The Goose Girl, adapted for awesome

I considered leaving the cover completely off this review because it makes the book look like it's about some sort of pageant queen with the power to create castles and unicorns out of a field of wildflowers, and THAT IS NOT AT ALL WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT.  So, please ignore the book cover and focus on my words because this story was so, so good!

I bought the book after Tanita reviewed it for #Diversiverse last year but only got around to reading it while on vacation.  Shame on me.  It was completely absorbing and I strained my eyes reading it on a very dark and bumpy bus ride.  It was worth it!  Also, it's only $3.99 on Kindle, and if you buy the e-book, you don't have to look at the cover, so there is zero downside.

Thorn is a retelling of The Goose Girl from the Brothers Grimm, though after reading Thorn, I realized I am not at all familiar with the story of The Goose Girl.  So I don't know how true this story is to the original, but it's true to itself and that's what matters.

Stardust Special Edition

I read and loved Neil Gaiman's Stardust almost four years ago.  It is such a lovely story about fairyland and stardust and love and friendship and so many other good things.

I received my original copy of Stardust from Lesley who blogs at A Life in Books.  We were chatting in a LibraryThing forum and I mentioned I wanted the book, she mentioned she had a copy, and she mailed it to me.  In 2006.

There it sat on my shelf until 2009, when I picked it up and read and enjoyed it.  And then, just to pass along the book karma, I left the book in a coffee shop for someone else to find and cherish.

And now that book karma has come back full circle because William Morrow contacted me with an offer for a free copy of their lovely 15th anniversary special edition version.

My version looks much like the picture above, though I do not have the pretty book case.  But the book case isn't nearly as important as the book itself, and that I do have, and that makes me happy.

There was a lot of care put into this edition of Stardust, which also makes me happy.  There's a forward by Neil Gaiman.  There are illustrations by Charles Vess, who was the original illustrator of the graphic novel.  (Granted, there are not many illustrations by Vess - there is a print on the cover, another on one of the first pages, and then a pretty chapter heading - but they are all nice.)  Also, Gaiman said that he imagined the book taking place in the 1920s, so this edition of the book was designed to look like one that was written in the 1920s.  Which, I think, was probably a great time period to be a book.

I'm so glad to have this book back on my shelf and in my permanent collection!  And in a beautiful blue edition, too.  If you have a Neil Gaiman fan on your Christmas shopping list, I think this would be a really great gift!

Musings: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There is the second book in Catherynne Valente's trilogy about a girl named September who visits Fairyland and has a great impact each time she goes there.  I loved the first book, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and was looking forward to reading this one.  I've loved every book I've read by Valente - she really steeps herself in her settings and the language and everything, and tells a seriously good story.

We pick up this book a year after the last one ended.  September is living in Nebraska with her mother.  Her father is still off fighting in a war.  September loves her mother and the time they spend together, but she dreams of returning to Fairyland.  And so she does by catching a boat going over the amber waves of grain and falls into Fairyland, expecting to see her friends and have a jolly good time.

But all is not well in Fairyland.  In the last book, September lost her shadow, and now many others are suffering the same fate.  The magic is seeping out of Fairyland and, parallel to life in Nebraska, everyone must make do with ration cards.  (I loved the way Valente mirrored September's world in Fairyland and Fairyland-Below, making the story so much richer and meaningful to read!)  September knows instantly that this is all her fault, that it's her shadow in Fairyland-Below causing so much trouble.  Being the intrepid young woman she is, September sets off to right this wrong.

Musings: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland

When I first saw the title The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, I wanted the book.  When I realized the author of this young adult novel is none other than Catherynne Valente, who wrote the excellent The Orphan's Tale:  In the Night Garden retelling of the Arabian Nights, I wanted it even more because believe me, the woman knows how to tell a fairy tale.

Luckily, I got my grubby hands on a copy of the book and read it immediately.  And, as expected, it was splendiferous.  Really, the more I read books set in Faerie/Fairyland, the more I want to go to there.  Well, kind of.  Fairies can be nasty beasties.  So I guess if I were to be perfectly honest, I'd have to say the more I read about Fairyland, the more I want to read even more about Fairyland.  It's just so fun and colorful and glorious, but also dark and sinister and creepy.  Great combination.

[TSS] Musings: Lud-in-the-Mist

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees is considered one of those forgotten classics of fantasy literature.  It was written before The Lord of the Rings, by a woman, and has a very different feel than that of what we have come to regard as epic fantasy.  Instead of elves, there are fairies.  Instead of good fighting evil, there are superstitions and shades of gray.  I love The Lord of the Rings, though I don’t know if I will ever re-read it.  But sometimes I think fantasy draws too closely from that story, settling easily into stories told in trilogies about voyages fraught with danger and boys growing into men and all the rest.  Lud-in-the-Mist is written along different tropes.

The story centers on Master Nathaniel Chanticleer, the mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist, a city nestled at the meeting of two rivers and dangerously close to Fairyland.  No one ever goes to Fairyland, not since the evil Duke Aubrey was dethroned and replaced by staid and reasonable merchants.  In fact, no one even mentions fairies any more in Lud-in-the-Mist unless they are flinging a great insult.  They just go about their lives, blissfully ignoring the land on the other side of the Debatable Hills.  That is, until people begin acting oddly, schoolgirls start disappearing and the Mayor’s son claims to have voices in his head.

Review: I, Coriander

Title: I, Coriander

Author: Sally Gardner

Publisher: Dial Books

# of Pages: 287

Plot Summary:
Coriander grows up in a cheerful, happy home with parents who love each other and her and a nanny/maid who is kind, protective and friendly. This happy life begins to fall apart, though, when Coriander receives a pair of silver shoes for her sixth birthday, puts them on, and is transported to a faerie realm. She is only there a short while, but when she returns, bad things start happening. The King of England- Charles I- is beheaded and the Puritan regime takes over. Her family is royalist and life becomes dangerous for them. Her beloved mother passes away, and her father remarries a horrible woman for political purposes. But then he must leave the country, being a royalist, and Coriander is left with her evil stepmother and her stepmother's friend Arise Fell with little help from those around her. And when she accidentally returns to the faerie realm, she finds that things there aren't going so well, either. Coriander must somehow overcome all the difficulties facing her to save her father, her mother's memory, and the realm of Faerie.

Wow, for a short children's novel, this one has quite the plotline! I left out some key characters and side plots above, too. I think I'm still not sure how much information to put into plot summaries. I try to put as little as possible to get the plot across, as I don't want to ruin the story for potential readers. But then I feel as though I am leaving out crucial information, too! Not sure I have the balance right yet.

I really enjoyed Sally Gardner's book The Red Necklace. I did not like its sequel The Silver Blade quite as much, and I think I like I, Coriander even less. That's not to say I dislike I, Coriander. I just don't think much is holding up to The Red Necklace. I had pretty high expectations!

I think some of the plots in this book were oversimplified or glanced over. I don't think the fact that it's a children's novel can really be used as an excuse, either, as there are many excellent children's novels that have complexity and depth. The main one that seems to have upset most readers is Coriander's father's decision to marry, and then to escape England for the continent, leaving his daughter with a woman he knew was a horror. The love that existed between Coriander's mother and father was obvious and really touching, through the first parts of the story. So it was a bit jarring when he remarried, and when he chose someone so horrible. Perhaps he was enchanted into doing it, but afterward, when he left England for the safety of France, he could have taken his daughter with him. It seemed callous and very out-of-character for him to just leave her behind.

I also would have preferred more time in the Faerie realm, but I guess that's just my personal taste. I think stories that involve that whole alternate reality of Faerie, with people who never age, and balls and sinister villains who seem so nice but draw you in... they're fabulous. I love them. However, Coriander doesn't spend all that much time in Faerie, just brief snatches, and that saddened me.

I think Gardner did a good job of portraying England under the rule of Oliver Cromwell. While the Puritan faction was portrayed very negatively, I think she captured the underlying tension and fear of ordinary citizens very well. They were all nervous about how people would perceive them, and were trying very hard to just get by, regardless of the political climate. I like that Gardner didn't talk down to her audience on this point, but let them see the confusion 17th century England for what it was. It would be interesting, I think, to see how all those Royalists reacted to Charles II's behavior :-)

I think this was a good Read-a-Thon pick for me because it was pretty light reading and had a fast-moving plot. Also, the font was nice and big :-) I don't know that I would recommend it without reservation; if you want to try Sally Gardner, I would recommend The Red Necklace instead of this one. But if you want a feel for Cromwellian England, with a bit of Faerie dust thrown in, then this might be a good pick.

Review: Fire and Hemlock

Title: Fire and Hemlock

Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Publisher: Harper Trophy

# of Pages: 420

Favorite Line: Bright, sharp streaks of sound, Polly thought. If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins.

Rating: 7/10

Product Description
In the mind of a lonely, imaginative girl, who can tell where fiction ends and reality begins? An epic fantasy, spanning nine years...The fire and hemlock photograph above Polly's bed sparks memories in her that don't seem to exist any more. Halloween; nine years ago; she gatecrashed a funeral party at the big house and met Thomas Lynn for the first time. Despite the fact that he's an adult, they struck up an immediate friendship, and began making up stories together -- stories in which Tom is a great hero, and Polly is his assistant. The trouble is, these scary adventures have a nasty habit of coming true...But what has happened in the years between? Why has Tom been erased from Polly's mind, and from the rest of the world as well? Gradually Polly uncovers the awful truth and, at Halloween nine years on, realizes that Tom's soul is forfeit to demonic powers unless she can save him.

I have only read one other book by Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle, and I loved it. Ironically, at the end of that review (written in October 2006!), I say that I will snatch up the sequel, Castle in the Air. Almost three years later, and that snatching has not occurred. I don't know why, but I seem not to read sequels right after one another, unless in a huge passionate burst a la Dorothy Dunnett or George R. R. Martin.

Anyway, since I adored the one book I'd ever read by Wynne Jones, I've always been compelled to pick up any others when I feel they are to be had at a bargain, with the result of me getting quite a few books on my shelves purchased with no idea of the plot, only on the strength of the author. Fire and Hemlock is one of those.

The book is based on the Scottish myths of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin. I am not very familiar with these stories (what is with the Brits and fairies?!), and I think that definitely worked against me here. Generally, they deal with men being sacrified to fairy queens, and the one or two that were able to make a break and get away.

I will freely admit that I have absolutely no idea what happened at the end of the book. I read it, and could feel myself sinking quickly, and then all of a sudden the book was done (please don't ask me to summarize how it ended) and my hopes of everything making sense in the last sentence were dashed. I think it will require a re-read for me to make sense of the conclusion. Or, to be honest, the entire last quarter of the book. Happily, however, most other readers seem to be in the dark as to the end, too, so I suppose I am in good company.

In any case, the story is certainly interesting and hits on several different levels and themes, even if I may have missed The Big Picture. The characters are all very vivid and realistic, the plot moves quickly, and there are numerous allusions to quite a few books that will now go on my wish list. It is also very real for a fantasy book, including many painful scenes of Polly's broken home. The entire romance aspect of the plot disturbs me a bit as well. I feel certain there must be a reason Wynne Jones wrote it as she did and I have a feeling it has to do with The Big Picture which I so woefully lost track of at the end of the book. However, be that as it may... at this point in my reaction to the novel, the whole 10-year-old girl, middle-aged man thing just doesn't sit well.

I do think the plot gets very wrapped up in itself and becomes a bit overly complicated for young adults. Or maybe it's fine for young adults and just totally over my head, I don't know. I think Wynne Jones tried very hard to keep her story as true to the original as she could, but all that served to do was to make a fairly simple story into a mind-bender. That said, I really love the author's way with words. She uses simple words in really wonderful ways (see quote above) and it's a delight to read them. I would say, though, to read Howl's Moving Castle if you want a fun, more heart-warming read, and keep this one on the shelf until you want to dig yourself really deep into mythology and gender wars!

Also, if anyone can recommend a version of Tam Lin for me to pick up and read, I would greatly appreciate it!

I am taking an exam on Saturday, but I hope to post the first of Rosie's Riveters soon! Thank you to everyone who commented and who contacted me privately with interest in participating- I think it's going to be a lot of fun :-)

Review: Stardust

Title: Stardust

Author: Neil Gaiman

Publisher: Perennial

# of Pages: 250

Favorite Line: Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us.

Rating: 9/10

Amazon.com Review
Stardust is an utterly charming fairy tale in the tradition of The Princess Bride and The Neverending Story. Neil Gaiman, creator of the darkly elegant Sandman comics and author of The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, tells the story of young Tristran Thorn and his adventures in the land of Faerie. One fateful night, Tristran promises his beloved that he will retrieve a fallen star for her from beyond the Wall that stands between their rural English town (called, appropriately, Wall) and the Faerie realm. No one ever ventures beyond the Wall except to attend an enchanted flea market that is held every nine years (and during which, unbeknownst to him, Tristran was conceived). But Tristran bravely sets out to fetch the fallen star and thus win the hand of his love. His adventures in the magical land will keep you turning pages as fast as you can--he and the star escape evil old witches, deadly clutching trees, goblin press-gangs, and the scheming sons of the dead Lord of Stormhold. The story is by turns thrillingly scary and very funny. You'll love goofy, earnest Tristran and the talking animals, gnomes, magic trees, and other irresistible denizens of Faerie that he encounters in his travels. -Therese Littleton

I received this book in July, 2006 from a fellow LibraryThing member as a really nice "You said you'd like to read it, and I have a copy, so you might as well read mine" sort of gift. She also runs a very impressive book blog at A Life in Books. It is one of those BookCrossing books, that you are then supposed to "release" into the world so that other people can enjoy it. Very sad to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book and wouldn't mind keeping it for myself! However, I should pass on the book karma =)

For me, Stardust was one of those books that you pick up and start reading and think, "Ohmigoodness, how did this ever sit so silently on my shelf for so long when, just reading the first page, I am already completely enthralled by it?!" It is a pretty short, light read. I read it in one day, which is saying quite a bit for me now. I also stayed up until 3am to finish it. Some people seem to preface reviews for books like Stardust with, "It was a short and light read," as though that somehow makes it a lesser book. I don't think this is true. Just because a book isn't complicated or long, that doesn't mean it won't have the power to enchant you.

Stardust is about a young man who sets off into Faerie on a quest for true love, and then realizes that he enjoys the quest itself. As they say, "Success is a journey, not a destination." Tristran Thorn, Yvaine the Star, the Lords of Stormhold, the witches- everyone that populates this story is delightfully dry-humored and fun. If I were Tristran, I wouldn't want to go home, either. Maybe it's because I suffer from wanderlust myself. I can certainly relate to someone feeling that life will be happy and fine if it continues in one very predictable direction, only to have a defining experience that leads you in a very different direction instead. No doubt, if Tristran had never left the town of Wall, he would have settled into a comfortable and enjoyable existence there. But he did leave. And experienced a completely difference life than the one he had planned. I'm not saying that one is better than the other- just that you often don't know what impact a sometimes lightly-made decision will have on your life. It's part of the fun.

The only other Neil Gaiman book I've read is American Gods, and I really enjoyed that one, too. I should read more of him, clearly! Any suggestions on what my next Gaiman adventure should be?

Note: Stardust was also made into a movie. I haven't seen it, but I hear it's quite good. I don't know how true to the book it is. I probably won't see it for a little while, just so I am more objective in my comparison of the two.

Review: The Book of Lost Things

Title: The Book of Lost Things

Author: John Connolly

Publisher: Washington Square Press

# of Pages: 480

Rating: 9/10

Favorite Quote:
He had quite liked the dwarfs. He often had no idea what they were talking about, but for a group of homicidal, class-obsessed small people, they were really rather good fun.

From Publishers Weekly
Thriller writer Connolly (Every Dead Thing) turns from criminal fears to primal fears in this enchanting novel about a 12-year-old English boy, David, who is thrust into a realm where eternal stories and fairy tales assume an often gruesome reality. Books are the magic that speak to David, whose mother has died at the start of WWII after a long debilitating illness. His father remarries, and soon his stepmother is pregnant with yet another interloper who will threaten David's place in his father's life. When a portal to another world opens in time-honored fashion, David enters a land of beasts and monsters where he must undertake a quest if he is to earn his way back out. Connolly echoes many great fairy tales and legends (Little Red Riding Hood, Roland, Hansel and Gretel), but cleverly twists them to his own purposes. Despite horrific elements, this tale is never truly frightening, but is consistently entertaining as David learns lessons of bravery, loyalty and honor that all of us should learn.

I loved this book. I loved it from the first line- "Once upon a time- for that is how all stories should begin- there was a boy who lost his mother." Wonderful. I had no trouble delving deeply into it from there, and this book is the one that REALLY made me feel like my reading habit is back. Granted, in my last entry I stated that I didn't think my reading habit would ever be back to full force the way it was last year- and that will probably hold true. But, reading is fun again, and there isn't any guilt involved, and I still love that exquisite feeling of finishing a book with a sigh of contentment and then going to my bookshelves to choose the next one to read- no matter how long that book might take to read.

This book did not take long to read. It only took a few days. On all of those days, I started reading in the night, and then read way past my bedtime- which, by the way, is never a good idea when you are reading a book which centers around rather twisted fairy tales.

This book is very much in the tradition of the "quest" fantasy novel- a boy enters a foreign realm and spends the vast majority of the book trying to get somewhere, to talk to someone, so that he can go home again.

I love how some authors can vary that plot into something so enchanting.

Like most kids, I grew up watching the Disney princess stories made into cartoons (I especially had an unhealthy obsession with Cinderella). Those were the fairy tales I knew. They are not the ones the Grimm brothers wrote, and when you think about them, truly... they're pretty bland. Connolly makes them much more interesting- Rumpelstilskin is a major force in the novel, Snow White is an obese and vulgar girl forced on the seven dwarfs who attempted to kill her, Little Red Riding Hood was a strange girl who *really* liked wolves, and Goldilocks eventually got her just desserts. I always thought Goldilocks was a brat, myself, so I'm quite happy with Connolly's take on that story.

But the central figure is David, a lonely 12-year-old boy looking for his dead mother and creating a ruckus in the other world while doing so. And when you get down to it, the story is more a coming-of-age tale than fantasy quest. David gets over himself, manages to defeat a few terrifying demons, and then returns home safe and sound and changed.

If you enjoy fantasy, then I strongly recommend this story. If you like fairy tales, I'd strongly recommend this book. If you like young adult books that crossover very neatly to the adult genre- then I would strongly recommend this book.

In fact, as books are so central to this story- if you like books, I'd recommend this one. And leave you with a quote from it which shows that Connolly really likes books, too (see my note in this entry about stories with books as central characters):

Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in teh beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.

Review: Faerie Wars

Title: Faerie Wars
Author: Herbie Brennan
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Audiobook

Book one in a series that includes (so far) two more books.

Favorite Quote: "So I did what any sensible man would do and took up bank robbery."

Rating: 9/10

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8–The Faerie Wars (Bloomsbury, 2003) by Herbie Brennan is an introduction to the complex world of the Faerie Realm, which is inhabited by the Faeries of the Night and the Faeries of the Light. The two main characters are teenaged boys, Henry Atherton, a likeable, forthright, British boy whose family is breaking up as a result of his mother's lesbian affair with his father's secretary, and Prince Pyrgus Malvae, heir to the Purple Emperor, a brave, socially conscious Faerie of the Light. The come from very different worlds but are thrown together when Henry is cleaning out the shed of his summer employer, Mr. Fogarty, a wily but brilliant physicist. Pyrgus has gotten into big trouble in the faerie realm and his father has had him "translated" into the "Analogue World" (our world) to protect him. Mr. Fogarty's backyard is a portal between the two realms. Mr. Fogarty's physics background allows him and Henry to try to help Pyrgus get back home and, in so doing, a friendship develops between the three. This story about friendship, honor, good and evil, with some weapons, demons, and a budding romance thrown in for fun, is filled with symbolism, wit, and irony. Listeners will find the ending surprisingly satisfying considering that the book ends with the words, "to be continued." The main characters are genuine, appealing, and well developed. Other characters are merely introduced, and we are left hoping to learn more about them in ensuing episodes. Narrator Gerard Doyle does a remarkable job of bringing each character alive. He reads clearly with great enthusiasm and vibrancy, allowing whimsy and mischief to emerge. Fantasy readers will thoroughly enjoy this audiobook, especially fans of Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter.

I heard about this book over on Twisted Kingdom, and then I saw the audiobook in the local library and decided to pick it up for the long commute to and from a client site. Boy, am I glad I did! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters were fun and easy to cheer for, and the plot moved along pretty quickly- as do most plots in children's literature. There were some random plot threads that were neither resolved nor even fully developed- for example, Henry's family problems are introduced at the start and then largely ignored for the remainder of the novel, as Brennan focuses on the troubles in the Faerie realm. There are great one-liners in the story, lots of action, and a whole lot of amusement to be got from this book- as I listened to the audio version, I thought that the narrator was excellent at doing different characters and inflecting his voice. I think this is a great read for those who enjoy children's and young adult fantasy- it's definitely a series that I will be following.