than he knows how to handle. He has dreams of a beatiful dancer who calls him by another name and insists they’ve met before. He meets some incredible people, makes friends and enemies, and falls in love. He grows up.
I have to admit that I bought Freaks mostly for the cover. I’ve read both of Annette Curtis Klause’s other books, The Silver Kiss and Blood and Chocolate. They were, respectively, my first introductions to vampire and werewolf novels. Although I liked them a lot at the time, they’re not books I’d want to own, and I told myself it was silly to spend the money on Freaks when I’d probably feel the same way about it. I didn’t.
I love this book and all the characters in it: Abel himself, a seventeen-year-old who takes his responsibilities seriously and would like to grow facial hair and lose his virginity now, please, Bess, the tough but kind bearded dwarf lady, Apollo the Dog-Faced Boy, a twelve-year-old with the exuberance and charm of a puppy, and so any others. Even Dr. Mink, a skeletal man with a personality and morals to match his sinister appearance, makes a superb villain.
I’m glad I bought Freaks: Alive, on the Inside! And the cover is wonderful, isn’t it?
Pages read: 6,800
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Annette Curtis Klause, Eponymous Challenge
February 15, 2008 at 2:23 pm · Filed under Books Etc
Coversgirl over at Between the Covers is hosting the Eponymous Challenge, and since I just finished the Unread Authors Challenge…
The challenge runs from March 1 through May 31. Participants must pick 4 books whose titles are either the name of one or more of the characters, or a description of one or more of the characters. Here are my reads for this challenge:
- Freaks: Alive, on the Inside! » Annette Curtis Klause
- Greenwitch » Susan Cooper
- The Grey King » Susan Cooper
- The Goose Girl » Shannon Hale
- Enna Burning » Shannon Hale
- Speaker for the Dead » Orson Scott Card
Alternates:
- The Girl with No Shadow » Joanne Harris
- The Book Thief » Markus Zusak
- Mollie Peer » Van Reid
- Thomas the Rhymer » Ellen Kushner
- Starship Troopers » Robert A. Heinlein
- The Dispossessed » Ursula K. Le Guin
- Califia’s Daughters » Leigh Richards
ETA: Clearly this is a good challenge. It hasn’t even started yet, and I’ve already finished two of the books I’d planned to read for the challenge (The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester and The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner.)
Tags: Book Lists, Eponymous Challenge
