Travel Reading: Madonna House Part 1

After my trip home to BC, I went to a farming community in the middle of nowhere (if anything can be called "the middle of nowhere", rural Canada can), with no electronics. It is far too difficult to write up proper reviews in these circumstances, so I'm continuing the Travel Reading series, where I simply write a couple sentences about each book read, and leave it at that. Here goes the first set of three:


"The Man in the Queue" by Josephine Tey
Grade: 3 stars
Entertaining Golden Age British mystery story, with some delightful but spoilery twists on the usual outcomes of such mysteries. I didn't enjoy this as much as some of Tey's other works, though. Her tendency towards atmospheric description I found a little more boring, rather than breathtaking and claustrophobic, as in The Singing Sands, or than entertaining and intriguing, as in Miss Pym Disposes. And although I loved to a surprising degree some of the secondary characters ([Raoul Legarde, Miss Dinmont, even Ray Marcable--Tey really has a strength with fascinating characters you want to know more about), they weren't as impactful as MPD, The Daughter of Time, or The Franchise Affair. In general, it seemed a little less well written. But it was her first book, after all.

"The Paladin" by C. J. Cherryh
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Retired general in east Asian inspired land reluctantly takes on a young and passionate-for-revenge girl as a student. The ending felt a bit rushed, and there was too much emphasis on how much the older guy wanted to sleep with his student. Cherryh is great at a properly limited third person view, but in this case I would have liked the romance better if it had more of the girl's perspective. Especially because it was so much more central than expected. It didn't throw me off Cherryh, though. I found her writing both excellent and entertaining, and I'm looking forward to reading her more well-known works.


"Lost in the Labyrinth" by Patrice Kindl
Grade: 2 stars
Retelling of the Minotaur story. I think it is too young for me at this point in my life, and I didn't find it as unique as some of her other books, so not my favourite read of the year. It would be good for teaching kids about myths though, I think.






"Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card
Grade: 3 stars
Had a bunch of notes on this, but I lost them. Will update this if I find them. It was too long ago to remember most of what I thought, but it wasn't as good as I was hoping. Still good, though.

"A Confusion of Princes" by Garth Nix
Grade: 2 1/2 stars
The first half was pretty cool because of Nix's worldbuilding (which he always does awesomely), of the scifi future-y sort, and his secondary characters, of the distinct and memorable sort. But the second half, with the romantic relationship and the sudden resolution seemed a bit simplistic. Also, why is Khenri so special? He didn't strike me as being particularly special... The characterization could have used a bit of work, think. Anyway, ultimately it was fun but too light.

Stars Above

by Marissa Meyer

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Short stories starring the delightful ensemble of characters you loved from the Lunar Chronicles (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter).
• Backstory! Alternative viewpoints! Weddings!

And Why You Might Not:

• You've got to be a fan of the Lunar Chronicles to enjoy this. For the most part, there's no point without that, I think.
• I think most stories could be more tightly written, in terms of view point and theme. I find this quite essential in short stories, so if you do too, you might not enjoy these.

Gothic!

ed. by Deborah Noyes

Why You Will Like This Book:

• If you're looking for short, dark, and creepy, this is it.
• There are stories by some great fantasy authors such as Neil Gaiman and Garth Nix.

And Why You Might Not:

• There's nothing really new or exciting in this collection.

Catch & Release

by Blythe Woolston

Story summary: Polly gets flesh eating disease and loses her eye. This other victim, a kid aptly named Odd, takes her on a fishing trip to take her mind of things. It turns into a road trip to Portland, with friendship and personal growth and all that.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Deals with difficult life events like the loss of a limb or eye.
• Has an unusual friendship and complex character relationships.

And Why You Might Not:

• It's strange. The characters are strange, and pretty unhappy.
• And...I can't really criticize more than this, though not because it's necessarily very good. See after the break for more on this.

The Scorch Trials

by James Dashner

Story summary: Thomas and the gang of boys that survived the Maze have been brought to safety with the mysterious WICKED group. Except--surprise! Turns out there's another part to this horrible experiment, and instead of being sent to a maze full of monsters, they're sent to a scorching desert full of crazy people and lightning. So that's... great.
Sequel to The Maze Runner.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Like The Maze Runner, the primary appeal of this book is finding out what the heck is going on. Reminds me a bit of the days of watching LOST.
• It's fast-paced and exciting. Not surprising they're making a series of movies out of these books.

And Why You Might Not:

• It was really light, lacking in character development or interesting ideas.
• There is an annoying love triangle.

Dearest

by Alethea Kontis

Story summary: After having a book each about the adventures of two of the Woodcutter sisters, Sunday and Saturday, we continue down the line (in reverse age order) to Friday. As in "Friday's child is loving and giving". And this is kind of cheating, but I'm going to quote the Goodreads summary, because it's been too long since I've read this and I don't feel like trying to remember the details and summarize it myself:
"When Friday stumbles upon seven sleeping brothers in her sister Sunday’s palace, she takes one look at Tristan and knows he’s her future. But the brothers are cursed to be swans by day. Can Friday’s unique magic somehow break the spell?"
Sequel to Enchanted and Hero.

Why You Should Read This:

• There are so many fairy tales, all integrated into a big mess of fairy tale goodness.
• There is a large, boisterous family of seven brothers. Great fun. I love large families.
• It's a nice contrast in tone to Hero, the previous book.

And Why You Shouldn't:

• Maybe there are actually too many fairy tales for one book.
• The romance is of the "instant" variety.
• There is not enough Thursday. (Never enough Thursday.)

What Would Machiavelli Do?

by Stanley Bing

Thoughts: I'm not quite sure of the point of this book. If it was to make fun of our celebrities, "ruling class", and own egos in an amusing way, then it succeeded, for the most part. If it were trying, as seemed to me, to bring Machiavelli's thoughts and ideas to a modern audience, then it definitely failed. The theme of this book was basically "be mean and do whatever you feel like doing, and you'll be successful". According to this book, what Machiavelli would do was "[B]e satisfied with nobody but himself" (pg. 45), "[D]o what he feels like doing" (pg. 64), "[R]espond poorly to criticism" (pg. 73), "[C]arry a grudge until the extinction of the cockroach" (pg. 74), and "[E]stablish and maintain a psychotic level of control" (pg. 123), among many others. Many of these are in direct contradiction to what Machiavelli actually wrote in The Prince, such as, "each of [these councillors] should know that, the more freely he shall speak, the more he shall be preferred" (pg. 111). Elsewhere (I can't find at the specific spots) he talks about the times a prince should delegate, should forgive, and practically the whole book is about a prince can't just do what he feels like doing. Machiavelli is so much more practical and rational and amoral rather than immoral than the Machiavelli portrayed in this book. I think people get caught up in the "better to be feared than loved" thing, and forget all the rest.

To summarize, it was funny (although not that funny), but not at all what Machiavelli would do.

Grade: 2 stars

The Prince

by Niccolo Machiavelli

Thoughts: Well, I feel completely unable to offer up any insight on this. It did make me wish I'd been able to study English and Literature in university (as well as computer science). Then I would have had a firmer grasp on this, perhaps. It also would have been considerably more interesting if I were familiar with Italian history, as there was quite a lot of it present here.

I can tell that Machiavelli is definitely insightful on human nature, though. I have two small examples. Firstly: "For it is the nature of men to be bound by the benefits they confer as much as by those they receive." (pg. 55) I have noticed this myself, and it is very true. I believe there have also been studies giving much evidence to this. And secondly, he discusses how important it is for princes to appear religious and upright, "but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite." (pg. 85) It reminded me of today's politicians, who are always very careful to seem religious, but in reality, often are not much at all.

Also, as a side note, Lord Vetinari (from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) is decidedly Machiavellian. Some people seem to think that means "cruel" or "self-absorbed and egotistical", but it really doesn't. (See also my review for What Would Machiavelli Do?.)

Grade: 2 stars for my personal enjoyment. More objectively, I have no idea, but considering it's so well-known, probably some very high number like 4 1/2 or 5 stars.

Travel Reading Part 4

For the last two months, I've been gone on a backpacking trip to Europe. My cell phone was the only internet access I had, and the reception was often spotty. Plus I was just super busy. So TONS of reading, but no posts. There were too many books, and I read them too long ago to make individual posts for each one. So I'm dividing them up into a couple posts, and just writing a couple sentences for each. Here goes the fourth and last set:

"Goose Chase" by Patrice Kindl
Grade: 4 stars
Retelling of the fairy tale "The Goose Girl". The goose girl is stuck in a tower for her own safety, courted by two men she highly dislikes. She plans a daring escape, and that's when her adventures start. A light read, but I loved it. It was pretty much the perfect comfort read for this particular time. The geese were hilarious, the goose girl was bad-tempered and awesome, and the romance was unusual.



"Shards of Honour" by Lois McMaster Bujold
Grade: 4 1/2 stars
The first book in the Vorkosigan saga. Cordelia is the captain of a scientific expedition, and she gets captured by the captain of a military ship from another planet. She has to survive for 5 days on an alien planet with him, and then there's politics and  battles and more survival and stuff. Faaabulous book (my description SO does not do it justice), which I'm guessing is the start to an amazing and unforgettable series. Where has this been my whole life? One of my favourites parts of this book is a little difficult to describe in so few words, but suffice it to say: it's titled perfectly. I loved the way the theme of honour was dealt with. This book and then next (Barrayar, discussed a bit below) are contained in an omnibus called Cordelia's Honour; this is very aptly named, for truthfully, Cordelia "pour[s] out honour all around [her], like a fountain". Also--Bothari. He is...quite something. There's not enough room to describe it all here, but his story was one of my favourite parts of the book.

"Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities" by Mike Jung
Grade: 2 stars
A couple of fanboys of the superhero Captain Stupendous have to help him out when all of a sudden he's not acting as stupendous as usual. This books subverts some common tropes (girl power, non-white characters, and more), which I always like, however it didn't really manage to keep my interest very well. Maybe my time of loving Middle Grade fiction more than most other kinds is slowly coming to an end, because it seems that the complaint "this book is too young for me" has come up a lot recently. (There are of course important exceptions, like Ordinary Magic, books by Frances Hardinge, and by Stephanie Burgis, and more.) Or maybe the book is simply a bit too simplistic. Not sure.

"Barrayar" by Louis McMaster Bujold
Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Begins right after Shards of Honour, so I don't want to discuss it too much because of spoilers. But there's a lot of Cordelia acclimatizing to a different culture, having lots of trouble with the horrific Barrayarian politics, and trying to save her unborn son. I liked it less than Shards of Honour, but it was still really good. My main issue might have been that it seemed to have less of a main theme and be less self-contained than Shards of Honour, but then I've read other reviews which have thought pretty much the opposite. So I don't know. What matters is that it has confirmed in my mind that this series is definitely worth reading. I am now going to go out and read as many Vorkosigan books as I can get my hands on.

Sword of the Rightful King

by Jane Yolen

Grade: 2 stars
Story summary: Gawain and his brothers leave their home in the Orkneys and their witch mother to go to King Arthur's court. Meanwhile at King Arthur's court, Merlinnus comes up with an plan to solidify Arthur's standing as king of Britain, and a mysterious boy shows up to be apprenticed to Merlinnus.

Thoughts: There was great potential here, I thought. The story of the Orkney princes (Gawaine and his brothers Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth, and sometimes even Mordred), their cruel, clever mother, and strange, isolated upbringing could make a fascinating story, if told in the right way. And King Arthur is almost always a fairly complex figure, generally struggling with insecurities and betrayal and all those things kings have to deal with. The problem is--frankly, I just don't think this was very well written. There was Gawaine and his brothers, interrupting the Arthur/Merlinnus/Gawen storyline, for no apparent reason that I could see. Did the two storylines ever really mesh? I mean, Gawaine & brothers arrived Cadbury (this book's version of Camelot), and spoke to Arthur and all that. But they could have been skipped entirely without any change to Arthur's story, as far as I can tell. It gave a general lack of coherence to the book. Many of the characters could have fleshed out a lot more as well, and I thought the dialogue could have been much more interesting.

Perhaps it's mostly that all the best ideas in this book have been done much better elsewhere. The Winter Prince and The Once and Future King properly get into the twisted familial relationships usually present in the King Arthur legends (although I think they were both  a bit too dark for this kind of book). Robin McKinley did a similar sort of story line to Gawen's in Outlaws of Sherwood (again a retelling of a legend), except much more exciting and well put-together. And finally, while reading, I was frequently comparing King Arthur's scenes with similar ideas in The King of Attolia. Now that is how you write a king winning over his people.

In the end, I would still suggest this for people who, like me, will read anything they can get their hands on that features Sir Gawain in an at least semi-positive light*. Or maybe for younger teens, who might be able to glean some of the themes only passed by here, and won't notice the missing depth.

*Sir Gawain has always been my favourite of Arthur's knights, for his growth in character after his first miserable adventure (chopping of that women's head) and the Green Knight adventure, for his brothers and mother and their weird dynamic, and for the fact that he wasn't Sir Lancelot.

Lucid

by Adrienne Stoltz and Ron Bass

Grade: 2 stars
Story summary: Two girls with completely different lives, with one common factor. At night, they don't have dreams, but live the other girl's life. But one life is real, and one is just a dream.

Thoughts: I expected this to be quite a different sort of book. A dream reality and the real one, all mixed up due to mental instability or weird machines or something. Kind of like Inception, where the focus was on the dream world, and it affected all the characters development and plot lines. But this wasn't really like that. It was basically just two different girls living two different lives and falling in love a bunch, with sporadic references to their awful secret. Until right near the end. That's where it all went wonky and the dream reality was revealed for what it really was. I wanted more weirdness, darn it all! The stuff at the end was cool, but by that time, I didn't really care anymore.

Yet... I don't know if that really could be my main issue with this book, because I absolutely loved the sadly-cancelled Awake TV series (with Jason Isaacs!), and it was in a very similar format. And this book has been loved by a lot of people, and compared to Inception quite a bit. So...maybe it was solely that I wasn't terribly interested in the girls themselves, or the romantic drama that pervaded their lives. I mean, seriously, there were about fifty dozen love interests. Ok, well only four (two for each girl). But it was enough for me. I am actually quite proud of myself that I kept reading, as I have had serious issues in the past continuing books if there are really obvious, rather boring, very hot love interests.

This Is Not a Test

by Courtney Summers

Grade: 2 stars
Story: It's the zombie apocalypse. Six teenagers have managed to seek refuge in an abandoned school.

Thoughts: Really not my kind of book.

1. Zombies. I don't like them. I don't like the characters that seem to show up in books about them. I don't particularly like the plots that generally surround them. Even the epic show-down between zombies and unicorns, Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black, couldn't bring any love of zombie fiction into my heart.

2. Teenagers. Stuck together. At the end of the world. Making out and drinking games ensue. Not really my cup of tea.

3. Seriously, it's really depressing. Now here's where I actually liked one aspect: the central character, Sloane, is abused and suicidal, and it goes into her thought processes a fair bit. This was really interesting and (along with the well-done suspense) raised it to 2 stars, but when you add tons of death and gross dead people walking around to an abused and suicidal main character, the results are not particularly pleasant.

Born to Run

by Christopher McDougall

Grade: 2 stars

Thoughts: Interesting, but not quite my style. The writing sounded quite journalistic, and kept on veering off to tell the back-stories of random weird people. And the actual fascinating stuff--about human physicality, running heel first vs. ball of the foot first, barefoot running, etc.--wasn't dealt with in as much detail or with enough back up and references as I'd like. I suppose that's what the Internet's for...

Also, I'm not exactly a ultra-runner or anything. So this wasn't my area of interest. I do run, but for such a tiny distance that it basically doesn't count.

Buuuut, I guess I'm glad I read it. I would like to run more, and this gave some inspiration. Plus the small sections about training (pg. 111 and 199) gave a few tips which I've already started to try, and they've already helped me.

Enthralled

edited by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong

Grade: 2 stars

Thoughts: I got this book because of Sarah Rees Brennan (of the Demon's Lexicon series), and hers was one of the only stories I actually really liked. Ok, there were a few more that were somewhat interesting. However, most of those were stories set in the worlds of the novels of those authors. And I'm not interested in those particular series of novels, no matter how interesting the short stories were.

However, Sarah Rees Brennan is almost always awesome, and as I mentioned, I quite liked the story "Let's Get This Undead Show on the Road". There were interesting characters, with growth and everything, and there was no weird Romance (which most of the rest had (especially Melissa Marr's story--boy, that was...uber Romantic)). Also, there was this exchange (which may be funnier in context, and if you happen to be Canadian, like me):

"The man came from an enemy nation," Faye told him.
Bradley hesitated. "Canada?"
"They're a rebellious people. All that ice hockey, it fires the blood. I required soldiers to bring them down."

I wasn't hoping for too much from this collection, since I already knew I wasn't a fan of some of these authors, and there were no awesome authors I already knew about, except for SRB. The book is subtitled "Paranormal Diversions", so I was hoping for at least a little more good stuff. Ah well.

The Tomorrow Code

by Brian Falkner

Grade: 2 stars
Story: Tane (the creative one) and Rebecca (the smart one) come up with this idea about sending messages back in time, and before you know it, they're on a mad adventure to save the entire human race

Thoughts: Ok, so I had this awesome post written out (if I do say so myself), and then a I did a stupid thing and lost it all. So here's my attempt to recreate it.

I actually started reading this one quite a while ago and couldn't finish. I think it was just general busyness and not the book itself, because it starts out quite awesomely. It's full of cool (although highly improbably and probably wrong) science, a new and unusual form of time travel, and lots of binary code.

However, about 2/3s or 3/4s of the way through, it begins to get all Environmental. Note the capital. In other words, there's not just the idea that humanity should stop wrecking the planet, which I agree with, but the idea that humanity is a pathogen and should be destroyed because it's wrecking the planet. This I do not agree with at all. I mean, this is 7 BILLION PEOPLE'S LIVES we're talking about. Now I know this was partly just Rebecca's opinion, which is fine, but the book seemed to show some sympathy with the idea as well. Which is not fine. At least, it's highly annoying to myself.
Also, killing chimps is not murder. It's not good, but it's not murder.

Finally, I know this shouldn't matter, but the phrase "Deus ex Machina" is LATIN. It's NOT GREEK. (See page 286.) Perhaps part of the reason why it annoys me so much is that there's a fair amount of explaining in this book (now that I think of it, probably too much for my taste). Mostly Rebecca explaining lots of science, but also lots of explanations about Maori traditions, and a bunch of other stuff as well. So if he got that wrong, what other among those many explanations might he have got wrong? Again, it probably shouldn't bother me as much as it does. But I don't like factual errors. They bug me.

So we'll see how the rest of my reading of Brian Falkner goes. I really loved Brain Jack, but mostly it was because there was lots of computery stuff. I had been thinking of making a Top Ten (Or So) list of Kiwi authors, and adding him to the list. But I think I'll wait a while now.


P.S. Ok, so now that I've re-written it out again, I'm afraid it's definitely not as good as the original post. I HATE THAT. And it always seems to happen when I'm particularly fond of the original post. But really, it was my own fault. Ah well.

Aliens on Vacation

by Clete Barrett Smith

Grade: 2 stars
Story: David, aka "Scrub", is banished to his grandmother's home for the summer vacation, where things are much stranger than he could have imagined.

Review: This one came hugely recommended by a certain book review blog, but unfortunately I didn't like it quite as much as they did. I'm having a hard time figuring out what makes a book "too young" for me. I often really love children's books, usually even better than adult books and sometimes better than young adult books. I'm thinking of books like Ellen Potter's The Kneebone Boy or Diana Wynne Jones's books for younger kids. But then there are books like this which are good enough, I suppose, but hold no particular interest for me. I don't know the difference yet. I'll figure it out one day I guess.

On the other hand, this book did have this description, which I've never heard described before, in books or real life. But it suits me exactly (substituting "no smile" with "small smile").

"I never know where to look when passing someone on the street. Seems weird to look straight ahead and avoid eye contact. But then again, you don't want to stare at someone and weird them out, either. I sort of looked down, and when they got close I lifted my head and tried the head-nod-with-raised-eyebrows combo, no smile, with some quick eye contact. I've seen other guys do that."