Retro Friday Review: Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz

by Garth Nix

Retro Friday Introduction:

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Angie @ Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be a favourite, an under the radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print etc.

Garth Nix is a decently well known Australian fantasy author, probably most famous for his Sabriel series (which is also fabulous). I think all of Garth Nix's books are more under the radar than they should be (despite him being well-known among young-adult fantasy aficionados), but this little book is probably the worst off. However, it is also among my favourite collections of short stories I have ever read. Perfect book for a Retro Friday.

Story summary: In these three short stories, a young soldier and his magical puppet sidekick* travel the land on their mysterious business, having adventures with giant starfish, duels, beautiful soldier women, cannibalistic pirates, and god-possessed captains.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• The world-building is amazing and so cool and gives this sense of vast history. Plus it's just fun. I want mooooooore.
• It has all the adventure and brotherhood and Classic writing style of The Three Musketeers within the world of an epic and original fantasy series.
• Short stories can sometimes pack a greater emotional punch for me, as everything is concentrated and everything superfluous cut out. So it is with these.

And Why You Might Not:

• This is written in the old-fashioned, Three-Musketeers-type-adventure style, the worst part of which is the "sleeping with every pretty woman" aspect. Fortunately, the women are fascinating, well-written characters, so this ends up actually being mostly a benefit.
• I love this book whole-heartedly, so I had to look up other people's reviews to find some possible criticisms for this section. (Apparently not everyone has the same taste as me! Who knew!) Mainly some people thought it was too dark, and some didn't like the format of short stories and thought it would work better with more information and story. Both of which I could see as being legitimate reasons not to like it, if you were a person-who-is-not-me.

Retro Friday Review: Eight Days of Luke

by Diana Wynne Jones

Retro Friday Introduction:

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Angie @ Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be a favourite, an under the radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print etc.

Recently I've been on a bit of a Diana Wynne Jones kick (see my other recent reviews Archer's Goon and The Magicians of Caprona). She's one of my favourite authors, and there are few who I enjoy re-reading as much as her. I haven't read Eight Days of Luke since the first time back in October 2008,  so it was interesting to see how my perspectives did and didn't change since then.


Story summary: David has nasty, horrible relatives (they're almost as bad as the Dursleys), and a unpleasant, boring life. But one day, after uttering a curse in a fit of anger against their cruelty, he meets a strange young boy with red hair and a strange affinity for flames. Luke does not follow the same rules as other people, and with his presence comes a sinister neighbour with a missing eye, ravens that can speak, and lots and lots of fire.

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Loki!*
• Other Norse mythology!
• Cruel relatives to be quietly defied, strange boys to be befriended, quests for unknown objects hidden in unknown places by unknown persons, and lots and lots of fire.

And Why You Might Not:

• Not enough Loki!
• Not enough other Norse mythology!
• (Ok, there's quite a bit in there. I just meant that I wish there were a few more really cool mythological scenes.)
• It's a little less complex than some of her other books.

Retro Friday Review: Archer's Goon

by Diana Wynne Jones

Retro Friday Introduction:


Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Angie @ Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be a favourite, an under the radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print etc.

This Friday, I chose Archer's Goon, the short, weird, but wonderful book about a family of megalomaniac wizards trying to rule a small town and the ordinary family who accidentally gets in their way. I reviewed it when I first read it back in September 2008, but it was a terrible and very short review. It deserves better.


Story summary: The Sykes are living their ordinary family life, with unwanted music lessons and awful little sisters, until one day, there's an enormous goon in their kitchen. He demands that Mr. Sykes (an author) write two thousand words (any words) for his boss Archer. It turns out Archer is one of seven wizard siblings ruling the town and battling each other for power. And all of them, in their own ways, are out to get Mr. Syke's two thousand words.
Can the Sykes survive the plots and machinations of seven self-absorbed wizards? Will they ever figure out what the heck those two thousand words are all about? And just how does your mother expect you to practice violin when you have imaginary spaceships to design?

Why You Will Like This Book:

• Family. It's all about family: dysfunctional, chaotic, funny, surprisingly loving and surprisingly heartless.
• Twists, complexity, originality, weirdness, chaos.

And Why You Might Not:

• As with many of Diana Wynne Jones books, how everything comes together in the end can seem a little rushed and lacking in coherency upon first reading. This is a lie, though. She has everything work together meticulously, you just have to pay attention. (Re-reads really help clarify this.)
• It is a weird book. And not extremely deep with the most complex characters or anything. If you're looking for something that isn't funny, strange, light, subtle, and family-friendly, then you probably won't like this.
• None of the covers are pretty. None of them. None of them get the feel of the book right, let alone look at all interesting and attractive. I was thrown off this book for quite a while due to the unappealing covers.

Retro Friday Review: High Wizardry

by Diane Duane

Retro Friday introduction:

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Angie @ Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be a favourite, an under the radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print etc.

Story summary: The third book of the "Young Wizards" series, set after the events of So You Want to Be a Wizard? and Deep Wizardry. This time, it's Nita's little sister Dairine's turn. As she is only eleven, her acceptance of wizardry results in an explosion of power that sends her across the universe, to a planet of silicon where strange things are happening.

Thoughts: This is perhaps my favourite book in the entire series, tied with A Wizard Alone. Outer space! Computers! Artificial intelligence! (Except not really artificial in this case.) Emerging sentience! Learning of all the things! Everything I love, in one very exciting and well written book. Although it might take a particular kind of person to love this book as much as I do. The description of the rise of the nearby galaxy on pg. 160-2, though perhaps not poetical and interesting enough to quote here, moved me greatly. So did the whole part where Dairine first began interacting with the aforementioned emerging sentience. Man, as a computer nerd, that was amazingly cool.

Page 333 describes, in more poetical terms, this series's idea of heaven: Timeheart. "[A] reality that burned like fire but still was sweeter than water after thirst, and fed the thirst itself, and quenched it again in delight and more desire; a state so much more solid and real than mere physical being and thought that Nita held on to herself for delight and terror, afraid she would fade away in the face of it like a mist in full sun. Yet she wanted to see and feel more of it--for she knew that there was more. How many more realities like this, piled one on another in splendor, towered up into the burning depths of creation, each more concrete, more utterly real than the last?"
I found it interesting how similar some of these ideas sound to C. S. Lewis, especially the idea of "heaven" as described in The Great Divorce: it is more solid and concrete, more real than this reality. Part of it also sounds a little like the "further up and further in" idea from The Last Battle.

Also, a quick little note that isn't really important to anything: on pg. 114 there is a quick conversation with an alien where he says he comes from "Earth", and Dairine remembers that most sentient creatures call their planet "earth" or "the world" or something. Which totally makes sense. It has been a small pet peeve of mine that often in scifi/fantasy, the planets all have strange names, and are called thus even by the inhabitants of the planet. All except Earth, which is called Earth by everyone, including aliens. Biased, much?

Grade: 4 1/2 stars

Retro Friday Review: Deep Wizardry

by Diane Duane

Retro Friday introduction:

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Angie @ Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be a favourite, an under the radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print etc.

Story summary: The second book of the "Young Wizards" series, set after the events of So You Want to Be a Wizard?. Nita and Kit are helping their fellow wizards who live under the sea: the whales and the dolphins. They agree to take part in the Song of the Twelve, a sung ritual which will help keep the Lone Power at bay. But they realize they've gotten into more than they bargained for when they discover what's actually entailed in the Song, and meet one of the singers:  the master of all sharks, an ancient great white shark who's job is to end pain--usually by death.

Thoughts: This is a fabulous series, and definitely deserves more attention. The series was started far before Harry Potter, but sometimes gets unfairly compared to it. It really isn't very similar at all, except for that it's about some children learning about wizardry, and there's the whole Good vs. Evil thing going on.

As a Catholic, I really love some of the explanations of spiritual concepts in these books. They can be terribly inspiring. There is some weird philosophy/theology from a Catholic standpoint (e.g. the redemption of the Lone Power, or the Devil). But the good stuff more than makes up for that.

I love this series more and more as it goes on, with high points in the third book, High Wizardry, and the sixth book, A Wizard Alone. This particular book is excellent, of course, but I must admit, I mostly like it for Ed (short for ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh), the Master Shark and Pale Slayer. (In fact, the only characters I can think of right now that I like better or equally are Dairine's computer, Spot; Darryl, the autistic wizard from the sixth book; and Fred, the star from the first book.) He is dry and amusing and mesmerizing and altogether quite fascinating. He's sort of the equivalent of an atheist in this universe, as he doesn't believe in Timeheart (sort of the equivalent of Heaven) or the "Heart of the Sea" (the whale's source of wizardry). His character arc is one of the best ones among the secondary characters in this series as well.

Grade: 4 stars

Retro Friday Review: The Masqueraders

by Georgette Heyer

Retro Friday introduction: This great book blog called Angieville started a meme called "Retro Friday", where one reviews old favourites. I thought this would be a great chance to talk about books that I read before starting this blog and am now re-reading, and perhaps to redo old blog posts that are sadly lacking in quality. Without further ado, here is Angie's regular Retro Friday intro followed by my thoughts on "The Masqueraders", which I recently re-read.

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Angie @ Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be a favourite, an under the radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print etc.

Grade: 5 stars
Story summary: Two adventuring siblings on the run from their involvement in the Jacobite rebellion cross-dress in order to avoid detection. Then follows adventures! escapades! duels at midnight! love and romance! shenanigans!

Thoughts: This is one of my favourite Heyers, along with Cotillion, A Civil Contract, The Grand Sophy, and Friday's Child. And as with the rest, it surprised me how much I liked it. Romance (and Historical Romance) is not generally my "thing". But Heyer manages, with those five at least, to make it so fun and interesting that I actually rather love it. Cotillion and A Civil Contract because they are so unusual for Romances, The Grand Sophy because Sophy is indeed one of the Grandest things there is, and Friday's Child because I have rarely read a romp so innocent and fun and lovely.
With the The Masqueraders, my love is for the relationship between the brother and sister, Robin and Prudence. I love good, strong sibling relationships in fiction--there are FAR too few of them. And together these two dazzle and deceive the upper-class with their wit and consummate acting skills.

Really, it's just so darned fun. There are tons of stories out there with girls masquerading as boys (from Shakespeare to many a modern YA book), but rarely any with boys masquerading as girls. And usually if that does happen, it's because the male in question is particularly feminine in some way. But here, though both siblings are much better than normal at passing for the opposite sex, they truly shine as their own. Plus, did I mention the duels at midnight? And shenanigans?  And last but not least, Robin and Prudence's father. He. is. amazing. I think it would have been awesome to have a book about all three of them having adventures together before the events of this book.

One unfortunate downside is that it can be pretty darn confusing at the beginning, before everyone is revealed to be who they actually are. I know people who have stopped reading it right near the beginning because of this. But once you get past that, or once you're at the re-reading stage, it's alllll good.

P.S. Robin and Prudence are so awesome that they made it onto my list of Top Ten (Or So): Conmen.