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 young 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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The School for Good and Evil (Soman Chainani) - My Review
The Legend of Hobart (Heather Mullaly) - My Review
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia C. Wrede) - My Review
Friday, January 10, 2025
Thursday, January 9, 2025
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) - My Review
Middlegame (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
John Dies at the End (David Wong) - My Review
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) - My Review
Middlegame (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
John Dies at the End (David Wong) - My Review
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