Game of Thrones

by George R.R. Martin

Having been an avid fan of Game of Thrones on HBO, I’m finally getting around to reading the books. It’s super interesting—kind of like watching a Greek tragedy where you know how it ends but you need to see how everyone gets there.

I find that this time around I’m not that impressed by the villainousness of the villains—Lannisters gonna Lannister, after all—but I am often shocked by the way the show runners yanked the audience around. Turns out Daenerys had a perfectly pleasant wedding night, thank you very much. Also, since the pace of reading is slower than watching, I’m noticing lots of details I missed in the show: gems, every one.

10/10, highly recommend.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

read by Kyle McCarley

Maia is the exiled, motherless, abused, and neglected youngest son of the emperor of the Elflands. He’s also a half-goblin in a society where stone-cold racism is the norm. When his father and all of his older brothers are killed in an airship crash, suddenly *he’s* the emperor—a job he has no training or desire for. 

But he does have the desire to make a good job of it. And he gradually learns he’s got the disposition for it; his childhood, miserable and deliberately neglectful as it was, prepared him for the imperial throne in some unexpected ways. Still, learning whom to trust and how best to navigate the bewildering and seemingly constant intrigues of a hostile court is far from easy. 

And then it turns out that the disaster that killed his father was no accident—and whoever is responsible for it is still out there somewhere. Or maybe somewhere in his own palace. Maia knows in his head, and soon learns in his gut, that an emperor can’t truly have friends; and his relations are either distant, dead, or have so many agendas, secret or otherwise, that it would take someone as idiotic as his former guardian always told him he was to trust them.

He can’t act alone, though. There’s only one of him, and he doesn’t know enough to be effective. And the potential consequences of failure to unearth the perpetrators of this plot won’t just affect him; thousands of his subjects could suffer if he makes a wrong move. He needs reliable advice and confederates, not honeyed words from sycophants. He’ll have to trust someone. But who?

This is a truly charming coming-of-age tale/political thriller/murder mystery set in a delightfully detailed and creditably believable world somewhere between elfpunk and steampunk (elfsteam? Punkpunk?). The cultures, political system, and details like court fashions are all three-dimensional and fascinating. We follow Maia's point of view closely throughout, to a degree that’s almost old school by today’s standards. 

Mostly this works beautifully, because Maia is such a good sort and a sympathetic character on multiple levels. His ignorance of court life is nearly as deep as our own ignorance of the world it’s set in, which makes him a good stand-in for the reader, and his awkwardness and occasional spitefulness are believable and save him from seeming too good to be true (or too good to be palatable, anyhow). 

The only drawback to this following-super-closely-over-Maia’s-shoulder business, and it’s the only real flaw I see in the writing, is that the scope of the story is much broader than our narrow view of it. Lots of things that one might like and expect to see happening, one only hears about afterward, which can feel a little anticlimactic at times.

But that’s a quibble. This is a really engrossing story that I couldn’t make myself stay away from for any length of time. Highly recommend.

The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver: A Middle Falls Time Travel Story (Middle Falls Time Travel Series Book 1) by Shawn Inmon

read by Johnny Heller

Anybody who knows my taste in literature knows I’m a complete sucker for a time travel tale. Whether it’s a romp or a horror story, whether the fate of reality itself is at stake or just the fate of the protagonist and a few close friends, whether the story is beautifully thought out or the writer came up with a concept and just went for it, I’ll read it. Of course I appreciate something literary to sink my teeth into, and am delighted by a plot twist that actually surprises me (and that happens all too rarely anymore). But really, if a book is about someone traveling along the 4th dimension, I’ll read it and I’ll probably like it.

So I’m not setting a high bar. But I will say that The Unusual Second Life of Thomas Weaver was above-average delightful.

It starts with our eponymous protagonist, Thomas, as a middle-aged man who has wasted his entire life. After a stupid mistake in his youth led to a tragedy, he sank deeper and deeper into depression over the decades, doing absolutely nothing of worth to himself or anyone else and not especially enjoying himself in the process. One day the final straw lands, and he decides to do himself in. He closes his eyes for the final time in 2016…

...and opens them in 1976, in his bedroom, in his 15-year-old body, with all his memories intact. After some disorientation, he figures out that it’s a few months before the tragedy. He’s got a second chance--maybe he can do things right this time. And while he’s at it, maybe he can stop a serial killer.

And then—well, and then he learns he’s not the only one to have traveled through time in exactly that fashion.

The tone of this book is by turns creepily suspenseful and thoughtfully hopeful. The author does a great job of putting you right back in 1976—if you’re old enough to remember it, you’ll instantly feel the verisimilitude of his depiction. It’ll feel almost claustrophobically like going back there. If you’re not old enough to remember it—well, here’s your chance to get a glimpse.

Our protagonist feels very believable. He vacillates between a burning desire to fix the wrong things and despair that they can’t be fixed. Also between an adult sense of agency and responsibility and the weird in-between passivity and acceptance of life of the young teenager. (As someone who moved back in with her parents to finish grad school, I can tell you that this is a thing.)

Thomas is a bit of a dufus, though, I will say. A well-intentioned dufus, but a dufus all the same. He just doesn’t seem to think things through. And we can’t blame it on him not being a science fiction geek and therefore never having thought about the potential consequences of his actions. He mentions, near the beginning of the story, having read some books and watched some movies about time travel, and being familiar with the “butterfly effect.” 

Maybe some of his dufosity can be explained by the fact that, although he has all of his memories from his adult life through 2016, he’s now back in the body of a teenage boy, all hormones and undeveloped prefrontal cortex? Our narrator is definitely unreliable, so it’s probably that, rather than lazy plotting. In any case, you’ll want to slap him sometimes.

Fortunately the story doesn’t revolve around his tendency to make mysteriously stupid mistakes. Instead it revolves around free will and the nature of causality, like any self-respecting time travel tale. Also around the interactions between Thomas and the other time-traveler, and the ripples (both emotional and in the time-space continuum) those interactions create. And the book leaves some mysteries unsolved--maybe because it follows Thomas’ point of view so closely and he doesn’t learn everything there is to be learned, or maybe because it’s the first of a series and the author wants to leave the reader curious.

Speaking of that, once the denouement becomes apparent on the horizon the book does seem to draw itself to its conclusion very quickly. In spite of which, the ending isn’t at all unsatisfying—if anything, it’s more satisfying than I expected.

In conclusion, if you’re not a fan of time travel novels, this one probably won’t convert you. But if you are, you’ll find it intriguing and mysterious and creepy and sweet, and you’ll enjoy meeting all the characters and getting lost in the setting. And maybe being surprised by some of the twists.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

read by Bahni Turpin

Children of Blood and Bone takes place a richly-detailed mythical African country called Orïsha, in which magic is very real. That is, it’s real until a ruthless, despotic king decides that magic and the dominant social order can't coexist. So he finds a way to sever the people’s connection to the gods; after that, it’s effectively dead. He then proceeds to persecute and oppress the former magic-using caste, calling them “worms” but treating them worse than any animal.

Our protagonist, Zélie, has the distinctive white hair of a (potential) magic user, and still has flashbacks to the night her mother was hauled off and killed by the king’s soldiers. As a “worm,” Zélie lives in grinding poverty and constant fear of the random cruelty of the king’s brutal guards. Not only is she not safe, but nobody associated with her has any real expectation of safety or fair treatment. 

Very much against her own better judgment, Zélie finds herself helping a young woman escape from the king’s guard… and that young woman turns out to be a royal princess, and in possession of an item that just might let Zélie bring magic back. If she can learn how to use it, and whom to trust, and if she can stay ahead of the king’s guard and get to a mythical island on the one day of the year that it appears.

What’s wonderful about this book is the way it takes what could be a fairly standard fantasy plot line and enriches it, transforms it, and fills it with surprises. Not simply by setting it in a mythical Africa instead of a mythical Europe, though Adeyemi does a wonderful job of that (Nnedi Okorafor calls it Africanjujuism); but also by taking individual elements of the plot (the romantic interest, the rules by which magic works, the hero’s journey) and subverting them.

In short, this is a very solid and compelling read, especially for anyone who loves fantasy or who used to love fantasy but has become bored with how derivative the genre has become. 

All the Ever Afters: The Untold Story of Cinderella by Danielle Teller

read by Jane Copland

In the spirit of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, All the Ever Afters takes a familiar tale and turns it on its head by telling from the point of view of the villain. In this case the villain-turned-protagonist is Agnes, Cinderella’s purportedly evil stepmother. And oh boy, do we get a different picture of what kind of person Cinderella really is.

To begin with, this is very much Agnes’ tale, not Cinderella’s (she’s actually called Ella), though of course that fabled beauty plays a tremendous part in Agnes’s life—and not just by spreading those nasty rumors about the woman who eventually becomes her stepmother. Ella is an ethereally lovely child with an extremely tenuous grip on reality; she’s also the spoiled only daughter of a drunken lord, in whose household Agnes becomes a laundress when her family can no longer afford to keep her.

Agnes works in the drunken lord’s household for a number of years, under the supervision of a lazy, despotic sadist of a head laundress. She has a fair amount of contact with the lord of the manor, first because as the lowest-ranking servant in the house she can be made to deal with him when his drunkenness has made him unusually difficult, and then because she proves herself equal to the task of jollying him along. He develops a fondness for her; he is, nonetheless, a frightening individual to be around when he is in his cups, which he usually is.

Eventually her fortunes improve and she becomes a better sort of servant in a better sort of household. Much later, after numerous ups and downs as her hopes for a better life are repeatedly dashed because of a society and legal system that are stacked against the poor, Agnes returns to work for Ella’s father—as a senior servant. Now that she has more say in how things are run, her understandable bitterness comes out in petty ways. But overall she runs the household well, including handling its still-drunken lout of a lord and his spoiled, mentally unstable daughter, Ella.

The “wicked stepmother” rumors start here, as Agnes tries to find ways to get Ella to learn the responsibilities of running a household and to have some appreciation for the hard work that all of the servants do for her. And Agnes does, by something of a miracle and much to everyone’s disapproval, end up marrying Ella’s father. And no, that’s not the end of the story—but I’ve already given away a lot.

Basically, if you like a good, solid retelling of a fairy tale with richly detailed world-building, especially ones from non-traditional points of view, you’ll like this one a lot. It’s a really good example of the genre.

The Space Between: An Outlander Novella by Diana Gabaldon

 read by Davina Porter

I’ve spent a lot of my life in the Outlander universe. I started reading the novels when they first came out, but tapered off during the long wait between Drums of Autumn and The Fiery Cross. When that was finally published, my curiosity got the best of me and I had to dive back in and find out what happened to Jamie and Claire—but I had to start again from the beginning because I’d just forgotten too much. 

(Side note: rereading something you really enjoyed and discovering that it’s still just as delicious on a second read, when you already know what’s going to happen, is an incredible treat. Ms. Gabaldon really is a very good writer.)

Finally the TV series happened, but I was super skeptical about it. I saw the stills on social media, and the actors who played Jamie and Claire looked nothing like the Jamie and Claire in my head. I didn’t want my headcanon messed with, so I avoided it. Nevertheless it did have one effect on me: it reminded me that, after another very long wait, Ms. Gabaldon had completed another segment of the story arc. More reading to be done! And I’d never listened to the audiobooks. I had no idea what a treat I was in for: they were read by Davina Porter, whom I wasn’t yet familiar with.

That woman could read her grocery list out loud, and I’d listen. For hours. 

Then I finished listening to Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, and I needed more Outlander, so I finally gave in and gave the show a try. And found, to my surprise, that the actors who play Jaimie and Claire are actually very appealing once they start moving and talking; the stills, in which they struck me as looking like enormous waxworks, had been deceptive. (I think they were *too* beautiful in a way; it made them seem inhuman. With the human attributes of speech and motion, though, they are simply very very very beautiful. IMHO.)

And then the recent season ended, and I needed more.

I’d tried one of the Lord John novellas some years back, but in spite of being set in this universe and centering a character I quite like, I couldn’t get into it. I can’t even remember now which one it was. I’m just not a mystery-novel person. 

But when I heard about The Space Between, I was intrigued. It’s about Jaimie’s stepdaughter, Joan, who is headed to France to become a nun, because she hears voices and knows when people are about to die and she thinks a religious community is the only place she has any real chance of finding answers about this, or at least relative safety from being tried as a witch. It’s also about Michael Murray, Jaimie’s nephew, who is returning to France after the death of his wife. It’s also about… no, I can’t tell you who else it’s about, because actually that would be a huge spoiler. Let’s just say that mysteriousness abounds in this novella.

And it turned out to be a lot of fun. It’s more like a story arc on the TV series in its pacing than like the novels, but that’s not a bad thing. And it delves deeper into the occult and stays there longer than most of her novels, but in a shorter piece like this, that works well. And the characters are charming and the setting is vivid and there are all the other hallmarks of Ms. Gabaldon’s writing in this series.

In other words, this is a very worthwhile use of your time while you wait for the next full-length Jaimie-and-Claire novel. What, you didn’t know about that? It’s going to be called Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, and it’s due out later this year, most likely. You can read all about it, including some excerpts, here.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

read by steven crossley

As a gamer myself, it seems abundantly clear to me that the author of this book is also a gamer. As I was reading, I could almost see the rules for the magic system taking form around me (here is the list of magical elements; here is a description of the relationship of the planes on which the different Londons exist; here is the fumble chart for magic items—oh no, wait, you’re dealing with an Artifact, see Index D7).

Also, clearly, here are two player characters with elaborate back stories who have no reason whatsoever to hang out together (clashing alignments, anyone? Plus they come from different planes) and the GM had to go to great lengths to cause the world to not only shove them together without them killing each other, but on top of that to give them a common goal. If you’ve ever been the GM in that kind of situation, you know how annoying it can be. Herding highly territorial cheetahs.

I don’t mean this as a bad thing; quite the reverse. It's something that amused me somewhere in the back of my head as I read.

So: in the book there are four Londons (that we know of), each on a different but intersecting plane of reality. Delilah Bard is a rogue (excuse me, a resourceful and dextrous young woman with a fine appreciation for the moral gray areas of life) who comes from Grey London, where there is no such thing as magic. Kell is a magic user (excuse me, a powerful, acerbic, and somewhat arrogant man with the ability to use runes and words and blood to bend reality and travel between the planes) from Red London, where magic is abundant and the people live in harmony with it.

The two of them come into contact because of a plot originating in White London, which is a cold, miserable place where magic is all about dominance and is gradually bleeding away, along with everybody’s life force. The plot involves an artifact from Black London, which we don’t talk about, because its fate is too horrible.

Kell ends up with the artifact, Delilah swipes it from him, both come to grief in different ways, and horrific hijinks ensue. 

This is a fine fantasy novel with very high-caliber world-building. Recommend.

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

read by Martin Jarvis

With the new series set to premier this month, I had to read Good Omens. I’d avoided it for all these years because, honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Terry Pratchett’s. (Yes, go ahead and pelt me with raw carrots or something.) I just didn’t love Neil Gaiman enough to read this collaboration—and I love Neil Gaiman a lot. But the on-screen version of American Gods was so good, I decided I had to have the necessary background to properly appreciate this adaptation.

And it turns out to have been an excellent idea. Good Omens is terrifically funny, in a style reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ best work: somehow ludicrous and dry at the same time. Basically two angels, one fallen (Crowley) and one not so fallen (Aziraphale), are friends who have “gone native” here on Earth and are living happily among us. But then it turns out that the End Times are about to happen—and neither of them wants that.

Also in the mix: the Antichrist, age 11; Anathema Device, a witch and a descendant of the eponymous Agnes Nutter; the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; and a couple of misguided but very devoted witch hunters. Hijinks ensue.

There are tons of scenes that stick in my head in a very visual way—but if I told you about them, I'd be like that preview of that really hilarious movie that shows all the funniest pratfalls and sight gags and one-liners to get you all excited, and then when you go to see the actual movie, you realize you've already seen all the best bits. So I'm not gonna do that.

I will tell you that it's about free will, more or less. Free will, and the absurdity of the human condition, and yes, it's also a buddy comedy, sort of. It's got elements of the Hitchhiker's Guide and of American Gods, which you would expect. But it's also got elements of The Screwtape Letters (but less preachy), Lucifer (the TV show) (but smarter), The Good Place, and The Preacher.

Verdict: definitely read it. Especially if you plan to watch the show. If you like this sort of thing, this is definitely a great example of it. If you have no idea what sort of thing this is, this is a good place to start. If you don't like this sort of thing... I still think you should give it a try, because this might very well change your mind. If it doesn't, I'll still shake your hand and wish you well.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children, Book 2) by Seanan McGuire

Note: though this book *could* stand alone, it’s not really meant to; it’s a prequel to Every Heart a Doorway, which is fantastic and should be read first. It’s the story of a very special school: Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. It’s for children who, like Alice Liddell and Coraline Jones and the Pevensies kids and so on, went through some kind of magical doorway to an improbable realm whose rules (of manners, logic, and even physics) were not our own—and then returned to the real world.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the backstory of two of those students, Jack and Jill (or as their extremely rigid parents insist that they be called at all times, Jacqueline and Jillian) Wolcott. They’re twins, born to an emotionally-stunted couple with extremely firm and inflexible views about how children in general and each of their daughters specifically should behave.

Roles are assigned—Jacqueline is the “girly” one, always dressed in frilly dresses and terrorized into keeping them perfectly clean (and into a shyness and timidity that isn’t really natural to her). Jillian, who seems the more physically active of the two, is designated the "tomboy," encouraged to go outside and get muddy and given appropriate clothes for that, whether she likes it or not. Each resents her own role and her twin’s occupation of the role she thinks she’d prefer, and over the years they grow to dislike one another.

They do have a loving grandmother who cares for them and encourages them to love each other and to be exactly who they are, rather than who their parents want them to be. But she’s banished from their lives on their 5th birthday, never to be seen again. The girls are encouraged to think their beloved grandmother didn't love them enough to stay, and they grow up living with that terrible "knowledge."

Once the story gets properly going, the girls find a magic staircase in what should have been an old trunk full of dress-up clothes. Of course they go down it—hundreds, or maybe thousands, of steps down into the earth. At the bottom they find a door labeled “Be sure.” One twin is definitely more sure than the other—but nevertheless they open it and step through, and find themselves on a dark, rolling moor. They pick a direction and start walking--and anything more than that would be a spoiler.

Let’s just say the world they find themselves in is deeply creepy.

I loved lots of things about this book. The world building is definitely its strength, the language is drily quirky, and you can’t help but empathize with these poor kids. However, it’s too slender a book. And it gets that way by skimping on what would, to me, have been the most interesting part: the process by which each girl learns and grows into her new role in their new reality.

If it had been up to me, the book would have been twice as long and included a chapter apiece, for each twin, on each of the five years spent in The Moors that are covered in this book. The twins are such interesting characters, and the Moors are such a fascinating place, that it’s a real disappointment not being able to spend sufficient time with either.

Lacking that, though, it’s still a beautifully-written little story, with numerous archly humorous lines that had me laughing out loud. If you’re a fan of Every Heart a Doorway, you’ll definitely want to read this.

A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle

read by Jennifer Ehle

Here’s another book review that has to start with a confession: I was never especially fond of A Wrinkle In Time. It was a good book, in my opinion, just scary enough and with some interesting science-fictiony concepts and scenes in it. I get why people love it so much. But it never really did it for me. I only ever read it once, until I had a kid of my own and read it to them. And I only read it even that one time, as a kid, because it was by the same author as A Wind in the Door.

I *loved* A Wind in the Door. I lived it, over and over and over again. I absorbed it. It became part of me in a way that books just don’t do anymore once you’re past your formative years. Reading it again, now, for the first time in decades, I was struck by how certain scenes and even certain phrases, though I didn’t consciously remember them, struck such a chord of familiarity and happiness that it was almost like reuniting with a long-lost and much beloved grandparent. The characters felt like long-lost family. Rereading this book was an intensely emotional experience—surprisingly so.

Meg Murry is our protagonist; she’s a bright, argumentative, and complaint-prone high-schooler who lacks confidence in her looks and is intensely loyal to friends and family (though she constantly questions everything they say). She’s the oldest Murry child; the middle kids are a pair of socially well-adapted twins, Sandy and Dennys, who play fairly minor roles in this book, and her baby brother, Charles Wallace, around whom the plot revolves.

Charles Wallace is a genius, the brightest of a very bright family. At age 6, he has a better vocabulary than most adults. He gets beaten up regularly at school because he’s so different—and it turns out he’s also seriously ill, with a disease that, coincidentally, his microbiologist mother happens to be studying.

Proginoskes is a singular cherubim, a creature not of this plane who materializes, when he does, as a great ball of hundreds of wings with winking eyes set amongst them, emitting the occasional spurt of flame or puff of smoke. He's haughty and pedantic—but so would you be, probably, if it were  your job to know the name of every star in the universe. His unbelievable appearance on the Murry property (they seem to live on a tremendous plot of rural land, though in other parts of the country their acreage is probably pretty standard) is what sets events in motion.

Meg, Charles Wallace, Proginoskes, and Meg’s personable and protective friend, Calvin O’Keefe, are soon united as students of a Teacher, an enormous and all-knowing humanoid being named Blajeny. For me, the biggest surprise of this reading was that I’d completely forgotten about Blajeny, as he directs the kids and sets them their tests and basically moves them all like somewhat-willful chess pieces. He’s hugely important to the plot—and yet he’d gone completely out of my mind.

My theory is that this is because he isn’t really a character—he’s more of a god-like force. He doesn’t seem to have much personality, other than an idealized-but-dim fatherliness. He matters tremendously, but he doesn't really feel real.

In any case, our intrepid protagonists discover the nature of Charles Wallace’s illness, and that it threatens not only him but, somehow, the entire universe. So of course they set out to save the world. Hijinks ensue.

I’ll stop here so as not to spoil the plot for you. I will say that this is metaphysical fiction on par, for its intended audience of tweens, with the Narnia books and with Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The nature of free will, the meaning and importance of love, the unimportance of time and distance—all that is discussed, at length, in terms any 5th-grader could understand. There’s a lot more religious content here than I realized when I was the target audience, but it’s thoughtful and life-affirming.

If you’ve never read this book, you should. Either to your kids, if you have them, or to yourself. It’s definitely aimed at a young audience, but it’s magical and scientific and universe-spanning enough to enchant almost anyone. 

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley

narrated by Charlotte Parry

Ah yes, Beauty and the Beast: the classic fairy tale about Stockholm Syndrome. I have to admit that I am enough of a fan of this story (and of modern retellings of fairy tales generally) to have sought out the live action version last year. And to have thoroughly enjoyed it—because, duh, Emma Watson, but also, Josh Gad as LeFou: what a performance! Totally stole the show.

But also, like any right-thinking person, I’m always a bit queasy about the premise, no matter how good the execution is. Basically this is the story of a young woman trapped in an enchanted castle by a man who has literally become a monster due to a (well-deserved) curse, and whose only hope of becoming human again is to have someone agree, of their own free will, to marry him.

But apparently in this universe the idea of “free will” isn’t negated by coercing someone to live with him by threatening grave harm to said person’s father, who innocently stumbled across an enchanted castle and plucked a single rose to bring her as a souvenir—so that’s exactly what the Beast does. It’s not technically kidnapping, but morally speaking, it might as well be.

Of course if we take all of this stuff literally, and not as a metaphor for bad things that happen in real life, we can decide to just focus, as this retelling does, on Beauty’s specific experience, her bravery and loyalty and ability to see the good in just about any person or situation. And on the magic and the tragedy of the castle and its various inhabitants.

If your only experience of this tale is the two Disney adaptations, you’ll notice some changes in this version. For one thing, “Beauty” is just a nickname—one that its bearer has come to dislike, over the years, even more than she originally disliked her given name, Honor. That’s because she’s not as beautiful as her two sisters.

The book spends quite a bit of time telling the story of the three sisters and their father and their various suitors, and how they became impoverished, and how they settled in their new life. A lot of time. About two-thirds of the book. Fortunately for Beauty, there is no Gaston in this retelling (which, alas, means no LeFou). Her troubles are a quieter sort—until her father falls afoul of the Beast, who threatens to kill him for taking one of his many flowers as a gift for Beauty. But Beauty offers herself in her father’s place, and somehow convinces her father to accept this, under a lot of protest.

At the enchanted castle at last, Beauty encounters the invisible servants of the original tale (not the talking animated objects of the Disney versions) and sets about making the best of her new circumstances. The best part is, of course, the library—this Beauty being just as bookish as Disney’s Belle—but I won’t spoil it for you, there being few enough surprises in this version. The rest of the story goes on more or less as one would expect, if somewhat condensed.

The end of the tale is extremely condensed—that, apparently, not being the part McKinley was most interested in. That was a bit disappointing. But overall, this is beautifully written, and, in spite of a certain vagueness about when it’s supposed to have taken place, it does a lovely job of bringing these characters and this story to life. Recommended for adult and teen fans of the genre or of fantasy in general.

Protector of the Small: First Test by Tamora Pierce: #tbt review

This is another book that my kid fell in love with when I would have thought they were too young for it, because I was listening to it in the car. With hindsight, I can see that they loved the heroine's strong sense of justice and her refusal to fit into prescribed gender roles.

Plus Tamora Pierce has done a great job of world-building here. If you're a fan of fantasy but you haven't read any of her books yet, you should—and this one would be a great place to start. It comes after the Song of the Lioness series and makes numerous references to storylines and characters from it, but someone who hasn't read that first (as I hadn't!) won't be at all lost.

As this novel begins, because of the pioneering work of the great Lady Knight, Alanna the Lioness, girls have won the right to go into service as pages and become knights. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Keladry of Mindelan is the first one to attempt it, and she learns very quickly just how stacked against her the deck is.

Not only is the system itself unfair, but on top of that, she immediately ends up on probation because of the actions of a bully. She has to work so much harder and overcome so many more obstacles than any boy… it would be so easy to give up. 

But she’s always wanted this, and it seems at least one person in the world believes she can really do it: a mysterious benefactor keeps sending her expensive gifts that are exactly what a page needs. Plus, Kel has never been able to abide a bully. Something has to be done about this one, or he’ll be able to get away with hurting her friends, too.

This is basically the story of the first girl going to a West Point-type military academy, only in a fantasy setting. Keladry lives out the maxim that a woman has to be twice as good as a man to be considered half as good. It’s a good introduction for middle-grade kids and younger teens to this sort of story, and Kel is a compelling character—she makes mistakes and has bad days but her determination and her unwavering protectiveness of those who are taken advantage of by others who are stronger keep her going.

The author, Tamora Pierce, originally studied psychology with an eye toward doing social work with teenagers. But she became a full-time writer instead in 1992, and I'm glad—I'm sure she has reached a lot more teens with her writing than she could have as a social worker.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman: #tbt review

Full disclosure: I love this series so much that I'm planning to get an alethiometer tattoo when I'm feeling a little more flush. (After the scarlet A and the Deathly Hallows symbol, that is.) My second time through the series (I've read it three times now) was on audio CDs in my car when my kid was 5 years old, and even though it was far too advanced for them at the time, they fell in love with it too. I wrote this review after my second reading but before the third, and long before the prequel was published.

So:

In this alternate universe where people’s souls have a physical reality and manifest themselves outside people’s bodies as animal-shaped “daemons,” and the Magisterium (think of the Catholic Church during the days of the Inquisition) rules politics, morality, and, as far as possible, people's minds, Lyra is an orphan who lives at Jordan College, Oxford. She is being raised haphazardly amid the benign neglect of the professors there and has a good, if chaotic, life.

Then a mysterious relative appears and Lyra saves his life; she ends up with a unique artifact called an alethiometer (the eponymous Golden Compass), in her possession; her friend Roger is disappeared by the much-feared Gobblers; and she is taken to live with the beautiful, self-willed Mrs. Coulter, whom the Jordan scholars obviously fear. Now Lyra needs to learn the nature of the relationship between all of these events, and what they have to do with Dust, a substance whose very existence is inimical to the Magisterium, and which nobody is supposed to know about--least of all a half-wild young girl.

This is an incredibly beautiful metaphysical work (I can't just call it a work of fantasy, though it is that) about the nature of truth and the soul, along the lines of the best C. S. Lewis books--but written by someone with a deep distrust of organized religion and of anybody who withholds important truths in order to control people.

The protagonist, Lyra, is a liar, a teller of tales, and the product of a society based on lies, brought up not knowing the most basic facts of her existence. But she is also intelligent, resourceful, intensely curious, and deeply loyal to her friends. This gets her into trouble, of course, but it may also be, along with her boundless ability to love and her fierce determination to find her disappeared friend, what ultimately saves her and her world.

Five out of five stars. At least.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Narrated by Mark Bramhall

This book was strongly recommended to me by someone who knows my taste in literature pretty well and called it “Harry Potter for grownups.”

The comparison is obvious, and fairly apt. Our hero, a kid who is about to graduate from high school in modern-day Brooklyn, discovers and is accepted at Brakebills, a highly exclusive school for magicians—real-magic magicians, that is, not stage magic. It’s a college in upstate New York, not an English boarding school for middle- and high-schoolers, though. And since the students are all college-aged, they do all the stuff you expect college students to do. In addition to learning to manipulate the fabric of reality, that is.

The novel spends a *lot* of time on Quentin’s college years—all five of them—before getting to what I feel is the meat of the story. Don’t get me wrong, Grossman’s take on how magic works is interesting, and his descriptions of various events in Quentin’s school years—especially the episode of the wild geese—can be enthralling. And it certainly gets the reader invested in the central characters, who are definitely three-dimensional. But I kept waiting for the other thing that was described on the book jacket to happen: his discovery that a land from his favorite fantasy series actually exists, and his travels there.

Grossman drops a hint about the magical land of Fillory (a very thinly-veiled analog of Narnia, with a smidgen of Middle Earth thrown in) in the first chapter—then drops the subject completely until well into the second half of the book. Eventually, however, and well after graduation, Quentin and his former classmates do learn that it really exists and that they can really travel there. Travel they do—and, naturally enough, disaster ensues, which, naturally, brings out both the best and the worst in them. Though, again, it takes much longer than I would have expected for things to go truly wrong.

The characters are interesting—even Quentin, who starts out very callow and manages to remain more or less incapable of seeing other people’s point of view throughout the book, gains depth and becomes a protagonist one can root for. The universe the Brakebills students live in is one that I could wish to live in. This a good book and I recommend it. Be prepared, though, for the pacing to be rather… odd. I understand there’s a TV series based on the series of books now; I plan to check it out.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft

Narrated by Jim Roberts

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is easily Lovecraft’s most ripping yarn, and a work of high fantasy, not horror. Well, there is an element of horror; eldritch beings do gibber and bubble and meep in inimitably Lovecraftian fashion throughout the story. But at its heart it’s definitely a fantasy story, if one with madness at its core.

The hero, Randolph Carter, dreams of a heartbreakingly beautiful city three times and never again. This dream affects him so deeply that he goes on a quest to beseech the gods’ help in finding it again—never mind that those self-same gods are probably the ones who decided they didn’t want him dreaming about it anymore. Along the way he encounters both help and hindrance in many forms, is captured and escapes, forms alliances, and generally exhibits the manly, chiseled-jawline sort of equanimity, resourcefulness, and determination we expect in a fantasy hero from the first half of the 20th century. Think of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter, or Flash Gordon.

The central conceit of this book, and of all the stories of Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, is that we actually go somewhere, to a shared reality, an objective plane of existence, when we’re dreaming. (Well, not entirely objective; it looks a little different to each of us.) There’s a geography to it; there are denizens who are actual people, not just figments of our dreaming imaginations; and there are physics and natural laws, though different ones from those we’re subject to in the waking world. Our old and much-altered friend Richard Pickman is there, and ships that sail to the moon. Mountains walk (not in a good way), and cats talk.

Experienced dreamers—skilled dreamers—“old dreamers,” as Lovecraft calls them—are able to affect the reality around them, to a greater or lesser extent, in the Dreamlands. One truly old dreamer in the story was able to create an entire city, and retire there to rule over it after he died on the mortal plane. Ghouls—those rubbery, doglike creatures who inhabit Earthly cemeteries for reasons best not dwelt upon--also nibble at the edges of the Dreamlands.

Expect Lovecraftian language. Things are verdant and wholesome and fair, or else chthonic and cryptical and cyclopean. Bad guys are squat and swarthy and slant-eyed, and black men (always men, we never see any women) exist purely to be enslaved or worse. (Apparently their life in the dreamlands isn’t any better than their reality—hell of a raw deal, that.)

In between the racism and the gibbering horrors, though, it’s a beautiful place, and Lovecraft describes it to within an inch of its life, never failing to modify a noun or verb if he can possibly help it and never using just one adjective when two will fit. Here’s a fair sample:

“Down through this verdant land Carter walked at evening, and saw twilight float up from the river to the marvelous golden spires of Thran. And just at the hour of dusk he came to the southern gate, and was stopped by a red-robed sentry till he had told three dreams beyond belief, and proved himself a dreamer worthy to walk up Thran's steep mysterious streets and linger in the bazaars where the wares of the ornate galleons were sold. Then into that incredible city he walked; through a wall so thick that the gate was a tunnel, and thereafter amidst curved and undulant ways winding deep and narrow between the heavenward towers. Lights shone through grated and balconied windows, and the sound of lutes and pipes stole timid from inner courts where marble fountains bubbled. Carter knew his way, and edged down through darker streets to the river, where at an old sea tavern he found the captains and seamen he had known in myriad other dreams. There he bought his passage to Celephais on a great green galleon, and there he stopped for the night after speaking gravely to the venerable cat of that inn, who blinked dozing before an enormous hearth and dreamed of old wars and forgotten gods.”

Intrigued? You should be. If you haven’t read Lovecraft, this is a great place to start. If you have, but haven’t read anything from his Dream Cycle, all I can tell you is you’re missing out.

Trickster's Queen (Daughter of the Lioness #2) by Tamora Pierce

read by Trini Alvarado

After Trickster’s Choice, I had to find out what happened to Aly and the family she serves. She’s fully made the transition from slave to spymaster, and because of a little gift from the god who got her into this mess, her side has massively better communications than the other side. I found this plot to be a lot more predictable than the first book--there was one major surprise, which I can’t reveal without spoiling the book for you, but I found the way it was handled unconvincing.

Still a fun read. I feel like this pair of books was written with a screen adaptation in mind--the more ham-fisted plot devices felt designed to play well on the big screen with lots of CGI. Props to Trini Alvarado, who read both volumes perfectly.

Trickster's Choice (Daughter of the Lioness #1) by Tamora Pierce

read by Trini Alvarado

Good, solid YA fantasy by Tamora Pierce. Alianne, the daughter of Alanna the Lioness, is of an age to get serious about her life and pick a career--but her famous parents forbid her to embark on the one she has both talent and passion for: spying. Mishaps, predictably, ensue. A fun read, though if you haven’t already read some of the Tortall books, probably not the one you want to start with.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Narrated by David Horovitch

Oh my goodness. I am in complete awe of this novel.

It's an adventure that takes place right after the death of King Arthur. A fog of forgetfulness covers the land, so that people can barely remember what happened a few minutes ago, much less what occurred during the war so recently ended. Our protagonists—an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice—dimly remember, somehow, that they have (once had?) a son and that he lives (lived?) in a town nearby. Mistreated by other inhabitants of their own town, they make the huge decision to go visit him, trusting that they will be able to get there, and that once they arrive, he will welcome them with open arms.

The way is impossibly hard. In addition to nobody being able to remember anything except in fits and starts, they must travel on foot, and Beatrice is ailing. Britons and Saxons mistrust one another, the terrain is deadly uncertain even at the best of times, monks have become untrustworthy, and former knights of King Arthur roam the land with new agendas and alliances which they aren't necessarily forthcoming about. On top of all that, there are rumors of a dragon in the land.

This book reads, in many ways, more like a stage play than a novel. There are numerous Waiting for Godot moments. (Also numerous Monty Python and the Holy Grail moments, but in a very solemn-Terry-Gilliam-animation sort of way.) In a couple of places I began to lose patience with the odd Punch-and-Judy-like mannerisms of the characters—especially when monsters were present and/or violence and death were clearly imminent, and the characters just kept maundering on about whatever it was that Mr. Ishiguro felt the scene was really about. But I was always irresistibly drawn along anyhow.

A good thing, too. This is wonderful, eerily beautiful, and deeply moving piece of myth-making. Axl and Beatrice's deep, abiding, and generous love for each other inspired in me a great affection for them both, and then awe. Beatrice's faith in Axl sustains him, even as his enormous, self-sacrificing heart sustains her. None of this is remotely sappy: the reader becomes aware, gradually, of the weight of years and events between them that has caused this love to grow, and of the fact that, like any life-long love, it's not without its flaws and fault-lines. And we never quite know, as we read, what this world will bring them to in the end.

There's a reason why Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Read this book.