Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey

Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars (10/10)
Read: 17-11-10 to 21-11-10

Oh, I really liked this. I've had it sitting on my TBR shelf for months, and now I wish I'd started it sooner.

It was great to find a New Zealand book with both a wonderfully accessible heroine and Maori myth that wove so seamlessly into a contemporary narrative. I also thought that Healy did a wonderful job in explaining the mythology (most of which I knew at least to some small degree) to the reader without belabouring the point for those who already knew what she was talking about.

I haven't read much in the way of modern versions of my own homeland's mythology that isn't either historical or a retelling. I thought this was beautifully done and it's so great to have a wonderful New Zealand book to share with friends both locally and overseas. I have a good gift on my hands here.

I loved Ellie. She was wonderfully easy to like I think as much for her flaws as for her strengths. She's complex and very relatable and I would love to see her in another book one day. Kevin and Mark were also great characters, if less rounded than Ellie and I'd love to learn more about them too.

I'm not going to say much about the ending, because I don't want to spoil it, but I thought it was just perfect, which surprised me a little, as it wasn't at all what you might expect. In fact, it was the end that pushed my rating up from a 9 to a 10, because it just rounded off this wonderful, unique, unexpected book perfectly.

I'll be keeping my eyes of for Karen Healey's next book, also set in New Zealand and called The Shattering which is due for publication in September 2011.

Go out and find a copy of Guardian of the Dead and read it. I loved it and I hope you will too.

View all my reviews

Finished a couple of books

I’ve been reading Glenda Larke’s The Last Stormlord for the last week or so. It’s this month’s fantasy book for Beyond Reality, and I’m the one who nominated it – a good reason to get myself organised and actually read it. I bought this when it came out in March, and I’m glad to have read it.

To quote what I posted to Good Reads when I finished it:

I found this a really solid, really enjoyable read.

I like the world Ms Larke has created. The world building doesn't goes as deep as some novels, but it's real and well thought out and the idea of waterpower is a good one.

I liked the characters - and I especially disliked the antagonists we're introduced to throughout the book. I find myself very worried about what they might do and the effect their actions might have.

I'm looking forward to book 2 and will be buying it when it comes out.
It's going to be hard knowing there's a whole other wait for the third book to be released and the end of the story.

I’m sorry that’s no kind of a review, but I do recommend the book. It was detailed and yet suspenseful and like I said, I’m looking forward to the release of book 2. A 9/10 rating for this one.

With that finally finished, I picked up Restoring Harmony by Joelle Anthony. This is a slightly dystopic YA novel that I saw mentioned around the blogosphere a few months back. I asked my library to get it and it turned up about 10 days ago. Since I was reading The Last Stormlord, which is a long book, clocking in at just under 700 pages, I didn’t think I would get to it in time and considered buying the ebook to read later.

In fact, I found this a quick and easy read. There’s not much substance to it really, but it was an enjoyable tale to use up a few hours. I’m certainly glad I didn’t pay for it. Okay, but average. 6/10.

Now I’m tossing up whether to go back to rereading Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn or start my next group read for Beyond Reality, which is the intimidating Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts. I tried to read it once, long ago, and got stuck about halfway. I’m hoping having the group (and the author!) to encourage me will keep me going as I’m assured it is the beginning of a brilliant series. Sadly, having never finished it, I gave away my copy of the book (and the second and third in the series) and now I’ve had to buy it again. It’s on its way from The Book Depository, but I have a copy from the library to tide me over until it arrives. I’m a little scared of it to be honest, but I’m also interested to see if it’s as wonderful as so many people tell me.

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

From Goodreads.com:

We were in the square, in the square where I'd run, holding her, carrying her, telling her to stay alive, stay alive till we got safe, till we got to Haven so I could save her - But there weren't no safety, no safety at all, there was just him and his men...

Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor's new order. But what secrets are hiding just outside of town? And where is Viola? Is she even still alive? And who are the mysterious Answer? And then, one day, the bombs begin to explode...

"The Ask and the Answer" is a tense, shocking and deeply moving novel of resistance under the most extreme pressure. This is the second title in the "Chaos Walking" trilogy.

I finished this book way back at the beginning of February, and it is only now, at the beginning of March, that I am finally starting to write about it. And that is largely because I haven’t been able to nail down what I want to say about it.

There has been all sorts of enthusiasm about this book, and the one before it, The Knife of Never Letting Go. I read The Knife of Never Letting Go in two days and was very impressed by it. I then rushed out and bought a copy of this one because I didn’t want to wait for as long as it might take me to get to the top of the library hold queue. I started reading it eagerly, and then I started to struggle. In contrast to the first book in the series, it took me twelve days to read this one and I could never decide if I liked it or not.

The thing is, this is a good book. The people who have said so are right. But I didn’t find it a nice book. Nice may not be the right word, as that seems to suggest something sweet and light, which this most definitely is not, but I can’t think of what the word I want actually is.

This is a good book. It raises important issues and tells a complicated story. But I didn’t enjoy reading it. And now, a month later, I’m still not sure if I liked it or not.

The pace is a lot slower than The Knife of Never Letting Go, which gives Ness the time to explore the issues he’s raising in the book. And boy oh boy, they are serious issues. He’s introducing things like fascism and terrorism and the rights and wrongs of both. There’s torture and terror and moral pitfalls everywhere. And as well written as it was, I didn’t enjoy reading about those things.

And then there was the Mayor. Really, I think he’s the crux of my issue with the book. I absolutely hated the Mayor. I detested him and I despised him. And I don’t mean that I hated the character because he was badly written; rather he was so well created and depicted that I hated the person in the pages as if he was a real person.

He had an absolutely clear insight into the hearts of all the other characters and he used that to manipulate them to the end of the world and back. It was just horrible. He separated Todd and Viola and then made them do exactly what he wanted – not through force or even fear (although there was a lot of fear) but by manipulating their very best characteristics to twist them into following his agenda without knowing they were doing it. It was heartbreaking to watch them trying so very hard to look out for each other and do the right thing and constantly have it turn back on them. By the cliffhanger at the end of the book (yes, there’s a cliffhanger but I’m not going to give away any of the details), the Mayor has achieved the result he has been working for all along (I totally don’t understand why that’s what he wants, but maybe it will become clear in the last book) and Todd and Viola are left in the same position they were in at the end of the last book. Or perhaps a worse position, as this time they’ve been vital in his achieving his ends, all while trying to oppose him.

It’s just awful and I was left aching for them both.

And it’s not just the psyches of Todd and Viola that he understands. It turns out he’s manipulated pretty much the entire population of the planet to do what he wants and I hated reading it. But I still had to keep on going.

I really, really, really want the Mayor to come to a very nasty and very sticky end.

So here I am, left not knowing what I thought of this book. It was good. It was very good. But I don’t know if I liked it. And I find myself eager to read the last book (thank goodness for library suggestions-to-buy) but not sure why about that either. Except that I want something awful to happen to the Mayor, and given the punches Ness has refused to pull so far, I find myself very afraid that may not happen. But I really hope it does.

You’ll have to decide for yourself if you want to read this. I really find myself unable to make a judgement call either way. Like I said, it’s good, but I didn’t really enjoy it. I guess you have to decide what your reasons are for choosing to read any particular book. If it’s to have fun along the way, this probably isn’t the right book. But if you want to be drawn into a fascinating world and challenged every step of the way, then maybe it is.

The Ask and the Answer
Patrick Ness
Chaos Walking, Book 2
8/10
Read: 21-1-10 to 2-2-10

Chaos Walking

1. The Knife of Never Letting Go
2. The Ask and the Answer
3. Monsters of Men (Goodreads link: Due for release 3-5-10)

Earth’s Magic – Pamela F. Service

Blurb from Goodreads.com:

The exciting conclusion to this futuristic Arthurian trilogy!

Heather and Earl (called Merlin the wizard by most) are working with King Arthur to unite Britain following a terrible nuclear devastation. Merlin’s sworn enemy, Morgan LeFay, is also organizing her forces, hoping to take over the world once and for all. Earth’s only hope is for Earl to find his father, who has been trapped in an enchantment for two thousand years. The problem is, Earl doesn’t know where to look, and worse, doesn’t even know what form the enchantment takes. Time is running out and Earl and Heather must solve the ancient mystery and return with the key to the Earth’s Magic.

Traveling to one of the origins of humanity, the ancient kingdom of Kush, Merlin must decipher the key before the summer solstice when a great battle will be waged to decide the future of the earth.
With a terrific heroine and an exciting nod to many cultures and legends, this riveting conclusion to Pamela Service’s tightly crafted and ingenious Arthurian trilogy is an exciting homage to the great adventure classics, as well as a marvelous addition to the Arthurian legend.

I first discovered this series long ago when it was only two books (which have now been reprinted in a single volume). I was proabaly a young adult or close to it at the time and I was delighted last year when Pamela Service picked up the series again and continued it.

Now we have the last volume of the series. This one focuses primarily on Merlin, with Heather as the secondary character. Welly has much more of a bit part, but he had found himself and his future by the end of the previous book and he fitted nicely into his smaller role in this one.

Not only do we have the science fiction-ish trappings of the post-nuclear world and mutated creatures, but in the last two books the remergence of a new kind of magic has become more and more prevalent. In fact, the series in its newly published form is now called the "New Magic" trilogy. And really that is what this book is all about as Merlin strives to return some kind of balance between good and evil in the world so that the creatures of the normal world and the various otherworlds can live together.

I liked this series and I was nicely happy with its conclusion. The concept of how humanity created the otherworlds and their inhabitants and then forget them was nicely done. And I loved the idea that stopping believing in someone doesn't stop them exisitng.

As Osiris says to Merlin, "A child is created by his parents, right? But when the parents die, does the child just fade away? No. He may change as he grows, and he will have been molded by his parents. But he exists and will until his natural time is up."

The future of the world is going to be very interesting and I'm just sorry that there's a good chance we'll never see the characters living in it. That's a difficulty with books where there is a big problem to be solved to create a new future. They tend to end at the point where that future is created. I want to see what living in it is like, but unfortunately, unless more troubles arise, there generally isn't a suitable story to tell after that point. I'm not a great fan of short stories, but I think this is a good case for them as it is a way to give us a sneak peek at the result of all the characters' hard work. I'd like to get to see what Service's world is looking like a few years down the track and I hope we'll get to do so.

This is a good little series. Yes, it's technically for older children; probably those approaching the YA range rather than young adults themselves. But it's still a fun read for adults and I'm glad I've read them. They'll be staying on my shelves (and my computer as I have the latter two as ebooks) and I suspect I'll be rereading them again a few years down the track.

I'm only sorry that combining the two original books means that we've lost the wonderful title of the first - Winter of Magic's Return - as it is combined with the more prosaic Tomorrow's Magic. Oh well, it is the content that matters most. Take the time to travel 500 years into the future, meet Merlin and King Arthur in guises you've probably never seen before, and enjoy a story about creating a new world out of the ruins of the old.

Earth’s Magic
Pamela F. Service
New Magic Trilogy, Book 3
7/10
Read: 31-12-09 to 1-1-10

New Magic Trilogy:

1. Tomorrow’s Magic (originally published in two volumes as Winter of Magic’s Return and Tomorrow’s Magic)
2. Yesterday’s Magic
3. Earth’s Magic

Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore

I don’t remember where I first saw this book mentioned, but it’s been on my “books to remember for 2010” list for a while now. I’ve just discovered that the author is having a promotional contest now the book has an official book trailer. So I thought I’d share it, both because I think it looks like a good book and because hey, who doesn’t like to try to win a prize.

(Sorry the video goes over the edge of the blog template. If you can’t see it all, pop over the You Tube to watch it there.)

Want to win a hardcover of MAGIC UNDER GLASS by Jaclyn Dolamore plus more prizes? See http://fabulousfrock.livejournal.com for details!

Nimira is a foreign music-hall girl forced to dance for mere pennies. When wealthy sorcerer Hollin Parry hires her to sing with a piano-playing automaton, Nimira believes it is the start of a new and better life. In Parry's world, however, buried secrets are beginning to stir. Unsettling below-stairs rumors swirl about ghosts, a madwoman roaming the halls, and Parry's involvement with a league of sorcerers who torture fairies for sport. Then Nimira discovers the spirit of a fairy gentleman named Erris is trapped inside the clockwork automaton, waiting for someone to break his curse. The two fall into a love that seems hopeless, and breaking the curse becomes a race against time, as not just their love, but the fate of the entire magical world may be in peril.

Musing on YA

Over at The Book Smugglers, Ana and Thea have been holding a YA Appreciation Month (that has stretched out to something over a month I believe). Today is their equivalent of an open mike night on the subject, with anyone with a blog free to join in.

I’ve always seen myself as someone who enjoys YA fiction even if it’s not my primary reading area, so I joined up to J. Kaye’s 2009 YA Challenge back at the end of last year, thinking I would easily read 12 YA books in 2009. So I’ve been rather surprised to find that it’s been more of a struggle than I expected. Here it is, now the middle of August, and I’ve managed to read just 8 books that I felt I could class as YA. In the interests of full disclosure I should add here that I’ve been in a serious reading dry spell since May, due to long, boring, health-related issues, but it has still been a bigger challenge that I originally anticipated.

Some of it has been that books that in my youth would have been classed as YA are probably now considered children’s books. So I reread Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence earlier this year, but felt I couldn’t really include them on the list (all the same, they are fantastic books and still a great read for anyone, be they children, young adults or “official” adults). I also felt I was stretching it a bit to include Jeanne duPrau’s Books of Ember as they read as fairly young to me. I did include them on my list, but I’m still not sure if that was a correct judgement call.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Ana and Thea’s YA month, but I have to admit (and I feel kind of embarrassed doing this) that a lot of current YA books intimidate me. Something like Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, which is getting great reviews all over the place (as is its sequel, Catching Fire) scares me. It sounds like such a powerful, dig-at-your-soul kind of book that this boring old adult isn’t sure if she can face it. (The whole reading dry-spell, depression issues don’t help either, I admit.) I’ve been a wimp of late, and I’m sticking to books I don’t feel anxious about when I contemplate reading them.

YA books, on the whole, I think are more likely to invoke that kind of response – in me, at least. Everything often is intense when you’re a teen. Life is full of new (and old) issues to be faced; it’s a whole adventure waiting for you, ready to be lived with passion and power. This staid, middle aged woman with depression and a 20-year history of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome may have forgotten how to do that.

I am reminded of a quote from Madeleine L’Engle (another author I love; if you haven’t read her books, get thee to a library or bookstore and give them a read) that I’ve seen used often recently in relation to YA books:

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."

I think this is very true. There is a depth and a challenge to be found in YA (and also children’s) books that has been sacrificed in many (but definitely not all) adult books for blood, guts, sex and/or gore, which are actually all pretty simple. So perhaps the conclusion to this bit of stream-of-consciousness reflection is that I should rise above the anxiety and read more YA anyway. I still need four more this year to meet my challenge goal after all.

I can’t finish on as wishy-washy a note as that. So here’s a little rave about my current favourite YA series – Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn Chronicles. I’ve reviewed the first three books in the series, Obernewtyn, The Farseekers and Ashling, and I’ve also read the fourth, The Keeping Place, although I didn’t feel up to reviewing it (even thought I loved it and rated it 9/10). Let me quote the beginning of my Obernewtyn review:

I have a memory of standing in a bookstore in my hometown and seeing Obernewtyn on the shelf. I don't know exactly how long ago it was, but I'm pretty sure it was when this was a standalone book and not the first of six as it is now. I can't imagine why I didn't take it home with me as it was just the sort of book I loved at the time. Now, having read it many years later, I can safely say that it's the sort of book I love now as well.

These are post-apocalyptic books where Carmody set a perfect balance (for me, anyway) between the characters taking charge of the world they now live in and discovering just what the great disaster was, how it happened and how to stop it happening again. I love both aspects of post-apocalyptic tales, so I love how this series neatly blends both. It also has telepathy and other mind-talents (another favourite of mine), talking beasts and well-realised, complicated characters. I really do recommend these books and if you start now, you should just about be ready for the last book when it comes out next year.

The Diamond of Darkhold – Jeanne duPrau

In The Diamond of Darkhold, Jeanne duPrau goes back to her original time frame as established in The City of Ember and continues the tale of Lina, Doon and the people of Ember and Sparks as they forge a new future together.

When a Roamer visits Sparks, Doon and Lina end up in possession of the last eight pages of a book (or rather, by the sound of it a booklet) that appears to have been intended for the people of Ember when they left their city. Lina and Doon decide to go back to Ember and try to find the “diamond” that the book is describing. They find their city changed and even inhabited, meaning finding the diamond hidden there will be harder than they expected.

This was a solid end to the series. I personally didn’t find anything deeper in it than an adventure that would set the characters (and their children and children’s children and… etc etc) up for a new and hopefully better future. Like The Prophet of Yonwood before it, the book has an epilogue tacked on the end that is essentially a list of “what happened after” that, while not good storytelling, was a nice way to let us know where that new future is going to lead. (Although I did think the plot point of the “travelling star” was totally unnecessary and a waste of space – as was its setup back in Prophet.)

The atmosphere of abandoned Ember was nicely done – a homecoming that isn’t a homecoming to a place that is no longer familiar – and it was nice that Lina and Doon got to say goodbye properly this time. It was also nice to see some of the other children from both Sparks and Ember working together, showing that the groups are slowly beginning to merge.

I know the book is written for children/young adults and, as such, should have adventurous and brave protagonists, but I have to say, from a parent’s point of view, that if Lina and Doon were my kids they’d have turned me grey long before now. Enough with the running off at the crack of dawn and leaving messages hidden so they won’t be found until the two of them are well on their way. As a kid myself – and maybe even right up to before I had a kid of my own – I probably took such things in my stride and didn’t notice, but these days I’m always wondering where the parents are or throwing up a silent cheer if they are present and useful characters.

All the same, like I said, this is a solid end to the series and it has been a satisfying journey. I like a good post-apocalyptic tale and while I don’t think this series has the depth of the other YA post-apocalyptic series I’m reading (Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn books), I enjoyed it all the same.

The Diamond of Darkhold
Jeanne duPrau
The Books of Ember, Book 4
7/10

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge, Young Adult Reading Challenge

The Books of Ember:

1. The City of Ember
2. The People of Sparks
3. The Prophet of Yonwood
4. The Diamond of Darkhold

The Prophet of Yonwood – Jeanne duPrau

The Prophet of Yonwood continues my read of Jeanne duPrau’s series, The Books of Ember. After The City of Ember and The People of Sparks, this book takes a different look at duPrau’s world, going back to a time before the Disaster.

11 year old Nickie travels to the small North Carolina town of Yonwood with her aunt. Together, her mother and aunt have inherited an old house from their late grandfather and Nickie and Crystal are there to prepare the house for sale. Nickie, caught in the big city of Philadelphia with her mother in troubled times, while her father is off somewhere secret working on an equally secret project, dreams they will get to move to Yonwood and live in the rambling old house. Once in the town, she gets caught up in the resident’s quest for “goodness” to fight the encroaching bad times. The are following the words of Yonwood’s prophet who has had a vision of the end of the world and seems to be offering advice on how to avoid it. As the world faces a showdown between superpowers and waits to see if it is going to end, Nickie fights her own battles to learn what is good and what is evil.

For a short little book with a strangely meandering plot-line that doesn’t seem to have a lot of depth, it is surprisingly full of themes, something I only began to see as I stepped back a bit from reading it. I came into the book expecting something that was going to tell me about the apocalypse and the founding of Ember. Well, it doesn’t. We do find out some things about Ember (for example, at least which US state it is located in) but really, Ember is only a side-line which distracts us from Nickie’s story.

For this is a coming-of-age story about a young girl living in a frightening world and trying to discover her own sense of right and wrong. Her world is a scary place, full of potential war, terrorist threats and continual tension – everyone leaves their televisions on and congregate around any shop where one is running as the president gives regular bulletins about the state of things. Nickie comes to Yonwood seeing it as a place of refuge, safer than Philadelphia, where the troubles might be further away and she and her mother able to live in safety.

Before Nickie and her aunt’s arrival, Althea Tower, one of the local residents collapsed in her garden, seeing a vision of the world ending in fire.

The trees and grass and birds faded away, and in their place she saw blinding flashes of light so searingly bright she staggered backwards […] Billows of fire rose around her, and a hot wind roared. She felt herself flung high into the sky, and from there she looked down on a dreadful scene. The whole earth boiled with flames and black smoke. The noise was terrible – a howling and crashing and cracking – and finally, when the firestorm subsided, there came a silence that was more terrible still.

She was found by Mrs Brenda Beeson, who heard her despairing words and took it upon herself to become the Prophet’s interpreter to the world. Althea has remained trapped in her vision ever since and Mrs Beeson is the town’s only conduit to the Prophet’s wisdom. Certain Althea is hearing the voice of God, instructing the town how it can be saved from the end of the world, Mrs Beeson has passed on the instructions as she interprets them, encouraging the town to give up such things as Althea has murmured - “no singing” for example – in the idea that such strength of will will encourage goodness and save the town.

Nickie comes to learn of all this and finds herself fascinated by Mrs Beeson and her determination to be the defender of goodness and to root out any and all sinners. Surely, especially in such difficult times, being good and standing for goodness is the right thing to do.

Nickie nodded, imagining it: everyone kind, everyone good, no creepiness, no wars.

“So the more of these trouble spots we can find, the better off we’ll be,” Mrs Beeson went on, her voice becoming very stern. “Remember what I said about how one moldy strawberry can ruin the whole basket? We’re not going to let that happen. We’re going to make this a good and godly town through and through.”

But in trying so hard to do Mrs Beeson’s version of good, Nickie finds herself hurting others in the town and ends up struggling to understand for herself just what good and evil means.

Mrs Beeson herself is a very, very creepy character. She’s so caught up in the struggle she sees herself fighting that she’s actually lost all sense of what really is good and right. As she sees it, God is talking to Althea, therefore what the Prophet says must be right and must be acted upon and all thought or compassion be damned. She’s not actually a bad person, but she’s a very, very scary one, and she’s carried the whole town with her, to the point that anyone Mrs Beeson labels a sinner is forced to wear a bracelet that makes a piercing hum at all time, making the wearer shunned and surely driving them crazy. In a way, the whole situation reminded me of the 1980’s book, The Wave (wikipedia link), which also showed the way a seeming good idea can get seriously out of hand, although the idea in question there turned out to be fascism rather that fundamental religion.

As the world situation reaches critical, so too does the one in Yonwood as Mrs Beeson realises Althea has been saying “no dogs” and insists that all the residents must give up their dogs. Nickie has adopted a dog in secret and, already uncertain after what happened to her friend Grover due to her well-intentioned tale telling, finds this the final straw. After her dog it taken and she is unable to rescue him, she decides to face down the Prophet directly and ask how she could possibly mean for the townspeople to give up their dogs.

Nickie’s confrontation with Althea is very nicely written and sets in motion the conclusion of the book. The town is brought back from the brink (as too is the world, at least temporarily and largely due to another Yonwood citizen who was on Mrs Beeson’s hitlist) and, while she never gets to live in Yonwood, Nickie’s family is reunited as she and her mother go to join her father at his secret project in California. I was a little surprised that everything settled down in the end and suddenly the book seemed to have only the slimmest of connections to Ember and the first two books.

It was a nice touch to see that maybe apocalypse isn’t inevitable and we can come close without stepping over the line, which is what happens in The Prophet of Yonwood. The problem is that once you do hit that line, it’s game over and no second chances. The world escaped this time, but what about next time?

But I came to realise that the point of the book wasn’t to set us up for Ember (although that is done in the background), but to investigate the idea of doing evil in the name of good and watching Nickie’s character grow over the course of her time in Yonwood. In doing those things, the book succeeds, and I think succeeds well, largely through the creepiness of Mrs Beeson and the revelation the Prophet brings at the end. But the book is disadvantaged by its labelling as one of The Books of Ember, because really, it isn’t.

There is an epilogue at the end, titled What Happened Afterwards that gives a quick summary of the next fifty years of so, partly to let us know what happened to the rest of the characters, but really to tie us back into the Ember storyline. One one level I found it annoying as the heart of the book didn’t need it. But at the same time, I also appreciated it as it did keep this book at least lightly tied to the others. I can see Ms duPrau finding herself in a dilemma – she had a story she wanted to tell that could be best told in a troubled world and she had one of those already created, so she used it. But the book then had to be forced to tie in the the rest of the Ember books in a way that didn’t really suit it. If the references to Nickie’s father’s project (go on, guess what he was working on!) and the epilogue were dropped, the book would have stood nicely on its own, exploring its own themes. Instead it was shoehorned into being a story that didn’t suits its heart so well, and I suspect many readers, me included, came into it expecting an Ember book and getting something different. Because of that, I gave it a low grade of 6/10. If it had been a totally standalone book, it would easily have got a 7 and might have even talking me into giving it an 8.

So I guess my final word is to say please try to read this without any preconceived ideas. It’ll work a lot better if you do.

The Prophet of Yonwood
Jeanne duPrau
The Books of Ember, Book 3
6/10

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, eBook Reading Challenge, Young Adult Reading Challenge

The Books of Ember:

1. The City of Ember
2. The People of Sparks
3. The Prophet of Yonwood
4. The Diamond of Darkhold

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

I have admitted before that I’m shallow. I find myself forced to admit it again – it was the cover that attracted me to this book. I saw it in the ‘upcoming releases’ section at Fantastic Fiction and the pretty cover encouraged me to check out the blurb. While it was actually the blurb that persuaded me to track down the book, I wouldn’t have read the blurb without the cover, so in the end, the credit for my enjoyment (because I did enjoy it) has to go to the cover.

Princess of the Midnight Ball retells the story of the twelve dancing princesses whose father the king is driven to distraction by the way their dancing shoes are worn to pieces every night and they refuse to tell him why. George’s telling doesn’t vary into new territory, in that she sticks to the basic, familiar tale, but she breathes life into the characters in a way that makes you care about what happens to them and want them to triumph over the curse that is woven around the princesses. She also provides a backstory for why the girls must dance for the King Under Stone every night that is perfectly reasonable and fits with the kingdom and characters she has borrowed and/or created.

Galen is a young soldier, returning from a war that, finally after twelve long years, Westfalin has won at great cost. With all his family dead, he makes his way to the capital city of Burch and the aunt and uncle he has never met. Along the road he meets an old woman and takes the time to share his meagre supplies with her. In return, she gives him a cloak of invisibility, some balls of wool and words of advice. Puzzled by the gift, he continues on his way. He finds his aunt and uncle and goes to work for his uncle, who is the king’s gardener. In the palace gardens, he meets Princess Rose, the eldest of the kings twelve daughters and gets caught up in the mystery of why the princesses wear out pairs of dancing slippers every night.

Galen is an endearing hero and his adventures as he tries to break the princesses’ curse are deftly told. The language has a light touch that matches the fairy tale setting of the book. There are moments of humour and of great tension, especially at the end as Galen and the princesses flee from the underground kingdom. Rose and her sisters are well drawn, and if I got a bit confused about which sister was which, there were twelve of them so I think I can be forgiven. The littlest princess, who has been forced to dance since she could walk, is a lovely character and her interactions with Galen are lovely.

I enjoyed the king too, a character who can be poorly treated in the tale. He’s a loving father trying desperately to help his daughters but not understanding the smallest thing about what is happening to them. His dead wife is a surprisingly strong character considering she has been gone for years; but she is the one who set the curse in motion (not a spoiler as we learn this in the prologue) and so her influence hangs over the entire story. But even she is misguided rather more than anything else, and we come to understand her and her actions by the end of the tale.

The magic is subtle, not spells and enchantments, but something quieter and more integral to the world itself. Galen knits, and his knitting is hugely important to the plot and it is herbs from the garden that protect him from the King Under Stone’s enchantment that sends everyone around the princesses to sleep as they ready for his Midnight Ball. I enjoyed this, as it fitted with the delicate touch of the prose and the tale’s feeling of gentle innocence.

This is a lovely little book, easy to read and filled with pleasant characters whose lives it is a pleasure to visit for a while. I’m glad I got seduced by the cover, as I enjoyed the story it was advertising.

Princess of the Midnight Ball
Jessica Day George
7/10

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, Young Adult Reading Challenge, Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge

Ashling by Isobelle Carmody

Reading The People of Sparks and then The Dreaming Place got me into a YA mood, making me conquer my I’m-so-worried-about-what-will-happen-to-Elspeth collywobbles and I picked up Ashling, the next in Isobelle Carmody’s Chronicles of Obernewtyn. This is a great addition to the story, flowing along at a steady pace and shifting location and focus several times. That meant I stayed interested and didn’t have time to stress too much about Elspeth, concentrating on the story instead.

Elspeth rescues a gypsy woman who is about to be burned by Herders and sets in motion a most unexpected adventure. When the woman fails to recover at Obernewtyn, the futureteller Maryon, dreams that Elspeth must venture to Sutrium and return the gypsy to her people within a week or die in the attempt. Joined by several others, Elspeth begins the journey south, along the way learning about the Twentyfamilies gypsies – who appear to have some kind of link to ancient Beforetime enemies of Talents – and eventually travelling to the neighbouring country of Sador to be tested to see if the Misfits can work with the growing rebels groups who want to overthrow the Council. Tied in to all this are growing hints about the Beforetime and what led to the Great White as well as indications of Elspeth’s future as the Seeker, destined to find and destroy the remaining Beforetime weaponmachines.

Oh, I loved this book. It was a perfect blend of thee things – a compelling current time adventure, reminders of the future that still waits for Elspeth and how she can reconcile it with the present, and a fascinating mystery about the Beforetime, what happened, what it all meant and how it will continue to affect characters in the present time. These things hit all my buttons beautifully, so the book was ideal for me. Personally, while actual apocalyptic fiction interests me, I prefer a more distant post-apocalyptic fiction where I get to enjoy the current story and figure out what the apocalypse in question was and how it happened. This book (and the entire series as a whole) gives it to me in spades.

Elspeth remains an interesting character; she’s strong and resourceful without being too perfect. She isn’t happy to be an instrument of fate, although she is working towards accepting it. Her developing relationship – or lack thereof – with Rushton is love and contains all the contradictions one might expect from a late teen. And through it all, she rises to the challenges that face her one by one and finds the necessary solutions.

The other characters in this book are less developed, more because they are not some much the focus of the tale than because Carmody has chosen to do less work with them. This book, and the entire series really, is Elspeth’s tale and the spotlight is on her, with the other characters acting in supporting roles.

The story of the Beforetime is also coming into focus. For me, this is huge part of the attraction to Ashling. As I said above, I really enjoy piecing together the remnants of the past to try to figure out what the world was like before. It’s more fun than just getting the directly told story of the apocalypse. Carmody is giving me everything I could want. So far, Elspeth herself is curious but not desperately interested in the Beforetime, but the book seems to be suggesting that it is going to become more and more important. This will certainly be true for the readers, but I suspect it may be for the characters as well. Of course, Elspeth and her fellow characters are more interested in the world they have to live in and its future, but to tell a complete tale, Carmody is building the story of the Beforetime and how it ending in the Great White, I am guessing to bring the tale full circle when Elspeth finally sets out on her quest to destroy the weaponmachines and prevent a new Great White. It would certainly provide an lovely symmetry to the thematic explorations of the series.

I found, as Carmody dropped all her hints, I was constantly annotating my ebook, mostly just highlighting passages, but also adding a few notes. While I hope to keep the annotations with the book, I know how easy it is for me to delete something easily (which is why I have a backup directly where I keep all my ebooks safe for future reading), so I wanted to copy those notes somewhere. I started out thinking of a Word document, but then decided ‘what the heck’ and started up a new blog where I’ll make a backup record of any notes and theories I might have. I figure it’ll also be a good place to use if I ever want to add spoilers to any of my reviews. If it sounds interesting to you (probably only if your read/are reading any of the books I discuss) the link is: Spoilers, Notes and Theories.

As I had already indicated, this series is pushing all my buttons and I’m really enjoying it. If your buttons are different, it may not resonate as much, but this is still an excellent series and well worth stretching your boundaries for. However, this is very much an on-going tale rather than a series of linked individual stories, for all that the action within each book is complete. I highly recommend starting with the first book in the series, Obernewtyn.

Ashling
Isobelle Carmody
Obernewtyn Chronicles, Book 3
9/10
Notes and comments for Ashling

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, eBook Reading Challenge, Young Adult Reading Challenge

Obernewtyn Chronicles:

1. Obernewtyn
2. The Farseekers
3. Ashling
4. The Keeping Place
5. Wavesong
6. The Stone Key (published together with Wavesong as a single volume in Australia)
7. Red Queen (forthcoming)
8. The Sending (forthcoming - probably to be published together with Red Queen as a single volume in Australia)

The Dreaming Place by Charles de Lint

After thoroughly enjoying Dreams Underfoot, Charles de Lint’s first book of Newford short stories, I wanted to keep reading through the series. According to the FAQ on his site, the next two were horror. I don’t do horror, so I jumped those and came to The Dreaming Place. This is a YA title that features sixteen year old cousins and none of the myriad characters I met in Dreams Underfoot, so it was a little different from what I was expecting.

Nina, an everyday, normal teenager is convinced her Goth cousin, Ash, is trying to put a spell on her. Something is making her dream she is trapped inside animals and Ashley is always reading occult books and causing trouble with her attitude. But Ash is simply trying to deal with the death of her mother and subsequent rejection by her father that sent her to live with her aunt, uncle and cousin three years ago. When she learns a winter spirit, or manitou, is hunting Nina, despite their differences, she does her best to help. If she is reluctant at first, she learns her strength and finds some self-worth and healing in the process.

I wasn’t as taken with this book as I was with Dreams Underfoot. It’s a good, solid YA title that is well worth reading, but it didn’t have that extra something the previous book did. I don’t really think it is a YA vs. adult novel thing, as I enjoy both kinds of books and one of my favourite books of all time, The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip is YA. However, for all that this was a full length novel rather than short stories, Nina and Ash both remained ciphers to a degree, and this meant I was interested in their tale but not mesmerised by it. I was much more enchanted by the adults in Dreams Underfoot.

The chapters alternate between Nina’s POV and Ash’s, yet I felt the book was more about Ash than Nina. It is Nina that is on a search for her totem animal (even if it was instigated by the manitou and not NIna herself), but it is Ash that goes on a voyage of self-discovery through the Otherworld. Nina finds her totem animal, Ash finds herself and the book comes to a satisfactory conclusion.

I feel like I’m damning the book with faint praise here, but I find I really don’t have much to say about it. It certainly isn’t a bad book – I don’t feel the need to go into details about what is wrong with it, because there isn’t really anything wrong with it. I just don’t feel inspired to jump up and down and insist this is an amazing must-read either. It’s simply a book, average or a little above that is worth the time to read, but isn’t something to rave about.

The Dreaming Place
Charles de Lint
Newford Novels, Book 4
7/10

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, Young Adult Reading Challenge

The People of Sparks by Jeanne duPrau

Okay, so I admit it; I decided to read The City of Ember after seeing a trailer for the movie.  I still haven’t seen the film (I’m not sure if it was even released here in New Zealand, but hopefully the DVD will turn up in due course), but I thoroughly enjoyed the book.  I bought the sequel pretty much as soon as I finished the first book, but it’s only now that I’ve had a moment to read it.

As the book begins, a group of just over 400 hungry, weary and footsore people arrive on the outskirts of the village of Sparks.  These are the survivors of Ember, the ones who made it out of the dying city into the strange and amazing and terrifying world above ground.  They’ve been walking since they emerged into the light, desperately looking for some sign of other human beings.

But Sparks is a small village, finally growing prosperous after generations of struggle since it was settled in the years after the Disaster.  It’s population is smaller than the number of strangers who have arrived needing food and shelter, understanding almost nothing about the kind of life the villagers live.  The leaders of Sparks agree to let the Emberites stay, but only for six months, while they learn what they will need to know to start their own village.

Inevitably, tension builds between the two groups of people.  The villagers are unhappy to have to share their limited stores and frustrated by the apparently simple things the Emberites don’t know or understand, while the people of Ember are gradually coming to realise there is no way they will be ready to found their own settlement in six months, at which time it will almost be winter, a concept that terrifies them once they come to understand what winter actually is.  Both Lina and Doon try to help in their own way.  Lina takes the opportunity to join a couple of roamers who scavenge old-time towns and buildings for useful items, to go and look for the city she has seen in her dreams.  Doon, on the other hand, remains in Sparks, caught between the need to find a way to live peacefully with the villagers and the increasingly strident and potentially violent leadership of a Tick, a charismatic young man from Ember.

It’s interesting that The People of Sparks, built on the conflict between two groups of people who are both right in their own way and yet can’t find a way to co-exist peacefully, reads as a simpler book than The City of Ember which had an apparently much simpler theme.  It’s a good little book, but it doesn’t have the same atmosphere that the previous book did, and that is to its detriment.  Or perhaps, I realise as I type this, it’s that the atmosphere is different.  Everyone is out in the blazing sun of summer here and it shines a pitiless light on everything, clearly showing the lack of an easy solution in a way that makes a complex problem look strangely simple (if possibly one without a solution).

Yes, I think that’s it.  Even for Lina, who gets away from the growing hostility in Sparks, the truth she leans about what she hopes may be a new home for her people is stark and harsh.  The city is totally destroyed, beyond any kind of recovery and seemingly haunted by the ghosts of its many dead.  If there is any truth to her dream of a living city, it must lie elsewhere as this is not it.

And ironically, in the end the solution turns out to be plain and simple as well.  Perhaps not simple to keep living every day, but simple at a turning point moment which is where the book ends.  The newly combined, 700-odd people of the enlarged Sparks will still face troubles as they try to integrate into a single community but now they have a warning of what can go wrong and an example of the right way to go, to help guide them along the journey.

With the introduction of a whole new community of people, this book obviously introduces a variety of new characters.  While all the villagers are decently drawn, for me the new character who shines the most is Maddy.  Not actually from Sparks, she left her failing home village with the nephew of Sparks’ doctor, who is a roamer.  An apparently indifferent character when she is first introduced, she turns out to be wise and daring and a delight to read, and she will be a credit to Sparks now she has decided to settle there.  She is the one who gives Lina the secret of how to stop the building hate between the two groups, the secret Lina passes to Doon and both of them act upon at the book’s climax to bring peace between the people of Sparks and the people of Ember.

The roamers are also a great addition to duPrau’s post-Disaster world.  Apart from Lina’s trip with Caspar and Maddy, the story is focused in a small area, meaning what we see is a place that could be any village struggling to survive in tough conditions, giving us little feeling of a post-Apocalyptic world.  But the roamers go out and hunt through the ruins of civilisation, showing us a glimpse of the world we know now that has fallen.  The transportation of the roamers (and around the village as well) is very cool.  With numerous hulks of dead cars and trucks about, the people have taken trucks mostly, stripped out the weight of their useless engines and hitched them to oxen to pull them.  It’s a great image and one that really appealed to me.  The other way to get around faster than a walk is to use a bicycle, and that is another common mode of transport.  Lina, who loved being a messenger in Ember, quickly comes to love riding a bicycle and I’ll be interested to see if there is more message running (or rather message biking) in her future.

My immediate reaction to this book was that, while I certainly liked it, I liked The City of Ember better.  But as a couple have days have gone past and I’ve further clarified my thoughts by writing this, I realise that I probably liked it just as much – just in a very different way.  Both books were very much defined by their atmosphere – the darkness and sense of ending in Ember and the bright, merciless sun baking the earth in Sparks.  That made for two very different books, but also two very good books and I recommend them both.

Being me, after finishing The People of Sparks, I jumped online and bought the next one, The Prophet of Yonwood.  This one should be interesting as it is set 50 years before the founding of Ember as the world is suffering through the Disaster (which turned out to be protracted, painful and destructive rather than one short bang that destroyed everything.  I’ve heard less positive things about this one, so I’m looking forward to making up my own mind.  Hopefully it won’t be too long before I get to read it.

The People of Sparks
Jeanne duPrau
The Books of Ember, Book 2
7/10

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, eBook Reading Challenge, Young Adult Reading Challenge