The Invasion (K. A. Applegate)

The Invasion
(The Animorphs series, Book 1)
K. A. Applegate
Scholastic
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

NOTE: In honor of the recent re-release of the Animorphs series, I'm finally posting individual reviews of all 54-plus books, to replace the en-masse series review on my book review website. As I'm squeezing in re-reads on top of my existing book backlog, this project could take some time...

DESCRIPTION: Jake used to be an ordinary American kid. His biggest problems were running out of quarters for the video games at the mall and not making the cut of the junior high basketball team. Then he, his best friend Marco, his cousin Rachel and her friend Cassie, and the strange new boy Tobias decided to take a shortcut home from the mall, through the old construction site. That's when they saw the UFO... and when their ordinary lives ended.
Prince Elfangor, a centaur-like Andalite, was dying when his battered ship landed. He tells the children that he is the last of his kind left in this sector of space, sole survivor after a fierce space battle with the Yeerks. Little more than an outsized slug, a Yeerk crawls into a victim's brain, taking over their bodies and memories and turning their victim into a Controller. Some entire species in the galaxy have succumbed to the parasites. It could be years before more Andalites arrive, and by then it may be too late for Earth. To fight back, Elfangor defies his race's protocols about sharing advanced technology, giving Jake and his friends the Andalite power to morph into any animal they can touch. Morphing proves as much a danger as a strength, and there's much more to it than Elfangor had time to explain before the Yeerks arrived to finish him off, but for now it's the only tool they have.
Now Jake and his friends are Earth's only defense against the Yeerk invaders, their terrifying alien host-bodies, and their foul leader: the only Andalite-Controller in the galaxy, with his own array of monstrous alien morphs... the abomination known as Visser Three.

REVIEW: This book reads like a pilot episode for a TV series, down to the sometimes-awkward setups and the details that change once the series gets picked up. It starts fairly fast, introducing the characters, establishing the "game rules" for the universe, and giving a taste of the action, paranoia, and occasional humor that form the bulk of the series. Jake finds himself unexpectedly - and unwillingly - thrust into the role of group leader, a job he almost refuses until the Yeerk invasion hits too close to home. With his friends, he has a good support team, even if - like Jake - none of them feel up to the monumental task of saving humanity. Applegate creates some nicely non-humanoid aliens, and if a few of them stretch the laws of physics and nature, well, Animorphs is ultimately an alien-blasting action series. Some fact issues bugged me (such as the "backwards knee" on dogs; as digitigrade walkers, that's the ankle, not the knee, as a quick glance at a dog skeleton amply proves), but on the whole it intrigued me just enough to keep reading... which is just as well, as I originally bought this book because I wanted to read Book 2. (It had a cat on the cover. I never pretended to be a sophisticated book buyer...)
Oh - and I must say that, while I liked the "morphing" covers of the original Animorphs run, the new ones are rather cool, in a shiny-object way. (Hey, I told you, I'm not that sophisticated...)

Found (Margaret Peterson Haddix)

Found
(The Missing series, Book 1)
Margaret Peterson Haddix
Simon & Schuster
Fiction, YA Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: 13-year-old Jonah always knew he was adopted, but never thought to wonder about his birth parents until he received the letter. In a plain envelope, without a return address, it claimed he was one of the "Missing." He brushes it off as a bad prank - he is, after all, in seventh grade, and some of his classmates can be jerks - but then a second note arrives: "Beware! They're coming back to get you!" When his best friend Chip, who never knew he was adopted, receives the same letter, it suddenly isn't funny anymore.
While Chip becomes obsessed with digging for answers, joined by Jonah's younger sister Katherine (a sixth-grade pain who never lets go of whatever she's sunk her teeth into), Jonah himself nothing to do with it... not even when the trail leads them to the FBI, a government conspiracy, altered realities, and many more adopted children all living in the same area. Unlike Chip, he always had a happy home; he doesn't want to be part of what sounds more and more like a bad Hollywood thriller. But, even if Jonah won't search for the truth, that won't stop the terrible truth from finding him.

REVIEW: I found Haddix's Shadow Children books (the two I read, at least) reasonably entertaining, so when I found this book clearance-priced, I figured it'd be worth a try. Jonah started out a reasonable protagonist, but I soon tired of his willful ignorance; if the reader's window to the world deliberately keeps closing the blinds because it doesn't want to see what's outside, it doesn't make for a great reading experience. The plot advances in spite of, not because of, his actions; both Chip and Katherine make far more interesting characters, investing themselves fully in the mystery. Maybe it's because of this, but the clues to the conspiracy feel random and more than a little convenient to the plot. The last 80-odd pages compensate by moving almost too quickly, concluding by hurtling the reader off the edge of a cliffhanger. The ending, at least, pulled things together reasonably, with enough originality for the extra half-star in the ratings. Overall, Found read fast, and I've killed afternoons in far worse books.

Shadowplay (Tad Williams)

Shadowplay 
(The Shadowmarch series, Book 2)
Tad Williams
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Dark forces work to reshape the world of the Living. Outside the northern castle of Southmarch, the army of the faerie Qar camps amid the deserted city, their seige halted under an ancient truce... for now. Within the castle walls, the reign of the Eddons is over in all but name; though a baby heir to the kidnapped King Olin lives, the castle is under the harsh stewardship of the ambitious Tolly clan, who already maneuver to make their occupation of the northern throne more permanent. But without an Eddon as king, Southmarch and its people - the humans, the burrowing Funderlings, the seagoing Skimmers, even the secretive Rooftoppers - may be in greater danger than any could possibly imagine... dangers the short-sighted, infighting Tollys cannot possibly foresee, let alone counter.
Olin's elder children, the twins Briony and Barrick, have been torn away from Southmarch by the currents sweeping across the land, thought by many to be dead. Brooding Barrick, plagued by dreams of flame and shadow, travels north beyond the Shadowline into the eternal twilight of the Qar realms, on a mission he himself hardly understands. Briony, meanwhile, having narrowly escaped assassination, travels with the Eddon's former armsmaster Shaso far to the south. She hopes to rally support for her family among the other human kingdoms, perhaps even with the bandit-king of Heirosol (abductor of Olin), but just staying alive beyond the rarified world of castle nobility takes far more effort than she could have anticipated.
As the northlands fall into discord and ruin, the fanatical forces of the god-king Sulepis begin to stir on the southern continent of Xand, ever eager to expand their empire. The divided land lies ripe for invasion... but even the Qar armies and the autarch's invasion fleets may only be a part of a much greater threat to the world, a threat that has the gods themselves stirring in their ancient slumber.

REVIEW: The first volume, Shadowmarch (reviewed previously on this blog, here), while enjoyable, read like many epic fantasies. A troubled royal family, power plays among the nobility, inhuman enemies, ancient buried secrets... A nicely realized world and interesting characters, but still nothing truly distinctive. Shadowplay steps beyond the average fantasy, taking its world in some interesting new directions. As before, Williams tells the tale through numerous narrators, each with a unique voice, place, and perspective on the greater tale. Also as before, a couple of the narrators irritated me more than the others, but even those who seemed superfluous in the first volume find themselves involved in far more than they bargained for in this book. The world itself grows sharper and more fully realized, most especially the interwoven myths and theologies of the various cultures. Williams indulges in more "sightseeing" in this book, one of his trademarks, but enough was happening overall that I didn't mind. I noticed several minor yet annoying editing errors, which came close to costing it a half-star, but by the end I was enjoying the tale too much. Hopefully, I can track down Book 3 soon... though it'll still be a wait before Book 4 is available in paperback.
Dang it...

Abandoned Places (Lesley and Roy Adkins)

Abandoned Places
Lesley and Roy Adkins
Shooting Star Press
Nonfiction, History
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Since the earliest days of civilization, great cities around the world have risen and fallen. Sometimes a single disaster - the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum - wipes them out in a single terrifying blow. Other times, the cause is less swift or certain. The silting of a harbor, the depletion of vital resources, the internal schisms of a weakening empire... even the most powerful city can find itself destroyed, turned obsolete, or rendered uninhabitable and lost to history. The authors examine a variety of abandoned cities from around the world, some from the very dawn of civilization and some from our own recent past.

REVIEW: Yes, it came from Half Price Books. It looked interesting, the sort of book that might inspire a story, so I gave it a try. The first chapter held some promise, showing the subject of abandoned places and ruins in an almost poetic light. Before long, unfortunately, it turned into a textbook, tossing around culture names and historic events with little explanation while glossing over huge chunks of information about the sites discussed. I had flashbacks to school, when history was taught as an endless cycle of "read the chapter, draw the timeline, pass the test, repeat" instead of an active story populated by humans not entirely unlike myself. I even found myself imagining the assignments I'd be given to accompany a book like this.
In its favor, Abandoned Places covers a very broad variety of sites, grouped roughly by the factors which are believed to have led to their downfall (political strife, depletion of local farmland, climate changes, disasters, and so forth.) There are also pictures of nearly every site discussed.
In summary, this makes a decent introduction to the subject of abandoned sites and past civilizations, but it certainly could've been more interesting.

The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss)

The Name of the Wind
(The Kingkiller Chronicle, Book 1)
Patrick Rothfuss
DAW
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Kvothe the Bloodless. Kvothe Kingkiller. Slayer of demons, seducer of women, master of many a dark and forbidden art, speaker of the ever-changing name of the wind... a man straight out of a storyteller's wildest yarns, the fabulous Taborlin the Great made flesh upon the world.
At least, that's how the fireside tale-tellers speak of him.
After much searching, Devan the Chronicler finally tracks the source of the stories to a humble rural town, where the greatest living legend in the known world hides behind a pseudonym and a bar in a quiet roadside inn. Devan wants to record the true story of Kvothe, from the man's own lips... but he finds far more than he bargained for. It is a tale of pain and loss, of best intentions gone awry. It is the tale of a boy filled with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, who set out in search of the name of the wind and found instead dangers he could never have imagined.
It is also, as Devan learns, a tale whose darkest chapters have yet to be written...

REVIEW: The first in a (probable) trilogy, The Name of the Wind sets itself apart from many epic fantasies by focusing almost exclusively on a single character. Kvothe relates the story of his youth, the passions and pains that started him - if unintentionally - on the road to becoming a living legend. The general thrust of this journey should be familiar to most fantasy readers, but Rothfuss does a good enough job getting into Kvothe's head and world that it still feels original. As a protagonist, Kvothe brings some nicely humanizing flaws to the table, revealing the often less-than-noble mind at work behind his heroism (or the acts that become the basis for his heroic reputation; part of the point of the story is how people tend to read their own intentions into the truth, creating their own legends in the retelling.) The book is more than just an extended flashback, however, as troubles from his past seem to have followed him even to his self-imposed exile, endangering the lives of his new neighbors (not to mention Chronicler himself.) Perhaps it is this - the knowledge that present-day Kvothe still has danger breathing down his neck, as he sits and relates the extended story of his childhood - that made the story seem to bog down more than once. I'm used to fantasy novels indulging in "scenic routes," meandering through trivial matters and sidetracks, but with the greater threats hovering I found myself growing antsy nonetheless. There's also the matter of Kvothe's love interest, a woman of many names, who remains almost maddeningly vague throughout the story.  For a "wild woman" who seems to wander the length and breadth of the world at will, she shows a disconcerting lack of basic street smarts toward the end of the story. For the most part, though, it held my interest. I look forward to reading Book 2, when it drops to a reasonable price (and my reading backlog thins out.)