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.

No Exit and Three Other Plays

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Why You Will Like This Book:

• The fascinating ideas. It's all about that, really.
• Although I found most of them surprisingly entertaining in their own right as well,  There was some well done creepiness and tragedy and even characters.

And Why You Might Not:

• These are existentialist plays, and every one is depressing.
• Did I mention depressing?

The House of Hades

by Rick Riordan

Story summary: Sequel to The Lost Hero, The Son of Neptune, and The Mark of Athena, as well as the first "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" series. In this one, everything gets worse, as the poor demigods have to fight with Titans, giants, strange cows, and sorceresses, as well as heartbreak, loneliness, fear, and much physical pain.

Thoughts: I never quite like Riordan's middle books as much as the the first and last books. In fact, even though I remember loving the first Percy Jackson series a lot, when I think back, I realize I only skimmed through some of the middle books. So I definitely think Riordan has improved since then. However, this still did feel very much like a middle book, and I think it was my least favourite of the new series so far. This series is also considerably less funny than the first series, which is too bad since it was one of my favourite parts of the first series.

But there was a lot of Nico in this one, which made me extremely happy. He has always been my favourite character. There was quite an interesting development in this one, which is now the talk of Tumblr. I don't want to spoil too much, but suffice it to say, I think it was handled in a fashion perfectly in keeping with the teachings of the Church.

Grade: 3 stars

Antigoddess

by Kendare Blake

Grade: 2 1/2 stars
Story summary: The gods are slowly dying--whether succumbing to a feral madness, being eaten alive from the inside, or having being choked by sprouting owl feathers, they are every one of them facing imminent death. But in one little town in America, there lives a girl who is a reincarnation of the prophetess Cassandra, who may just be the key to saving Athena, Hermes, and the other gods.

Thoughts: It wasn't actually that bad. I enjoyed it, and would recommend it to fans of Greek mythology. Odysseus, Hermes, and Athena played some of the most major roles, and they are among my favourite characters from the Greek mythos. Also the creepiness factor was pretty awesome--Athena's feathers especially, and Poseidon's madness. And spoiler (translate): Oynxr unq gur thgf gb xvyy dhvgr n srj punenpgref, juvpu V yvxrq.

But, it was also very...teenager-y. All the important characters were teenagers, and there was a fair bit of teenage angst. Not that there's anything wrong with teenagers, of course, but I would have preferred a better impression that these beings were actually thousands of years old. Also, Odysseus is definitely my favourite Greek hero, but his cleverness wasn't actually shown here, just talked about a lot. True, the descriptions of his cleverness could be rather cool, but all he actually really did was follow Athena around and admire her.

I think I was mostly disappointed because Kendare Blake's other book, Anna Dressed in Blood was so cool, so I immediately bought this one in hardcover when it was available, and it wasn't quite worth it.

Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

by C. S. Lewis

Grade: 4 1/2 stars

Thoughts: It's C. S. Lewis. It's obviously going to be fabulous. The first section of this book is a collection of essays about writing, with an emphasis on speculative fiction. In the second section, there are four short stories, again with a SciFi/Fantasy bent.

The first part was especially good. These essays, among many other important things, defended views I've held for a long time, but never been able to defend very well. Such as: children's books can be as good and well worth reading as adult books, it is not lame to re-read books many times, speculative fiction is not worthless escapism, and SciFi is awesome. I could fill this review with quotes discussion, but that would deprive you of the pleasure of finding things out for yourself. (Plus it would be way too much work.) So here goes a much smaller selection (but still very long, compared to the rest of my reviews).

"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often more) worth reading at the age of fifty--except, of course, books of information."
"On Stories", pg. 15
Hah! Take that, people who think people who read children's books as adults are weird and immature!
There's also some interesting discussion in this essay about film vs. "popular" fiction (in other words, the pretty badly written stuff). There's a section early on that is talking about excitement, and how the film of King Solomon's Mines lost what made the original book special by (among other things) exchanging the particular  and atmospheric fear of being shut in the dark cave, with general "excitement" and violent danger. I thought it very applicable to most modern action movies (although I do actually enjoy many modern action movies).
Also:
"If you find that the reader of popular romance--however uneducated a reader, however bad the romances--goes back to his old favourite again and again, then you have pretty good evidence that they are to him a sort of poetry."
"On Stories", pg. 15

"I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story."
"On Three Ways of Writing for Children", pg. 24
In this essay, he also has a whole defence of fairy tales being read to children, even though they can be terribly frightening. (Have you read the original fairy tales? They are dark.) "Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." (pg. 31) It also reminded me of Doctor Who (the awesomest), and how people remember hiding behind the sofa whilst watching it, but loving it all the same.
Another fascinating discussion was concerning the idea that kids who read fantasy will lose themselves in escapism. I strongly disagree with this, and thankfully, so does C. S. Lewis. In fact, he basically argues the reverse, that love of fantasy makes people less inclined to escapism, especially compared to real-world stories.  "[A child] does not despise the real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted." ("On Three Ways of Writing for Children", pg. 29-30) He talks more about escapism, but from an adult perspective, in the essay "On Science Fiction".

I could quote so much more, sigh... But this is getting too long already, so I'll leave the essays and go on to the stories.

Somewhat unexpectedly for me, I didn't enjoy these as much as the essays. My favourite was actually the unfinished story, "After Ten Years". It had enormous potential to be the kind of story I would treasure for my whole life. And strangely enough, it was the least scifi of the lot, being about the aftermath of the Trojan war. The more actual scifi stories almost seemed a little dated, especially "Ministering Angels" and "Forms of Things Unknown". I liked "The Shoddy Lands" a bit more, but seemed to fit more with The Great Divorce (splendid book), and more interesting when you came at it from that point of view than expecting cool scifi stuff.

The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

Grade: 3 1/2 stars
Story summary: Half "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" and half "Beauty and the Beast", with a dash of the story of Hades and Persephone thrown in for good measure.

Thoughts: I am four reviews behind, so point form it is:

--Nice complexity for some of the characters, especially the Princess whose name I've forgotten and the really handsome boy whose name I've also forgotten. (Yeah...I have a bad memory, and I don't have book on hand right now.) The "Beast" or Hades character was not as blameless as he tends to be, either, though still on the side of Good.

--I seem to have read quite a few books with feisty 12-year-old fantasy heroines recently, the best being Kat, Incorrigible, Ordinary Magic, and this one. Reveka is a great addition, with her interest in herblore so passionate that she was willing to give up marriage and a family to become a nun and study it for the rest of her life.

--Speaking of which, it was immensely refreshing to have a recently-written character who actually wanted to be a nun (though nuns weren't exactly portrayed well...). Many people seem to completely misunderstand the place the religious had in the middle ages--being a religious was actually rather freeing for women. Like the awesome Hildegard of Bingen, who was mentioned several times in this book, and was recently canonized (yay!).

--It was good and worth reading, and the take on Beauty and the Beast was rather unusual. And I have nothing else to say because, as I mentioned, I'm four reviews behind.

P.S. My favourite cover illustrator Jason Chan again! Sooo pretty.

The Mark of Athena

by Rick Riordan

Grade: 3 stars
Story summary: All the demigods from the past two books meet up in one big quest. Tensions between Romans and Greeks mount. Gaea's menace grows. Teenagers have a tricky time trying to sort out all their relationships. Plots thicken.
Sequel to The Lost Hero and The Son of Neptune, all three of which are part of a sequel series to the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series.

Thoughts: Though the viewpoints in this book changed around quite a lot, Annabeth was a lot more prominent than usual, as might be deduced from the title. And Annabeth isn't nearly as hilarious as Percy, and doesn't have some of the cool powers that the other main demigods have.

But the middle books in Riordan's series are never quite as good as the beginning and ending books. Though I look back on the first Greek series with immense fondness, I actually kind of skimmed through a couple of the middle books. So considering that I read this quickly and completely, this series is looking good so far.

Best thing of all: the next book in the series, announced in the back of this book, is called "The House of Hades"! Maybe we'll finally get some more Nico di Angelo.