Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Kim
by Rudyard Kipling
Vintage Books, 2010 (originally published in 1901)
265 pages

Full disclosure: my favourite audiobook of all time is the reading Jack Nicholson did of Kipling's story The Elephant's Child, with music by Bobby McFerrin. Ever since that transcendent experience as a child, I've been rather predisposed to like Kipling, warts and all. (All that spanking = not cool, Rudyard.) When a friend mentioned I should read this and then provided a copy, I took a long time to get around to it - but I'm glad I finally did.

Kim is the tale of young Kimball O'Hara, an orphaned white boy living and thriving on the streets of Lahore. His life changes forever when he is about ten years old and attaches himself to a naive but wise elderly lama from Tibet, who is searching for the river created by the Buddha's arrow so he can immerse himself in it and become enlightened. Kim also attracts the attention of the British spy network in India, earning himself a place of respect through his escapades running messages.

I really, really liked this book. It's a fascinating and vivid window into a time and place that really does not exist anymore. It's also a bit of a primer on how colonial racist attitudes were so commonplace and ingrained that someone like Kipling, an intelligent, compassionate man with a deep respect and love for the culture he's depicting, could still say things that are glaringly patronizing, ugly, racist, or pseudoscientific, and his audience would be right there with him. It makes me wonder, sometimes, what prejudices and errors will be exposed when someone looks at our contemporary literature one hundred years from now. Maybe (one hopes?) the idea of a person's physical sex determining their behaviour and outlook on life will seem as ridiculous and wrong-headed?

As an example of the sort of thing I mean, Kipling relies, sometimes quite heavily, on Kim's "white blood" to form his character. This is a child who has grown up on the streets of Lahore with children of many races and religions, has next to no experience of white culture or people, and yet does things that Kipling ascribes to his being white despite the fact that Kim himself doesn't realize he's white. Being white is almost a kind of short-hand for Kim being brave and clever, superior in these qualities to the "natives" around him. This despite the fact that Kim is surrounded by brave and clever people who are not white; I guess those characters had to earn their badges, rather than being born with those traits. And sadly Kipling also occasionally falls into using other characters' races for short-hand for their less desirable qualities - being deceitful, belligerent, or cowardly, for example. Ouch.

Clearly, for Kipling to write that so blatantly and unironically, he understood that being white included certain personality and biological traits other than skin colour. This was a common view supported by scientists of the time, and frankly still is in certain dark corners. The idea of biological determination is insidious and hard to shake. These days, many of the characteristics that Kipling ascribes to racial biology would be ascribed (and described, in building a character in a reader's imagination) to nurture, environment, and societal structures.

But all of that considered and aside - this book is a joy to read. Kipling's language is perhaps not quite as inventive in Kim as it is in some of the Just So Stories, but it can be, and it is always beautiful. The plot is, for a spy adventure, rather slow; but I drank up the descriptions. The colours, the smells, the tastes, the voices and beliefs, the multitude of people and the delight Kim (and Kipling) takes in the diversity. This world is messy and beautiful. And it doesn't exist anymore, except in books, and this is a good one to immerse yourself in whether you're interested in this time and place in history or not.

The characters are as bright and vivid as the rest of the book. Kim is a fantastic lens to experience his world through. And though, as above, the plot is a bit slow, it is not boring if you adjust your expectations to its pace. Very glad I read this, and recommended for the armchair time-and-space traveller, among others.

three for the price of one!

How about a few mini-reviews to get caught up on things? In two cases because I don't have a huge amount to say, and in one it's because nymeth already said it all and better. Actually, it's kind of that way with two of them. I will get to that.

So, it's been a good month for romance over here, with two really enjoyable romance stories being ingested in an incredibly short space of time. One was a full-length novel and I ate it up the way one eats potato chips: delicious while the bag lasts and then you kind of feel a little ill because of the speed with which it disappeared. The other was a novella and I read it in two days and loved it. And the third book, unrelated to romance at all, was kind of a flop, but kind of not.

The Spymaster's Lady
by Joanna Bourne
Berkley Sensation, 2008
384 pages

This was one of those romance novels that's been on my radar for a long time; I read a number of great reviews back when I was doing a lot more blog reading than I am able to do right now. My library has it as an eBook, and I needed something fast and light, so away I went.

And it was fast and light, and a great deal of fun. This book is well-written, and the humour is funny, the danger is real, and the chemistry between the mains is palpable. Actually, in this case, I felt like the chemistry was actually more exciting than the inevitable payoff, but because some of the other stuff was so enjoyable I didn't mind so much.

This is a book with multiple perspectives - we get the heroine's version, the hero's, and the villain's (there may be others, I can't remember and I should have taken better notes, but those are the three main ones.) They're each likable or rabidly dislikable in the appropriate ways. Annique is a French spy, on the run after a task gone wrong has seen her run afoul of both her own countrymen and the English during the Napoleonic Wars. Grey is an English spy who helps her escape a predicament, but determines to capture her himself and bring her back to London for England's gain. Of course, the course of true love and serious spy games never did run smooth.

The villain POV stuff is always a tricky one for me and it rarely works; here it didn't either, and I felt it added nothing, nor moved the plot along. The villain is a bit overdone overall, but over the top doesn't feel out of place in a romp like this. There were a few things that stretched credulity for me for some reason, but there was also a nice couple of twists and a satisfyingly happy ending.

The Governess Affair
by Courtney Milan
Courtney Milan, 2012
101 pages

It is possible that I didn't love The Spymaster's Lady quite as much as I might have because I chased it with this absolutely fantastic little nugget of romance writing. I am not sure this is the best romance story I've ever read - I am still very fond of some of Julia Quinn's books - but ... but it's really close. The writing sparkles and the story and characters - well, I'll point you at Ana's discussion of this piece, because even if she's coming at it from a very different angle from me, she's hit on why this is an excellent little piece.

It is a novella, so some of the character development seems a bit speedy - particularly the attraction between the two mains, Hugo and Serena. But within the conventions of the genre, Milan has written something that feels both plausible and sweet, working with the time period she has chosen (mid-1800s.) This story goes down really easily and yet makes one think, which is a lovely thing. Maybe it was just the length (I certainly don't think so) but I didn't end up feeling overstuffed at the end of this one despite the fact that I read it in less than 24 hours. In fact, I plan to dive right in to the first book in the Brothers Sinister series, to which The Governess Affair is a prequel. I'll be curious to see if Milan can pull off the full length as well as she's pulled off this novella. Really looking forward to it. Also, go read Ana's bit, serious. A feel-good story that made me feel happy after I'd read it.

Rooftoppers
by Katherine Rundell
Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013
278 pages

Well, this was interesting. Again, I have Ana to thank for drawing this book to my attention, and while it didn't work out for me in the end, she kind of warned about that too. Interestingly, I think it maybe didn't work for me for different reasons. What happened to me was similar, though. Started with great promise, and then kind of lost steam. I loved the beginning, and the relationship that Sophie, our protagonist, has with her guardian, a scholar named Charles. It's charming and it's strangely believable, and if it's a bit over-the-top and a bit whimsical, I was on board.

Rundell has a proficiency with description and one-liners that is dynamite to read. Some of the language is beautiful and her writing is both funny and joyful, and that can usually carry a book for me. But. My problem is that Sophie is fixated, from the beginning, on something, to the point where nearly everything else is eclipsed. She recklessly endangers others she has grown to care about, and herself, in her quest, and this doesn't seem to have consequences. Maybe this is just a personal nitpick, but I don't find that sort of thing believable at all. In the end, it made me very lukewarm on a character I was otherwise disposed to adore. I'll read more Rundell because I think there's great potential here, and it is quite possible that middle-grade readers will enjoy this book more than I did.

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

Around the World in 80 Days (Extraordinary Voyages 11)
by Jules Verne, translated by Michael Glencross
Penguin Classics, 2004 (originally published in French in 1872)
248 pages

I feel kind of guilty, because a) I haven't been blogging, and b) I am cribbing a bunch of these notes from my book club notes and so am kind of not really blogging again. But at least there's some new material up here. It's not that I haven't been reading - I have - but more that I haven't been finishing much, and I have started quite a bit and either given it up for good or given it up for an indefinite period of time. It's also probably something to do with having a two-year-old who wants us to read and read and read, and who goes to bed late, and it's something to do with work changes that have been happening (good!) and spring! is! here! So we're spending lots of time outdoors and birdwatching and gardening and... not blogging.

Anyhow. So Jules Verne. This is the first thing I've ever read by him, though I recall that Journey to the Centre of the Earth was one of my favourite movies as a kid. The little bits of 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea that I used to catch while it was playing on repeat on one of the three t.v. channels we got when I was a kid used to scare the complete pants off me, so I never have seen the full thing. And I have somehow escaped seeing any of the adaptations of Around the World in 80 Days at all. Verne is a bit of a gap in my reading, being as he is often considered the grand-père of science fiction. Perfect, therefore, for my genre book club.

Around the World in 80 Days was originally published in 1872 as a serial in France, and collected into a novel edition in 1873. It is considered one of Verne's best works, though it contains none of the speculative technology that Verne employed in other works, and therefore can't really be considered science fiction. That said, it is speculative, in that no one had actually accomplished the feat (the first person to do so, in 1889, was Nellie Bly), and employs the best factual information Verne could get at the time; so it skims very close to science fiction. It is considered a classic of modern adventure fiction. The main character is Phileas Fogg, a rigidly eccentric, very wealthy British gentleman who takes a bet at his club one evening that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. He drags his newly employed French valet Passepartout along for the ride (Passepartout, it could be argued, is the real hero of the story.) Along the way they rescue a maiden in distress, purchase an elephant, take a wind-powered sledge across the frozen prairies, are attacked by Sioux warriors and waylaid by an enormous herd of bison, arrested, and finally resort to piracy on the high seas to get where they are going on time.

I didn't really love it but I certainly didn't hate it either, and I'm quite glad I read it. I think the big hurdle for me (aside from some of the cringe-worthy and unhappily predictable racist bits, particularly in the section where the train across the American prairies is attacked by Sioux warriors) was Verne's pedantic style, and his habit of getting sidetracked by... uh, "interesting" technical details. He spent more time describing the shortcomings of the P&O ships than the rescue of Passepartout from the Sioux.

The characters were placeholders and occasionally totally inexplicable, and clearly there to serve the plot, though I will admit that this does leave the reader's imagination entirely free to fill in whatever gaps they would like, and mine generally did. It was interesting to read the portrayal of Phileas Fogg compared to Passepartout, knowing that certain French/British rivalries were still very much in force at the time of the book's writing: Fogg is completely unreachable; Passepartout, while more relatable, is often rather a puppy-dog-like dufus, though a very brave and agile one.

One piece of criticism I read suggested that none of the English translations available really do Verne's writing justice, which could be part of the problem, though part of me doubts that the translators can do much when he chooses to spend a bunch of time elaborating on the genius of American railway engineering instead of the inner life of his characters. If I had the patience I could see trying a different translation, and perhaps I will some day, but I thought Michael Glencross did quite a serviceable job with the material he had.

As an interesting side note: I had to see if wind-powered ice sledges actually existed, because I was pretty much thinking that was an invention straight out of Verne's very creative, very speculative, and very scientific mind. Apparently not. Right around the time Verne was writing this book they were making headlines for racing trains and beating them.

All in all, glad I read it, would recommend it to the right person (interested in historical adventure, perhaps, and in a light, quick read.) Not going to be considered one of my favourite books, but I do feel like Verne is part of the consciousness of our culture, and now I have a better background understanding of why. Would probably try Verne again, most likely Journey or 20 000 Leagues, though I'll admit Five Weeks in a Balloon rather tickles my fancy too.

Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke

Zita the Spacegirl (Zita the Spacegirl 1)
by Ben Hatke
First Second, 2011
192 pages

I am always on the lookout for good graphic novels to read with my kids' book clubs. Because they are parent-child groups, I like to expose everyone - in this case, the adults - to something they may not have tried before. Most often the kids have at least tried a graphic novel, and most of the parents are always a little skeptical at first. In at least two or three cases I've had full converts, to the point of the adults searching out and reading new and interesting adult graphics themselves; and the only complaints I've had (there are always a few) have to do with the fact that reading graphic novels - or comics - can be difficult if you're not comfortable with the conventions, or with the very visual mode of storytelling. Sometimes kids have the same problems. But overall, reading a graphic novel every once in a while with my book clubs has been a success.

Zita the Spacegirl will be our next attempt at one. It's actually fairly difficult for me to find quality graphic novels that I feel have enough meat to carry a book club discussion with a group of seven- to eleven-year-olds and their adults, especially if I am trying to find something that most of the group hasn't already read. School librarians are very adept at finding the great graphic novels and making sure the receptive kids get a chance to read them. I find it hard to grudge them this.

Summary: when Zita's friend Joseph is snagged by a terrifying tentacled creature from a portal to an unknown world, Zita follows to try and save him. (This whole part is done so well, and so believably, character-wise, that I was hooked immediately.) She finds herself transported to the surface of a planet doomed to be destroyed in days by an incoming asteroid. She appears to be the only human around, she's penniless and friendless, and Joseph is whizzed off in some sort of flying car before she even has a chance to rescue him. Zita is going to need a little bit of help to save the day.

Zita fits my criteria for a good book club graphic novel. The art is easy to follow and evocative. The plot is very fast-paced, and there's lots of humour. Characters are interesting, though many are a bit mysterious; I think we'll learn more about some of the secondary characters as we move into the second book. Zita is a complex, totally believable kid. The story is not entirely straightforward and the subtext isn't always outright explained - always excellent features in a book club book. If it is a bit predictable at points, that's because I know the conventions of the adventure and science fiction genres. At other points, it managed to surprise me even within the conventions, so it gets points for that too. Finally, it isn't perfect. While I thought the book started incredibly strong, I was a little confused by the timelines for some of the later plot and the end of the book felt rushed. It's possible I might read the book again in order to see if that was just because I was distracted and/or reading too quickly at the end. Flaws in an otherwise well-done book make for good discussions, too, if they're not so deep as to wreck the book, and these are nothing like that.

Recommended for fans of middle-grade graphic novels; I'll be reading the rest of the trilogy.

Cold Magic by Kate Elliott

Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)
by Kate Elliott
Orbit, 2010
544 pages

This is a book that gets at the heart of one of the more difficult questions I face when I am thinking and talking and recommending books and writing: what carries a novel? Is it the writing? The plot? The concepts? The characters? Is it all four? Can a book succeed on the strength of one? Can it fall on the weakness of one?

I picked this book as a book club read for my adventurous genre readers, it being a very interesting example (I thought) of that particular niche of fantasy, gaslamp/steampunk. It turns out that it's not quite either, but that's neither here nor there; what it is, concept-wise, is incredibly rich. It's a fantasy set at the time of the Industrial Revolution, or what we would call the Industrial Revolution, in a world where magic is part of the fabric of society, Christianity is just a very minor sect in a large pantheon of religions, and Africa is a wasteland populated by ghouls. Amerike (sic) is populated by a birdlike, friendly, highly intelligent humanoid race called trolls, European society is heavily Roman-influenced one thousand years after the fall of the Empire, and the African diaspora has settled and become part of the fabric of society and culture such that the colour of one's skin is no indicator of heritage and someone of predominantly Celtic culture is as likely to be black as someone of predominantly Mande culture is likely to be white and children of the same parents can have varying colours of skin and hair. In other words, racism, as we know it, isn't an issue here. Magical ability, class, and wealth, on the other hand, are the main drivers of discrimination.

Sounds good so far, doesn't it? The world is incredibly complex. The cultures are carefully thought-out and inspired by a multitude of historical cultures and mythologies. The main characters aren't white, which counts for a fair bit in the world of fantasy fiction. The characters: Cat, or Catherine, and her cousin Bee, or Beatrice are two young women nearing the age of majority, educated and of a venerable, but down-on-its-luck family. They are full of new and dangerous ideas about science and technology, while still navigating their worlds with magic. Cat is an orphan, raised as Bee's sister by her aunt and uncle, and the two girls are absolutely devoted to each other. Even the concept of these characters is awesome.

Here we start to stumble a bit, but let me move on to the plot.

Which gets very bogged down very quickly with that dangerous problem of exposition. When one has a world as cool and complex and alien, but not quite alien enough, as the world of Cold Magic is, one has to explain it. And a good writer can make that happen, almost like magic, but that is not at all what happened here. There are a couple of ways to take on the problem of exposition: infodumping ("as you know, Bob, the general tried to conquer the known world but has been in prison these last thirteen years...") and thrusting the reader right into things and trusting they'll land on their feet (usually my preferred option). Elliott employs a clumsy, poorly-edited combination of the two and this is, depending on your threshold for that fourth component, the writing, disastrous.

I will be honest: I did not think I was going to make it to the end of this book. By the time I hit the ninth chapter I was furious. I had picked this book on the understanding that it was critically well-received (Publisher's Weekly, I am looking at you) and I was appalled at the writing. There were things on every single page that tore me right out of my struggling attempts to enter the world, ranging from awkward sentences to clear copy editing errors to blocks of confusing and seemingly aimless exposition. The prose veered from pedestrian to purple, occasionally laughably so. The text meandered, the dialogue was stilted, the characters unfocused. I was being treated to infodumps and I still had no idea what was going on, and what was worse, I really didn't care.

I was angry because I could see, I could feel, that there was something here. There was a kernel, maybe just the concept of the world or the idea of characters and conflict, of something that could be really interesting. And I felt that Elliott wasn't getting the editing she desperately needed. An editor should have tightened up those first nine chapters, or chopped them completely. Condensed them to one. It felt like the author was wandering vaguely in a forest of awesome worldbuilding and character description exercises and couldn't get her bearings.

But.

Once she gets her bearings, watch out.

I don't think that the writing got appreciably better, and I lost count of the number of times we were treated to the fact that the lying Romans had called the Kena'ani "Phoenicians" and the great city of Qart Hadast "Carthage." A writer with more grace would have let the reader remember those facts on her own. But what did start happening was plot. It was like Elliott suddenly knew exactly what she wanted to do with this interesting world she had built, and the characters marshalled around that, and suddenly I was nearly halfway through the 544 page book and I wanted to know what was going to happen next, because somehow, suddenly, I cared.

As E. M. Forster said, "and then what?" has a lot of power. Add some half-decent characters and some very imaginative trappings, and you have yourself a very readable book.

The problem with a read like this is that I don't quite know what to do with it. I enjoyed myself, in the end. I almost couldn't put the thing down and I definitely didn't want to. I even quite liked Cat, and loved that she was so fiercely protective of herself and her own power; if you're looking for a book with a very strong female character with a lot of agency and determination, you could do a lot worse than this one. It didn't leave me with a glowing impression, but I also wasn't left with that empty, potato-chip-gorged feeling I get when reading something I don't really like just because I have to get to the end. I liked this book and I can still respect myself in the morning.

This book succeeded on the strength of the concepts and eventually the plot, and fell down on the weakness of the writing. Depending on your threshold for each, this is a read you might enjoy, or might hate, and I think you'd be right in either case.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
by Grace Lin
Little, Brown and Company, 2009
278 pages

This is a beautiful book. I don't just mean beautiful as in the content, though that's lovely too. I mean the production quality on the actual item is beautiful: the paper is thick and smooth, the colouring of the illustrations is gorgeous (the illustrations themselves are perfect) and the typesetting is lovely, even if some of the font changes between main body and folktales and handwritten letters felt just the tiniest bit excessive. It weighs nicely in the hand. In short, this is an extremely attractive book.

I do so like it when a publisher takes that kind of time and makes that kind of effort. It feels like they were considering the entire experience they want the reader to have.

It matches the story inside, in this case: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is careful, lovely, and colourful. Minli is the daughter of very poor farmers, who scrape a bare subsistence living from the ground near the muddy, turbulent Jade River and the aptly named Fruitless Mountain. The bright spot of her days are the stories her father tells Minli and her mother at night after dinner. Her favourites include the story of why nothing does grow on Fruitless Mountain, and a story of the Old Man of the Moon, the Immortal who knows everyone's fate, and controls their destined meetings. One day, after purchasing a goldfish on a whim, hoping to change her family's fortune, Minli decides that she must search out the Old Man of the Moon herself. Thus begins a long, sometimes strange, sometimes frightening, sometimes funny, and always interesting journey.

It is a simple story, told in very simple language, and things are relatively straightforward. The enjoyment is in the creativity of the plot itself, and the way the story is told. The characters are spare, but somehow still engaging; I am not sure exactly how Lin managed that without making them cardboard cutouts (aside from the villain, who was pretty two-dimensional.) It's also deceptively busy. It's a story in which an awful lot happens, but the pacing is incredibly well done. One never feels rushed, and even the ending, which could have felt like it happened too quickly, didn't. It felt just right.

Throughout the body of the story, which is split between spending most of our time with Minli and Dragon, and a bit of our time with Minli's parents, are sprinkled little folktales. They take their inspiration from Chinese folklore, but my understanding is that these tales are mostly Grace Lin originals, heavily influenced by traditional stories. These short little gems, told formally and separated from the main story by narrative style and differences in font, each have something to say to the main storyline as well. Minli loves stories. Ba tells them to her every night, and it is from these stories that she gets the original idea to go find the Old Man of the Moon. Minli's Ma, however, is a tired, embittered woman, who cannot understand why the other two bother with tales when nothing of material good comes out of it. The contrast and struggle, and the love, between Ma and Ba was one of the highlights of the novel for me.

Weight and consideration is given, without being heavy-handed, to the power of stories and the need for them; Lin also weaves in the importance of certain virtues, again without being too heavy-handed (mostly): gratitude, generosity, loyalty, initiative, patience, cleverness, kindness. Minli gets where she needs to because she has each of these characteristics in spades, except maybe patience. Even then, she can be patient when she needs to be, and Ma and Ba's tale is all about patience and loyalty.

I am absolutely looking forward to reading this with my parent-child book clubs at some point. I will, unfortunately, have to wait until next year, as this year's choices are already made. But it's a book that will read aloud wonderfully, and I think equally enjoyed by adults and children. Recommended for those looking for a gentle adventure. Also, the fact that this takes its inspiration from a culture very different from many Western books written in English doesn't hurt; I'm always on the lookout for middle-grade books that can expand kids' horizons.

The Beasts of Clawstone Castle by Eva Ibbotson

The Beasts of Clawstone Castle
by Eva Ibbotson
Pan Macmillan, 2005
3 discs, unabridged

A perfectly spooky tale for a spooky time of year, and entertaining for the whole family. It's a simple tale, this one, on the surface. Madlyn and Rollo's parents are off in New York, because their father has taken a badly-needed commission. They are packed off to spend the summer with their Great-Uncle George and Great-Aunt Emily at an old castle in the north named Clawstone. Once there, it is apparent that things are not going well; the neighbouring castle, Trembello Towers, is drawing all the local visitors, and there is no money for the upkeep of the castle, the grounds, or most importantly, the herd of unique, wild white cattle who inhabit the grounds. Madlyn and Ned, one of the local children, come up with an idea to draw visitors back to Clawstone with the help of some rather unusual entertainers.

This is very much a children's book, in that the villains are villainous and unpleasant, the good characters are good beyond reproach, and there isn't too much in between. The characterization is enough, but not deep. But the writing is solid and the plot is, while occasionally completely ridiculous in a fun way, well-executed. And there are deeper issues here that would make for great discussion with kids. They are never belaboured, but it is not as if Ibbotson was ignoring them; they are an integral part of the plot, but this is a short book, and so if the plight of refugees in the UK is never investigated deeply it's not because the seriousness of the problem isn't recognized. It's just not the point of the story. There are other stories that deal with that.

Where things do get a bit sketchy is with a few minor plot threads towards the end that do odd things. Why did the banshees bother to come to Black Scar Island with Great-Uncle George if nothing was going to be said about them on that visit? What was the point of their presence? Did I miss it because I was listening to an audiobook? Was it just intended to be amusing at that moment? (I don't think this counts as a spoiler, at least not a major one, unless I really did miss something important.) It was just such a strange oversight, in a book that otherwise seemed to tie up the ends rather neatly if not always in the way one expected. I was confused enough about it that I actually paused the disc once I realized nothing more was going to be said about them. Thrown out of the story. I am of the Chekhov school - if you are going to have a banshee or three in the back of the car, those banshees had better be used in the plot. Otherwise they just confuse me.

The audio is excellent. It's David Tennant doing the reading, so how can it not be? He's got a wonderful reading voice, and he does the character's voices well, and one never feels like one is being spoken down to, which is always a turnoff for me with kids' audiobooks. I'd love to do this book with one of my child-parent book clubs, because of the fact that I think there is meat to discuss but also just a wonderful, entertaining, spooky but not too spooky story that would appeal to all ages. Much thanks to Darla for bringing it to my attention, lo those many years ago.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The Phantom Tollbooth

by Norton Juster

Harper Children's Audio, 2008 (originally published in 1961)

4 discs, unabridged

When I saw this audiobook was narrated by David Hyde Pierce, I had reservations. I wasn't sure how I felt about Niles Crane reading to me for the entire length of a book I'd been looking forward to for ages. I shouldn't have worried. This was one of the most enjoyable audiobooks I've run across ever, and Pierce can take a fair chunk of the credit for that. He is a wonderful reader.

The narration makes it, but the book itself is just fantastic too. It is silly but substantive, clever without being obnoxious about it, incredibly imaginative, strangely relevant, and often wise. Also, puns. Many, many puns. The wordplay is everywhere.

Milo is bored. He is a boy for whom life holds no joy: he is not interested in anything, he is always in a hurry, and he is never satisfied. So when a mysterious purple tollbooth shows up in his bedroom one day, the only reason he attempts to use it at all is because there is simply nothing better to do. But the tollbooth is no ordinary toy, and Milo is transported to a world where things start to interest him in spite of himself. This is the Kingdom of Wisdom. He is caught in the Doldrums, visits Dictionopolis and meets King Azaz the Unabridged, makes his way through the Forest of Sight and the Valley of Sound, encounters the Mathemagician in Digitopolis, and finally takes on the Mountains of Ignorance. For all is not well in the Kingdom of Wisdom: a horrible mistake was made, and the princesses Rhyme and Reason have been banished, and everyone is counting on Milo to bring them back.

Most criticisms I have seen of the book lie in the fact that it is too clever for its own good; the words are too long, the concepts too difficult, for children to understand. These criticisms started when Juster released the book back in 1961 and they continue today. I think this is incredibly unfair. Not to the book, because it is indeed full of delightful words and challenging concepts, but to the children whose parents (or teachers, or librarians) decide not to attempt it because they think it will be too hard. This is a book that has many charms, and if a child doesn't get all the jokes, they'll still enjoy the adventure story. And frankly, most children I know love a good joke. (And lots of bad ones, too, and lots of things that aren't really jokes at all...) And many of them have no trouble taking things literally, as Juster often does with his idioms (how do you get to the Island of Conclusions? You jump there, of course.) So what if they don't pick up on everything the first time through. Let them read it again. This book has staying power. My suspicion is that they will want to read it again. And they will get more out of it the second time through. And yet more the third time.

I say this because I was actually scared off reading this with my parent-child book club for a couple of years because of the suggestion it might be too hard for kids to enjoy. What a shame, because there are kids who have moved on from the group and won't be reading this with me now, and I regret that. Checking in with the kids who still come to book club, all of them adore it so far. None of the parents in the group were more than passingly familiar with the book either, and certainly hadn't read it. Those I have talked to are loving it, too. I should know better than to fear the appropriateness of a book because it is "difficult." I should trust my instincts, but I should also trust the kids themselves.

My criticism doesn't lie with the supposed difficulty of the book. My criticism lies in the fact that there is a Message, and very occasionally the plot serves the Message rather than the Message coming out of the plot organically. There were moments when it was clear that Learning is Good and Fun and You Should Do It Even If You're Not Sure Why You're Doing It Right Now, and Also Pay Attention Kid. It was just that I was enjoying David Hyde Pierce's reading so much and the inventiveness of the plot and world so much that I didn't much care about being Messaged At. The other important point here is that the book isn't trying to be coy; it knows it has a Message. It's pretty clear on that. The major win is that it also tries hard to be an enjoyable story, and succeeds 99.5% of the time. 

This is a book I will buy so that I have it lying around. I will reread it myself (and I suspect reading will be a different, but still very enjoyable, experience, not least because I missed out on Jules Feiffer's illustrations) and I look forward to reading it with others, too, and reveling in the sheer silly joy of the English language.

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
by Jeanne Birdsall
Oakhill Audiobooks, 2008 (originally published in 2005)
6 discs, unabridged

This book feels like an older children's classic -- along the lines of The Railway Children, say -- and yet is relatively recent. It felt like I was listening to a story from my childhood again; only this was brand new, with new characters and new adventures. And I'd say Jeanne Birdsall has taken pains to make sure this book will remain as timeless as possible; there are telephones and cars, but no mention of what sorts of telephones and cars. Technology doesn't really make an appearance, aside from a mention of a computer that one of the girls uses once, and though that itself could make the book feel dated, it doesn't. This is a summer tale, an outdoor tale, a tale of four girls and a cottage and a lovely extended vacation. With, as the book's subtitle mentions, two rabbits and a very interesting boy. And a dog. And another very interesting boy.

Maybe I am just a sucker for this sort of thing, but if that's so, I'm in good company: The Penderwicks won a National Book Award the year it was released. It has played very well with the adults who give out awards and starred reviews. It first came to my attention through the discerning Aarti. I am curious to know if it will play as well with kids. My child-parent book club is going to be reading it next spring, to get them set for summer, and I'm very curious to know if they will enjoy it as much as I have.

The Penderwicks, four girls, their loving but somewhat distracted father, and their dog Hound, are on summer vacation. Seeking a last minute cottage rental, they've chanced upon a place called Arundel -- a grand estate in the mountains, a mansion with beautifully manicured gardens. Their cottage is a humble, but lovely, little place behind the mansion, hidden from the main grounds by a tall hedge. And while that would be fun enough for four girls with big imaginations and lively curiosity, there happens to be a handsome young gardener (handsome enough and young enough to turn eldest Penderwick Rosalind's 12-year-old head for a first crush), a friendly and comforting housekeeper, a nasty, shrill, very rich lady who owns the place, her sneering suitor, and her mysterious son, who happens to be just the right age to make an ideal playmate for the girls.

And the girls play. They get into all sorts of scrapes and wild adventures over their three week vacation, some of them inadvertent and some of them deliberate, some of them dangerous and some of them harmless. They are good-hearted, imperfect, and impulsive, which makes for excellent stories. You're always rooting for whichever Penderwick is featured, even when you know she's squarely responsible for her own tricky situation. What makes this book are the characters, not necessarily the storylines; and not necessarily the secondary characters, either. Mr. Penderwick is charming, but hardly there (not in a bad way, mind you, and when he needs to be he is there) and Churchie the housekeeper, Harry the Tomato Man, and even Cagney the gardener are all pretty one-note, though very alive and each quite likable. Mrs. Tifton and her suitor are pretty much caricatures and extremely dislikable. It's the four girls -- motherly, responsible Rosalind, difficult and brilliant Skye, dreamy Jane, and shy little Batty -- and Jeffrey Tifton who make the story worth reading. They are gently handled by Birdsall, even Skye, who I'll admit was a challenging character for me at first though she did grow on me. Their dreams and fears and feelings are all considered fairly and without judgement, and they felt like very, very authentic people. I'm not so far away from Jane or Rosalind (though Skye is pretty foreign to me) that I don't remember what that was like. Birdsall has it pretty much dead on.

Which lead to a couple of very uncomfortably squirmy moments for me, listening in the car. At one point I actually stopped the audiobook cold without even realizing I'd planned to do it, just before Skye did something she should not have done, but that I couldn't blame her for, that I kind of wanted her to do, but that I was painfully aware was going to be mortifying for her and therefore by extension for me. Except when I realized what I'd done and turned the audio back on, it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Birdsall once again treated Skye with dignity and didn't play up the full mortifying horror of the situation for amusement or tension as a different author might have done.

The reader of the audiobook, Laurence Bouvard, is a voice actor and veteran audiobook reader, and that comes through. Overall the narration was good. I occasionally had some trouble -- Jeffrey and Cagney sounded pretty much the same to me, and Mr. Penderwick just sounded silly and dopier than I think he was, text-wise. However, her voices for the four girls were brilliant and I never had any trouble telling any of them apart. I do find children's audiobooks can be really hit or miss for me; I don't like being talked down to and can't stand it for an entire story. I wouldn't say this was an entire hit, as it occasionally skirted that very subjective line, but it certainly wasn't a miss.

A warm, engaging, fun, gently-told story that appeals to me for any number of reasons. I think this would be a perfect family read-aloud, especially for the summer... or maybe for the cold spring, when summer seems too far away and a little warmth is needed.

The New Noah by Gerald Durrell

The New Noah
by Gerald Durrell
Viking Press, 1964 (originally published in 1955)
223 pages

This was an odd one, in that I started reading it and thought two things: first, I've read about these trips before, and not when I was a kid, but rather more recently; and second, the last time I read these, they were written better. It was weird. And then I read the dust jacket, and realized that the advertising was all right there -- these were, indeed, retellings of previous adventures, but primarily aimed at kids. Once I had that all sorted, I could enjoy the book for what it was. Sort of.

I believe I have mentioned before a number of things I like about Gerald Durrell's writing -- his enthusiasm for nature, his desire to share the quirks and amazing things about the animals he meets, and especially his eloquence when it comes to describing settings, and his sharp and self-deprecating sense of humour. Some of that was still in evidence here, but in taking his "best" stories from the earlier books and editing them for a younger audience, we really only got the first two, with rare glimpses of the third and fourth -- he's telling animal stories, and he's shortened them, and they're considerably less incisive and/or amusing than their counterparts written for adults. They don't sparkle in the same way. The language is simpler, the stories shorter, the sense of adventure and danger and occasionally sorrow or outrage just doesn't show up. Chumly the Chimp (remember him?) makes an appearance and gets most of a chapter -- an unusual thing for any single animal in this book -- but the sadness of the story has vanished. Chumly's ignoble and tragic end isn't mentioned, isn't even alluded to. Perhaps this was considered too distressing for children to hear? Durrell uses this volume as a bit of a platform for discussing the life of an animal collector, but doesn't quite hit the same note that the previous three do: the acknowledgement that collecting fauna for zoos is as much hard work, pain, disappointment, and frustration as it is excitement and success. The book is significantly poorer for the lack of balance and depth.

It is possible that this book would be a better entree to Durrell's oeuvre. I think because I am familiar with his better stuff -- his "real" books, as it were -- this was not a terribly good choice for me.

Complaints aside, it's still fun to read these stories, truncated and disjointed as they are, and it's a very fast read. The stories are short and amusing even without the sparkle of wit and vivid description, and the little bits on his trips to Guiana, Argentina, and Paraguay have certainly whet my appetite for the next book in my quest to read all his autobiographical animal tales. Though it also became clear to me that I've read The Drunken Forest before -- I remember the story about Amos the Anteater well, including the bit where the gaucho's wife rides out on the back of the draft bull to pick up the aforementioned creature. And the tale about the musical capybara was one of the better and funnier tales in the book.

Only recommended if you haven't got any other Durrell to read, and absolutely need a fix. I suppose if you wanted to get a kid an early Durrell book that didn't include any unpleasant colonial English white male overtones, you might do well with this, too. The stories focus on the animals almost exclusively, so some of the parts that are not so desirable about his earlier books are absent here. However, as an adult reader, too much of the wonder and beauty and balance of his first books is absent too; I won't feel the need to read this one again.

Other Durrell books reviewed here so far:
1. The Overloaded Ark
2. Three Singles to Adventure
3. The Bafut Beagles

The Secret of the Mansion by Julie Campbell

The Secret of the Mansion
by Julie Campbell
Random House, 2003 (originally published in 1948)
272 pages

I read a lot of Nancy Drew as a kid. Imagine my horror when I went back to read some of them again, just for kicks. It turns out that (hold on -- this may come as distressing news to some of you) Nancy Drew is not very well-written. Certainly not the first one, anyway, and I am saddened; I loved her so much as a kid. I couldn't even get past the first half of the book.

My mother, on the other hand, really loved Trixie Belden, and for some reason I just couldn't get as invested. Maybe it was that Nancy was older and cooler -- but it turns out that, as an adult reader, I far prefer Trixie. So I introduced my parent-child book club to her, with mixed results. Some of them really enjoyed the experience -- the boys, mostly, which surprised me, and the older generations, which did not -- and others were so frustrated by the repeated "golly! golly! golly!" and by Trixie calling her mother "Moms" that they just couldn't get into the book. That, and the fact that the pacing seemed kind of slow to them. Funny how a little thing starts to stick out like a sore thumb when there's an underlying dissatisfaction with the way a story is told.

I was somewhere in the middle. I wouldn't say I loved The Secret of the Mansion, which is the first of the Trixie Belden series and one I had never read before, but I rather enjoyed it, and I even kept it past the book club date to finish it (I didn't find it as fast a read as I'd hoped to.) The "golly" and even the "Moms" didn't really bother me, but the pacing did, and the tendency to melodramatic chapter endings followed by "ha ha, it was just a chicken" kinds of chapter beginnings wore a bit thin. I realize this is a certain kind of convention, particularly in children's mystery novels, but it quickly loses its shine for an adult reader.

So, for a quick summary: Trixie lives with her mother and father and three brothers on Crabapple Farm on the Hudson River. Her older brothers, Brian and Mart, are off at summer camp, and Trixie is looking at a summer of housework and helping out with younger brother Bobby, trying to earn enough money to buy a horse. It doesn't hold a lot of allure to her, and she's desperate for some excitement. Luckily, at almost the same time, a new girl Trixie's age moves into one of the two neighbouring mansions and a runaway hides out at the other, and rumours of a hidden fortune in the latter mansion start to heat things up.

Considering the book was first written in 1948, it holds up surprisingly well. It's certainly of its time, but in such an accessible way that though the language (see: "golly") was a bit of a barrier for some of the kids, most of the group had no trouble relating to Trixie and Honey and Jim. The family dynamic is a lovely background -- Trixie's father's a kind, generous man who takes the time to listen to his daughter; Trixie's mother is busy but supportive and trusts Trixie to be responsible; Bobby, Trixie's younger brother, is cute but exasperating and Trixie loves him dearly and also finds him a pain in the neck. The friendship between Trixie and Honey is well-done, too, if a little rushed, but it's rushed in that kind of believable way -- there are no other girls around for Trixie to hang out with, and Honey is lonely and wants a friend, and they're both of that age when passions are high and a potential friend can become a best friend in a day.

Most interestingly for me is that Trixie is not a perfect heroine, and I actually found her a bit hard to like at first. She's wildly impulsive, acts and speaks well before she thinks, shirks her chores, and is judgmental and selfish and pushy. Except that she's also very clever, very genuine, responsible, kind-hearted, and incredibly generous, too. Yes, some of that contradicts, and that makes total sense. She is a thirteen-year-old girl, a tomboy with three brothers. She's a complex character and I grew to appreciate that, versus Nancy Drew's weirdly perfect, mini-adult (and frankly, boring) demeanor. Trixie's the kind of girl I would have loved to know as a kid, but would have been too shy to approach. She would have scared me a bit, and I bet she would have lit up a room.

The plot itself is relatively thin for a mystery, and read more like an adventure story than a mystery to me. Further, it was interesting to me how much "teaching" was done in the text -- [largely outdated] first aid tips, fairly detailed discussions of rabies (aka "hydrophobia") and the habits of skunks, how to ride a horse, that sort of thing. Some of it was a bit info-dumpy, but I thought it was also kind of neat. I did feel that it was my duty to dissuade my group from thinking that the way Trixie handles a poisonous snake bite is the way to do it, though.

I'd like to eventually read the entire Trixie Belden series, but I don't think it's the sort of thing I'll be doing all at once. As I said above, it wasn't a favourite read, but I did really like the characters and I'd love to see how things evolve, at least in the first six books, which were all written by Julie Campbell. It wasn't a fast read, though, and I had enough mild irritation with it that I think I'll space the books out a fair bit. Recommended with caveats, the caveat being that you probably want to be reading this to the sort of kid who enjoys historical fiction, and doesn't mind an old style of adventure story pacing, and won't get irritated by repeated uses of the word "golly."

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

A Princess of Mars
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Duke Classics, 2012 (originally published as a serial in 1912)
195 pages

I love that my adult book club asked to read this book. True, it was more "I heard that John Carter [the Disney movie] was based on some books, wasn't it? Can we read that?" but still. They're game for anything and I really appreciate it. Not least because I get to fill in some gaps in my reading I otherwise might not.

This is very much a pulp adventure story, and contains science fiction elements and close attention to detail that would go on to become standard in the genre. I love reading books that are foundational to genres I enjoy, and so reading A Princess of Mars, despite its (copious) flaws, was a fun and maybe even enriching experience. But flaws, yes, and so in some ways my experience was mixed. And it wasn't just the typical historically-based flaws one might expect to encounter: some flawed science, and pretty egregious racism and sexism. There were also a couple of internal inconsistencies of character that bugged me, particularly in relation to the end of the book.

Okay, so for those who, like me, have managed to stay pretty much ignorant of the storyline of this tale: John Carter is a veteran Confederate soldier who escapes from a band of Apaches into a strange cave that turns out, somehow, to be a portal to Mars. Once he lands (naked!) he discovers that, in Mars' lesser gravity and less dense atmosphere, he has incredible strength and the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, which is pretty lucky because he almost immediately is set upon by a group of warlike, enormous, mean green bug-like brutes. Happily for John Carter, the green men are exceedingly impressed by his physical prowess, and so rather than shooting him, they take him as an honoured captive. From there, he continues to have several preposterous adventures, finds himself attached to a guard "dog" named Woola, a surprisingly sympathetic green female named Sola, and finally the titular princess enters the picture (naked!), a captive of the green martians, conveniently beautiful and human-like and in need of a super-human sort of rescue. More completely preposterous adventures ensue. And unlike what the cover above might have you believe, the adventures all take place without any clothes on. This is less sexy than one might hope.

I probably should have disliked this book, is the thing. The phrase "feminine reasoning" enters the picture shortly after Dejah Thoris, the princess, does, and you can probably imagine how well that flew with this reader. So the question here is how was I able to get past the embedded racism and sexism? The answer, I think, is world-building. And maybe a bit of understanding, if not forgiveness, due to the time period, and the audience Burroughs was writing for. And the fact that Dejah Thoris is indeed a limp fish, but not quite as much of a limp fish as I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. But mostly world-building.

The first chunk of the book, and other parts throughout, read almost like an anthropological study. Which again, I am not sure why this works so well, but it really does. For an adventure novel that packs a lot of plot, there is an incredible amount of exposition. In other books I would be tempted to call it one long infodump, but something about the narrative voice (John Carter, in first person) precludes that, and we build up a relatively deep understanding of the culture of Mars (or Barsoom, as the locals call it), its history, and its environment. The detail is astonishing in some cases, and equally astonishing is that my eyes didn't glaze over, nor did I start skipping descriptions of how things worked or how societies were structured. What comes out the other end is a very thorough understanding of the environment in which John Carter is operating, and a huge respect for Edgar Rice Burroughs' creativity.

I loved the detail. I loved the differences between our world as John Carter knew it and Barsoom. I loved the images and the intricacies of the cultures of the green martians and the red martians, the idea of the long-lost great civilization, the post-post-apocalyptic feel of the Barsoom John Carter finds himself on. Actually, I really loved that the societies of Mars were the way they were due to a long decline, not some single huge catastrophic event.

I loved that the green martians, the Tharks, weren't entirely villains, though they very easily could have been; I loved that some of the complexity of their culture was shown, and that John Carter displayed a willingness to work within it and even attempted to befriend some of the strange creatures he found.

I kind of loved that I spent a lot of time wondering how people -- men, in particular -- rode their thoats comfortably without any clothes on.

I didn't love the inconsistencies in John Carter's character. He is a great character, almost too great, really. He's quite likable.  He's got this super-human strength, but then he's also super-humanly dutiful and brave and good and smart and tolerant, too. EXCEPT for when he's not, which is when Edgar Rice Burroughs needs him not to be for the sake of the plot. There are two specific instances that bothered me, both towards the end of the book. Both are pretty outright cruel or stupid, neither of which things John Carter has ever appeared to be earlier in the text, and were so out of character that they threw me out of the book in a way that even the most unbelievable coincidences and preposterous feats of agility/strength/daring/intelligence didn't.

So the verdict for me on this book is ... it's kind of recommended? I'm really glad I read it, because as I say, the world-building was magnificent and incredibly creative and really interesting. But it also has the kind of appallingly casual racism and sexism that one might expect of a pulp adventure novel of the era, and that's grating. And while some of the writing is really quite excellent, which is why I think this book has lasted so long in the public imagination and the classic science fiction canon, some of it is inexcusably bad, with the characters and events contorting painfully to get to the place where Burroughs wants to go. I don't know that I'll ever go out of my way to read the second or third or following books in the series, but I won't rule it out either.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
by Catherynne M. Valente
Feiwel and Friends, 2011
256 pages

After reading On Basilisk Station I was kind of desperate for something that would feel more me, but I wasn't feeling like a re-read. I've had my eye on Valente's stuff for years and years now, particularly as one of the comments one tends to hear is that she writes beautifully and I am a big fan of beautiful writing that isn't self-consciously so. She's a poet, too, and in my experience I tend to really like novels by people who are also poets. This book in particular seemed like just the right sort of thing, so I ... I bought it. On impulse. I don't usually do that. But I'm very glad I did.

This book takes all the surreality and other trappings of fairytales and folktales and inserts it confidently into a fantasy tale, such that we have here something that feels, looks and smells like a fairytale, but is far, far deeper. The characters, despite appearing as though they could be the two dimensional folk we know from fairytales, develop into richer, rounded characters sometimes with only a few words. The economy of Valente's language is admirable, and what she can do with a few words is wonderful. The imagery is full and stunning and whimsical, but never without its hint of darkness -- which just makes everything shine more brightly. The story itself is inventive, new clothes hung on old frameworks and both are transformed.

September is a twelve-year-old girl who lives in Omaha with her mother. Her father has gone off to war in Europe, and her mother works long hours at a factory building airplane engines. She loves both her parents and they love her, but September feels frustrated and bored; and one evening, while she's washing dishes before her mother gets home, the Green Wind comes by flying on the Leopard of Little Breezes to ask her if she wants to go to Fairyland. It's an offer September doesn't even think of refusing. But when she gets there, it's quite clear that not all is well. A witch has had her Spoon stolen and her brothers killed. Flying is tightly regulated, and fairies and wyverns have their wings chained. And Good Queen Mallow has disappeared, replaced by The Marquess, a girl who at least has a wonderful hat.

Aside from the writing and the imagination behind the story, both of which are impressive, the tone reminded me (in a good way) of The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker. There's something restrained about it, a recognition of sadness and pain without letting those things overwhelm the story or the reader. Melancholy is present but so is wonder and joy and amazement, and they are in balance, connected and inseparable. I think this is maybe an important thing in a book written for older kids, and I think it's hard to get right.

Valente also gets the sheer volume of childhood emotions right. One of my favourite sections in The Girl Who... is when September, having had to make a number of very difficult decisions and having had a number of really difficult things happen to her, has to catch and eat a fish. And when she meets a rescuer, it's her pained confession of the fact that rung absolutely true with me. Because for me, too, that would have been the worst of the things that had happened, though to an adult it might have seemed the littlest thing. And the response of the rescuer is perfect too.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone with a bent for whimsy and wonder. It's definitely appropriate for older children; I am considering it seriously for my parent-child book club, though it would be a summer book because it's a bit long. It's also wonderful for older readers who will get quite a lot out of the story. One last little thing, that isn't that little: I have rarely met a book with such a perfect ending. I'm not doing this book justice. I can only say I'll be reading it again, and often.

On Basilisk Station by David Weber

On Basilisk Station
by David Weber
Baen Books, 1993
346 pages

First of all, free eBook. Is awesome. Also legal. Thank you, Baen Books and David Weber for giving me the chance to test out the Honorverse for myself.

Sadly, the gambit didn't work out this time, as I'm not going to be purchasing, or reading, any of the other Honor Harrington books. It's not you, Commander Harrington and David Weber. It's me.

I want to be clear, because hopefully I can at least raise the profile of the book in return for its free-ness: this is a good book. This is a really good book. It's well-written, detailed, interesting, engaging, creative, adrenaline-boosting, entertaining, and even thought-provoking. And if you are in to military science fiction, this is a great, great place to go, as Weber's legion fans can attest. (Actually, if you're in to military science fiction, I imagine you've already been here. I'm late to the party on this one). In Commander Honor Harrington, David Weber has created a really attractive main character; she's intelligent, competent, and generally kicks ass. And (I mention this because it's not always the case in military SF) she's a woman in a powerful position and almost no mention is made of it; more mention is made of her youth than of her gender. Her gender does not signify, nor do the genders of any of the other characters in the book. They are simply people doing their jobs. I love this.

There are several moments in this book where the reader wants to sit up and whoop as Harrington makes yet another connection or faces down yet another bully with a will of steel. She even comes across as being almost too good sometimes, but she's not perfect, exactly. I will admit there were a few times when I thought maybe she was too good to be true. But I liked her too much to care.

I can't really talk about this book and my reaction to it without some major spoilers. So if you like military fiction, or science fiction, this is for you. The detail encapsulated in the books, the work that has gone in to creating the universe his characters inhabit, is stunning. I wish I could follow Honor through her next thirteen-plus adventures, but I can't. If you have already read this book, or know you won't, and wish to know why I'm not going to go further, read on. If you've got this book on your TBR, stop now.


/spoilers ahoy! seriously guys, do not read past here if you want to read the book.



Guys, the ending. The ending is brutal. The ending is just. so. brutal. I'm talking as someone emotionally invested, but also as someone who has a upper limit for violence and death and this book sailed clear through that at hyper speed. Worse, I knew what was coming. Well, I didn't know exactly what was coming, but about halfway through, I knew that things were going to go sour, and I figured it would happen quickly, and I figured that it would be bloody, and I figured that I wasn't really going to like it. It made reading on both pleasurable, because I liked where I was, and painful because I knew it was going to end badly. And boy was I right.

The ending is a bloodbath. And what makes me feel somewhat worse about hating it, is that it should have been. If Weber had wimped out and let all the mains get away scott free, I would have been disappointed in him, and the book wouldn't have been good. It would have been an exercise in fantasy, of the worst sort, the sort I find trite and the reason some people don't take SF/F seriously. War is hell. And it should be shown that way, guts and glory. Weber knows this, so we get plenty of both.

If I had one technical problem with this book, this would be it: I realize she's Navy, but my impression is that Honor Harrington hasn't seen a lot of live action. Nor have the other characters. So I'd like to have seen a bit more about the psychological toll the death and grief would have taken, because while it was mentioned, it was... kind of glossed over. Frankly, I was a little uncomfortable with how comfortable Harrington is with the way she is lionized, though she did deserve it; I would have been a lot more traumatized than she appeared to be.

Actually, I was, and herein lies the problem. As much as I would love to spend more time with Honor Harrington, this book made me feel ill at the end. The characters -- the aliens, too -- who died, some just terribly, and the ones left behind -- there were scenes I couldn't get out of my head. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I felt like I needed to dip my brain in bleach. And I don't think Weber was gratuitous with the violence and the death, it's just that my threshold is low. There was implied torture -- implied makes it worse for me. There was a slaughter of drugged-up religious fanatic aliens (we understand why the slaughter has to take place, but still.) There was people being blown to pieces by shrapnel in the vacuum of space. People I liked, people who were narrating the action, people who were good people and who died doing heroic things or not. The people who survived, you read the roll call at the end and you feel like you've been given a gift because that character made it. Even Honor Harrington's seemingly unbeatable genius can't save the day entirely. It all fits, it's all exactly the way it should be, and I can't handle it.

So why did I start reading this book? Well, I'll be honest. I thought it would be a light, guilty pleasure, something more along the lines of Anne McCaffrey's space operas. I didn't realize until things started sinking in just how bad it might get, and once I realized it I was too invested to stop.

I was feeling a bit miserable about my inability to face the music, as it were; my constitutional aversion to watching bad things happen to good people in fiction. And I was thinking about how sometimes people equate tragedy with good literature, and the rest of it is fluff, meaning I'm somehow not a serious reader. (This goes back to the Greeks; drama was the Thing, and comedy was a lower art form, though I actually think good comedy is harder to write.) The thing is, I feel like I deal with enough in real life, and I'm well aware I have it relatively easy, and I know there's terrible things out there, and I don't want to put myself through fictional misery too. For some people it can be cathartic, but for me, it keeps me up at night for days and causes me to feel anxious and miserable and sad. I just get far, far too attached, far too emotionally invested even though I know it's fiction. I find plenty of excellent, brilliant, beautiful literature that doesn't make me feel like hell and I still manage to be pretty well-informed and well-read.

Then I read Darla's blog entry and felt better, because apparently I am not alone in being adversely affected by books. What Darla is talking about there is a little different; I didn't feel terribly manipulated here, just in shock. But much of it is applicable, I just think my threshold is even lower than Darla's...

The Native Star by M. K. Hobson, and a new addition

**I started this review the day I went into hospital with smallfry complications, but before there was any inkling of what was about to happen. Kobo couldn't have come at a better time. I have since grown extremely attached to it, as it functions as two books in one: one that I am reading, and one that fishy is reading. We can switch off -- one interacts with smallfry, the other reads.**

So, yes. I have crossed the line: I now own an e-reader. It was a birthday present from fishy, and a perfect one; I have been curious and attracted for a while now, perhaps not enough to buy one myself but more than enough to make it an excellent gift. It is a Kobo Touch, black and smooth and not at all shiny. It makes me feel like Jean-Luc Picard, sitting at my desk, drinking my tea, and reading documents on a little black pad.

Of course, upon receiving it, the first thing I had to do (after setting it up) was see if it really is as easy as I keep telling patrons it is to download library books. I am happy to report that with a minimal amount of effort and know-how, it is. Now, I realize my definition of "minimal" and the actual experience of "minimal" for many of our patrons may be worlds apart. However, it was so simple to do that walking people through it on the phone, as I have been doing, is not the challenging proposition it might have been. (For the record: iPads are easiest to help people setup for library e-book capacity, and thus far Sony Reader takes the cake for being the more challenging of the popular brands, if we discount Kindle which is impossible. Kobo is somewhere in the middle -- pretty easy, but not without its small, usually fixable quirks and problems.)

So what did I download? Here is the challenge: I have three books on hold now, three things I have wanted to read -- but a lot (read: the vast, vast majority) of the stuff I'm interested in and most of the stuff I'm not interested in was already checked out. I think our download system may be a victim of its own popularity. So I kept browsing until I saw something that tweaked a memory... The Native Star was nominated for a Nebula some time ago, I believe, and something lead me to believe it was an alternate history fantasy with a strong romance component. Just the sort of thing I might quite enjoy as an e-read.

The experience of reading on the e-reader itself is going to take some getting used to; I still have the same problems I mentioned before, though certainly not as pronounced and very easy to overcome on a dedicated e-reader versus my laptop. I miss the ability to flip back and forth through the book quickly and easily, is the big thing, and the dimensionality of a paper book. And the attractiveness of it. Kobo has its own kind of attraction, but it is not the same sort of attraction that a beautiful hardcover or trade paperback might have. Overall, though, so far I am growing rapidly quite fond of the thing; I may even resort to giving it a name. The idea of having multiple books at my fingertips for travelling and sitting in waiting rooms (a favourite occupation lately) without giving myself back problems from carrying the weight is really extremely attractive.

Technology aside, let us move on to the meat of the thing.

The Native Star
by M. K. Hobson
Dial, 2010
326 pages

I'd blame the fact that I was up too late reading this, couldn't sleep after stopping for the night for thinking about it, and woke up at an ungodly hour to finish the damn thing on the fact that I was reading it on my new toy, but... I think anyone who knows my reading habits would sniff out the lie immediately. It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with my own inability to let an exciting plot be.

And this is a very exciting plot. It's a travel story, an adventure story, a quest really: Emily Edwards, small-town frontier witch in California, comes into possession of a strange magical stone after a series of questionable choices. Very shortly she becomes the target of some of the most powerful men in magic, all of whom want the stone for their own aims and don't seem to care to much about what happens to Emily in the process. One disgraced warlock, the improbably-named Dreadnought Stanton, makes it his mission to get Emily to New York to the one person who may be able to help her. But the journey is perilous -- pursued by government agents, bounty hunters, and mysterious factions that Emily has never heard of, Emily and Dreadnought are in for a very dangerous, very challenging cross-country trip.

One of the things that stood out for me from the beginning was how strangely unlikeable I found some of the characters, even the protagonists. Both Emily and Dreadnought (okay, that's it, I'm calling him Stanton from now on -- you will be glad to know that his name doesn't go without comment in the book, either) are prickly, unpleasant, and mulish to begin with; Stanton is insufferable, and Emily makes some really questionable decisions straight off the bat, and then continues to be stubborn and off-putting for chapters after. This is a brave choice, to have your protagonists be difficult right at the beginning of the book. But it works here, because gradually I found myself coming to enjoy and then really like both of them. Other characters have their own quirks; while many of them only show up briefly, they are all well-described. The villain, mind you, is thoroughly despicable and irredeemable, possibly to the extreme; I found nothing to recommend him, and he was a bit of a mouthpiece for a point Hobson wanted to make. I often like my villains with a bit of ambiguity, but it didn't take away from the story here -- the complexity of the other characters made up for it.

I didn't find the writing to be spectacular; the phrase "workmanlike" occurs to me. It's not inspired, but it's also not boring or lacklustre. It's just there, and it serves its masters Plot and Character well enough. The only thing that occasionally bothered me was that Hobson can be a little unsubtle in her Messages. You know, the ones where we're looking at "racism is bad" or "rabid patriotism is bad" or "greed is bad" -- that sort of thing. There are parallels drawn with oil, natural gas, and other non-renewable resources that are pretty blatant. It got a little heavy-handed at times, but again, frankly, the plotting can carry it; or at least it can for me, because I generally agree with Hobson's views on these issues.

The world-building, on the other hand, is excellent, and worthy of notice. I would love to find more alternate history fantasy set in the Wild West if it's done as well as Hobson has done here (Patricia C. Wrede's Thirteenth Child comes to mind, though they're completely different worlds; I have enjoyed the setting of both.) There are vague steampunky elements, but they're not terribly prevalent; really, I can only point to one section with a flying machine that I would think of as straight steampunk at all. The system of magic is interesting, if slightly predictable (can anyone recommend a good fantasy where blood magic is not automatically evil? I've seen a few where necromancy gets a fair shake, but nothing with blood) and well-integrated into society as a whole. There are even anti-magic factions, a religion that struck me as particularly recognizeable and realistic. These little details were nice touches as well as plot drivers.

Overall, I think Hobson's attention to detail is what makes the book as good as it is, giving it a ring of gritty veracity. Her realistic characters and settings mean it's a much simpler task for the reader to suspend disbelief and enter the book wholesale. I would recommend this to fans of fantasy and alternate histories; I would also recommend to fans of romance, though be aware that the romance isn't a central point of the story, more of a pleasing sidenote, despite the book jacket copy. It would be a good jumping-off place for fans of paranormal romance to slide into an adventure-based fantasy, for example. There will be a sequel, I believe it's possibly already published, but the book stands on its own -- it's just the epilogue that sets up the next tale.

The Bafut Beagles by Gerald Durrell

The Bafut Beagles
by Gerald Durrell
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954
232 pages

I find this book a little hard to review. It is third in my quest to read all of Gerald Durrell's autobiographical animal stories, and I am glad I read it; it had moments in it I would have been sorry to miss. The man writes beautifully. He has a great turn of phrase, a beautiful knack for description, and a dry, self-skewering sense of humour. These early books of his, at least, are a rich tapestry of love of place, love of animals, and deep curiousity about the world around him.

The Bafut Beagles, though, is a product of its historical moment; published in the early 1950s, the edition I have from the library is a first printing. He spends a lot more time here documenting the people around him than in the previous two, and not always to his credit in a contemporary light. As stated before, I do think that Durrell was likely extremely progressive given his station (a well-enough-off white British male) and I do think he had a healthy dose of respect and affection for the people he met and worked with in the British Cameroons; one realizes this as one reads, and it is quite clear. One also gets vaguely uncomfortable as one identifies a very faint paternalistic colonialism and a definite streak of sexism that rears its head every once in a while. I found it particularly jarring in The Bafut Beagles, thanks largely, I think, to one rather ugly incident that Durrell relates and plays a bit for laughs (though he is laughing at himself, mostly, and his own romantic colonialism, I think). I think also it's because he did spend less time talking about the animals, which is what I read for anyways. That said, as before, I was reading it knowing that it is a snapshot of a fascinating profession in a particular time, and so I was able to enjoy the best parts of the book, and move past the parts that occasionally made me cringe.

It does make me wonder if, when I was reading some of these books for the first time (this was not one of them; of the three I've read so far, only Three Singles to Adventure was a reread) some of the historical tenor of them was present but I missed it, or whether it was removed for political correctness in later editions (I am not sure how I feel about this), or whether his underlying, and (I suspect strongly) unconscious, attitudes changed as the times did -- most of the others of his that I've read were from the late 60s and 70s.

Anyway! As always, my favourite parts of this book were to do with the animals, and particularly the parts in which he is describing a behaviour or a proclivity that a particular animal has, rather than a capture. The simple pen-and-ink illustrations that accompany the text are actually quite helpful in showing the physical characteristics of the animals Durrell describes. He is clearly fascinated -- enamoured, really -- by animals in all of their forms, from the tiniest insects to the largest predators, and it shows. I think part of the reason I didn't like this book quite as well as the first two is that there was less of the animals than there had been previously. He is at his strongest, writing-wise, when he is talking about them, too.

I won't recommend this book, even in Durrell's canon, but I'm not sad to have read it, if that makes any sense. I think it could have been skipped comfortably and I wouldn't have missed too terribly much. It's an interesting read both for the intended subject matter and as an historical exercise, but reader beware, that's all. Aside from my squirming, politically correct caveats, I just don't think it's as strong a book as the previous two in the chronology.

The next book in the chronology is The New Noah, a book I can find very little about. I'm not even sure if I can find it, period, but I'll do what I can and I'm interested to see where -- and when -- Durrell takes me this time.

Other Durrell books reviewed here so far:
1. The Overloaded Ark
2. Three Singles to Adventure