The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise (Dan Gemeinhart)

The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise
The Coyote Sunrise series, Book 1
Dan Gemeinhart
Henry Holt and Co.
Fiction, MG General Fiction
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Once upon a time, the twelve-year-old girl Coyote Sunrise had another name. She lived in a house, not a converted yellow school bus lovingly named Yager. She called her father Dad, not Rodeo. And she had a mother and two sisters, and they all loved each other very, very much.
But that was five years ago, before the car accident that destroyed that peaceful home, that love-filled life. Now, she and "Rodeo" are forever on the move, wandering across the country and back again, and Coyote isn't even allowed to talk about the ones they lost, let alone ask to go back to the Washington town they once called home, not even to visit; she can't even call her own father "Dad", for the painful memories it brings. Normally, the girl is okay with her father's "no-go" rules. She loves him, after all, and there's a lot to enjoy about their rootless life. Then a phone call with her grandmother changes everything.
When Coyote learns that the town is planning to tear up the small park near her old home - the place where her mother and sisters and her buried a time capsule, just days before the crash - she becomes desperate to get back before the bulldozers come. She made a promise, after all, a promise to return and dig up that time capsule with her family, and if she's the only one left to do it, then that makes it all the more imperative that she keep that promise. But to Rodeo, the very thought of a return is paralyzing, among the few things to bring out anger in the otherwise easygoing man. He's spent five years running away from his grief and memories, and isn't about to turn around now. It will take all of Coyote's cunning and cleverness to figure out how to get Yager pointed back toward Washington State... that, and the help of some new friends she and Rodeo pick up along the road.

REVIEW: I'm going to start by admitting that the timing might well have an impact on my rating, here. Almost one week ago, I lost my father, though not under circumstances nearly as unexpected or traumatic as a car crash (he was in his mid-90s and had dementia and other health issues). So perhaps I was primed for a book that tackles the complexities of family, trauma, and grief with such a deft hand and interesting characters, one that treats both adults and children as fully realized people capable of having fully realized emotions and pains and hopes and dreams. Whatever the reason, this story struck some deep, resonant chords, with notes of beauty and humor along the way.
It starts with the girl Coyote displaying her larger-than-life personality and confidence as she befriends strangers at a gas station... but, then, strangers are about the only people she meets. Even though she and Rodeo sometimes give rides to people who need a lift (only after they meet Rodeo's approval and answer the three questions he puts to all would-be riders in a satisfactory manner), their rootless life does not lend itself to friends any more than it lends itself to pausing long enough for their grief to catch up with them... or, at least, catch up to Rodeo. Coyote feels that grief regardless of how high the numbers roll on Yager's odometer, and she starts the book feeling lonely enough to scheme to bring a kitten on board the school bus in defiance of Rodeo's no-pet rule. She needs something, anything, to call a companion, and there's something special about the little gray striped kitten from the moment she sets eyes on him, something that (inevitably) wins over Rodeo and everyone else they meet. That act of defiance, that admission that her father's chosen life isn't answering the girl's needs, is the first open crack in the dam the two have built against their shared pain and trauma, a crack that widens when Coyote talks to her grandmother and learns about the impending destruction of the corner park and, with it, the time capsule. In scheming and racing to save that little metal box, she's essentially racing to save her memories of her family, to be allowed to admit they existed, they lived, they loved - all things that Rodeo has designated "no-go" zones. But none of this implies intentional cruelty on her father's part. He's among the most open, trusting, friendly, and loving people she knows, and their relationship is as close as ever, which makes it all the more complicated for Coyote to wrestle with defying him, with admitting openly what he stubbornly refuses to see: that they both need to remember, need to grieve, need to stop running away. Thus, her need to scheme to get him to drive cross-country without him realizing until it's too late just where they're going. In this, she finds unexpected allies in a collection of passengers they pick up: a jazz musician hoping to reunite with a girlfriend, a mother and son escaping a bad situation who are counting on a relative who promises work in another state, and a girl turned out by parents over her orientation not matching their strict standards. Each of these characters is allowed to be rounded and distinct, with their own goals and fears and personalities. In the boy Salvador, Coyote finds the first true friend she's had since leaving home, a true companion and ally, even if they sometimes clash. Lester becomes almost an uncle, an adult to balance out Rodeo's well-meaning yet sometimes misguided intentions, who understands why she needs to do what she's doing even if her father can't cope with it. And in Val, she gets a surrogate big sister. This found family helps give Coyote the courage she needs even as the inevitable confrontation with Rodeo comes closer, though the road trip itself also has its share of adventures and obstacles, leading everyone to places (metaphoric and literal) that they need to go, even if they didn't realize it when they set out. Throughout are multiple moments of wonder and beauty and wild abandon, conversations full of surprisingly complex emotions and truths. The final parts feel slightly stretched, but by then Coyote had earned those moments, and the tumultuous emotions that come with them. It all comes together in a very satisfying way that manages to avoid excessive treacle and trite sentimentality, never once cheapening the characters or their journeys.
For hitting so many strong emotional notes, for feeling so authentic yet so full of pain and wonder and truth, and for generally being the book I needed when I needed it, The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise earns top marks. It would be nice to live in a world as generally good-hearted as the one Coyote lives in...

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Billy Budd (Herman Melville)

Billy Budd
Herman Melville
Dreamscape
Fiction, Literary Fiction
** (Bad)

DESCRIPTION: Young Billy Budd was a perfect sailor, uncommonly handsome and beloved by all who knew him... or nearly all. After being conscripted to a British warship, he inadvertently ends up on the wrong side of John Claggart, the man of arms and de facto enforcer of shipboard law, a one-sided conflict that inevitably must end in tragedy for all parties.

REVIEW: I try to expand my reading horizons on occasion, which includes tackling the odd classic. That said, clawing through the unabridged Moby Dick was one of the most trying reading efforts I've undertaken; despite some interesting parts and characters and some beautiful passages, I am firmly of the opinion that Melville would've benefited from a stern editor. (I'm well aware that this likely marks me as functionally illiterate. If this is an issue... well, it's my book review blog, and there are countless others.) So, given that impression, why did I try his work again? For one thing, this was a short enough work to slot into a slow work day. For another, as mentioned, I found some of Melville's writing intriguing, even if a little went a long, long way. And for a third, my library's Libby app inexplicably listed this as a "fantasy" title, not just a literary fiction title. If there was a fantasy involved in Billy Budd, it was not one that was clear to this reader.
The basic story covers, at rough guess, less than half or even a third of the total narrative, from Billy's conscription, his time aboard the Navy ship, and the tragedy of justice that concludes the affair. The rest, in Melville fashion, weaves around, under, over, and through this rather skeletal framework with asides, backstories, digressions, philosophical diversions, histories, and more. (I looked online, and discovered that Billy Budd was actually an interpretation of an unfinished work by Melville after his death, compiled by his widow and numerous editors from scraps of source material described more than once as "chaotic"... and I am very much not surprised, given how far over the metaphoric map it ranged before eventually, maybe, in a fashion getting back to the actual story it was ostensibly telling the reader.) Billy is described as nothing short of angelic in breeding and countenance (putting me in mind of a "Gary Stu" character, someone so inexplicably perfect and beloved and jealousy-invoking in bad people that he almost has to be an author self-insert), while his enemy is unfortunately "flawed" in countenance and soul, which may be the roots of the envy and resentment that blossoms into a dark scheme to knock young Budd off his pedestal of perfection. Throughout, there are threads of bloodlines and ancestry and class as being determinants of one's innate worth (particularly if those bloodlines involve good white English stock); though a foundling of unknown parentage (perhaps even literally celestial; there's a naïveté behind his oft-described handsome face that almost seems impossible for a flesh-and-blood human working the high seas), it's often noted how everyone just knows he must be of noble bloodlines, while Claggart, though not precisely ugly, always has some mark of an inherently flawed and low-born and perhaps even criminal nature that can never been concealed or expunged. The symbolism's about as subtle as a cannon blast, as the perfect yet tragically innocent Budd fails to comprehend the deceit and conniving of Claggart, unable to understand evil when it's looking him in the face, while Captain Vere finds himself torn between human empathy and immutable maritime laws (laws all the more important and harsh in the wake of recent revolts in the British Navy by ill-treated conscripts). It ends with yet more symbolism (and almost groveling praise for the better-than-this-world Billy Budd), and then three final chapters that do little but muddy the waters surrounding the fallout and legacy of the whole incident, none of which seem profound enough to justify building an entire novel around. At least Moby Dick ends with a cataclysmic tragedy, one that well explains why Ishmael felt compelled to tell others (like the reader) about it...
Long story short, this is another instance where I just could not connect with a piece of classic literature.

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Camp Damascus (Chuck Tingle)

Camp Damascus
Chuck Tingle
Tor Nightfire
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Like many people in Neverton, Montana, Rose Darling is a proud, God-fearing disciple of the Kingdom of the Pine church, a once-humble sect that has risen to great renown through its outreach programs and megachurch. Like many of her peers, she has even helped fundraise for their special summer camp, Camp Damascus, a place where misguided youth are led, through the glory and the fear of Christ, to reject foul secular temptations and unnatural lusts and learn to "love right". Their notoriously high success rate has concerned Godly parents from around the world sending their kids and teens to the secluded campground, but just what happens there is never made clear; even those who have been there don't seem to have much to say about it. But asking questions implies an unhealthy curiosity, which is little more than a lack of faith. For all the many questions that Rose has about the world, even she would never think to ask about the miracles performed at Camp Damascus, not when those miracles save so many wayward souls.
The day she sees the stranger at the swimming hole - a ghastly, pale figure that nobody else seems to see - is the day everything changes... especially when, just after her best friend Isaiah tries to kiss her, Rose finds herself coughing up flies onto the family dinner table.
Rose has been having odd feelings for a while, fragments of memories that don't seem to fit with her orderly life and uncomfortable emotions around certain girls in her high school, but she tries to ignore them. Now, as more unexplained and terrifying things start happening around her, she slowly realizes that it's not just part of growing up, or all in her head, or ordinary temptations that plague the faithful. Something far darker and more dangerous is going on in Neverton, and all threads lead to the secrets hidden at Camp Damascus.

REVIEW: I first heard of Chuck Tingle a while ago, but the books he wrote didn't seem like my kind of thing. More recently, he seems to be moving into territory I find more interesting, so I figured this one was worth a shot when I found it available via Libby. Given my middling-to-low expectations going in, I found it surprisingly enjoyable, a dark tale of twisted faith and warped religion and the evil wrought by zealots thinking to forge love and God in their own images.
The sense of foreboding starts early on, as Rose struggles to fit in with her peers at the swimming hole and experiences her first vision of the pale, inhuman stranger in the woods. On the autism spectrum, her difficulty connecting to others is exacerbated by her fundamentalist upbringing; even in a churchgoing town, the children of the Kingdom of the Pines worshipers are a breed apart, complicit in their own isolation by a sense of unspoken moral superiority (though they themselves don't see it that way, just that other kids should embrace the love of Christ and reject corrupting secular influences). For Rose, scripture and the church also help ground her when she finds life or other teens confounding. When she later completely misreads her friend Isaiah's social cues, the reader already has a sense that it's more than just social awkwardness, given her visceral reaction to classmate Martina... but it's shortly thereafter, when she first coughs up a living fly, that both Rose and the reader realize just how terrifying the secrets beneath Neverton truly are - and the unusual reactions of her loving parents further show just how few people the young woman can trust to figure things out.
All along the way, she's told by her community and mentors and her own family to stop investigating, stop poking, stop indulging the sin of curiosity and obsession, but it's not in Rose's nature to let a question go, and once she starts picking at threads she has to follow where they lead, even if that direction runs counter to everything she's been taught to embrace. In the process, she learns just how her beliefs have been turned into blinders, how blind faith can be twisted by those with ulterior motives, and how much of what she was taught runs counter to the truth, even the truth within the very Bible she has essentially memorized. Does that mean her entire faith was misplaced? Not necessarily; she finds that the matter of belief, just like the matter of love, is far more complex and nuanced than she was raised to understand. She finds scant few allies and many enemies, and sometimes stumbles or backslides in her pursuit, but never gives up, especially not once the shape and scope of the evil before her becomes more evident, how many others have been hurt.
There are times when Tingle feels like he's hitting nails a little hard on their heads as he drives in certain points, but the palpable rage underneath the story is entirely justified... and all the more terrifying as one sees parallels in action in the real world, some of them being promoted to the national stage. Other parts seem to revel in gruesome imagery. On the whole, it's a solidly chilling story.

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The Scourge Between Stars (Ness Brown)

The Scourge Between Stars
Ness Brown
Tor Nightfire
Fiction, Horror/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Generations ago, colonists left an exhausted Earth to establish a new home in the Proxima star system... and failed. Now, their descendants are coaxing the worn-out generation ships back to the cradle of humanity, though whether anyone will still be alive when the ships get there is anyone's guess. Food supplies are dwindling, equipment is aging beyond repair, citizens are growing discouraged and mutinous, and periodically they find themselves battered by "engagements", random explosive byproducts of what appears to be an interstellar war on a scale that makes the humans seem like insects. Over the years, communication between the ships in their ragtag flotilla has deteriorated, until the Calypso might as well be traversing the black alone. Perhaps that's why the ship's official captain has gone into hiding in his cabin, leaving his daughter, Jacklyn Albright, the acting commander of a vessel and crew on the edge of collapse.
And things are about to get worse.
When people and supplies start disappearing, Jacklyn at first thinks it might be faulty sensors, or maybe one of the more rebellious factions acting out. When she hears the ominous bangs and thumps in the walls, it might easily be the Calypso's aging conduits. But when she finds the dismembered body, she can't rationalize it any longer. Something very dangerous is aboard the Calypso, something that may not have originated on Earth.. and that "something" has decided humans are its new favorite prey...

REVIEW: A quick glance at the description likely brings to mind a popular sci-fi franchise or two, where an exhausted crew isolated in deep space has to cope with an entity that seems, against biological probability, to have evolved solely to stalk and consume bipedal mammalians from an entirely different star system. Though The Scourge Between Stars tries to dress it up with some interpersonal conflicts and a subplot about a scientist abusing an android with emotions, ultimately it doesn't bring too much new to a very familiar table.
Jacklyn is a middling at best commander, saddled by numerous personal problems and insecurities yet forced into the position because she's the captain's daughter and because, even in an emergency, nobody really puts much effort into actually trying to get the real captain out of his self-imposed exile - not even when an alien monster is known to be picking off people in isolated places. She has a sometimes-girlfriend on the bridge and a crew that's mostly loyal to her, though to be honest characterizations aren't generally that deep or memorable, mostly filling roles in an expected storyline. It takes far too long for Jacklyn to put two and two together and arrive at the obvious four of "something very bad is happening on this ship", and when she does things go as they almost always go in these stories: small groups with guns stalking dark corridors while shadowy things jump out at them (along with the requisite false starts). Some of these incidents do a decent job building tension, but there's a sameness that settles in, and a sense of stretching once the premise is clear. Other subplots - the mutiny, the breakdown of various vital systems on the ship, some personal frictions, and more - become story clutter once the invasion takes center stage, never developed enough to care about or resolve in a satisfactory manner. The climax and resolution feel forced, and the wrap-up feels far too convenient and neat given the state of the ship and crew after the incidents involved. There are also some logic holes and hiccups, and more than one instance where revelations are drawn out too long. I wound up dropping it below a flat Okay rating for a sense of irritation that settled in by the halfway point, and also because the fact that it felt compelled to shoehorn in a sexual abuse subplot involving an intentionally feminized android as a helpless victim really felt manipulative.

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Abeni's Song (P. Djeli Clark)

Abeni's Song
The Abeni's Song series, Book 1
P. Djèlí Clark
Starscape
Fiction, MG Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: The twelfth harvest festival of young Abeni's life was supposed to be a great day - her last as a girl in the village, before starting the rites of womanhood. Instead, it became the worst day of her life. First, the wise old woman who lives deep in the forest turned up, the first time anyone could recall her setting foot among the huts, with a dire warning... just before dark clouds gather in the clear sky, and warrior women with flaming eyes and terrible swords attack. Only Abeni and the old woman remain, sole witnesses as the village burns, the adults are taken captive, and a wicked man in a goat horn mask pipes the children away with a terrible, beautiful song.
As deep as her grief runs, Abeni finds an even deeper well of anger and determination to see that the Witch King, he who sent the warriors and the Goat Man and destroyed her people, will pay. But before she can exact vengeance, she has to find her family and friends - and before she can even do that, Abeni discovers that she has much to learn about the world, about people, about the spirits of the land, about the temptations and dangers of magic, and most of all about herself.

REVIEW: I have yet to be disappointed by anything P. Djèlí Clark has written, and this middle-grade fantasy is no exception. Set in a fantastic Africa full of wild beauty and dark dangers and spirits of all shapes and sizes and dispositions, it presents some familiar elements but in pleasantly original ways.
Abeni is a girl eager to grow up and become like her strong, intelligent mother and aunts, even experiencing her first tingles of puppy love for a boy in her village; if she doesn't dream of a bigger future or larger world, it's because everything she needs or wants is right there in her happy forest village, so why would she even imagine another life? The arrival of the old woman, often rumored (in whispers) to be a witch, follows on the heels of a peculiar dream shared by the children of the village, an omen quickly followed by the devastating attack. Abeni tries her best to protect her loved ones, but is too weak, too young, and too overmatched by an enemy she does not understand; whisked away by the old woman (who is, of course, much more than she seems to be, though the term "witch" is scarcely adequate to describe her true nature), she stews in her grief and anger until it becomes a diamond-sharp determination within. But even when her new guardian agrees, finally, to help, Abeni finds she has much to learn and a long way to go, in more than one sense, and even her new mentor cannot protect her from every bump in the road; indeed, all too soon, Abeni finds herself without the protection she came to take for granted, forced to rely on her own incomplete training and some cryptic clues and warnings. She stumbles more than once, and not every obstacle can be easily surmounted, but she learns from her mistakes. In the nature of these sort of stories, she gathers companions in her journey, each with their own personalities, flaws, and strengths, to help her on her way, but she must ultimately earn her own victories. This being the first book in a series, there remain more challenges and adventures ahead before Abeni confronts the ultimate baddie, and she has much more room to grow by the end. It makes for an enjoyable adventure with wonders, perils, and multiple strong women and girls. I'll be watching my library for the next installment.

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Lord of the Fly Fest (Goldy Moldavsky)

Lord of the Fly Fest
Goldy Moldavsky
Henry Holt and Co.
Fiction, YA Humor/Thriller
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The hottest ticket of the millennium is Fly Fest, a star-studded week of models and music and nonstop parties on a private tropical island, where even the cheapest accommodations cost two thousand dollars - almost every penny Rafi Francisco has in savings. Unlike the vast majority of attendees, the hardcore fans and influencers and other internet-famous phonies, Rafi is a serious (if small-time) podcaster, and Fly Fest will be her best (and likely only) chance to corner Aussie pop sensation River Stone and ask him the question no interviewer or police detective has ever apparently dared to ask: did he kill his first girlfriend in the outback? Oh, everyone knows the sob story he tells, how she abandoned him on a camping trip and broke his heart (and inspired the songs on his chart-topping debut album), but Rafi's own investigations are enough to tell her that River's story holds less water than a thimble. If she can get him to confess, she can not only bring a killer to justice, but maybe her podcast will finally break into the big time.
She should've known it would all go wrong.
When the boat arrives at the private island, they're greeted by nothing but a half-built dock. There is no stage. The closest thing to the promised villas is a collection of cheap survival tents. The only food is a crate full of cheese sandwich-shaped items that may or may not actually be edible. There isn't even a single Fly Fest staffer on hand to explain what's going on. The only celebrity who showed up is River Stone himself. And, worse, there's no wifi. Rafi is still determined to get her interview and her confession, but the longer everyone is stranded, the worse the situation becomes... especially when she can't be sure whether or not they're stuck on an island with a serial killer.

REVIEW: As the title implies, this is a satiric homage to William Golding's classic Lord of the Flies, only instead of marooned English schoolboys degenerating into violent anarchy in isolation, it's a group even less prepared to confront a survival situation: a gaggle of internet-addicted wealthy elites who wouldn't know how to recognize unfiltered, hashtag-free reality if it cracked them on the skull like a coconut.
Rafi starts out convinced of her own moral superiority even as she can't help but feel inferior; she sees herself as a serious investigator, not a vapid spewer of meaningless fluff and unattainable beauty standards like most everyone else stranded on the island, and her lack of a six-figure bank account makes her more grounded, yet being surrounded by such impossibly perfect and inexplicably popular people - people who almost seem to be another species altogether, inhabiting a world that only tangentially connects to the planet Earth - can't help but remind her, second by second, how small her voice truly is, how little she even belongs at Fly Fest (the planned mega-festival or the actual fiasco both). The only reason she's initially noticed at all is that she's mistaken for a staffer due to an ill-advised decision to wear festival merchandise to the festival itself; that, and she's so nondescript that nobody else can conceive of any other reason such a drab, ordinary person could possibly be in their presence. Various characters offer fun-house-mirror versions of characters from the Golding classic (I'm sure I would've caught more parallels had I read the book more recently than high school), as most of them stubbornly refuse to believe the reality of the situation (and the fact that they've all been duped and abandoned) and instead - as they do in their normal lives - create an entirely fictitious idea of Fly Fest, trying to replicate their Instagram-worthy personas on a deserted island via increasingly hilarious stunts and extremes. Despite her determination to remain aloof from the madness and pursue her own agenda, Rafi finds herself drug deeper and deeper into the delusions, even as she discovers an unexpected connection with the object of her obsession, the maybe-killer pop star River Stone. When an influencer disappears, River is her immediate prime suspect, but her tendency to latch onto conspiracy theory thinking becomes her own form of the insanity that sweeps the rest of the crowd, for all that she's among the few who fights to remain aware of what's really going on and the trouble they're all in. Along the way, she learns just how much she has in common with the people she swore she'd never have anything in common with... and how dangerous a person can become when their worldview come under threat.
With many snicker-out-loud moments, the story presents some clever commentary on our social media obsessions and cultural tendency to elevate ideas of reality over the actual experience of reality itself, and how none of us are as immune as we like to think we are to the trends and mindsets surrounding us. The ending feels like it loses its chain of thought, though it's not quite the disappointingly (and pointlessly) abrupt ending of the original Lord of the Flies, almost costing it its full fourth star. Lord of the Fly Fest might've done better to break more fully from the source material (and indulge in the darker side it teased but never quite committed to). In the end, I found the story fun enough overall to keep the Good rating intact.

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Holes (Louis Sachar)

Holes
The Holes series, Book 1
Louis Sachar
Yearling
Fiction, MG Adventure/Mystery
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Stanley Yelnats didn't steal the shoes; they literally fell out of the sky in front of him. How was he supposed to know they belonged to a celebrity ball player, and had just been swiped from a homeless shelter where they were supposed to be auctioned for charity? Of course, the judge and prosecutor didn't believe him. Bad luck like this has plagued the Yelnats family for generations, ever since an ancestor stole a pig from the wrong old woman and brought a curse down on the whole line. Given the choice between traditional incarceration or 18 months at Camp Green Lake, he opted for the latter; Stanley always wanted to go to camp, though his parents could never afford it. Unfortunately, what he finds in the deep desert is nothing green, nor a hint of a lake. The warden's idea of reform is setting each boy in her custody to digging a hole every day, five feet wide by five feet deep, under the punishing Texas sun. In addition to the heat, there are rattlesnakes and venomous yellow-spotted lizards - plus no water for countless miles around, should any boy be foolish enough to run away. But there's more going on at Camp Green Lake than meets the eye, and Stanley inadvertently sticks his shovel straight into a century-old mystery.

REVIEW: This modern classic came out well after I passed the target age (and after I left high school), but it had such a devoted following I was always intrigued by it. In the tradition of the best literature for younger readers, Holes doesn't write down to its audience, tackling some thorny issues and meeting young readers where they are, without sugar coating life or the frustrations that come with so often being powerless over one's own existence.
Since childhood, Stanley has learned to blame his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather" when things go wrong, even though he and his father don't really believe in curses or magic or the peculiar family story passed down through the generation to explain why the Yelnatses so often end up on the wrong side of luck; it's just something to say, a thing to point to when one's best efforts and intentions fail to convince the universe to give them a break... or is it? An air of magic realism hangs over the story, a slightly surreal edge, where one can't completely dismiss the idea of curses or miracles, for all that people are ultimately accountable for their own actions. Curse or not, there's no denying that Stanley's had a run of ill fortune to end up at Camp Green Lake, thrown in with other boys convicted of a variety of crimes. He makes some tentative friendships among his new bunkmates, even as he learns all too quickly about the hierarchies and the flow of power at the camp. He also has to deal with the grown-ups, particularly the casually cruel warden who paints her nails with rattlesnake venom and is as likely to lash out at the adults as the kids, backed up by henchmen who may at first seem friendly but ultimately serve one master. During Stanley's monotonous days, the story flashes back to Stanley's ancestor and to the long-lost Texas town of Green Lake - back when there really was a lake - and a tale of bigotry and intolerance that eventually ties into one of the more infamous instances of the Yelnats "curse". It goes without saying that there is an ulterior motive to the unusual punishment doled out at the camp, and even without intending it, Stanley winds up in the thick of it... which puts him on the wrong side of the warden and others. Along the way, he deals with issues of racism and abuse of power and learning to take control of his own seemingly out of control life. It's a solid story with some interesting depth and complexity, well deserving its reputation.

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Once Upon a Marigold (Jean Ferris)

Once Upon a Marigold
The Tales of Marigold series, Book 1
Jean Ferris
Harcourt
Fiction, CH Fantasy/Humor
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Edric the troll never meant to become a father, let alone a father to a human boy. But one day, as he was roaming the woods looking for various odds and ends to add to his collections, he and his two dogs found a child hiding in a berry patch. Young Christian hasn't been abducted or abandoned; he ran away, tired of his parents' endless rules and how they get mad at him for his many messy, often nonfunctional inventions. Furthermore, he steadfastly refuses to go back home - not that he even remembers which way home is anymore, or who his parents are other than "Mother" and "Father". The troll decides to take him back home to his cozy cavern, but just for one night... which becomes two, which becomes ten years. Now a young man, it's time for Christian to set forth and find his way in the world - and he knows just where to go.
For a long time, Christian has been watching the royal family across the river from his woodsy home. He watched as the shrewish queen and doddering but kindly old king married off their beautiful triplet daughters, then turned their attention to the shy, bookish youngest girl... a girl who makes Christian's heart feel strange and fizzy when he looks at her through the troll's spyglass. When he works up the courage to send her a p-mail - via carrier pigeon - he is thrilled when Princess Marigold writes back. Thus begins a friendship that becomes the center of Christian's young world, and the reason that his first destination upon leaving Edric's cave is across the river to the castle itself, to find his first job. Even though he knows, as a commoner, he'll never truly be her peer, he can't wait to meet Marigold in person. But, though Edric taught him well, even instructing him in etiquette and manners, it's been a very long time since Christian lived among people - and he couldn't have picked a worse time to show up at the castle. Queen Olympia is determined to marry off the stubborn princess to get her out of the way for her own impending ascent to the throne. And if Marigold still refuses to marry, well, there are other ways to get rid of pesky heirs...

REVIEW: This story is exactly what it promises to be: a light, humorous, once-upon-a-time fairy tale with all the requisite trappings and a generally goodhearted nature. This isn't the sort of story where one can expect lots of character depth or plot intricacy, but rather one where there are good people worth rooting for, bad people worth hissing at, some setbacks to overcome and lessons to be learned, and no spoiler for guessing things end on an upbeat note (save a little hook for the sequel). Everyone has just enough personal quirks to differentiate them on the page, just enough of a goal and a personality to drive them through their roles in the plot (including the dogs) and add some small wrinkles or complications to the story, though a few of these felt like setups to payoffs that were forgotten or brushed off the page, and a couple developments came across as a little contrived and convenient even for a children's story. (I also felt that, even for a simple fairy tale, Queen Olympia was rather one-note as a villain, and could've used a little more justification/rationalization for the extreme measures she took toward her goals.) Still, this is a generally enjoyable tale, even if it's hardly breaking new ground in the "fractured fairy tale" subgenre.

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Going Bovine (Libba Bray)

Going Bovine
Libba Bray
Ember
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Like many teen boys, 16-year-old Cameron Smith just can't seem to figure himself out, let alone his future. Nothing ever seems to matter, like he's a spectator in his own existence. He can't be bothered to engage with his peers, save a small group of potheads who gather in the high school bathroom, and it's been years since he was close to his popular sister, his professor father, or one-time literary scholar mother. But he's just a high school junior; surely he has plenty of time to pull himself together.
Then he sees the strange storm and the fire giants and the crazy-talking punk angel in the torn fishnet stockings, and suffers the first of many seizures, ultimately leading to a diagnosis of Creutzfeldt–Jakob variant BSE, better known to the world as "mad cow disease". Basically, his brain is turning into a useless sponge inside his head. There is no cure, no treatment. Instead of decades or years, Cameron Smith's life can now be measured in months, at most.
As he undergoes experimental treatments in the hospital, the "hallucinations" return - only the angel with the punk clothes and pink wings may be more real than he thought. Dulcie tells him that his disease isn't natural, but a byproduct of a scientist's experiments in traveling across parallel dimensions. Professor X unwittingly opened a wormhole and let unsavory dark matter entities into our defenseless world, and unless Cameron stops them, the world has less time to live than he does. And since the boy's disease is linked to the wormhole, there's a chance that Professor X could even cure him, where modern medical science has thus far failed.
Thus begins a wild, frantic cross-country quest, to a forgotten New Orleans club where lost jazz legends still play, through a cult dedicated to perpetual bliss at all costs, into the mystery of the world's most popular Inuit band that disappeared mid-performance, even to the heart of a modern reality TV empire and beyond, in the company of a hypochondriac dwarf and a garden gnome who may be an cursed Norse god - two weeks in which one dying teenager will finally learn what it means to truly be alive.

REVIEW: Part of the ever-popular subgenre of surreal stories centered around vaguely horny, underachieving stoner guys experiencing grand epiphanies, Going Bovine perpetually teeters on the edge of being truly profound and wonder-inducing, but just kept falling short.
After an opening with some real promise - relating an incident when Cameron was five years old and suffered what could best be described as an existential crisis on the "Small World" ride in Disney World - it kicked off on a bad foot for me by taking far too long to introduce Cameron, a teen so disaffected he even bores and irritates himself. He doesn't connect with anyone or anything; his "favorite" musician is an obscure Portuguese crooner of sad love songs who plays recorder and ukulele, which the boy only really likes because he laughs at the man's musical efforts without even trying to understand the lyrics, let alone the emotions behind them. Why is he that way? Even he doesn't know, though it's established fairly early on that our world pretty much grooms everyone to be as disengaged, as poor at independent thinking, as demanding of instant gratification of every whim, and as intolerant of even momentary unpleasantness (let alone the discomforts that ultimately drive needed change and produce greatness) as possible; his English class's course on Don Quixote has the teacher telling the students not to bother thinking about the book on their own but simply to regurgitate the answers provided in order to pass the standardized test, and all anyone in his school cares about is popularity and the vapid reality shows cooked up by the Young Adult TV channel. Slowly, ponderously, the story trudges through Cameron's unpleasant life through his unpleasant point of view, to the point where I nearly gave up on the audiobook more than once. Only because I had really enjoyed a previous Bray title (and because I was at work and, frankly, too busy/lazy to pick another title) did I keep going. That, and because the wild description promised such potentially great and weird and hilarious and wonderful things that I just had to see where things were going.
Eventually, things manage to kick into gear, when the angel named Dulcie (an unsubtle nod to the Dulcinea who spurred Don Quixote to his delusional and ultimately tragic life as a would-be knight errant) gives him his quest... with the condition that he takes his hospital roommate, classmate Gonzo (a fellow sometimes-pothead with dwarfism, half-crushed under the thumb of an overprotective mother), with him. By following a series of random-but-possibly-not encounters and clues, Cameron and Gonzo strike out on a bold quest to save the world (and possibly Cameron's life), with periodic encounters with increasingly-violent fire giants and visits from Dulcie to keep the dying boy going when he grows discouraged or disillusioned. In the nature of similar tales, the universe seems to go out of its way to provide guides, instructive obstacles, and lessons specifically for our confused but desperate protagonist, along with innumerable Themes and Metaphors and Pounded In So Hard The Nail Emerges From The Far Side Of The Earth Messages about Life, the Universe/Multiverse (quantum physics figure in, as they so often do in metaphysical-leaning tales these days), and all that big stuff. It all builds up to an intense showdown with Cameron's arch-enemy, the Wizard of Reckoning, whose identity is not nearly so mysterious to anyone who has read or watched remotely similar stories, capped by a finale that pulled one of my personal pet-peeve least favorite "twists", which cost it a solid star in the ratings.
At times, the commentary was razor sharp and the episodes darkly humorous, sprinkled with moments peculiarly beautiful and even meaningful, but at least as often as not things felt contrived and heavy-handed. It didn't help that Cameron frequently proved obtuse and bumbling (despite glowing neon signs pointing out the way forward or trying to convey the lesson he was supposed to be learning), and not in an endearing way. Add to that a vague sense that some elements and ideas were set up and never adequately tied in or followed through on, and I wound up disappointed.

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