Every Heart a Doorway
(The Wayward Children series, Book 1)
Seanan McGuire
Tor
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Once upon a time, a girl (or a boy) discovered a doorway to a magical world. Here, they had many adventures and learned many things - but, one day, they found themselves returned to the land of their birth. It was a harsh land, a strange land, and it was no longer home, as they were no longer the children they used to be. Some went insane. Some swallowed their memories until they convinced themselves it had all been a dream. But some found their way to a special boarding school, where the headmistress helped them process their adventures and learn to cope with the knowledge that, try as they might, they probably will never find their way back to the kingdoms of fairies or the moors of vampires. Because the headmistress, Eleanor West, was once a girl who found a doorway, herself.
Nancy arrives at Eleanor West's school with hair bleached white from the touch of the Lord of Death and a suitcase packed with offensively colorful clothes by parents who just want their lost "rainbow" girl back. Rooming with Sumi, whose adventures in a Nonsense realm left an indelible mark on her personality, she struggles to adapt, even as she refuses to give up hope of returning to the Halls of the Dead. Soon after her arrival, students start dying, gruesomely mutilated - and almost everybody suspects the new girl who once danced with the Lord of Death.
This novella includes sample chapters from Down Among the Sticks and Bones, the next volume in the Wayward Children series.
REVIEW: Every Heart a Doorway, a 2016 Nebula award winner, examines the psychological impact of portal adventures, the one many authors tend to gloss over or leave out. If you really had been to another world, if you really had been apprenticed to a mad scientist or courted by the Skeleton Girl or learned to run on rainbows, how could you ever return to our mundane Earth, with its immutable physics and linear time? McGuire creates an unexpected cast of decently-rounded characters, hinting at all manner of worlds from all over the map, a map whose compass includes such cardinal directions as Nonsense and Logic and Virtuous and Wicked. It's harsh and bleak and beautiful all at once, with hope being both a cruelty and a comfort. I quite enjoyed it, and will likely read more titles in this series as they appear.
As a closing note, I suppose this could be classified as a Teen title, given the age of
the main characters, but the subject matter and overall tone bleed over
into the adult end of the spectrum, and it's as much about mourning the
loss of childhood as it is about magical worlds. So I gave it a split age rating.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Everworld: Search for Senna (K. A. Applegate) - My Review
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Birthright Volume 1: Homecoming (Joshua Williamson and Andre Bressan) - My Review
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Friday, June 2, 2017
Stealing Mr. Right (Tamara Morgan)
Stealing Mr. Right
(The Penelope Blue series, Book 1)
Tamara Morgan
Sourcebooks Casablanca
Fiction, Romance
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: After her thief father disappeared when she was fifteen, Penelope Blue managed to scrape together a meager yet dishonest life using the skills he taught her, not to mention the help of fellow accomplices Jordan, Oz, and Riker. Together, they become the family she never had. When a persistent and disturbingly handsome FBI agent, Grant Emerson, started sniffing around their operation, costing them more than one score, Penelope decided he needed watching... extra-close watching.
Which is how she wound up married to Grant.
He knows she's a thief, and a talented one at that. She knows he has access to federal records on her father, and possibly a line on the missing millions the man was reputed to have stashed away before he vanished. It's a tense game of cat and mouse - and now, with her sights set on a very special diamond necklace, it may finally be coming to an end. Because only a fool could ever believe that a jewel thief and a federal agent could find true love in the middle of such a web of lies, and whatever else Penelope Blue may be, she's nobody's fool.
REVIEW: This book sucked me in with a fast pace, intriguing premise, and clever heroine voice, starting in the middle of a jewelry heist that quickly goes awry. Cutting back and forth between the present robbery (and subsequent complications) and the past, from Penelope's first encounter with Grant through their courtship and marriage, it keeps up a decent pace while introducing the cast of quirky characters, who tend toward tropes but are nonetheless engagingly written. Early on, Penelope and Grant are fairly evenly matched, both engaged in a complicated, teasing dance in which neither openly admits knowing the deceptions their relationship is based upon, while both have been overcome by genuine feelings neither anticipated. As the tale winds on, though, the wheels begin to wobble. Penelope slowly ceases to be a clever thief and becomes a generally naive woman who never quite grew up, who is surrounded by masculine protectors that she resents, but which she clearly needs to survive. Because a girl growing up on the streets, living by theft, is never going to be able to take care of herself without a big, strong man to do the hard stuff... As the climax unfolds, several (frequently telegraphed) revelations come out that essentially undercut much of Penelope's remaining agency and independence, in addition to just plain not making sense if you think about them much. (No details, as they constitute spoilers, but they induced several eye-rolls and incredulous groans, plus more than one head-thump against the Kindle cover in disappointment.) On top of that, a large portion of the Kindle title was simply advertising for the next installment, meaning the book itself was shorter than it appeared. I was so dissatisfied that I almost dropped the rating another half-star, but the decent character voice of Penelope Blue, not to mention some snappy interplay between the characters (before the flop of an ending), kept it afloat (if barely) at a flat three-star Okay.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scoundrel for Hire (Adrienne DeWolfe) - My Review
Concrete Evidence (Rachel Grant) - My Review
(The Penelope Blue series, Book 1)
Tamara Morgan
Sourcebooks Casablanca
Fiction, Romance
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: After her thief father disappeared when she was fifteen, Penelope Blue managed to scrape together a meager yet dishonest life using the skills he taught her, not to mention the help of fellow accomplices Jordan, Oz, and Riker. Together, they become the family she never had. When a persistent and disturbingly handsome FBI agent, Grant Emerson, started sniffing around their operation, costing them more than one score, Penelope decided he needed watching... extra-close watching.
Which is how she wound up married to Grant.
He knows she's a thief, and a talented one at that. She knows he has access to federal records on her father, and possibly a line on the missing millions the man was reputed to have stashed away before he vanished. It's a tense game of cat and mouse - and now, with her sights set on a very special diamond necklace, it may finally be coming to an end. Because only a fool could ever believe that a jewel thief and a federal agent could find true love in the middle of such a web of lies, and whatever else Penelope Blue may be, she's nobody's fool.
REVIEW: This book sucked me in with a fast pace, intriguing premise, and clever heroine voice, starting in the middle of a jewelry heist that quickly goes awry. Cutting back and forth between the present robbery (and subsequent complications) and the past, from Penelope's first encounter with Grant through their courtship and marriage, it keeps up a decent pace while introducing the cast of quirky characters, who tend toward tropes but are nonetheless engagingly written. Early on, Penelope and Grant are fairly evenly matched, both engaged in a complicated, teasing dance in which neither openly admits knowing the deceptions their relationship is based upon, while both have been overcome by genuine feelings neither anticipated. As the tale winds on, though, the wheels begin to wobble. Penelope slowly ceases to be a clever thief and becomes a generally naive woman who never quite grew up, who is surrounded by masculine protectors that she resents, but which she clearly needs to survive. Because a girl growing up on the streets, living by theft, is never going to be able to take care of herself without a big, strong man to do the hard stuff... As the climax unfolds, several (frequently telegraphed) revelations come out that essentially undercut much of Penelope's remaining agency and independence, in addition to just plain not making sense if you think about them much. (No details, as they constitute spoilers, but they induced several eye-rolls and incredulous groans, plus more than one head-thump against the Kindle cover in disappointment.) On top of that, a large portion of the Kindle title was simply advertising for the next installment, meaning the book itself was shorter than it appeared. I was so dissatisfied that I almost dropped the rating another half-star, but the decent character voice of Penelope Blue, not to mention some snappy interplay between the characters (before the flop of an ending), kept it afloat (if barely) at a flat three-star Okay.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scoundrel for Hire (Adrienne DeWolfe) - My Review
Concrete Evidence (Rachel Grant) - My Review
Thursday, June 1, 2017
This Side of Wild (Gary Paulsen)
This Side of Wild: Mutts, Mares, and Laughing Dinosaurs
Gary Paulsen
Simon and Schuster
Nonfiction, YA Animals
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Popular author Gary Paulsen reflects on animal encounters through his life, from the dog Gretchen (who would hold long "conversations" over cups of bitter-dark coffee) to the toy poodle Corky (who proved unexpectedly brave against Alaskan grizzlies), not to mention his ongoing, frequently contentious relationship with ravens.
REVIEW: This is an interesting, if sometimes meandering, collection of stories demonstrating the intelligence, playfulness, and occasional spite of all manner of animals. In his observations, he comes to agree with a conclusion reached by an animal trainer friend of his: we do not train animals, but animals train us, having far more awareness and agency than humans like to credit to them. Paulsen sees how even wild animals learn to manipulate humans, in memorable encounters at a highway rest stop and on a desert horseback ride. He also offers glimpses into his long and colorful life, not to mention a brief detour into the true horrors of nuclear warfare, as part of his military training introduced him to facts that were deliberately withheld from the general population on warhead lethality. (It's Gretchen, the dog who appeared to have figured out a way to hold wordless talks with her people, who helps him deal with this troubling knowledge.) As usual, I enjoyed Paulsen's writing style, though the chapters sometimes wavered and wandered in their focus. Overall, though, it's an interesting collection of animal encounters, mostly domestic but a few wild, that can be enjoyed by somewhat older children and adults alike. (Some of the material is a little graphic for very young or sensitive readers.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot) - My Review
Animal Wise (Virginia Morell) - My Review
Guts (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Gary Paulsen
Simon and Schuster
Nonfiction, YA Animals
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Popular author Gary Paulsen reflects on animal encounters through his life, from the dog Gretchen (who would hold long "conversations" over cups of bitter-dark coffee) to the toy poodle Corky (who proved unexpectedly brave against Alaskan grizzlies), not to mention his ongoing, frequently contentious relationship with ravens.
REVIEW: This is an interesting, if sometimes meandering, collection of stories demonstrating the intelligence, playfulness, and occasional spite of all manner of animals. In his observations, he comes to agree with a conclusion reached by an animal trainer friend of his: we do not train animals, but animals train us, having far more awareness and agency than humans like to credit to them. Paulsen sees how even wild animals learn to manipulate humans, in memorable encounters at a highway rest stop and on a desert horseback ride. He also offers glimpses into his long and colorful life, not to mention a brief detour into the true horrors of nuclear warfare, as part of his military training introduced him to facts that were deliberately withheld from the general population on warhead lethality. (It's Gretchen, the dog who appeared to have figured out a way to hold wordless talks with her people, who helps him deal with this troubling knowledge.) As usual, I enjoyed Paulsen's writing style, though the chapters sometimes wavered and wandered in their focus. Overall, though, it's an interesting collection of animal encounters, mostly domestic but a few wild, that can be enjoyed by somewhat older children and adults alike. (Some of the material is a little graphic for very young or sensitive readers.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot) - My Review
Animal Wise (Virginia Morell) - My Review
Guts (Gary Paulsen) - My Review
Me and My Dragon (David Biedrzycky)
Me and My Dragon
David Biedrzycki
Charlesbridge
Fiction, YA Picture Book
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A boy wants a special pet - not a dog, not a goldfish, but a fire-breathing dragon.
REVIEW: Another quick read during some down time at work, Me and My Dragon is a simple, fun exploration of pet ownership with a draconic twist. The boy talks about the best size for a pet dragon (not too big, so it can fit in the house) and other points of care, not to mention the benefits of a fire-breathing pet... particularly when one has to deal with bullies. The illustrations are simple but amusing and bright. As someone who would've loved a pet dragon growing up, I can recommend this book to any kid who dreams of a special pet, or any grown-up who used to be that kid.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragon (Jody Bergsma) - My Review
The Egg (M. P. Robertson) - My Review
How to Raise and Keep a Dragon (John Topsell) - My Review
David Biedrzycki
Charlesbridge
Fiction, YA Picture Book
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: A boy wants a special pet - not a dog, not a goldfish, but a fire-breathing dragon.
REVIEW: Another quick read during some down time at work, Me and My Dragon is a simple, fun exploration of pet ownership with a draconic twist. The boy talks about the best size for a pet dragon (not too big, so it can fit in the house) and other points of care, not to mention the benefits of a fire-breathing pet... particularly when one has to deal with bullies. The illustrations are simple but amusing and bright. As someone who would've loved a pet dragon growing up, I can recommend this book to any kid who dreams of a special pet, or any grown-up who used to be that kid.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragon (Jody Bergsma) - My Review
The Egg (M. P. Robertson) - My Review
How to Raise and Keep a Dragon (John Topsell) - My Review
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
May Site Update
Just got the May site update posted, so the previous ten reviews have been archived and cross-linked on the main site.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
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