The Circus of Stolen Dreams
Lorelei Savaryn
Viking
Fiction, MG Chiller/Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Three years ago, Andrea's kid brother Francis disappeared in the middle of the night... and it's all her fault. Not a day passes when she doesn't blame herself, though she still hopes against hope that he'll return. One night, at yet another tense family dinner, her divorced parents announce that they're going to finally get rid of Francis's things, insisting it's time to let go... but she can't let go. That's as bad as pretending he never existed at all.
Grieving, angry, she jumps on her bike and pedals off into the moonlit evening to cool down, taking the path through the woods at the park - and finding something very strange. A flyer leads her to the circus Reverie, a place where children from around the world can forget their worries for a single night. The price of entry for one night is a dream or memory - and she knows just the memory she'd love to be rid of, the memory of her last night with Francis and the terrible mistake she made that led to him vanishing.
Once inside the iron gates, Andrea finds herself swept up in a magical world, where she can live countless dreams and memories and nightmares, everything from flying through the clouds to escaping a sea witch sacrifice. But when she finds a nightmare that used to plague her brother, she realizes that he must have come to Reverie after he vanished from their room. Maybe he's still there, one of the countless other children wandering the fairgrounds. With her new friend Penny, she sets out to uncover the truth - and instead discovers a darkness at the heart of the circus, beneath the whimsy and wonder... a darkness that nobody can escape.
REVIEW: Sinister circuses aren't exactly new fictional territory, but The Circus of Stolen Dreams adds a bit of a twist with the dream angle, helped by a main character who genuinely has reasons to want to abandon her pain- and guilt-filled reality to bury herself in another world... and a villain with a vested interest in keeping her there.
From the start, Andrea is a girl whose life has been shattered beyond any hope of repair: she's sitting at a silent dinner table with her divorced parents, staring at the empty seat where her brother Francis should be, crushed by her own guilt (which the reader will understand later on)... only to be told that her mother is about to get rid of the last of her brother's belongings, one more blow she simply cannot take. Her ride in the dark - ostensibly to clear her head, but one wonders whether she intends to really go back home to deal with the thorny emotions lingering there - brings her to the circus Reverie and a strange girl, roughly her own age, who explains the rules and the price of admission. At twelve, Andrea is still young enough to accept magic - especially when facing a circus in the park that could not possibly be where it is - if old enough to hesitate, if slightly. She agrees, of course, at least as much to be rid of the painful memory of her guilt as to gain entrance to a fairground full of literal dreams. Once inside, she encounters Penny, and her first possible hints that something might be amiss; Penny, like everyone else, appears happy, but has the appearance of someone who's been up far past their bedtime. There are also some oddly anachronistic outfits floating among the other guests. But Andrea is too relieved to finally be in a place where she can enjoy herself, where she can set down the burden of her parents' divorce and her estrangement from her own friends and... something else that was bothering her, something she knew must be bad if she agreed to give up its memory to get into Reverie. While the dreams (and even a sampling of nightmares, which provide their own exhilaration in the way a haunted house or wild roller coast does, the adrenaline rush of surviving and escaping) help, Andrea can't shake the nagging sense that she's forgetting something very important... and when she finds Francis's recurring nightmare among the tents, enough comes flooding back to prompt her to ask questions and poke around, even though Penny warns her against it. This brings her into the presence of the Sandman, the creator and operator of Reverie, and the beginning of a high stakes game of sorts between the two, as he tries to coax her back into complacency and forgetfulness and she refuses to give in - with increasingly dire consequences, as it becomes harder and harder to tell just what is dream and what is reality in this place. Even when she finds a little boy who seems to be Francis, he's a child of six, not of nine like the real boy would be - or does time even work the same here in Reverie? As Andrea digs for the truth about the circus and Francis and a means to escape, she finds ways to process the grief that's been strangling her for over three years, an emotional and sometimes heartbreaking journey.
The tale came close to earning an extra half-star for delving surprisingly deep into the pain of a broken child and family and how attempts to ignore reality and the truth inevitably produce backlash that causes at least as much pain as the thing one was trying to ignore in the first place - not just for oneself, but for those around you, even total strangers caught in the maelstrom of consequences - and setting up parallels between Andrea and the Sandman that make it plausibly difficult for the girl to outwit and outmaneuver him. I kept thinking the tale had reached its peak, and it just kept going higher and hitting harder. After the emotional climax, the final parts feel just a little too stretched, though, with a couple things that, though tangential, stretched the premise a little far (even given the presence of magic)... things that almost make me wonder if Savaryn was intending a sequel or series involving Andrea and/or Reverie. It was a very, very near miss, though. I wasn't anticipating a tale as emotionally charged as this one, as willing to confront head-on concepts of grief and loss and guilt and the yearning to escape it all, capturing along the way the immersive, strange wonders of dreams.
(As a closing nitpicky note, I call foul on the concept of not feeling pain in dreams. Personal experience suggests otherwise.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) - My Review
Haunter of Dreams (Claudya Schmidt) - My Review
Full Tilt (Neal Shusterman) - My Review
Showing posts with label chiller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chiller. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Lifeboat 12 (Susan Hood)
Lifeboat 12
Susan Hood
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, MG Action/Chiller/Historical Fiction/Poetry
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When war comes to London, it brings rations, air raid sirens, gas masks, and bombs falling from the skies... all of which could hardly make thirteen-year-old Ken's life much worse, thanks to an overworked father, a stepmother who hardly seems to care for him, and a kid half-sister who steals all the love and attention in the household. Now he's been told that he is to be one of countless children to be shipped away from the city due to the threat of German attacks - all the way across the ocean to Canada. Dad tells him it'll be his own grand adventure, like the ones in the books he's always reading (that of course he can't take with him), but to Ken it feels more like his stepmom has finally found a way to get him out of the house once and for all. Still, once he's on his way, he begins to warm to the prospect, especially when the food aboard the transport ship - luxury liner SS City of Benares, out of India, pressed into national service - is miles above anything he's had in his impoverished, ration-restricted home in memory.
Then the German submarine finds the convoy, and everything goes wrong all at once.
Now Ken is in a cramped lifeboat with hardly any food, not enough water, and odds of rescue diminishing by the hour. What happened to the other passengers and crew of their ship? Where is the British Navy, who was supposed to be following the convoy? And how is anyone ever going to find one tiny, overloaded lifeboat in the middle of the vast Atlantic Ocean?
This story was inspired by true events in World War II.
REVIEW: Melding the horrors of war and ocean survival, the confusion of growing up in turbulent times, and the excitement of discovery and adventure as a young man is pushed into the wider world on his own for the first time (even if that excitement too often runs face-first into the unforgiving chasm of reality), Lifeboat 12 makes a pivotal moment in world history relatable to readers of all ages.
Ken starts out a mere boy, casually selfish in the way of many children, prone to mischief like stealing apples as he acts out anxieties about his home life: he still carries a certain guilt knowing that his mother died shortly after giving birth to him, and has never warmed up to his stepmother, nor she to him. When he finds that his parents are sending him halfway around the world, he sees it as ultimate proof that he's unwelcome in his own home... until the bombs begin to fall, and he realizes the danger they claim they're trying to protect him from is all too real. In the way of children, he adapts quickly to the new reality, becoming obsessed with airplanes and ships until he can identify them at a glance, and thus thinks himself more prepared for the journey to Canada than he really is - even when the trip itself proves at least as dangerous as staying in London, and that's before they even reach the docks and the ship. Along the way, he begins to make new friends and even step up to small leadership roles over younger children. Soon enough, he's forgotten all about the potential dangers of the war... but the war has not forgotten about him, as he learns the hard way in the dead of night. In the mad scramble to escape, he ends up in the wrong lifeboat, one of many crowded into too small of a space with inadequate emergency supplies (there isn't even simple fishing gear on board to supplement canned rations). The emergency levels playing fields almost across the board; boy or girl, passenger or crew, officer or civilian, adult or child, even white English or other (the crew of the luxury liner are Muslims and foreigners, most of them just service crew and not even working sailors), all are literally in the same survival boat. The desperation and tedium are at least as dangerous as exposure and dehydration, and Ken and others try desperately to keep themselves sane... not all of them succeeding.
The story is told in a sort of free verse, with short chapters that have little fat in them, adding an almost surreal overtone. The ending felt a trifle abrupt, and I almost wanted an afterword outlining the original true story and what was kept or changed about Hood's take on events, but other than that it's a solid tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex (Owen Chase et al.) - My Review
Adrift (Paul Griffin) - My Review
The Cay (Theodore Taylor) - My Review
Susan Hood
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, MG Action/Chiller/Historical Fiction/Poetry
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: When war comes to London, it brings rations, air raid sirens, gas masks, and bombs falling from the skies... all of which could hardly make thirteen-year-old Ken's life much worse, thanks to an overworked father, a stepmother who hardly seems to care for him, and a kid half-sister who steals all the love and attention in the household. Now he's been told that he is to be one of countless children to be shipped away from the city due to the threat of German attacks - all the way across the ocean to Canada. Dad tells him it'll be his own grand adventure, like the ones in the books he's always reading (that of course he can't take with him), but to Ken it feels more like his stepmom has finally found a way to get him out of the house once and for all. Still, once he's on his way, he begins to warm to the prospect, especially when the food aboard the transport ship - luxury liner SS City of Benares, out of India, pressed into national service - is miles above anything he's had in his impoverished, ration-restricted home in memory.
Then the German submarine finds the convoy, and everything goes wrong all at once.
Now Ken is in a cramped lifeboat with hardly any food, not enough water, and odds of rescue diminishing by the hour. What happened to the other passengers and crew of their ship? Where is the British Navy, who was supposed to be following the convoy? And how is anyone ever going to find one tiny, overloaded lifeboat in the middle of the vast Atlantic Ocean?
This story was inspired by true events in World War II.
REVIEW: Melding the horrors of war and ocean survival, the confusion of growing up in turbulent times, and the excitement of discovery and adventure as a young man is pushed into the wider world on his own for the first time (even if that excitement too often runs face-first into the unforgiving chasm of reality), Lifeboat 12 makes a pivotal moment in world history relatable to readers of all ages.
Ken starts out a mere boy, casually selfish in the way of many children, prone to mischief like stealing apples as he acts out anxieties about his home life: he still carries a certain guilt knowing that his mother died shortly after giving birth to him, and has never warmed up to his stepmother, nor she to him. When he finds that his parents are sending him halfway around the world, he sees it as ultimate proof that he's unwelcome in his own home... until the bombs begin to fall, and he realizes the danger they claim they're trying to protect him from is all too real. In the way of children, he adapts quickly to the new reality, becoming obsessed with airplanes and ships until he can identify them at a glance, and thus thinks himself more prepared for the journey to Canada than he really is - even when the trip itself proves at least as dangerous as staying in London, and that's before they even reach the docks and the ship. Along the way, he begins to make new friends and even step up to small leadership roles over younger children. Soon enough, he's forgotten all about the potential dangers of the war... but the war has not forgotten about him, as he learns the hard way in the dead of night. In the mad scramble to escape, he ends up in the wrong lifeboat, one of many crowded into too small of a space with inadequate emergency supplies (there isn't even simple fishing gear on board to supplement canned rations). The emergency levels playing fields almost across the board; boy or girl, passenger or crew, officer or civilian, adult or child, even white English or other (the crew of the luxury liner are Muslims and foreigners, most of them just service crew and not even working sailors), all are literally in the same survival boat. The desperation and tedium are at least as dangerous as exposure and dehydration, and Ken and others try desperately to keep themselves sane... not all of them succeeding.
The story is told in a sort of free verse, with short chapters that have little fat in them, adding an almost surreal overtone. The ending felt a trifle abrupt, and I almost wanted an afterword outlining the original true story and what was kept or changed about Hood's take on events, but other than that it's a solid tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex (Owen Chase et al.) - My Review
Adrift (Paul Griffin) - My Review
The Cay (Theodore Taylor) - My Review
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Scritch Scratch (Lindsay Currie)
Scritch Scratch
Lindsay Currie
Sourcebooks
Fiction, MG Chiller/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Seventh-grader Claire's life has been a nightmare ever since her father's book, about the ghosts of Chicago, became a big hit. Now he runs bus tours of "haunted" sights around the Windy City, while Claire gets teased about her dad's obsession all day at school. She's a girl of science, not of spooks (even if she does still have to count out loud to get through the dark and scary alley behind her home). It might not be quite so bad if she had a shoulder to cry on, but her older brother Sam can be a jerk sometimes, and her best friend Casley seems to have outgrown her, spending most of her time with the new girl Emily talking about fashion and make-up and other stuff Claire just can't make herself be interested in. The night Dad's assistant calls out sick, forcing Claire to fill in on the night's ghost tour, is an embarrassment to end all embarrassments... until she sees the little boy, all alone, at the back of the empty tour bus.
A little boy nobody else sees.
Soon after, strange things start happening around Claire. Something's scratching behind the walls and rattling the bedroom doorknobs. Cold water soaks her dresser drawers. Windstorms strike out of nowhere... indoors. Even a scientist like Claire can't ignore this kind of evidence, for all that she's always believed ghosts are impossible. The little boy is a real spirit, and Claire is being haunted. But why has he latched onto her, of all people? Who was he? And how is she supposed to figure out what he wants before he destroys her home, and her mind?
REVIEW: With a chill-inducing title, Scritch Scratch is a decent little chiller of a story, with some rather spooky moments that evoke childhood fears of death and darkness and things that go bump (or scritch-scratch) in the night.
Claire is a bright young girl, but still hobbled by fears... as is everyone in the story, to some degree or another. One major thread in the story is fear: how one doesn't always outgrow fear, whether or not it's objectively rational, but one can choose how one reacts to it and copes with it. Her embrace of science is part of how she tries to overcome her fears, but she still has to count out loud to face scary things... and even that doesn't help much when it's not just an overactive imagination haunting her (no spoiler for saying that the ghost is quite, quite real). She tries to face everything alone, too, convinced that turning to others will only make things worse or open her up to ridicule or disbelief (or, in her father's case, risk him latching eagerly onto a haunting in his own house to boost his ghost tours, regardless of how terrified she is of the vengeful little boy in white), but eventually has to call in help. In doing so, she learns that everyone has their own fears to face (if not necessarily their own personal turn-of-the-century spirits stalking them), and reaching out to others can actually make things a little better. Along the way, Claire and her friends delve into the history of Chicago and the many bones buried beneath its streets, quite literally in some instances.
It lost a half-star in the ratings because of some internal logic inconsistencies with the haunting (which I can't get into without spoilers), and something about the later parts felt like it was pulling its punches after the truly scary bits that came before, as if it didn't trust the reader to handle the climax without excessive hand-holding. I also had the odd feeling it wanted to set up a series (or at least a sequel), but shied away at the last minute. These late wobbles aside, though, I found it a fairly spooky tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The In-Between (Rebecca K. S. Ansari) - My Review
The Ghost in the Third Row (Bruce Coville) - My Review
City of Ghosts (Victoria Schwab) - My Review
Lindsay Currie
Sourcebooks
Fiction, MG Chiller/Mystery
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Seventh-grader Claire's life has been a nightmare ever since her father's book, about the ghosts of Chicago, became a big hit. Now he runs bus tours of "haunted" sights around the Windy City, while Claire gets teased about her dad's obsession all day at school. She's a girl of science, not of spooks (even if she does still have to count out loud to get through the dark and scary alley behind her home). It might not be quite so bad if she had a shoulder to cry on, but her older brother Sam can be a jerk sometimes, and her best friend Casley seems to have outgrown her, spending most of her time with the new girl Emily talking about fashion and make-up and other stuff Claire just can't make herself be interested in. The night Dad's assistant calls out sick, forcing Claire to fill in on the night's ghost tour, is an embarrassment to end all embarrassments... until she sees the little boy, all alone, at the back of the empty tour bus.
A little boy nobody else sees.
Soon after, strange things start happening around Claire. Something's scratching behind the walls and rattling the bedroom doorknobs. Cold water soaks her dresser drawers. Windstorms strike out of nowhere... indoors. Even a scientist like Claire can't ignore this kind of evidence, for all that she's always believed ghosts are impossible. The little boy is a real spirit, and Claire is being haunted. But why has he latched onto her, of all people? Who was he? And how is she supposed to figure out what he wants before he destroys her home, and her mind?
REVIEW: With a chill-inducing title, Scritch Scratch is a decent little chiller of a story, with some rather spooky moments that evoke childhood fears of death and darkness and things that go bump (or scritch-scratch) in the night.
Claire is a bright young girl, but still hobbled by fears... as is everyone in the story, to some degree or another. One major thread in the story is fear: how one doesn't always outgrow fear, whether or not it's objectively rational, but one can choose how one reacts to it and copes with it. Her embrace of science is part of how she tries to overcome her fears, but she still has to count out loud to face scary things... and even that doesn't help much when it's not just an overactive imagination haunting her (no spoiler for saying that the ghost is quite, quite real). She tries to face everything alone, too, convinced that turning to others will only make things worse or open her up to ridicule or disbelief (or, in her father's case, risk him latching eagerly onto a haunting in his own house to boost his ghost tours, regardless of how terrified she is of the vengeful little boy in white), but eventually has to call in help. In doing so, she learns that everyone has their own fears to face (if not necessarily their own personal turn-of-the-century spirits stalking them), and reaching out to others can actually make things a little better. Along the way, Claire and her friends delve into the history of Chicago and the many bones buried beneath its streets, quite literally in some instances.
It lost a half-star in the ratings because of some internal logic inconsistencies with the haunting (which I can't get into without spoilers), and something about the later parts felt like it was pulling its punches after the truly scary bits that came before, as if it didn't trust the reader to handle the climax without excessive hand-holding. I also had the odd feeling it wanted to set up a series (or at least a sequel), but shied away at the last minute. These late wobbles aside, though, I found it a fairly spooky tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The In-Between (Rebecca K. S. Ansari) - My Review
The Ghost in the Third Row (Bruce Coville) - My Review
City of Ghosts (Victoria Schwab) - My Review
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Doll Bones (Holly Black)
Doll Bones
Holly Black
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, MG Chiller/Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since almost before he can remember, Zach has been best friends with Alice and Poppy. Their games take on lives of their own, stories of mermaids and pirates and curses and adventures, many featuring the dreaded Great Queen: the antique bone china doll locked in the glass case in Poppy's house, which the children are forbidden to touch but who has come to rule their imaginary world. Zach can't ever imagine anything changing... but change is coming, whether he wants it or not. They're in middle school now, and surely none of his friends on the basketball team play with dolls or action figures anymore - especially not with girls, who are starting to seem a little different to him in confusing, irritating ways. Now that Zach's father is back in his life, the man is encouraging his boy to "grow up" and stop playing kiddie games, even going so far as to throw out Zach's action figures. Through his frustration and anger and grief, the boy is starting to wonder if everyone else is right, and he is being a baby. He decides it's time to stop playing.
Then Poppy does the unthinkable: she opens the glass case and lets the Great Queen free. Suddenly, what was a remote, untouchable inspiration for childhood stories seems a lot more sinister - especially when Poppy insists the doll is haunted, that it contains the bones of a murdered child, and that the spirit won't rest until they give it a proper burial in its home town, hours away by bus. Already it's plaguing her dreams. Despite his misgivings, Zach agrees to what he's more than half certain is just Poppy's final, big game with her friends before they all get too grown up for such things... but there's more than just imagination at work, here, and spirits are not to be trifled with...
REVIEW: This is a nice, somewhat unsettling story of friendship, imagination, and what growing up means (and what it doesn't, particularly the idea that growing up means having to let go of everything that makes a person who they are in favor of what other people tell them they should be). At twelve, Zach and his friends are at the end of true childhood and entering adolescence, a time of confusing changes that can make a body feel they don't even know themselves, let alone their friends, or what's expected of them now that they have one foot in adulthood but one still lagging behind. He's also struggling to deal with a father who, after a prolonged absence, is trying to settle back into his home and his life, and not doing the best of jobs; throwing out his son's favorite toys is his way of making him "man up", but he didn't think through how the boy would take having his privacy violated and favorite possessions literally tossed in the garbage. In true adolescent fashion, Zach doesn't handle the frustration well, lashing out at family and friends, who are going through their own problems. The "quest" to bury the china doll Eleanor becomes much more than a game to all the children, and not just due to the supernatural aspect (which is very strongly implied but never specifically or blatantly confirmed): they all recognize the journey as a pivotal point in their lives and relationships, possibly the last "game" of their innocent youth, and even if they remain friends afterward they know nothing will ever go back to the way it used to be before. Running away from home to go to another town feels grown-up, but doing so for the sake of a haunted doll also feels childish. Yet the more time Zach spends on the road, finding eerie echoes of their games, the harder it is for him to pretend that the ghost is all in Poppy's head. By the end, the children and their relationships have indeed been changed, but they've also managed to set their own terms, at least for now, on what growing up will mean for them and their bond. It makes for a memorable and worthwhile story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Knight's Castle (Edward Eager) - My Review
Dragon Magic (Andre Norton) - My Review
The Glass Town Game (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Holly Black
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, MG Chiller/Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since almost before he can remember, Zach has been best friends with Alice and Poppy. Their games take on lives of their own, stories of mermaids and pirates and curses and adventures, many featuring the dreaded Great Queen: the antique bone china doll locked in the glass case in Poppy's house, which the children are forbidden to touch but who has come to rule their imaginary world. Zach can't ever imagine anything changing... but change is coming, whether he wants it or not. They're in middle school now, and surely none of his friends on the basketball team play with dolls or action figures anymore - especially not with girls, who are starting to seem a little different to him in confusing, irritating ways. Now that Zach's father is back in his life, the man is encouraging his boy to "grow up" and stop playing kiddie games, even going so far as to throw out Zach's action figures. Through his frustration and anger and grief, the boy is starting to wonder if everyone else is right, and he is being a baby. He decides it's time to stop playing.
Then Poppy does the unthinkable: she opens the glass case and lets the Great Queen free. Suddenly, what was a remote, untouchable inspiration for childhood stories seems a lot more sinister - especially when Poppy insists the doll is haunted, that it contains the bones of a murdered child, and that the spirit won't rest until they give it a proper burial in its home town, hours away by bus. Already it's plaguing her dreams. Despite his misgivings, Zach agrees to what he's more than half certain is just Poppy's final, big game with her friends before they all get too grown up for such things... but there's more than just imagination at work, here, and spirits are not to be trifled with...
REVIEW: This is a nice, somewhat unsettling story of friendship, imagination, and what growing up means (and what it doesn't, particularly the idea that growing up means having to let go of everything that makes a person who they are in favor of what other people tell them they should be). At twelve, Zach and his friends are at the end of true childhood and entering adolescence, a time of confusing changes that can make a body feel they don't even know themselves, let alone their friends, or what's expected of them now that they have one foot in adulthood but one still lagging behind. He's also struggling to deal with a father who, after a prolonged absence, is trying to settle back into his home and his life, and not doing the best of jobs; throwing out his son's favorite toys is his way of making him "man up", but he didn't think through how the boy would take having his privacy violated and favorite possessions literally tossed in the garbage. In true adolescent fashion, Zach doesn't handle the frustration well, lashing out at family and friends, who are going through their own problems. The "quest" to bury the china doll Eleanor becomes much more than a game to all the children, and not just due to the supernatural aspect (which is very strongly implied but never specifically or blatantly confirmed): they all recognize the journey as a pivotal point in their lives and relationships, possibly the last "game" of their innocent youth, and even if they remain friends afterward they know nothing will ever go back to the way it used to be before. Running away from home to go to another town feels grown-up, but doing so for the sake of a haunted doll also feels childish. Yet the more time Zach spends on the road, finding eerie echoes of their games, the harder it is for him to pretend that the ghost is all in Poppy's head. By the end, the children and their relationships have indeed been changed, but they've also managed to set their own terms, at least for now, on what growing up will mean for them and their bond. It makes for a memorable and worthwhile story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Knight's Castle (Edward Eager) - My Review
Dragon Magic (Andre Norton) - My Review
The Glass Town Game (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Friday, May 21, 2021
Long Way Down (Jason Reynolds)
Long Way Down
Jason Reynolds
Athenium/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Fiction, YA Chiller/Poetry
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: The night fifteen-year-old Will's brother Shawn is gunned down in the street, the boy knows just what to do with the grief tearing his heart out. There are Rules for this, taught to him by Shawn, who learned it from others: don't cry, don't snitch, and always take revenge. Will didn't see who pulled the trigger, but he's pretty sure he knows who, and he has the gun Shawn left behind in their shared room. Full of rage and fear and confusion, Will leaves his apartment and takes the elevator to the lobby, intent on following the Rules and exacting his revenge - only to find a dead uncle stepping aboard at the next floor, and another ghost on the one after... It's a long way down to the lobby, and even longer when the dead must have their say.
REVIEW: I listened to the audiobook (read by the author) at work, not quite sure what to expect from such a relatively short piece. The free-form verse tells a story of anger and fear and pain and a self-perpetuating cycle of ultimately pointless payback that destroys lives long after the original injustice (if indeed there was one) has been forgotten. Will has known pain since before he can remember, and known death on a personal level at least as long, as friends and family members have been claimed by the violence that poisons his world like smog. The only way he knows how to deal with grief is by following the Rules that led to the grief in the first place. The ghostly visitors show the scope of the horrors that have encompassed his life since childhood, horrors he never thinks to question until looking into the faces of death all around him. The nightmarish elevator ride has shades of Dickens, but only if all the ghosts were as grim as the Ghost of Christmas Future, with as little hope of salvation. Does Will understand what they're saying, by the end? Is it already too late for him by the time he steps into the elevator car with his brother's gun tucked into his waistband? Did he ever have a choice but to eventually join them, whether today or tomorrow or next year, as the Rules play out endlessly around him, claiming more lives that create more killers that claim more lives? The ending leaves Will's choice and fate unspecified, but there is no doubt that the visions have made him fundamentally reassess his world. It's a powerful, harrowing tale.
The audiobook I listened to included a brief interview with the author, wherein he describes the inspirations for the tale and mentions his own dislike of ebooks, where readers can change font sizes and such in ways that, to his mind, ruin the impact and flow of his verse in an unacceptable way. The ability to change font sizes and types is one of the benefits of ereader devices for people with visual impairments or other issues. For some reason, this broad-brush dismissal irked me subtly. Other than that, the interview (more of a monologue wherein he answered his own questions) was reasonably interesting, though, adding depth and background to the story.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Vengeance Road (Erin Bowman) - My Review
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) - My Review
The Ghosts of Belfast (Stuart Neville) - My Review
Jason Reynolds
Athenium/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Fiction, YA Chiller/Poetry
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: The night fifteen-year-old Will's brother Shawn is gunned down in the street, the boy knows just what to do with the grief tearing his heart out. There are Rules for this, taught to him by Shawn, who learned it from others: don't cry, don't snitch, and always take revenge. Will didn't see who pulled the trigger, but he's pretty sure he knows who, and he has the gun Shawn left behind in their shared room. Full of rage and fear and confusion, Will leaves his apartment and takes the elevator to the lobby, intent on following the Rules and exacting his revenge - only to find a dead uncle stepping aboard at the next floor, and another ghost on the one after... It's a long way down to the lobby, and even longer when the dead must have their say.
REVIEW: I listened to the audiobook (read by the author) at work, not quite sure what to expect from such a relatively short piece. The free-form verse tells a story of anger and fear and pain and a self-perpetuating cycle of ultimately pointless payback that destroys lives long after the original injustice (if indeed there was one) has been forgotten. Will has known pain since before he can remember, and known death on a personal level at least as long, as friends and family members have been claimed by the violence that poisons his world like smog. The only way he knows how to deal with grief is by following the Rules that led to the grief in the first place. The ghostly visitors show the scope of the horrors that have encompassed his life since childhood, horrors he never thinks to question until looking into the faces of death all around him. The nightmarish elevator ride has shades of Dickens, but only if all the ghosts were as grim as the Ghost of Christmas Future, with as little hope of salvation. Does Will understand what they're saying, by the end? Is it already too late for him by the time he steps into the elevator car with his brother's gun tucked into his waistband? Did he ever have a choice but to eventually join them, whether today or tomorrow or next year, as the Rules play out endlessly around him, claiming more lives that create more killers that claim more lives? The ending leaves Will's choice and fate unspecified, but there is no doubt that the visions have made him fundamentally reassess his world. It's a powerful, harrowing tale.
The audiobook I listened to included a brief interview with the author, wherein he describes the inspirations for the tale and mentions his own dislike of ebooks, where readers can change font sizes and such in ways that, to his mind, ruin the impact and flow of his verse in an unacceptable way. The ability to change font sizes and types is one of the benefits of ereader devices for people with visual impairments or other issues. For some reason, this broad-brush dismissal irked me subtly. Other than that, the interview (more of a monologue wherein he answered his own questions) was reasonably interesting, though, adding depth and background to the story.
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Saturday, October 21, 2017
The Halloween Tree (Ray Bradbury)
The Halloween Tree
Ray Bradbury, illustrations by Gris Grimly
Yearling
Fiction, CH Chiller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In a small Midwestern town on Halloween, Tom Skelton and his friends can hardly wait to race into the autumn night, full of costumes and candy and spooks and shadows... but their best friend, Pipkin, hasn't joined them, asking instead that they meet him at the old house in the ravine past town. Here, the eight boys find a great, towering tree full of lit pumpkins: a real Halloween tree. And with it, they find the mysterious black-robed figure Mr. Moundshroud, who takes them on a wind-wild flight through history, down to the roots of all the fears and rituals that have become today's Halloween - all the while chasing a phantom of Pipkin, a soul dreadfully close to its final departure from Earth...
REVIEW: With Bradbury's signature poetic prose and Grimly's borderline-surreal grayscale illustrations, The Halloween Tree is a holiday classic, an ode to the timeless spirit of boyhood as much as a celebration of Halloween. It's a story of wonder and of terror, stretching from ancient caves and Egyptian tombs to modern Mexican celebrations of the Day of the Dead. The story isn't so much a coherent arc with driving characters as it is a series of events they experience, a gauntlet of time and fear building up to a choice on which Pipkin's life ultimately depends, a choice to either cower from the ageless fear of Death or confront it. Some kids would likely be put off by Bradbury's prose, which can get a bit convoluted even to grown-ups, and others might find the subject matter unsettling, but it contains some great imagery. It's much truer to the spirit of the holiday than so many modern interpretations, those bubble-wrapped cutesy commercial "specials" that file down the fangs of what is supposed to be a subtly unsettling night. Though the driftings of the boys almost grew tedious at times, and I could almost swear Bradbury was recycling a few turns of phrase and images from previous works (writer's prerogative, of course), I still give it a solid Good rating.
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Coraline (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Griffin's Castle (Jenny Nimmo) - My Review
Ray Bradbury, illustrations by Gris Grimly
Yearling
Fiction, CH Chiller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: In a small Midwestern town on Halloween, Tom Skelton and his friends can hardly wait to race into the autumn night, full of costumes and candy and spooks and shadows... but their best friend, Pipkin, hasn't joined them, asking instead that they meet him at the old house in the ravine past town. Here, the eight boys find a great, towering tree full of lit pumpkins: a real Halloween tree. And with it, they find the mysterious black-robed figure Mr. Moundshroud, who takes them on a wind-wild flight through history, down to the roots of all the fears and rituals that have become today's Halloween - all the while chasing a phantom of Pipkin, a soul dreadfully close to its final departure from Earth...
REVIEW: With Bradbury's signature poetic prose and Grimly's borderline-surreal grayscale illustrations, The Halloween Tree is a holiday classic, an ode to the timeless spirit of boyhood as much as a celebration of Halloween. It's a story of wonder and of terror, stretching from ancient caves and Egyptian tombs to modern Mexican celebrations of the Day of the Dead. The story isn't so much a coherent arc with driving characters as it is a series of events they experience, a gauntlet of time and fear building up to a choice on which Pipkin's life ultimately depends, a choice to either cower from the ageless fear of Death or confront it. Some kids would likely be put off by Bradbury's prose, which can get a bit convoluted even to grown-ups, and others might find the subject matter unsettling, but it contains some great imagery. It's much truer to the spirit of the holiday than so many modern interpretations, those bubble-wrapped cutesy commercial "specials" that file down the fangs of what is supposed to be a subtly unsettling night. Though the driftings of the boys almost grew tedious at times, and I could almost swear Bradbury was recycling a few turns of phrase and images from previous works (writer's prerogative, of course), I still give it a solid Good rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Coraline (Neil Gaiman) - My Review
Griffin's Castle (Jenny Nimmo) - My Review
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