And it's been another one of those months (June doesn't look like it'll be a vast improvement, either). But I managed to archive ten reviews on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
Friday, May 31, 2024
Thursday, May 30, 2024
Pageboy (Elliot Page)
Pageboy: A Memoir
Elliot Page
Flatiron Books
Nonfiction, Memoir
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since before grade school, Elliot knew something was different about him. What it was, he lacked the vocabulary to say, the life experience to articulate even to himself, but he never quite felt at home in the skin of the girl "Ellen" that his parents, his friends, and society at large insisted that he was. It would take three decades and a roller coaster of life events and setbacks and even instances of self-harm and near-suicidal depression before he would come to grips with his true identity... revelations that come as his acting career is taking off.
REVIEW: There would seem to be few things more inherently personal than gender and sexuality, yet we live in a world where society at large either tacitly permits or actively encourages total strangers (many with disturbing amounts of authority behind them) to strictly and intrusively police both. The scrutiny doesn't even need to rise to the level of law (though several places, unfortunately and terrifyingly, are doing just that) to create almost unbearable social pressures to conform, pressures that would rather see square pegs sledgehammered to splinters than admit that not everyone fits into neat little round holes. It's even worse for those in the public eye, especially when part of an industry that too often helps reinforce those pressures and associated social stereotypes. This memoir, written by a popular actor (whose works I admit to being only vaguely familiar with), digs deep to lay out a life often warped out of shape by the disconnect between internal truth and external expectations, by survival mechanisms that ultimately worked against him until confronted (and even then it's not as easy as flipping a switch to stop unhealthy coping mechanisms of avoidance and self-destruction). Events are not related in a strictly linear fashion, moving back and forth from Page's childhood through turbulent teenage years and adulthood and in and out of various relationships and breakups, but the process of discovering, let alone embracing, one's true self is rarely a linear process. The end result reveals some ugly moments and beautiful ones, times of gains and times of backslides, ultimately culminating in an epiphany that by no means ends the lifelong journey of self-discovery but marks a pivotal milestone. Throughout, Page must contend with other people telling him who and what he is, even beyond the scrutiny of Hollywood and tabloids; some of the most hurtful moments come from his own family. Page does not paint himself as a flawless hero of his own life story, and comes across as stronger and more empathetic for it. He also admits where he has some amount of privilege, insofar as getting access to help and even a supportive community, which too many people unfortunately lack in today's world. As many people seem eager to roll back gains in equality made in recent years, stories like this one, told honestly and from the heart, become all the more important - not because they serve as a template or substitute for all nonbinary experiences, but because they demonstrate how much pain and lasting damage is caused by trying to force people to live socially convenient lies rather than seek their own truths.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Never Say You Can't Survive (Charlie Jane Anders) - My Review
Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) - My Review
Across the Green Grass Fields (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Elliot Page
Flatiron Books
Nonfiction, Memoir
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since before grade school, Elliot knew something was different about him. What it was, he lacked the vocabulary to say, the life experience to articulate even to himself, but he never quite felt at home in the skin of the girl "Ellen" that his parents, his friends, and society at large insisted that he was. It would take three decades and a roller coaster of life events and setbacks and even instances of self-harm and near-suicidal depression before he would come to grips with his true identity... revelations that come as his acting career is taking off.
REVIEW: There would seem to be few things more inherently personal than gender and sexuality, yet we live in a world where society at large either tacitly permits or actively encourages total strangers (many with disturbing amounts of authority behind them) to strictly and intrusively police both. The scrutiny doesn't even need to rise to the level of law (though several places, unfortunately and terrifyingly, are doing just that) to create almost unbearable social pressures to conform, pressures that would rather see square pegs sledgehammered to splinters than admit that not everyone fits into neat little round holes. It's even worse for those in the public eye, especially when part of an industry that too often helps reinforce those pressures and associated social stereotypes. This memoir, written by a popular actor (whose works I admit to being only vaguely familiar with), digs deep to lay out a life often warped out of shape by the disconnect between internal truth and external expectations, by survival mechanisms that ultimately worked against him until confronted (and even then it's not as easy as flipping a switch to stop unhealthy coping mechanisms of avoidance and self-destruction). Events are not related in a strictly linear fashion, moving back and forth from Page's childhood through turbulent teenage years and adulthood and in and out of various relationships and breakups, but the process of discovering, let alone embracing, one's true self is rarely a linear process. The end result reveals some ugly moments and beautiful ones, times of gains and times of backslides, ultimately culminating in an epiphany that by no means ends the lifelong journey of self-discovery but marks a pivotal milestone. Throughout, Page must contend with other people telling him who and what he is, even beyond the scrutiny of Hollywood and tabloids; some of the most hurtful moments come from his own family. Page does not paint himself as a flawless hero of his own life story, and comes across as stronger and more empathetic for it. He also admits where he has some amount of privilege, insofar as getting access to help and even a supportive community, which too many people unfortunately lack in today's world. As many people seem eager to roll back gains in equality made in recent years, stories like this one, told honestly and from the heart, become all the more important - not because they serve as a template or substitute for all nonbinary experiences, but because they demonstrate how much pain and lasting damage is caused by trying to force people to live socially convenient lies rather than seek their own truths.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Never Say You Can't Survive (Charlie Jane Anders) - My Review
Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) - My Review
Across the Green Grass Fields (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Z. Rex (Steve Cole)
Z. Rex
The Hunting series, Book 1
Steve Cole
Puffin Books
Fiction, MG Action/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: For twelve-year-old Adam Adlar, life with his tech genius father Bill has its ups and downs. On the upside, he gets to play with Dad's cutting-edge "Ultra-Reality" equipment as the first (and thus far only) test subject, a system that can actually insert ideas and sensations into one's brain so a player is living the game in a way even virtual reality can only dream of imitating. On the downside, Adam often feels more like luggage than a son, following his dad around the world in pursuit of fresh funding and new backers, left behind in hotel rooms - sometimes for days at a time. Dad's latest gig lands them in New Mexico, about as far from Adam's beloved native Edinburgh as possible, but surely this project's the one that will get Ultra-Reality funded. Just two or three days, Dad promises, before disappearing into a sleek black car and riding off into the desert.
Five days later, and aside from a couple of ambiguous texts and a visit from a surly bodyguard, Adam hasn't had any contact with his father. Then a strange text arrives - just before the building is destroyed, demolished by an impossible, invisible monster.
At first, Adam thinks it's a Tyrannosaurus rex... but, while there's no way to know if the apex Cretaceous predators had chameleon skin like this brute, he knows for a fact that T. rexes didn't have five-fingered hands. Nor did they have wings. And they certainly couldn't talk, albeit in stunted, struggling sounds. The monster seems strangely fixated on locating Adam and his missing father, and from the carnage left in its wake Adam doesn't want to know what the "Z. rex" has planned for them. But first impressions might be deceiving. Perhaps the impossible dinosaur isn't his enemy, but his only ally against something far more dangerous, something that has already trapped his dad and is now coming for Adam himself.
REVIEW: I'll admit at the outset here that the rating might be mildly generous, but I'm taking into account both the target audience and my own middling-to-low expectations when I downloaded this audiobook from Libby. (I'll also admit that I initially thought Z. Rex would involve zombie dinosaurs, which sounded like it could've been a cheesy fun time.) But it turned out to have just a little more to it than it seemed - nothing hugely deep, but more than I expected.
Adam starts the story as the tagalong son of a single father. He loves his dad, and his dad loves him, but Bill Adlar's obsessive pursuit of Ultra-Reality (and the associated "Think-Send" tech that can pull memories from and implant knowledge into a living mind) hasn't provided the most stable home life, and thus far every would-be sponsor and backer has fallen through. Adam is so used to being left behind that he doesn't really think much of his father not coming back when he said he would... but when things start literally blowing apart, just when the "bodyguard" turns up at the apartment with a gun and a very unfriendly attitude, he's jarred out of his complacency. From here, Adam's off on a wild race, one that eventually sees him captured by "Zed" the Z-rex... and that name alone is enough to clue Adam into the fact that there's more to the monster than its apparent savageness; Bill Adlar was born in the American Midwest, but took to pronouncing "Z" as "zed" while raising a son with an Edinburgh woman, so hearing "zed" from a monster can't be a coincidence. Zed starts out an apparent beast, despite his stunted ability to speak; several brutes are mauled and outright killed while trying to take the dinosaur down, and Adam is terrified he'll be next on the menu. Yet it's also clear that Zed has some ulterior motive in mind as he holds the boy hostage in pursuit of Bill Adlar. The two find themselves in an uneasy alliance against greater enemies whose plans make one rampaging, genetically enhanced Tyrannosaurus rex seem downright insignificant.
This easily could've been a shallow, simple book of running and screaming and fighting dinos and sneering baddies. On some level, yes, it does have all those. But there's also just a hair more going on. Zed isn't a simplistic beast, nor is he merely a misunderstood giant prehistoric puppy; he can and does kill in pursuit of his goals, and also has an animal temper at times that can be hard to rein in, so Adam isn't stupid to be reticent to team up with him for so long. With his wings, humanlike intelligence, and other enhancements, Zed straddles a line between dinosaur and dragon... and what kid in the target audience wouldn't love to befriend a dragon? (Heck, I'm in my upper 40's and I'd still love a dragon buddy.) Adam himself can be a bit slow on the uptake at times, but does eventually grow more of a spine. The baddies can be a slight bit mustache-twirly and shallow, but they really don't need to be more than that in a story like this, and they prove to be quite formidable foes even to a boy with a winged dinosaur in his corner.
There are some flaws, particularly in generous handwaves of tech and science and how evolution - even artificially-juiced evolution - would work. It's also a very boy-heavy cast, which starts to feel conspicuous. I expected a bit more of a follow-through on the opening scene and the Ultra-Reality gaming itself (which seems to be pretty much forgotten by the end). And a few "twists" are a bit obvious as an older reader. But those issues aside, looking at it as a younger reader (especially a boy and/or a dinosaur lover) would approach it, Z. Rex is actually entertaining for what it is, a story that doesn't insult the audience by glossing over the brutality of an apex predator (or the brutality of the kind of people who think recreating and unleashing said predator is a good idea).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragons vs. Drones (Wesley King) - My Review
Domesticating Dragons (Dan Koboldt) - My Review
Cryptid Hunters (Roland Smith) - My Review
The Hunting series, Book 1
Steve Cole
Puffin Books
Fiction, MG Action/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: For twelve-year-old Adam Adlar, life with his tech genius father Bill has its ups and downs. On the upside, he gets to play with Dad's cutting-edge "Ultra-Reality" equipment as the first (and thus far only) test subject, a system that can actually insert ideas and sensations into one's brain so a player is living the game in a way even virtual reality can only dream of imitating. On the downside, Adam often feels more like luggage than a son, following his dad around the world in pursuit of fresh funding and new backers, left behind in hotel rooms - sometimes for days at a time. Dad's latest gig lands them in New Mexico, about as far from Adam's beloved native Edinburgh as possible, but surely this project's the one that will get Ultra-Reality funded. Just two or three days, Dad promises, before disappearing into a sleek black car and riding off into the desert.
Five days later, and aside from a couple of ambiguous texts and a visit from a surly bodyguard, Adam hasn't had any contact with his father. Then a strange text arrives - just before the building is destroyed, demolished by an impossible, invisible monster.
At first, Adam thinks it's a Tyrannosaurus rex... but, while there's no way to know if the apex Cretaceous predators had chameleon skin like this brute, he knows for a fact that T. rexes didn't have five-fingered hands. Nor did they have wings. And they certainly couldn't talk, albeit in stunted, struggling sounds. The monster seems strangely fixated on locating Adam and his missing father, and from the carnage left in its wake Adam doesn't want to know what the "Z. rex" has planned for them. But first impressions might be deceiving. Perhaps the impossible dinosaur isn't his enemy, but his only ally against something far more dangerous, something that has already trapped his dad and is now coming for Adam himself.
REVIEW: I'll admit at the outset here that the rating might be mildly generous, but I'm taking into account both the target audience and my own middling-to-low expectations when I downloaded this audiobook from Libby. (I'll also admit that I initially thought Z. Rex would involve zombie dinosaurs, which sounded like it could've been a cheesy fun time.) But it turned out to have just a little more to it than it seemed - nothing hugely deep, but more than I expected.
Adam starts the story as the tagalong son of a single father. He loves his dad, and his dad loves him, but Bill Adlar's obsessive pursuit of Ultra-Reality (and the associated "Think-Send" tech that can pull memories from and implant knowledge into a living mind) hasn't provided the most stable home life, and thus far every would-be sponsor and backer has fallen through. Adam is so used to being left behind that he doesn't really think much of his father not coming back when he said he would... but when things start literally blowing apart, just when the "bodyguard" turns up at the apartment with a gun and a very unfriendly attitude, he's jarred out of his complacency. From here, Adam's off on a wild race, one that eventually sees him captured by "Zed" the Z-rex... and that name alone is enough to clue Adam into the fact that there's more to the monster than its apparent savageness; Bill Adlar was born in the American Midwest, but took to pronouncing "Z" as "zed" while raising a son with an Edinburgh woman, so hearing "zed" from a monster can't be a coincidence. Zed starts out an apparent beast, despite his stunted ability to speak; several brutes are mauled and outright killed while trying to take the dinosaur down, and Adam is terrified he'll be next on the menu. Yet it's also clear that Zed has some ulterior motive in mind as he holds the boy hostage in pursuit of Bill Adlar. The two find themselves in an uneasy alliance against greater enemies whose plans make one rampaging, genetically enhanced Tyrannosaurus rex seem downright insignificant.
This easily could've been a shallow, simple book of running and screaming and fighting dinos and sneering baddies. On some level, yes, it does have all those. But there's also just a hair more going on. Zed isn't a simplistic beast, nor is he merely a misunderstood giant prehistoric puppy; he can and does kill in pursuit of his goals, and also has an animal temper at times that can be hard to rein in, so Adam isn't stupid to be reticent to team up with him for so long. With his wings, humanlike intelligence, and other enhancements, Zed straddles a line between dinosaur and dragon... and what kid in the target audience wouldn't love to befriend a dragon? (Heck, I'm in my upper 40's and I'd still love a dragon buddy.) Adam himself can be a bit slow on the uptake at times, but does eventually grow more of a spine. The baddies can be a slight bit mustache-twirly and shallow, but they really don't need to be more than that in a story like this, and they prove to be quite formidable foes even to a boy with a winged dinosaur in his corner.
There are some flaws, particularly in generous handwaves of tech and science and how evolution - even artificially-juiced evolution - would work. It's also a very boy-heavy cast, which starts to feel conspicuous. I expected a bit more of a follow-through on the opening scene and the Ultra-Reality gaming itself (which seems to be pretty much forgotten by the end). And a few "twists" are a bit obvious as an older reader. But those issues aside, looking at it as a younger reader (especially a boy and/or a dinosaur lover) would approach it, Z. Rex is actually entertaining for what it is, a story that doesn't insult the audience by glossing over the brutality of an apex predator (or the brutality of the kind of people who think recreating and unleashing said predator is a good idea).
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragons vs. Drones (Wesley King) - My Review
Domesticating Dragons (Dan Koboldt) - My Review
Cryptid Hunters (Roland Smith) - My Review
Friday, May 24, 2024
Interior Chinatown (Charles Yu)
Interior Chinatown
Charles Yu
Pantheon
Fiction, Humor/Literary Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Being Asian in America often feels alienating. Perhaps that's why Willis Yu sees life as an endless movie where he and all his neighbors are playing roles in modern Chinatown. As Generic Asian Guy, playing bit parts in the background of everyone else's plotline, he aspires to someday be Kung Fu Guy like his father once was (though more recently he's faded to merely Old Asian Man), the closest Willis feels he can ever come to a starring role in his own life. But when the spotlight finally finds him, he discovers that it's not as easy or as wonderful as he always dreamed... and sometimes the things one wants the most are far, far away from the things one really needs.
REVIEW: From the outset, Interior Chinatown - a novel largely in screenplay format - establishes a surreal meta-reality where life both is and isn't a series of movies or TV episodes... none of which, at least in America, seem to have room for an Asian lead. The son of immigrants, Willis absorbed culture as much through TV reruns and their stereotypes as through his parents and Chinatown surroundings. Even when a show ostensibly starred an Asian character, as in the old TV series Kung Fu, it's almost invariably a white man in costume. Still, he grew up aspiring to be "Kung Fu Guy", the most powerful role he's seen on screen and in his life; his father was once the neighborhood Kung Fu Guy, but even that was still just a role invented by white people, another box to put Asian people into rather than seeing them as real people, real Americans, with their own dreams and hopes and histories. As Willis works to rise above Generic Asian Guy level three ("delivery boy", working for the same Chinatown restaurant where his parents worked, the one beneath their run-down apartment and the heart of Willis's community), he finds himself part of a detective show featuring a white woman and Black man, yet more boxes checked... even as, more than once, people step out of and around their roles to talk directly to the reader and/or Willis. As the young man unexpectedly finds a chance at genuine happiness, one beyond scripted scenes, he must confront what internalizing stereotypes and archetypes has done, both to his own life and his community (and the country at large). The whole is a complex examination of what it means to be an Asian in America, a country that has, at various times, tried to criminalize, dehumanize, and categorize Asians in various ways that perpetually brand them, in big ways and small, as not "really" American (read: not white American). At times the surreality threatened to swamp the story, and there was more than one time I thought Willis needed a conk on the skull to get some sense through his cranium, but overall it was entertaining and thought-provoking, offering no easy answers or quick fixes. (It also was short enough not to overstay its welcome.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
This Book is Not Yet Rated (Peter Bognanni) - My Review
Jade City (Fonda Lee) - My Review
The Dragon and the Stars (Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, editors) - My Review
Charles Yu
Pantheon
Fiction, Humor/Literary Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Being Asian in America often feels alienating. Perhaps that's why Willis Yu sees life as an endless movie where he and all his neighbors are playing roles in modern Chinatown. As Generic Asian Guy, playing bit parts in the background of everyone else's plotline, he aspires to someday be Kung Fu Guy like his father once was (though more recently he's faded to merely Old Asian Man), the closest Willis feels he can ever come to a starring role in his own life. But when the spotlight finally finds him, he discovers that it's not as easy or as wonderful as he always dreamed... and sometimes the things one wants the most are far, far away from the things one really needs.
REVIEW: From the outset, Interior Chinatown - a novel largely in screenplay format - establishes a surreal meta-reality where life both is and isn't a series of movies or TV episodes... none of which, at least in America, seem to have room for an Asian lead. The son of immigrants, Willis absorbed culture as much through TV reruns and their stereotypes as through his parents and Chinatown surroundings. Even when a show ostensibly starred an Asian character, as in the old TV series Kung Fu, it's almost invariably a white man in costume. Still, he grew up aspiring to be "Kung Fu Guy", the most powerful role he's seen on screen and in his life; his father was once the neighborhood Kung Fu Guy, but even that was still just a role invented by white people, another box to put Asian people into rather than seeing them as real people, real Americans, with their own dreams and hopes and histories. As Willis works to rise above Generic Asian Guy level three ("delivery boy", working for the same Chinatown restaurant where his parents worked, the one beneath their run-down apartment and the heart of Willis's community), he finds himself part of a detective show featuring a white woman and Black man, yet more boxes checked... even as, more than once, people step out of and around their roles to talk directly to the reader and/or Willis. As the young man unexpectedly finds a chance at genuine happiness, one beyond scripted scenes, he must confront what internalizing stereotypes and archetypes has done, both to his own life and his community (and the country at large). The whole is a complex examination of what it means to be an Asian in America, a country that has, at various times, tried to criminalize, dehumanize, and categorize Asians in various ways that perpetually brand them, in big ways and small, as not "really" American (read: not white American). At times the surreality threatened to swamp the story, and there was more than one time I thought Willis needed a conk on the skull to get some sense through his cranium, but overall it was entertaining and thought-provoking, offering no easy answers or quick fixes. (It also was short enough not to overstay its welcome.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
This Book is Not Yet Rated (Peter Bognanni) - My Review
Jade City (Fonda Lee) - My Review
The Dragon and the Stars (Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, editors) - My Review
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Illuminations (T. Kingfisher)
Illuminations
T. Kingfisher
Tantor
Fiction, MG Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Studio Mandolini produced the best illuminations - magical artwork, capable of nearly anything from keeping food fresh in the pantry to turning back a raging housefire - in the city. But those days are fading, and today's Mandolini family of artists seem to be fading with it, disappearing into their own projects. Young Rosa hopes to become an illuminator herself, but she grows so bored with the lessons, with having to draw the same things over and over and over again, when all she really wants to draw is monsters like fanged radishes. It doesn't help that she also still can't infuse her art with power, the key to a true illumination, though everyone agrees that she's almost there; "almost" still isn't good enough, and it makes all the tedium of practice, practice, practice seem all the more useless. Discouraged and more than a little bored, Rosa ends up rummaging around in the studio's basement and the collected artistic detritus of several generations of Mandolinis... which is where she found the forgotten box with the crow on the lid - a crow that must have some powerful illumination magic infused, as the very sight of it keeps making her turn around and temporarily forget she even saw the box. But one thing she definitely has in common with her family is her stubborn determination; if a box doesn't want to be seen, let alone opened, nothing is going to stop her from doing just that.
Which is how Rosa unleashes a magical monster that may well spell the doom of Studio Mandolini: an enspelled mandrake root known as a Scarling, whose charcoal scribbles can come to life and drain power from illuminations.
Helped only by the talking crow Payne, come to life from the box lid, Rosa decides that, since she unleashed the Scarling (and since nobody would believe her anyway), it's up to her to stop the malicious little beast... but the Scarling has had centuries to plot its revenge against the Mandolini family, and Rosa can't even paint a working illumination to fight against its ever-growing army of evil scribbles.
REVIEW: I had hoped that Illuminations would follow in the vein of T. Kingfisher's rather enjoyable A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, which had an outwardly light premise that hid darker shades and a sharper tooth underneath. This story, though, is a doodle that stays on the surface of the page, aimed younger and being rather more silly, and even at its relatively short length it felt a little long for the story it contained.
Rosa starts out as, frankly, a whiny and selfish little kid, complaining to her family about her boredom and expecting them to solve the problem. Everything about the crow box in the basement screams "Dangerous Magic - Do Not Touch", and a girl raised in a studio full of people who work with magical artwork should well recognize trouble when she sees it, but nevertheless she does the selfish, short-sighted thing... after quite a bit of drawing out and dithering by the story, enough that I came close (more than once) to finding another audiobook. Once the Scarling is released (along with its guardian, the living artwork crow Payne), things pick up a little, but still often wander into tangents about the exaggerated and often silly Mandolini family (who are Artists in the purest, most eccentric and distractable sense of the term) and Rosa's frustrations with being a kid, often talked down to when she isn't outright overlooked. There are some themes about family and friendship and forgiveness and how complicated all three can be, and how art as a job can feel more like a repetitive grind and less like a joyous connection with the muses (further exacerbated by how illuminations work: styles and specifics differ, but each illumination must contain specific elements if it is to do its job, meaning that, for instance, a cat must have blue eyes if it's to ward off mice... and painting dozens of cats, even of different sizes and in different poses, with blue eyes will inevitably start to feel monotonous by the fifth or six feline on the easel, even if that's what one must do to pay the bills). Rosa does some growing up, of course, and it's almost inevitable that she levels up in the art department while fighting malicious scribbles (that her family initially assumes must be her, even though she never once, not even as a child, drew on the studio walls or made art in such a crude style and would have no reason in the world to act out against the other Mandolinis). Some points are repeated more than even a younger reader should need to figure things out, and characters often need several blows to the skull to figure some things out. The ending draws itself out (and never follows through on an earlier setup that I was absolutely positive would come into play, given how much time went into showing off that particular project), after a climax where I was almost shouting at the characters to do the one thing that they obviously needed to do (which they eventually did even without my input).
There's a light, whimsical tone and several silly moments, and Payne in particular was a fun character (for all that even he could've used a rap on the skull more than once for wandering off on tangents and not spitting things out clearly). The concept of illuminations also was interesting. I just found Rosa and the others a bit too frustratingly obtuse and the story itself a little too thin for my tastes.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Stone Girl's Story (Sarah Beth Durst) - My Review
The Rithmatist (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review
Behind the Canvas (Alexander Vance) - My Review
T. Kingfisher
Tantor
Fiction, MG Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Once, Studio Mandolini produced the best illuminations - magical artwork, capable of nearly anything from keeping food fresh in the pantry to turning back a raging housefire - in the city. But those days are fading, and today's Mandolini family of artists seem to be fading with it, disappearing into their own projects. Young Rosa hopes to become an illuminator herself, but she grows so bored with the lessons, with having to draw the same things over and over and over again, when all she really wants to draw is monsters like fanged radishes. It doesn't help that she also still can't infuse her art with power, the key to a true illumination, though everyone agrees that she's almost there; "almost" still isn't good enough, and it makes all the tedium of practice, practice, practice seem all the more useless. Discouraged and more than a little bored, Rosa ends up rummaging around in the studio's basement and the collected artistic detritus of several generations of Mandolinis... which is where she found the forgotten box with the crow on the lid - a crow that must have some powerful illumination magic infused, as the very sight of it keeps making her turn around and temporarily forget she even saw the box. But one thing she definitely has in common with her family is her stubborn determination; if a box doesn't want to be seen, let alone opened, nothing is going to stop her from doing just that.
Which is how Rosa unleashes a magical monster that may well spell the doom of Studio Mandolini: an enspelled mandrake root known as a Scarling, whose charcoal scribbles can come to life and drain power from illuminations.
Helped only by the talking crow Payne, come to life from the box lid, Rosa decides that, since she unleashed the Scarling (and since nobody would believe her anyway), it's up to her to stop the malicious little beast... but the Scarling has had centuries to plot its revenge against the Mandolini family, and Rosa can't even paint a working illumination to fight against its ever-growing army of evil scribbles.
REVIEW: I had hoped that Illuminations would follow in the vein of T. Kingfisher's rather enjoyable A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, which had an outwardly light premise that hid darker shades and a sharper tooth underneath. This story, though, is a doodle that stays on the surface of the page, aimed younger and being rather more silly, and even at its relatively short length it felt a little long for the story it contained.
Rosa starts out as, frankly, a whiny and selfish little kid, complaining to her family about her boredom and expecting them to solve the problem. Everything about the crow box in the basement screams "Dangerous Magic - Do Not Touch", and a girl raised in a studio full of people who work with magical artwork should well recognize trouble when she sees it, but nevertheless she does the selfish, short-sighted thing... after quite a bit of drawing out and dithering by the story, enough that I came close (more than once) to finding another audiobook. Once the Scarling is released (along with its guardian, the living artwork crow Payne), things pick up a little, but still often wander into tangents about the exaggerated and often silly Mandolini family (who are Artists in the purest, most eccentric and distractable sense of the term) and Rosa's frustrations with being a kid, often talked down to when she isn't outright overlooked. There are some themes about family and friendship and forgiveness and how complicated all three can be, and how art as a job can feel more like a repetitive grind and less like a joyous connection with the muses (further exacerbated by how illuminations work: styles and specifics differ, but each illumination must contain specific elements if it is to do its job, meaning that, for instance, a cat must have blue eyes if it's to ward off mice... and painting dozens of cats, even of different sizes and in different poses, with blue eyes will inevitably start to feel monotonous by the fifth or six feline on the easel, even if that's what one must do to pay the bills). Rosa does some growing up, of course, and it's almost inevitable that she levels up in the art department while fighting malicious scribbles (that her family initially assumes must be her, even though she never once, not even as a child, drew on the studio walls or made art in such a crude style and would have no reason in the world to act out against the other Mandolinis). Some points are repeated more than even a younger reader should need to figure things out, and characters often need several blows to the skull to figure some things out. The ending draws itself out (and never follows through on an earlier setup that I was absolutely positive would come into play, given how much time went into showing off that particular project), after a climax where I was almost shouting at the characters to do the one thing that they obviously needed to do (which they eventually did even without my input).
There's a light, whimsical tone and several silly moments, and Payne in particular was a fun character (for all that even he could've used a rap on the skull more than once for wandering off on tangents and not spitting things out clearly). The concept of illuminations also was interesting. I just found Rosa and the others a bit too frustratingly obtuse and the story itself a little too thin for my tastes.
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