The previous five reviews are now archived at the Brightdreamer Books website. I also rotated the site's Random Recommendation page. (The Random Recommendations on the sidebar of this blog, just below Currently Reading, have also been rotated, but I change them out on a random basis.)
Enjoy!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Frequently Asked Questions (Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum)
Frequently Asked Questions
(An Unshelved collection)
Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
Overdue Media
Fiction, Comics
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The staff of the Malville Public Library deals with all manner of peculiar patrons and their perplexing problems. In a special section at the back, a variety of books are plugged in comic strip format.
REVIEW: I actually got this book for free through work. (I work for a library system that somehow scored donated copies - something to do with technically being the highest circulating library system in the nation, as I understood it. I stopped listening after "free book.") The authors/artists are librarians, and I suspect that more of these strips are based loosely on life than one might suspect. (I wouldn't know; my job is blissfully free of interaction with the general public.) You don't need to work at a library to laugh at these, though; a passing acquaintance with humanity should be enough. This is not the first Unshelved collection printed, but there are no major story arcs to catch up on. A one-page primer at the front of the book explains the characters, if you're worried about coming in on the middle. The artwork is simple, but it does the job. I've always liked their weekly book strips, and though some of the summaries are too vague to pique my interest, I respect the spoiler-free format. In any event, after a not-good week, I enjoyed a chance to laugh, and that's about all I ask out of a comic collection.
(An Unshelved collection)
Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
Overdue Media
Fiction, Comics
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: The staff of the Malville Public Library deals with all manner of peculiar patrons and their perplexing problems. In a special section at the back, a variety of books are plugged in comic strip format.
REVIEW: I actually got this book for free through work. (I work for a library system that somehow scored donated copies - something to do with technically being the highest circulating library system in the nation, as I understood it. I stopped listening after "free book.") The authors/artists are librarians, and I suspect that more of these strips are based loosely on life than one might suspect. (I wouldn't know; my job is blissfully free of interaction with the general public.) You don't need to work at a library to laugh at these, though; a passing acquaintance with humanity should be enough. This is not the first Unshelved collection printed, but there are no major story arcs to catch up on. A one-page primer at the front of the book explains the characters, if you're worried about coming in on the middle. The artwork is simple, but it does the job. I've always liked their weekly book strips, and though some of the summaries are too vague to pique my interest, I respect the spoiler-free format. In any event, after a not-good week, I enjoyed a chance to laugh, and that's about all I ask out of a comic collection.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Voices of Dragons (Carrie Vaughn)
Voices of Dragons
Carrie Vaughn
Harper Teen
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Kay knew she was pushing the rules when she went rock climbing alone so close to the border, but she didn't really expect much trouble. After all, dragons rarely ventured within sight of the human lands, and though the military patrolled to keep thrill-seekers away, she had grown up in these woods and knew where the gaps in security were. And it wasn't like she was actually going to cross the creek that marked the boundary. She just wanted to get away from the pressures of being a teen, not to mention being the daughter of the town sheriff and probably the only junior in high school not to have a boyfriend.
When she takes an unanticipated tumble, Kay finds herself on the wrong side of the border - rescued by a dragon. Artegal is just as curious about humans as Kay is about dragons. Though neither species have talked to each other in sixty years, ever since the boundaries between human lands and the dragon domains were set, Kay and Artegal strike up a tenuous friendship. But humans haven't forgotten the terror that dwells in the north, the horrors of the dragons' re-emergence after World War II, the fiery battles and the instinctive fear of the giant beasts. All too soon, decades of stalemate and tension erupt into violence, and Kay and Artegal find themselves caught in the middle. Can a teen girl and a young dragon stop a genocidal war, or is the hatred too strong on both sides?
REVIEW: A fairly fast read, this story feels a bit obvious from the start. Vaughn's tale is set in a modern-day world where dragons are real. Once in a while, the integration feels unnatural, even forced. Vaughn's dragons are disturbingly vague. Through the entire book, we readers learn next to nothing of their species and culture; the dracophile in me kept asking for more. The speed with which Kay and Artegal bond also feels forced, especially as much of their early friendship is glossed over in page count; they don't seem to have that much in common, really, until Kay figures out how to rig a flying harness from her rock climbing gear. Some moral ambiguity comes into play as the re-ignited violence claims loved ones of both Kay and Artegal, as Kay reconciles her feelings of interspecies friendship with horror at what dragons are capable of, but for the most part the "good" characters are reasonable and the "bad" ones are prideful hotheads, making the battle lines pretty clear. We readers don't see Artegal's struggles, so we have little idea of what the dragon goes through, but Kay endures all manner of problems, from family tragedies and threatened friendships to manipulation by the military. She has a believably hard time, trying to reconcile the fear of her loved ones with her belief in Artegal. Without dealing in spoilers, I can't get too specific, but the ending feels unsatisfactory, a trailing thread that ought to be tied up, or at least lead into another story.
In the end, I could only work up enough interest to add an extra half-mark to an Okay rating. Better fleshing-out of the dragons and the integrated world, plus a more conclusive ending, would've probably bumped it up a notch, but I've definitely read worse.
Carrie Vaughn
Harper Teen
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Kay knew she was pushing the rules when she went rock climbing alone so close to the border, but she didn't really expect much trouble. After all, dragons rarely ventured within sight of the human lands, and though the military patrolled to keep thrill-seekers away, she had grown up in these woods and knew where the gaps in security were. And it wasn't like she was actually going to cross the creek that marked the boundary. She just wanted to get away from the pressures of being a teen, not to mention being the daughter of the town sheriff and probably the only junior in high school not to have a boyfriend.
When she takes an unanticipated tumble, Kay finds herself on the wrong side of the border - rescued by a dragon. Artegal is just as curious about humans as Kay is about dragons. Though neither species have talked to each other in sixty years, ever since the boundaries between human lands and the dragon domains were set, Kay and Artegal strike up a tenuous friendship. But humans haven't forgotten the terror that dwells in the north, the horrors of the dragons' re-emergence after World War II, the fiery battles and the instinctive fear of the giant beasts. All too soon, decades of stalemate and tension erupt into violence, and Kay and Artegal find themselves caught in the middle. Can a teen girl and a young dragon stop a genocidal war, or is the hatred too strong on both sides?
REVIEW: A fairly fast read, this story feels a bit obvious from the start. Vaughn's tale is set in a modern-day world where dragons are real. Once in a while, the integration feels unnatural, even forced. Vaughn's dragons are disturbingly vague. Through the entire book, we readers learn next to nothing of their species and culture; the dracophile in me kept asking for more. The speed with which Kay and Artegal bond also feels forced, especially as much of their early friendship is glossed over in page count; they don't seem to have that much in common, really, until Kay figures out how to rig a flying harness from her rock climbing gear. Some moral ambiguity comes into play as the re-ignited violence claims loved ones of both Kay and Artegal, as Kay reconciles her feelings of interspecies friendship with horror at what dragons are capable of, but for the most part the "good" characters are reasonable and the "bad" ones are prideful hotheads, making the battle lines pretty clear. We readers don't see Artegal's struggles, so we have little idea of what the dragon goes through, but Kay endures all manner of problems, from family tragedies and threatened friendships to manipulation by the military. She has a believably hard time, trying to reconcile the fear of her loved ones with her belief in Artegal. Without dealing in spoilers, I can't get too specific, but the ending feels unsatisfactory, a trailing thread that ought to be tied up, or at least lead into another story.
In the end, I could only work up enough interest to add an extra half-mark to an Okay rating. Better fleshing-out of the dragons and the integrated world, plus a more conclusive ending, would've probably bumped it up a notch, but I've definitely read worse.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Swamplandia! (Karen Russell)
Swamplandia!
Karen Russell
Knopf
Fiction, YA? General Fiction
** (Bad)
DESCRIPTION: In the swampy Ten Thousand Islands region of Florida, no tourist's journey is complete without a visit to Swamplandia! Three generations of Bigtree "Indians" (as authentically Native American as their Ohio-born progenitor) have lived and worked on their own private island, wrestling alligators and driving tram tours and hawking merchandise to gawking mainlanders. Every night, the world-famous female gator wrestler Hilola Bigtree performs her trademark swim through a tank swarming with nearly a hundred monstrous reptiles. It's a death-defying spectacle - fun for the whole family!
Ava Bigtree, youngest daughter and most promising prodigy of the alligator wrestling line, grew up in this world apart from the World, her family's swampy island kingdom. Like the alligators themselves, Swamplandia! seemed immune to the passage of time... but time catches up to everyone, and everything. After Hilola lost a brief and bitter fight with cancer, Ava watches her family and her island fall apart. When a competing park, the Hell-themed World of Darkness, opens up on the mainland, the lifeline of tourists dries up. Her father, "Chief" Bigtree, comes up with one impractical plan after another to save Swamplandia! Her sister Osceola buries herself in occult attempts to conjure up spirits. Kiwi, her booksmart brother, abandons the island for the mainland in his own efforts to save the family business. Meanwhile, Ava throws herself into her wrestling practice, determined to replace her mother. All the while, the greatest threat to the Bigtrees gnaws at them from within, the jaws of grief - and not even a third-generation alligator wrestler like Ava knows how to defeat that terrible monster.
REVIEW: Some books you stay up late reading because you cannot wait to see how they end. Other books you stay up late reading because the thought of ever having to pick them up again is even more dreadful than the words printed on the pages.
Swamplandia! falls into the latter category.
Ava's story reads like a trip through the swamps, overgrown with tangles of colorful detail and murky metaphors, with only the barest hint of clear water ahead at any given time. While Russell weaves a poetic and no doubt accurate description of the Florida swamplands and a bygone world lingering long past its own extinction, she does so at the expense of a compelling storyline. By my estimation, she averages about ten pages of plot progress per hundred pages of text. For all that the book stars an alligator-wrestling dynasty whose star character hopes to use her own skills to save the family's alligator wrestling show, less than a page - at most - out of the entire book actively involves anyone actually wrestling an alligator. Subplots about Osceola's increasing obsession with her posthumous "boyfriends" and Kiwi's educational journey through the bowels of employment at the World of Darkness, not unlike Ava's main tale and the fate of Swamplandia! itself, end with resounding whimpers. Some of Russell's ideas glimmered brightly through the greater murk, but in the end the murk won out.
There is a school of thought, among many readers, that a book need not be interesting to be good. If the author uses complex turns of phrase to build a story full of resounding metaphors, if they pepper the prose with literary references, if they do nothing else for pages on end but delve into the dreary depths of history in order to reflect more fully upon the now, that alone, such people would sniff as they squint over their bifocals in their dimly-lit reading chairs, elevates a story into the realms of proper Literature. They would happily spend months - nay, years - of their lives communing with their fellow high-brow readers, dissecting the minutae of Swamplandia! and exposing the most obscure of wonders before their erudite eyes. I, on the other hand, whose simple little mind merely asks that a story interest and entertain me on some level, can only walk away disappointed that a book starring alligator wrestlers managed to bore me nearly to tears.
Karen Russell
Knopf
Fiction, YA? General Fiction
** (Bad)
DESCRIPTION: In the swampy Ten Thousand Islands region of Florida, no tourist's journey is complete without a visit to Swamplandia! Three generations of Bigtree "Indians" (as authentically Native American as their Ohio-born progenitor) have lived and worked on their own private island, wrestling alligators and driving tram tours and hawking merchandise to gawking mainlanders. Every night, the world-famous female gator wrestler Hilola Bigtree performs her trademark swim through a tank swarming with nearly a hundred monstrous reptiles. It's a death-defying spectacle - fun for the whole family!
Ava Bigtree, youngest daughter and most promising prodigy of the alligator wrestling line, grew up in this world apart from the World, her family's swampy island kingdom. Like the alligators themselves, Swamplandia! seemed immune to the passage of time... but time catches up to everyone, and everything. After Hilola lost a brief and bitter fight with cancer, Ava watches her family and her island fall apart. When a competing park, the Hell-themed World of Darkness, opens up on the mainland, the lifeline of tourists dries up. Her father, "Chief" Bigtree, comes up with one impractical plan after another to save Swamplandia! Her sister Osceola buries herself in occult attempts to conjure up spirits. Kiwi, her booksmart brother, abandons the island for the mainland in his own efforts to save the family business. Meanwhile, Ava throws herself into her wrestling practice, determined to replace her mother. All the while, the greatest threat to the Bigtrees gnaws at them from within, the jaws of grief - and not even a third-generation alligator wrestler like Ava knows how to defeat that terrible monster.
REVIEW: Some books you stay up late reading because you cannot wait to see how they end. Other books you stay up late reading because the thought of ever having to pick them up again is even more dreadful than the words printed on the pages.
Swamplandia! falls into the latter category.
Ava's story reads like a trip through the swamps, overgrown with tangles of colorful detail and murky metaphors, with only the barest hint of clear water ahead at any given time. While Russell weaves a poetic and no doubt accurate description of the Florida swamplands and a bygone world lingering long past its own extinction, she does so at the expense of a compelling storyline. By my estimation, she averages about ten pages of plot progress per hundred pages of text. For all that the book stars an alligator-wrestling dynasty whose star character hopes to use her own skills to save the family's alligator wrestling show, less than a page - at most - out of the entire book actively involves anyone actually wrestling an alligator. Subplots about Osceola's increasing obsession with her posthumous "boyfriends" and Kiwi's educational journey through the bowels of employment at the World of Darkness, not unlike Ava's main tale and the fate of Swamplandia! itself, end with resounding whimpers. Some of Russell's ideas glimmered brightly through the greater murk, but in the end the murk won out.
There is a school of thought, among many readers, that a book need not be interesting to be good. If the author uses complex turns of phrase to build a story full of resounding metaphors, if they pepper the prose with literary references, if they do nothing else for pages on end but delve into the dreary depths of history in order to reflect more fully upon the now, that alone, such people would sniff as they squint over their bifocals in their dimly-lit reading chairs, elevates a story into the realms of proper Literature. They would happily spend months - nay, years - of their lives communing with their fellow high-brow readers, dissecting the minutae of Swamplandia! and exposing the most obscure of wonders before their erudite eyes. I, on the other hand, whose simple little mind merely asks that a story interest and entertain me on some level, can only walk away disappointed that a book starring alligator wrestlers managed to bore me nearly to tears.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star (Brandon Mull)
Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star
(The Fablehaven series, Book 2)
Brandon Mull
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Last summer, Kendra and her kid brother Seth went to visit their grandparents out in the country, and stumbled into an adventure filled with fairies, imps, monsters and more. To save the magical sanctuary of Fablehaven from a terrible threat, Kendra turned in desperation to the Fairy Queen for help, and was marked forevermore. Normally, her fairy gifts don't bother her much in the ordinary world... but, in the last week of school, a new student joins her in the eighth grade. Everyone else thinks he's the cutest boy on campus, but Kendra's fairy-gifted sight sees through to the hobgoblin within. Worse, he seems to know that she's aware of his true nature. Kendra knows this can't be a good sign.
The Society of the Evening Star, a dark group which seeks the exploitation of magical beasts and subjugation of mankind, is on the move, and has targeted Fablehaven. Somewhere on the grounds, a powerful magical artifact lies hidden, one of five keys to a demonic prison. With the help of the enigmatic Sphinx, Grandma and Grandpa have brought in three new allies to find and retrieve the artifact for relocation to a new, more secure sanctuary - but from the start, trouble and betrayals dog their efforts. A traitor is in their midst, and time is running out.
REVIEW: I read Fablehaven some time ago, and while I enjoyed it, I never foresaw myself following the series further. After reading the abyssmal The Dragons of Ordinary Farm (Tad Williams and Deborah Beale), however, I found a renewed appreciation for what Mull did with the generic "modern-kids-find-magical-world" formula, and vowed to read the second Fablehaven book if I ever found it cheap enough. So, when I saw this book for sale at a thrift store for under a buck, I grabbed it.
Unlike some series authors, Mull doesn't spend much time on recaps, plunging right into Kendra and Seth's new adventures; new readers will likely be disoriented at times. The children were both changed to some degree by their first visit to Fablehaven, but still have more growing up to do. Bookish Kendra is more willing to take risks and bend rules, and even Seth's seemingly self-destructive adventurous streak is tempered, if slightly, by past experiences. The action picks up quickly. Mull always has at least one ball in the air, but manages to juggle them adroitly, making for a fast read with few, if any, lulls. While some elements of the plot proved predictable, other parts are pleasantly original. Fablehaven remains, as it was in the first book, a domain of both wonders and dangers, where even the most beautiful and innocent-seeming magical creatures almost invariably have a deadly side. Once in a while the dialog feels awkward, and the humor leans toward the low-brow. On the whole, it's a worthy and entertaining sequel to the first volume. I expect I'll track down the next book eventually, to see how things go from here.
(The Fablehaven series, Book 2)
Brandon Mull
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Last summer, Kendra and her kid brother Seth went to visit their grandparents out in the country, and stumbled into an adventure filled with fairies, imps, monsters and more. To save the magical sanctuary of Fablehaven from a terrible threat, Kendra turned in desperation to the Fairy Queen for help, and was marked forevermore. Normally, her fairy gifts don't bother her much in the ordinary world... but, in the last week of school, a new student joins her in the eighth grade. Everyone else thinks he's the cutest boy on campus, but Kendra's fairy-gifted sight sees through to the hobgoblin within. Worse, he seems to know that she's aware of his true nature. Kendra knows this can't be a good sign.
The Society of the Evening Star, a dark group which seeks the exploitation of magical beasts and subjugation of mankind, is on the move, and has targeted Fablehaven. Somewhere on the grounds, a powerful magical artifact lies hidden, one of five keys to a demonic prison. With the help of the enigmatic Sphinx, Grandma and Grandpa have brought in three new allies to find and retrieve the artifact for relocation to a new, more secure sanctuary - but from the start, trouble and betrayals dog their efforts. A traitor is in their midst, and time is running out.
REVIEW: I read Fablehaven some time ago, and while I enjoyed it, I never foresaw myself following the series further. After reading the abyssmal The Dragons of Ordinary Farm (Tad Williams and Deborah Beale), however, I found a renewed appreciation for what Mull did with the generic "modern-kids-find-magical-world" formula, and vowed to read the second Fablehaven book if I ever found it cheap enough. So, when I saw this book for sale at a thrift store for under a buck, I grabbed it.
Unlike some series authors, Mull doesn't spend much time on recaps, plunging right into Kendra and Seth's new adventures; new readers will likely be disoriented at times. The children were both changed to some degree by their first visit to Fablehaven, but still have more growing up to do. Bookish Kendra is more willing to take risks and bend rules, and even Seth's seemingly self-destructive adventurous streak is tempered, if slightly, by past experiences. The action picks up quickly. Mull always has at least one ball in the air, but manages to juggle them adroitly, making for a fast read with few, if any, lulls. While some elements of the plot proved predictable, other parts are pleasantly original. Fablehaven remains, as it was in the first book, a domain of both wonders and dangers, where even the most beautiful and innocent-seeming magical creatures almost invariably have a deadly side. Once in a while the dialog feels awkward, and the humor leans toward the low-brow. On the whole, it's a worthy and entertaining sequel to the first volume. I expect I'll track down the next book eventually, to see how things go from here.
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