Troll's Eye View

ed. by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Grade: All right

Some of these stories were really clever, but all in all, I would have liked a little more substance to this book.

"Wizard's Apprentice" was good.
"An Unwelcome Guest" was a clever twist on Rapunzel. I think it was one of my favourites simply for the twist.
"Faery Tales" was an interesting poem.
"Rags and Riches" was not my favourite. I guess partly because the fairy tale it's based on (The Goose Girl) has never been my favourite. Also I didn't quite get it.
"Up the Down Beanstalk" was clever and amusing. One of my favourites.
"The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces" was all right. Not exactly a "Troll's Eye View" though.
"The Boy Who Cried Wolf" was creepy and clever and I loved it.
"Troll" was good enough.
"Castle Othello" was ok. I didn't love it. I wonder how much of that rascally pope stuff was accurate? Plus--polygamy?
"'Skin" was good enough.
"A Delicate Architecture" was strange and clever. I liked it a lot.
"Molly" was ok. She sure made me annoyed with Molly. I guess that was the point, but I think she succeeded a little too well.
"Observing the Formalities" was disappointing only in that it was Neil Gaiman, so I was hoping for a strange and clever short story, instead of a poem.
"The Cinderella Game" was also creepy and clever. Another of my favourites.

In fact, now that I go through all of them, I realize that I liked it better than I thought. "The Cinderella Game" and "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" were both marvellously creepy. "A Delicate Architecture" and "An Unwelcome Guest" were both very clever. "Up the Down Beanstalk" and "A Wizard's Apprentice" were both  very good and amusing.

So that's 6 out of 12 stories. I guess it keeps it's label of "All right".

Pegasus

by Robin McKinley

Grade: Good
Story: Princess Sylviianel is bound to her pegasus, Ebon, and they can talk to each other. Surprise! Magicians of the country don't like it.

THE COVER IS PERFECT. I may have never seen such a perfectly lovely and suitable cover. It captures the tone of the book exactly right (and is, as I've mentionted gorgeous).

The book itself was lovely and beautiful, although there were a few problems I had with it:

--The ending. It was terribly sad and somewhat inconclusive. Actually, the inconclusiveness wasn't too bad. Sometimes I like endings like that. This one wasn't perfect, though.

--How much better the pegasi were than the humans. I mean, they were supposed to be, and it wasn't that bad. Just, I get a bit tired of humans being the worse ones. One reason why I like Doctor Who so much. There's this huge love of humanity for the humans. This book reminded me slightly of Pocahontas sometimes. (Notice the "slightly" and the "sometimes". Those words really mean "teeny, tiny bit" and "once or twice".)

--I would have liked to get to know some of the characters better. The two central characters were fairly fleshed out, but I still thought the strength of this book was in the atmosphere and world than in the characters. (Although Ebon was prettty great, I must admit.)

The Lost Hero

by Rick Riordan

Grade: Good

More Olympian goodness. And this time with some Roman stuff thrown in. Which was pretty cool.

My favourite character is still Nico. I very much hope he will appear in these books sometime. I mean, Riordan should know that he's an awesome character, right? And thus bring him back? But Jason seemed very Roman somehow, so he was pretty cool too. I like Leon's powers, but he still isn't my favourite character ever.

But Fall 2011? How can we wait that long??

EDIT: And now the wait is over. Here are the sequels: The Son of Neptune and The Mark of Athena. Two more books are coming soon.