REVIEW: Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

“She had a hundred reasons: because Bear had carved a statue of her in the center of the topiary garden, because she could always make him laugh, because he'd let her return to the station, because he won at chess and lost at hockey, because he ran as fast as he could to polar bear births, because he had seal breath even as a human, because his hands were soft, because he was her Bear. "Because I want my husband back," Cassie said.” 

Cassie has lived her whole life in her family's arctic research station. Her world is ice and science and tagging polar bears and survival. Her grandmother had told her fairy tales about her mother, the adopted daughter of the North Wind, who was supposed to marry the Polar Bear King but married a mortal instead. The North Wind was so angry that he threw the mother into the land of the trolls, never to be seen again. When Cassie grew up, she realized these were just stories to make her feel better about her mother's death. That is, until the Polar Bear King comes to claim Cassie as his wife. After agreeing to rescue her mother, Bear whisks Cassie away to his ice castle at the North Pole. She and Bear slowly and deeply fall in love, but when Cassie betrays Bear and he is torn from her side, she must brave the frozen wasteland to find him again.

I loved this adaptation of "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" even more than East. It is a rather faithful adaptation of the story, though elements are changed and added to enhance the themes Durst draws out of the tale. The story begins strong and ends strong, but when you hit the 3/4 mark, the story is difficult to adapt, as she travels to find Bear and encounters very vignette-y adversaries and friends, but such is the nature of the tale. Durst's adaptation is rooted in a very real exploration of a relationship: two people who love each other but have separate careers, interests, and plans for the future. They struggle and fight and that is what makes the story ring true. It is about coming to terms with who you are as a person and who you are as a couple. Cassie is 18, so she has a lot of growing up to do in a short period of time.

Cassie and Bear, the pillars of the story, are a joy to watch. Bear, unlike most Beasts or Bears or Cupids I have seen in "Beauty and the Beast"/"East of the Sun and West of the Moon"/ "Cupid and Psyche" adaptations, is not brooding or depressed or serious. His actually very loving and silly. They play together verbally and physically, ice skating in the ballroom and bantering back and forth. He cares deeply for Cassie and the polar bears he serves. He is easy to fall in love with. Cassie is smart and brave and stubborn beyond all belief. The amount of pain and suffering she must endure to find Bear is awe-inspiring. She is up there with September from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairy Land in a Ship of her Own Making and Katsa from Graceling as some of the most resourceful badass chicks in literature.

Durst creates a fascinating mythology surrounding Bear and the creatures that help or hinder Cassie. Bear is a munaqsri, a being who cares for a particular species. He takes their souls from them when they die, and gives them to newborns. If they do not transfer a soul into the newborn, the baby is born dead. This element ends up being essential to the journey of Cassie and Bear and critical in the climax. I teared up on the metro as I read it, it is so well-crafted and emotionally satisfying.

I highly recommend this adaptation of "East of the Sun and West of the Moon."

Books Like This
East by Edith Pattou
Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Cinder and Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Stung by Bethany Wiggins

REVIEW: Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Skulduggery Pleasant

by Derek Landy

“Her parents wanted her to find her own way in life. That’s what they’d said countless times in the past. Of course, they’d been referring to school subjects and college applications and job prospects. Presumably, at no stage did they factor living skeletons and magic underworlds into their considerations. If they had, their advice would probably have been very different.” 

When Stephanie's eccentric uncle suddenly dies, she meets someone rather mysterious at the reading of the will. Skulduggery Pleasant, her uncle's old friend, covers himself with a coat, scarf, had and dark glasses. When Stephanie is attacked by a terrifying man, Skulduggery reveals himself to be a walking, talking skeleton, an ancient sorcerer whose lost his life fighting the forces of evil, and pulled himself back together to finish him off. In the last few hundred years, he has become a wisecracking detective. Together, he and Stephanie must face a new threat, and stop a villain from destroying the world.

This book was absolutely clever and charming. While the plot was rather simple and conventional for the genre, and the villain was one dimensional, but the meat of the story is Skulduggery and Stephanie's relationship. Skulduggery is witty and silly fun on his own, but together with Stephanie the banter and chemistry is electric. They bat scenes back and forth like a tennis ball, matching each other in wit, humor and grit.

I loved Stephanie's slow assimilation into the magic culture. Once she knows it exists, she must choose to turn back to her old life, or plunge forward wholeheartedly into the danger and the dark. As she steps further and further in, her understanding of the very real threats that face them grow and her continuous determination to help Skulduggery is heartening. In this world, people have three names: the secret name they are born with, the name they are given by their parents, and the third name that they choose. That third name protects a sorcerer from using their other two names to control them, and it is usually deliciously descriptive. The moment Stephanie chooses her name was so powerful, I got shivers.

It bothered me how much Stephanie was on the sidelines of the fighting, either hurt or watching. However, she is 12 and a magic noob, so it makes sense that Skulduggery does most of the ass-kicking. Tanith Lee, a female swordslinger who joins up with them, gives us ample badassery on her own. And Landy allows her to giggle with Stephanie, which makes me so happy. No stoic, cardboard, humorless fighter chicks in this book!

I also appreciated Stephanie's family life. Usually in stories like this, the protagonist's family abuses them, or is apathetic, or is dead. Stephanie's family cares! Her dad is absolutely lovely, and has one of the most touching scenes in the book. You worry that in the sequels, Stephanie is going to break his heart.

A fun and fast juvenile read. I did wish it was more of a magical detective story, and less of an epic battle of good vs evil, but it was a joy to sit in the Bentley with Skulduggery and Stephanie and listen to them talk. I look forward to see where this series goes (there are 8 of them!)

REVIEW: Dodger by Terry Pratchett

Dodger

by Terry Pratchett

“Dodger made haste towards the house of the Mayhews while in his mind he saw the cheerful face and hooked nose of Mister Punch, beating his wife, beating the policeman and throwing the baby away, which made all the children laugh. Why was that funny, he thought? Was that funny at all? He’d lived for seventeen years on the streets, and so he knew that, funny or not, it was real. Not all the time, of course, but often when people had been brought down so low that they could think of nothing better to do than punch: punch the wife, punch the child and then, sooner or later, endeavour to punch the hangman, although that was the punch that never landed and, oh how the children laughed at Mister Punch! But Simplicity wasn't laughing...” 

It was a dark and stormy night in turn-of-the-century London. A girl's scream rips through the air as she tries to escape a carriage with two brutish men on her heels. Suddenly, a young man emerges from a sewer drain and saves her. Thus Dodger, common geezer and tosher (person who explores sewers for lost items), gets swept up in a mystery that involves Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew, Benjamin Disraeli, and even foreign powers. Will he be able to solve the mystery of the woman in the coach, and will he be able to maintain his identity as his star rises?

Pratchett calls this book a historical fantasy, and I can definitely see how that is true. It is more like historical fan fiction, where he manipulates facts to give you a really fun story. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of his long, convoluted and clever sentences, but I really enjoyed the book.

The world was excellently drawn, almost too much so, for I felt sometimes he was letting the historical personages run wild with their opinions on the world more than letting the plot advance. However, the characters are really fun, if a bit flat. The two characters that stand out in relief from the others are Dodger himself and his mentor and landlord Solomon. Solomon is a practical, cosmopolitan Jewish refugee. He lives simply and speaks wisely, and plays his cards close to the chest. It bothered me that Pratchett seemed to be implying that Fagin from Oliver Twist was based on Solomon, for Solomon was nothing if not an amazing role model. Dickens actually went back and apologized for the anti-Semitic portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist, so it colored my view of Dickens in the novel.

Dodger is a surprisingly compassionate hardened geezer (clever, streetwise person). He is more complex than you realize at first, protecting his town, and if he lies and manipulates a good person, he makes sure they are recompensed. He sees all sides of a situation, and feels sympathy for those who are portrayed as "villains" in the eyes of the public. I do sometimes wish that he was actually genuinely scared or that he failed horribly once or twice in the story, because his constant successes made me hate him a little, but just a little.

I honestly was expecting a lot of horrible things to happen in this book which never happened. Perhaps, I forgot this was a Pratchett novel, and not just a regular historical/ literary adaptation where they try to take the story down dark roads.

All in all, a pleasant and fun romp through 17th century London.

Books Like This:
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance by Gyles Brandreth

REVIEW: Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Tiger Lily

by Jodi Lynn Anderson

“I'm not myself," she offered, guiltily. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.
He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.” 

Tiger Lily lives in Neverland, an island in the Atlantic where ships of Englanders occasionally wash up with pirates or children or folks who don't last very long. Englanders have a disease that makes them continue to grow older until they die, something the natives are not subject to. Tiger Lily is an orphan, adopted by the shaman of the tribe, a man named Tik Tok, who is "of two genders": he is a man who wears women's clothing. Tiger Lily lives up to her name: fierce, stoic, and unreadable except by those who know her well. She is a misfit in the tribe, so when she meets Peter Pan, the ominous and deadly boy in the woods, she is caught up in a world where she is needed, special, admired. Her relationship with Peter ignites with heart-thrumming intimacy.  But when Tiger Lily neglects her tribe to tragic results, and when a Wendy bird arrives, will they be able to maintain their connection, or will Tiger Lily lose everything?

This was such a fascinating book. It is narrated by Tinkerbell (not her real name, simply a name Peter condescendingly bestowed). She cannot speak, but she can sense the thoughts and feelings of those around her, making her a unique, slightly omnipotent storyteller. Neverland itself is a strange entity. It is set in our world. Their are fairies and mermaids, but no flying, no "second star to the right." And yet, Anderson manages to maintain what I loved most about the original story: the very real psychology of the characters.

This story also maintains the ache of the original. As an adult reader, you know what things mean. The larger implications of certain feelings become clear. You pity, envy, and are frightened of Peter. He becomes that boy. The one who cannot understand the feelings he is having. The one who shuts himself to any other reality but his own. The one who desperately means to keep promises, but then does not. The one who sends you to the highest highs but also deeply frightens you with what he is capable of. I understood Peter more in this book than in any other interpretation. Hook's desperation for Peter is not the comical Disney or musical version: it is dark and dangerous and self-destructive. Smee is still "lovable" but you remember why he is a pirate and not an affable accountant. He is still a murderer. Wendy is much stronger and also much weaker than in the original. She is so sure of herself because the world cannot be other than how she sees it. The lost boys are not romanticized as off on a camping trip. These boys act the way any children would if they were left to their own devices, forced to survive on their own. They hero-worship Peter, desperate to have some sort of direction, a compass to focus their days. But this, of course, takes a toll on a leader who is still very much a boy himself.

Tiger Lily is wonderfully complex and refreshing. She is not a preteen seductress, nor a silent generic "indian." She is guarded and pained and untrusting but also worthy and strong, and has the capacity for deep love. And she does not, as this book seemed to imply at the beginning, loose her mind, heart and need for life when she loses Peter (as all girls lose Peter).

The cast of new characters are more of a mystery to us, but they are no less compelling: Pine Sap, Tiger Lily's mishapen and introspective friend, and Tik Tok the shaman whose slow tragedy breaks our hearts.

This is a quality Peter Pan adaptation. Well-written and faithful to the spirit of the original.

REVIEW: Timeline by Michael Crichton

Timeline

by Michael Crichton

A team of archaeologists are digging up a medieval castle when their funders, the mysterious ITC, accidentally drop a hint that they know more about the site than they let on. The lead archaeologist, Professor Johnson, flies to New Mexico to find out what is going on and he doesn't return. Meanwhile, his team unearths an ancient parchment in the ruins, a document dating 600 years old, with the words "Help me!" in the Professor's handwriting. With the questionable aid of ITC, they must travel back in time and save the Professor. Will their expertise help them survive the dangerous middle ages, or will they be crushed underfoot by the march of history?

This is my first Michael Crichton book and I can't say I am a fan. I loved the movie of Timeline (warning, this review is tainted by that), and I hoped the book would be even better. I was surprised at how different the two were, and how the movie streamlined and improved upon the story Crichton told.

For example, time travel is not even mentioned until page 109. The first quarter of the book is taken up with wandering through ITC and the dig site. I honestly would have stopped if I hadn't known that time travel would happen, and the knowing made it even more excruciating.

Crichton loves to bathe in science. The book is saturated with it and it verges on fetishism. And yet the science is questionable. I know little about scientific theory, and even I could see that the logic was flawed. The theory of time travel is based on the idea of the multiverse. That (in an uber simplified version) because you shoot light particles through holes and some hit their target and some disappear, that something blocks them. Obviously, it is another universe getting in the way. It seems like that is the most complicated answer possible for such a phenomenon. The science behind the time travel that ITC uses is really moving a person from one universe to another. But also back in time in that universe. It is an unnecessarily complex method of time travel.

Crichton treats history almost the same way as science, reveling in explaining to the reader why everything we think about the middle ages is untrue. I quite enjoyed his fact dropping as history is more my scene, but at times it did verge historical masturbation. It is full of long anecdotes and facts that have little to do with the plot and more to do with how knowledgeable Crichton was about the subject matter.

The movie simplified a lot of convoluted plot points (ex. the Professor makes greek fire, rather than almost greek fire). Some of the adventures the heroes encounter feel like filler and provide a momentary inconvenience before setting them back on their path again.

The book did maintain an element of the movie I loved: the reality of the middle ages and how the modern archaeologists are completely out of their element. Kate, Andre and Chris each have their own baggage and their own area of expertise that ends up being indispensable to the mission.  Kate is an expert climber and architect. Andre is an expert on medieval life, culture, language and martial arts. Chris is an expert in the history of technology, and the workings of a particular mill that plays a pivotal role. Chris' journey was the most meaty as he goes through the crucible of medieval peril, transforming from a whiny serial dater to a solid, stouthearted friend.

There were some elements to the book that seemed entirely out of place. One adventure leads them to a green chapel where a knight waits with an ax to chop of their head.  Did you just read Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, Michael? And the Lady Claire, a sweet, smart, and determined character with a clear goal and a clear purpose in the movie becomes an absolute baffling mystery in the book: a randomly sexualized scheming deus ex machina and reward for sacrifice.

In the end, this book had an interesting premise which crawled, stumbled, danced a jig, and then awkwardly sat down again. All in all, the story and the history ended up being entertaining, but I thought, with Crichton's reputation, we would get a better book.

Books like this (but better!)
The Domesday Book by Connie Willis

REVIEW: The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The Wizard of Oz

by L. Frank Baum 

“I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas."

"That is because you have no brains," answered the girl. "No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home." 

The Scarecrow sighed.

"Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.” 

Dorothy lives in Kansas with her uncle and aunt. It is a grey little farm on a grey little plain. One day a tornado swoops down and takes Dorothy and the house up into the sky and down again, landing in the Land of Oz on top of the Wicked Witch of the East. Dorothy and her new friends the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Lion travel through perils to the Emerald City to each receive what they most desire from the great and terrible Wizard of Oz. But will Oz's price be too much for them to pay?

Please do not read this if you are a part of my book club! This is my first time reading the books. I have seen the movie several times, and I have vague memories of reading Oz stories in picture book form, but I never had all of them, and the ones that stood out were the visit to Oz, the china town and the Hammer Heads. I had never read it all the way through.

I love it! The style is so charming. I shouldn't say that it reminds me of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairy Land in a Ship of her Own Making, it should be the other way around, but I hadn't read Oz yet!

I loved that the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Lion weren't just Dorothy's backup dancers. They each had their own very specific talents -- ironically the exact talents they thought they lacked. On every adventure, the Scarecrow would come up with the plan, the Tin Woodsman built or used a tool to help with the plan, and the Lion had to complete the scary task. They used teamwork to solve problems and they could not have accomplished any part of their journey without the other. There were very few moments like that in the movie where they separately shone as part of the whole.

Dorothy, while still a child, is much more sensible than the Dorothy in the movie. As much as I love Judy Garland, she is very much the damsel in distress. Dorothy keeps a close eye on the food supply for the journey, and keeps her head down when she needs to. She deals with the supposed death or loss of her companions multiple times, and she handles herself in Oz with maturity. When the witch takes her prisoner, she obeys and comforts the lion (one of the more touching moments of the book for me). The end rescue happens in reverse from the movie. Dorothy has had enough and in a fit of frustration throws water on the witch and melts her (rather than as a desperate impulse in the movie). She rescues the lion and then goes to rescue the Tin Woodsman and the Scarecrow.

I was so shocked at the violence in this book. The Tin Woodsman kills a lot of animals with his ax. But I did appreciate how Baum handled Oz' request for Dorothy, a little girl, to kill the Wicked Witch of the West. She cries and states that she cannot kill someone willingly. I felt this was missing in the movie, the full weight of asking a child to kill someone.

I did feel that the adventures post Oz's departure were a bit too much. The movie handled it nicely, having Glinda appear at the balloon launch. Perhaps it was because I was used to the movie's ending that I didn't fully grasp the trajectory of this story.

I missed the parallels between farm life and the Land of Oz to show that she still carries some Oz with her at home. It makes me wonder if she will be as happy as she claims in the grey land of Kansas. And you do wonder, after the 100th time they repeat the brains, heart, courage, home mantra...what did Toto want?

I did love the book, however, and I will definitely put it on my shelf of classics I will read to my children, along with Peter Pan and the Secret Garden.

REVIEW: Stung by Bethany Wiggins

"As I jump out the window, I glance over my shoulder. The window frames a face with smooth skin and hollow cheeks -- a boy on the brink of manhood. He peels his lips back and growls, and I stare into his brown eyes. For a moment it is like looking into a mirror and I almost say his name. Until I realize his eyes are wild and feral, like an animal's...As I sprint across the empty schoolyard, past the silent, rusted playground, I dare a look over my shoulder. My brother is hobbling toward the fence, his angle hanging at an odd angle to his leg. His eyes meet mine and he holds a hand up to me, a plea to come back. A sob tears at my chest, but I look away and keep running."

Fiona wakes up in her bedroom. Everything is covered in dust. The world around her is lifeless, and there is a tattoo on her right hand. She is 4 years older than she was when she fell asleep. She steps into a world divided, where those bearing the tattoo must live outside the wall because they are infected with a deadly disease that could turn them at any moment into mindless beastly killing machines. Those within the wall are safe, but at what cost? When Fiona is captured by the militia, she is marked as a Level Ten, the deadliest of all the infected. Yet, she feels normal. As flashes of memories come back to her, she and her former classmate Bowen, now a hardened militia man, must discover her secret before it is too late.

This book was chilling. The opening images of a normal world gone wrong were nightmarish. Everything left as if the family had just stepped out, but dust-covered, broken, and warped. Vestiges of her old life present themselves in horribly twisted ways.

There are very few elements of the Sleeping Beauty tale in this adaptation, but they appear in the prick of a needle, the many-years sleep, and the healing power of a kiss, just not in the ways you would expect.

The story itself did not grab my heart the way Scarlet did. The bleak dystopia grabbed my brain, however, and I was moved by the dogged perseverance of Fiona towards the end of the book (after a few chapters of some wandering, and following). While her relationship with Bowen is compelling, I was more taken by her relationship with her twin brother Jonah, a Level 10 who has already turned into an aggressive killer, and how his repeat appearances change as the plot advances.

I found that the story meandered a little and the deus ex machina at the end was a little too abrupt and easy, but it was still a satisfying tale, and a fascinating world to explore. A solid sci-fi version of the fairy tale.

And the cover art is amazing, right?