Starcross by Philip Reeve

After thoroughly enjoying Larklight, I immediately requested the next book from the library and made a suggestion to buy the third, since it wasn’t yet in their catalogue. Happily, they took up my suggestion (so far, I think they’ve bought nearly everything I’ve suggested) so I have now read Starcoss and have the third volume, Mothstorm sitting on the shelf in the bedroom, waiting for me to get to it.

In this adventure, Art, Myrtle and their mother leave Larklight while it is getting a top to bottom (or, as Art points out, top to top, since it has no particular up or down) refit. They are invited to visit Starcross, a new holiday resort in the asteroid belt. There, they discover Jack Havoc undercover, mysterious goings on, time travel, sea bathing and nefarious top hats. Soon, Art (and Myrtle of course) are fighting another threatening invasion, rescuing friends and family and, naturally, saving the great British Solar Empire.

This was another light, fun, and slightly crazy adventure. Art’s narration remains a lot of fun, Cross’s steampunk-y world is still full of clever and sometimes sly ideas and the illustrations are again lovely. Again, there are silly throw away lines - my favourite was about locations in the asteroid belt:

…and Abnegation, which was woven out of brown string by Presbyterians.

Larklight’s obvious pop-culture reference was from The War of the Worlds. This one from Starcross should be even more recognisable:

“He dreamed of founding a Rebel Alliance which would strike at your Empire from a hidden base…”

All the same, I didn’t enjoy Starcross quite as much as I did Larklight. I’m not sure why, but it didn’t have quite as much sparkle. Maybe it was that the world wasn’t so new to me, or maybe it was the story itself. While the Moobs were a neat idea, I’m personally afraid of spiders, which may be a factor in why I found the Old Ones in the previous book to be a much more successful enemy. Or maybe it’s just that, even in a book that isn’t supposed to be taken seriously, I simply couldn’t take evil top hats as a valid villain. (No, they’re not actually top hats, but I’m not going to spoil it.)

That said, I still enjoyed reading it a lot and I’m looking forward to reading Mothstorm. If you haven’t read anything in this series by Philip Reeve before, start with Larklight, as their are spoilers in this book for the previous one, especially relating to Art and Myrtle’s mother. Otherwise, settle back for another fun adventure and spend a pleasant afternoon or two adventuring across the solar system.

Starcross
Philip Reeve
Larklight, Book 2
7/10

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

Larklight:

1. Larklight
2. Starcross
3. Mothstorm

Progress on Second Chances

I’ve been making some slow progress on Second Chances, but I’ve been slack about posting photos, so here are a few. This is so pretty – the photos don’t begin to do it justice. Once I’ve finished the first page I’ll actually scan it and see if that gives a better picture.

  

Listing of Reviews

Last night, I had a Good Idea (TM).

Since I started adding the other books in a series to my book reviews, I was finding I was having to troll back through my blog to find any previous reviews to link to. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have a listing of all my reviews over on Lists and Such? And of course, if I was going to do that, wouldn’t two lists be better – one by author and one by title?

It’s taken me all day, but 247 books later, the lists are up.

• Reviews, alphabetical by Author
• Reviews, alphabetical by Title

I use the word reviews, but they vary from full blown reviews to a short single sentence.  A few (like one that simply read “Ditto”) I left out altogether. Most are a short comment or paragraph as often I got behind and did a summary at the end of the month. But at least it’s a way to check a rating or get a quick feel for what I thought about a particular book.

This year, I’m hoping to (or maybe dreaming of) managing a full review for each book I read. Here we are at the middle of February and so far, so good. I’m only one behind and plan to do that tomorrow.

Shades of Dark by Linnea Sinclair

I really enjoyed Linnea Sinclair’s first book about Chaz Bergren and her growing relationship with Gabriel Sullivan (not to mention her involvement with political intrigue, ex-husbands, monster breeding programmes and difficult family relationships). So when I heard there was a direct sequel coming out that would continue Chaz and Sully’s adventures I was delighted. But then the reviews started coming out. They were pretty much uniformly positive, but most talked about it being a dark book and about Sully making bad choices and stupid decisions. My book fear (where I worry desperately about the characters and/or how much reading about what happens to them is going to stress me) came rising up and I kept finding excuses not to face up to reading the book. But the third related book (not about Chaz and Sully, but about Chaz’s ex-husband Philip) is due out in a couple of weeks and the random number generator picked Shades of Dark for me, so I figured it was time to take the plunge and read it.

Chaz and Sully have escaped after destroying the Jukor breeding lab on Marker, but they know there is another lab out there on a ship. While trying to track it down, they find themselves caught up in high politics. Chaz’s brother Thad, who helped them on Marker, is arrested by the conspirators behind the Jukor labs (and more) as bait to draw out the fugitives. Whether he co-operates or has his mind scanned, his knowledge that Sullivan is a hated telepath or Kyi-Ragkiril is sure to be discovered. Chaz and Sully have to deal with the reactions of their crew to this news, the discovery of traitors in that same crew, not to mention the potential fall of the Empire itself (along with the arrival of Chaz’s ex-husband, Philip) and the intrusion of an alien Storloth Kyi-Ragkiril onto their ship. The latter, Del, can train Sully, whose power is growing at a rate he can’t control, but his mentorship comes with oaths, traditions and complications that will strain Chaz and Sully’s relationship to breaking point.

For once, my fears about a book proved to be true. By its end, this was a disturbing book. A very good disturbing book, but a disturbing book all the same. Sinclair doesn’t ever choose to take the easy way out and she explores the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely with a clear and unwavering gaze. Sully needs to come to terms with what he is, but as the only human Kyi-Ragkiril that he knows about, he has no guidelines except for scanty research about Storloth Kyi-Ragkirils. When Del enters the scene, he thinks he’s found a tutor and mentor, but the very things that make him human are not things Del, as a Storloth, sees as necessary or important. Chaz sees Sully changing and has to come to decide for herself how much of this is a good thing and how much, if any, is a bad thing.

Sully does indeed make some very bad and stupid choices, and Chaz’s responses are strong, brave and sometimes heart-breaking. I’m still processing exactly what happened and both Chaz and Sully’s choices. I’m not 100% clear how much of what happened was freely Sully’s choice and how much was Del manipulating him. Even if Del influenced things, the power inside Sully is a hungry, demanding thing and he must, as the story progresses, discover if he can stand up to it or if it will devour him too.

Chaz does not love blindly, and this makes her a strong and brave character that the reader can only admire.  She’s fantastic as she walks her own path through the minefield of her relationship with Sully, further confused as it is by the presences of Del and Philip. She knows where her moral boundaries lie and she will stick to them despite what it costs her – and who can’t love a woman who’s prepared to shoot her lover because he’s crossing a line he shouldn’t cross and it’s the only way to get through to him?

Sully is lost and confused and his pain is heart-breaking, but at the same time both he and Chaz know, and Sinclair doesn’t let the reader forget, that we are still responsible for our actions and we must take the consequences for what we do. We must fight to stay human and in touch with those things that are the best in humanity. Sully tries and, in the end, he stumbles, but still he tries. And always, always he loves Chaz with all that he is.

There’s a lot more plot in this book as the Empire disintegrates and the Jukor breeding lab is found – and it’s very good plot that weaves neatly though the focus on Sully and Chaz’s relationship and Sully’s growing power in the Kyi and what responsibilities that does or doesn’t place upon him. But at bottom this book is an study of love, as it seeks to explore its limits and its limitlessness. Sully says frequently to Chaz that all that he is is hers. But sometimes we have to draw lines in the sand, and where Chaz chooses to draw hers and how much she loves despite that make for a painful and uplifting conclusion to the book.

The ending is downbeat, yet beautiful in its own way. It’s painful, but it’s right. These people and their situation and experiences could only end here. And despite everything, the reader can still believe in their happy ending. It might not be happy right now, and it might be totally different from what they (or we) originally imagined, but there’s a rightness to their relationship that nothing has yet destroyed and we can believe nothing will.

Like I said way back at the beginning of this review, this is a disturbing book. It’s disturbing because, through Sully, we are forced to face some of the darker shades to human nature – and we don’t have a hero who can automatically be assumed to stand strong against them, because real people often fail and if Sully is anything, he is very real, despite his great power. So it’s disturbing, but it is also very good. If you have book fear like me, don’t let it stop you. This is a book worth reading, and there’s a love here that is strong and true yet real in its complications and its pain. Trust in Linnea Sinclair; she’s taken on a hard challenge here and she’s succeeded.

All the same, I’m hoping the next book, Hope’s Folly, won’t be so hard on its readers. I can’t take books like this all the time.

Shades of Dark
Linnea Sinclair
Dock 5, Book 2
8/10

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, eBook Reading Challenge, Romance Reading Challenge

Dock Five:

1. Gabriel's Ghost
2. Shades of Dark
3. Hope's Folly (to be published 24th February, 2009)

Two pretty designs

I can across these while browsing today. I do rather like them both – although I acknowledge I am unlikely to stitch either.

Beach Cottage – Country Cottage Needlecrafts

 

Traveling Stitcher – Little House Needleworks

14 days

The Sharing Knife: Horizon arrived today.  So guess what I’ll be reading next?

It took 14 days to get here, which is much, much better than the 50 days Acheron spent in transit. Here’s hoping Bone Crossed will arrive just as speedily.

I’m a few chapters into Shades of Dark now, so rather than messing up my momentum, I’ll finish that, then start Horizon.

Oh pah!

In line with my plan to start listening to The Grey King, I pulled out my cross stitch tonight and settled down to get some done.

It was going along very nicely – I was enjoying the book (even if I did side-track to buy it as an ebook so I could add notes to it as I listened) and getting back into the swing of the stitching.

But I’ve just found that the section I’ve been working on doesn’t join up properly with the bit before.  Darn it, I’ve got myself a single stitch out – and quite a way back too. I’ve now got a whole lot of red (of course it had to be red) thread to pull out that has been stitched 1-over-1 on 32-ct lugana.

Excuse me while I go and curse and use lots of rude words.

I am totally not going to try to do it tonight. I’m going to bed. Hopefully I’ll feel up to frogging it tomorrow. If not, it can wait until I’m good and ready.

Sigh. And it was looking so pretty too. In fact, it still looks pretty, but since it’s a symmetric and circular design it has to be right or it won’t meet up at the end. I have no choice but to pull it out.

Tomorrow.

The only good news is that I got about an hour into my book so hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with Sue and Nymeth.

Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas

Lisa Kleypas is very well recommended around the romance community. There’s a friendly competition between many readers to decide which of two of her heroes is the best. One of the candidates turns up in book 3 of her Wallflowers series. Being me, if I was going to read it, I had to start at the beginning of the series, so I bought Secrets of a Summer Night a while ago and the random number generator picked it for me just at the time when a romance felt like just the break from other books that I needed.

Annabelle is running out of time. She’s at the end of her fourth season and she still hasn’t found a husband. Her family is well born but poor and this fact has stopped anyone from offering her anything so respectable as marriage – although there have been indications men are willing to offer her something less respectable. At balls, she finds herself a wallflower, sitting on the sidelines along with three other young women who, like her, are never asked to dance. The four of them, Annabelle, two American sisters Lillian and Daisy, and the shy Evie, form an alliance, planning to help each other find husbands. One man who has shown interest in Annabelle (but not in marriage) is Simon Hunt. He’s a self-made man, a butcher’s son who is grudgingly welcomed into society due to his wealth. But Annabelle is looking for a peer, not a commoner. All the same, she keeps coming into contact with Simon and slowly, finds herself developing an interest in him despite her plans.

I can see why Kleypas is well regarded. She tells a good story with great characters and she can take standard romance tropes and either take them in a new direction or tell them with a vigour and freshness that makes you forget you’re reading something you’ve seen in other books.

Her characters shine. Annabelle and the other wallflowers are a delight to read and their interaction is lovely. Personally, I’m not one for romances that focus so tightly on the hero and heroine that there’s no room for other interactions. In real life, that’s unhealthy, and while I acknowledge that generally romances have little to do with real life, I still like some authenticity if possible. Kleypas provides that here. The chapter that includes the flow of letters around the four women is delightful. Equally fun to read is the frequent banter between Annabelle and Simon. Neither is willing to bend, or not at first anyway, and their fencing in clever and witty.

As feelings between them develop, that banter continues, but there is an underlying concern for each other as well. Simon’s care for Annabelle when she is sick – and his uncompromising determination to help her himself – is a delight to read. This is a romance after all, and seeing the tough alpha hero showing his softer side for the heroine is a large part of the fantasy. A fantasy Kleypas writes with skill.

I readily admit this is a personal thing, but the frequent romance trope of a virginal heroine who has several blistering orgasms the first time she has sex drives me totally batty. I know it’s another kind of fantasy, but unlike the caring alpha hero, this one really doesn’t work for me. So I particularly noticed when Annabelle, while not having a bad experience, didn’t feel heaven and earth moving either. Thank you Ms Kleypas; that alone raised you high on my list of romance authors to read again.

Annabelle isn’t perfect in any way, but she came into her own during her honeymoon and as I read I looked at how much of the book there was left to go and found myself worrying. Clearly, with that many words left, something had to go wrong and things were coming together so nicely. Again, Kleypas impressed me. True, there is a misunderstanding between Annabelle and Simon, but it is a small and reasonable one that is reasonably worked out with time and experience, not something big, unrealistic and at bottom, stupid. The end of the book is a rounded resolution rather than high adventure and it worked beautifully for me. The problems are solved – or at least to the point that is reasonable within context – and the end comes neatly.

Another difference between this book and many historicals is that it is set a little later, in the mid 1800’s. This allows Kleypas to study the fading power of the gentry and the rise of the new industrialists. Simon is one of the latter and Annabelle, initially believing in the superiority of the former and looking for a husband among them, comes to see that there’s a new way coming. In the end, it is Simon and that future that she chooses to embrace and while the gentry look down on her for it, she comes to understand that she’s the one who has made the most forward thinking choice. And of course, she’s found her happily ever after, and that’s a huge part of why people (me included) read romance.

This change in Annabelle’s thinking is neatly described in this exchange with her brother Jeremy:

“Don’t be so severe on her, Annabelle. It wasn’t so long ago that you had the same disdain for those on the lower rungs.”

“I did not! I…” Annabelle had paused with a ferocious scowl, then sighed. “You’re right, I did. Though now I can’t see why. There’s no dishonor in work is there? Certainly it’s more admirable than idleness.”

Jeremy had continued to smile. “You’ve changed,” was his only comment, and Annabelle had replied ruefully.

“Perhaps that’s not a bad thing.”

I was impressed by my first historical by Lisa Kleypas and I strongly suspect I’ll be reading more. I wasn’t hugely won over by my first Kelypas novel, which was the contemporary Sugar Daddy, but Secrets of a Summer Night was very much more my kind of book. I think it was a case of one subgenre (historicals) being more my thing that the other (contemporaries) because Lisa Kleypas is an excellent author and one to which I’m sure I’ll be returning.

Secrets of a Summer Night
Lisa Kleypas
Wallflowers, Book 1
8/10

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, eBook Reading Challenge, Romance Reading Challenge

Wallflowers:

1. Secrets of a Summer Night
2. It Happened One Autumn
3. Devil in Winter
4. Scandal in Spring
5. A Wallflower Christmas

I knew this would happen

Marcus has been at school for four days.

Today, his teacher asked me if I had any summary reports from his daycare. When I said no, she said that she’s concerned about his distractibility. When they had an assembly he couldn’t stay still and she has trouble getting him to focus. She also said not to worry, that at the moment she’s essentially gathering data to develop a plan to work on the problem.

I’m very sad to hear it, but I’m not in the least surprised.

Marcus does have real trouble focussing and he is very easily distracted. Dave and I knew it could be a problem at school. We made a choice not to tell the school about it or that he’s an ex-premature baby because we didn’t want to set up any preconceived ideas, but we were ready to add that information into the mix if there were issues about it.

I expected there to be. But I did expect it to take longer than four days.

One of the things the developmental psychologist told us when he had his four year old checkup, was that we weren’t to let teachers try to tell as he had ADHD as if he had those sorts of problems, they would be from his prematurity instead. But that clearly implied that he was likely to have some of the same symptoms. We’d been hoping he was about the same as other kids, but if the teacher has noticed it already, I guess that hope hasn’t been realised.

Marcus is such a bright, intelligent kid that it breaks my heart to think he might not be able to reach his great potential because of prematurity issues. (The teacher did add that he knew lots about letters and numbers and not to worry about those – I knew that too.)

So I’m feeling a little sad this evening. I hope we can work on this and develop strategies for him so that he can overcome this, but it still makes me sad.

Bushfires

I find myself intently following the news of the bushfires in Australia, especially Victoria. We lived in Melbourne for six years (on and off) when I was a child/teenager and I did my undergraduate degree at Melbourne University. There’s a part of me that feels very invested in what’s going on.

I recognise the names of the places they mention and find myself thinking, “I’ve been there.” Not the places that have been burned to the ground, but some of the places where the survivors and evacuees are being taken, I’ve been to those.

I remember one family holiday to Beechworth, a name that I’ve heard on the news and seen in the online newspapers. We stayed in a home stay house there that had this little tin annex out the back that was the bathroom. There was a sign hanging beside the toilet (I suppose on the assumption that more people would read it if it was there) that listed in great detail all the things you were supposed to do if there was a bushfire. At the time, I read it with a kind of morbid curiosity, but with no thought about ever needing to use the information it contained. I keep remembering that notice now and wondering if it is still there and if the person currently using the toilet thinks they might need to follow its advice.

People of Victoria, my thoughts are with you.

Changing my audibook

While checking out blogs this morning, I came across a very interesting post by Susan, talking about an essay from Ursula Le Guin’s The Language of the Night about why we read fantasy. She also talked about Susan Cooper’s books The Dark is Rising and Greenwitch. I listened to both recently and planned to start the next book in the sequence, The Grey King after I finished listening to Magician’s Gambit.

I made a comment to that effect and Susan commented back to ask if I would like to join her and Nymeth in reading The Grey King. It sounds like a great idea, so I emailed her to say I’d love to join in. I’m going to start The Grey King today as I was getting bored with Magician’s Gambit anyway. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up listening to the book (I listen I lot more slowly than I read), but if necessary I can nip downstairs and grab my copy off the shelf and speed up the process by doing some reading as well. The audio is 5 hours and 40 minutes long, so it certainly isn’t as long as some books. I hope I’ll be able to play along.

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

Weekly Geeks 2009-05

Oh, this week’s Weekly Geeks is the one for me! It’s all about book covers. Now, I just love book covers – I can always be tempted by a pretty cover. Sure, in the final analysis it’s all about what’s actually between the covers, but a pretty package most certainly never hurts.

So what was our mission this week?

Judge a Book By Its Cover!
This week it's all about judging books by their covers! Pick a book--any book, really--and search out multiple book cover images for that book. They could span a decade or two (or more)...Or they could span several countries. Which cover is your favorite? Which one is your least favorite? Which one best 'captures' what the book is about?

I went through quite a few options before I picked my book. My first consideration was Joan D. Vinge’s The Snow Queen, simply because I have a truly horrible cover while there’s a different one that I absolutely love. But when I went out and searched, I found that apart from the two covers in question, there are only about two others and that limited my opportunities for posting. Then, after seeing a couple of posts featuring the covers for Anne of Green Gables, I flirted with the idea of picking The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. Since it was first published in 1925, I figured there would be an interesting progression of styles (I was right, there are). But in the end, I chose Baroness Orczy’s classic, The Scarlet Pimpernel.

For starters, here’s the cover to my copy (or at least, to the best of my ability to recall, it looks like this – it’s actually packed away in a box under the house). It’s a hardcover from somewhere around the fifties or sixties I think. I wouldn’t be surprised if there used to be a dust jacket, but when I picked it up in a second hand bookshop, that was long gone. All the same, for all that it’s very simple, I love the embossed pimpernel on the front, to match the signet ring Percy uses to sign his Scarlet Pimpernel missives.

Like others, I’ve taken advantage of Library Thing’s collection of covers for each book to find some more to share with you (you can see all of LT’s covers for The Scarlet Pimpernel here).

This is one of my favourites. I think the figure mixes a good balance of the foppish persona Sir Percy affects much of the time, especially with the flaring lapels and pink waistcoat. But at the same time, his causal stance has a sense of waiting to it, suggesting that there is a man of action hidden underneath (as indeed there is). It’s easy to figure out that this must be a recent edition as poor Percy has his head cut off, and this is a current trend in book covers. I really like this one and I think it gives a good indication of the time the book is set and the character of the Sir Percy.

Obviously, this one is a much older edition, with the images stamped onto the boards of this hardcover. While it isn’t clear if the man is Percy himself or some other character, I feel this is another cover that gives a good indication of the contents inside. The man’s clothes and hat clearly give the time the story is set, and if we weren’t quite sure, the guillotine in the background through the doorway clinches it for us. I also like the font that has been chosen and the way the red and gold work with the more definite black of the drawing.

Okay, I’ll admit to a certain frivolity with this one. It’s Richard E. Grant from the 1999 A&E TV series based on the books, and I rather like Richard E. Grant. But the cover has a lot going for it all the same. Despite being in colour, it remains very monochromatic, being essentially black and white. Having the white misty background around the figure of Percy, it makes him stand out while still using the starkness of a black cover, and it is a very striking pose. I also like the font and the way a sword with a pimpernel on the hilt (I assume, the picture is a bit small to be sure) is used as the ‘T’ for the ‘The’ in the title.

This is the last favourite cover I’ve picked out. I like the way the man has his hand partially covering his face, indicating Percy’s secret identity as the Scarlet Pimpernel. The richness of the glove, ring and sleeve make for a lush cover with a hint of danger in the man’s eyes.

Here are a few more covers, again pulled from Library Thing, that are more indicative of the “average” covers for The Scarlet Pimpernel that are out there. After that, I’ll treat you to some of the ones that scream “bad” – to me at least.

  

Okay, here come some bad ones. Personally, I think this ones wins the prize hands down for the worst ever cover for The Scarlet Pimpernel! If I saw that looking at me from a bookshelf, I’d run screaming in the other direction. Okay, I admit that it is taken from the early scene in the book where the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues doomed aristocrats from the guillotine while the old woman knit. But really, that is just horribly, horribly ugly and I would never want it on my bookshelf.

I readily admit that I loved the 1982 TV movie of The Scarlet Pimpernel starring Anthony Andrews (yum) and Jane Seymour. In many ways, I still do. But this is a particularly bad still to use for the book cover. Marguerite looks as if she can’t decide if she’s terminally bored or she’s already had her head cut off, while Percy at his most annoyingly supercilious. I enjoyed this TV version while I struggled to watch the 1999 version, but you’ve got to admit that they did a much better job putting Richard E. Grant on the cover than they did with these two.

Taken on it’s own merits, this is a pretty nice cover and in the tradition of a lot of modern covers that use a piece of classic art (almost always of a woman) on the cover. But what’s with using a woman in this case when the book is about a man? Yes, I acknowledge that Marguerite’s discovery of the truth about her husband is a significant part of the book. But if I say ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’, do you think of Marguerite or Percy? For me, it’s Percy every time. And also, what’s with the repeated sleeve and arm at the top right? That just looks plain weird.

Putting this one with my collection of bad covers is, I admit, totally personal. In and of itself, it isn’t necessarily a bad cover – and I’d certainly be happy to listen to Hugh Laurie read The Scarlet Pimpernel (note to self - check library to see if they have it). But the lighting and the pose remind me of Horatio Caine in CSI:Miami and I absolutely cannot stand him (to the point I wish the sniper had killed him in the pilot episode) so that completely ruins the cover for me. Personal prejudice can be a funny thing.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a classic book that has had it's share of good and bad covers – and a whole lot more that are just mediocre. I hope you enjoyed this sampling.

To close, I’m going to give in to my original urge and show you those two covers for The Snow Queen.

You guessed it – I have the bondage-themed one on the left when I really wish I had the beautiful Michael Whelan art on the right. I do have a lovely, signed print of Whelan’s queen on the wall in my dining room, so I guess that will have to do. I’ve often been tempted to replace my second hand copy with a new one, but when it comes right down to it I can never justify spending the money. After all, it’s the story inside that counts, right?

Who am I kidding? Book covers rock!

Zzzzzzz

Well, after having to write my review for A Thousand Words for Stranger twice after I accidently overwrote my saved draft with another blog post, I think it’s time for me to go to bed. It’s relatively early – almost 9.30pm – but we had a night-time adventure last night and Dave and I both need to catch up on sleep.

I didn’t actually hear him, but about 3am Dave woke me to say Marcus was calling for me. I staggered out of bed, expecting the usual demand for a drink or a biscuit (or maybe just some attention) and was horrified to find him making horrible, rasping breathing sounds and barking a nasty, hacking cough. Dave came in to check on us both and we made a mutual decision to take him to the doctor.

To make what turned out to be a very long story (we got home again about about 6am) short, it turned out he had croup. The doctor at the emergency medical centre gave him some steroids to start relieving the swelling in this throat, but wanted us to take him to Starship (the children’s hospital) to be on the safe side. We got there (with a side trip included because on our usual route the road was closed – fortunately Dave found an alternative where I would have been totally screwed because I didn’t have a clue where to go next) and after being seen first by a triage nurse and then a registrar, they agreed the steroids had done the trick and he could go home again.

But we were assured we had done the right thing because if the swelling is serious enough and isn’t treated, the child can suffocate.

I don’t know how he managed it, but Marcus has been awake from 3am until he finally went to sleep about 9pm. Dave managed to get in about an extra hour’s sleep in the morning and I got maybe 2 or 3 over the course of the day, but we both need to do some catch up.

Sadly, since it’s a viral thing, Marcus’ excursion with his best friend (who he now doesn’t see as much because he’s at school and she’s still at daycare) has to be cancelled tomorrow, but so far he’s taking it very well and agreeing that we will plan something again once neither of them is sick (she’s been a bit under the weather too, so having two sick children with different sicknesses together seems like a bad idea).

So it’s off to bed with me now – after I check on Marcus – and hopefully Dave will follow me shortly. Even more hopefully, we won’t have a recurrence of it all tonight. We were told it was possible, but I’m hoping the odds will be on our side and we’ll all get to sleep through until tomorrow morning.

A Thousand Words for Stranger by Julie E. Czerneda

Well, I wrote an entire review for this – and one I was rather pleased with too – and then accidently overwrote the draft when I started typing up my notes for the book for my Spoilers, Notes and Theories blog. Here’s hoping I can remember enough to recreate something similar.

I first read Julie E. Czerneda’s A Thousand Words for Stranger (isn’t that such an evocative title?) several years ago, but unfortunately I remembered very little about it. In an effort to encourage myself to a reread, I kept nominating it for the SF read of the month at [Beyond_Reality] and finally it got picked for February. It took me longer than I expected to read it – about a week – but it was because it was a detailed and somewhat complicated book, not because it was a bad one.

A young woman is travelling with an escort on the planet Auord when they are attacked and she escapes, fleeing into the rain. Memoryless, she finds herself driven by hidden compulsions to get herself off planet, preferably in the company of human spacer, Jason Morgan. So begins Sira’s journey to find out who she is, what has happened to her and why, and why she is being chased by multiple groups of people for a variety of inexplicable reasons. She and Morgan must face mysterious (and not-so mysterious) enemies as they find themselves caught up in an attempt by the humanoid but alien Clan to save themselves from extinction. They must also deal with space pirates, Trade Pact enforcers, a variety of Clansfolk with differing agendas and, just to make things more complicated, their own growing feelings for each other.

The above is a relatively straightforward description of what is actually quite a complicated book. Czerneda is a biologist and the central theme of this book is a biological “what if” that is explored in great detail, all while the novel masquerades as an action mystery with a hint of romance. Author John Scalzi hosts a regular feature on his blog, Whatever, where he asks authors to discuss the “big idea” behind their novels, and Czerneda’s contribution, which discusses the origins of the Clan, and with them, Sira and Morgan, can be found here. It’s an interesting read that intrigues without spoiling the books and it’s what encouraged me to reread A Thousand Words for Stranger.

The book is primarily written in first person POV, telling the tale through Sira’s eyes as she slowly gathers enough information and experience to find out who she is, what has happened to her and why. It is a good way to tell an amnesia story as the reader and the protagonist solve the mystery together. As well as Sira’s POV, the story includes interludes told is third person POV, which Czerneda uses to tell parts of the story where Sira is not present. This worked well for me as those little extra pieces put me, the reader, a slight step ahead of Sira. That meant that as she then discovered something new I had a little bit of extra information to help me make sense of it all. However, one of the members of [Beyond_Reality] really disliked it and I got the impression it significantly spoiled the book for her because she felt it was a cheat on the author’s part. This is one of those things that is going to be very much a matter of personal taste.

Be warned that this is not a simple book. It’s not impossibly complicated – there are other SF books out there that have confused me much more than this one ever did – but you do have to pay attention and study the clues and explanations carefully if you want to fully understand Czerneda’s Clan and their problems. For all that I have a BSc(Hons) degree in chemistry and biochemistry, biology has never been one of my strong points. I never studied it at school (always planning to be a chemist) and had to play catch-up when I started my biochem papers to get some of the basic ideas down pat. (I’m a reactions and pathways girl and not into the squishy biology stuff.) All the same, I wanted to understand – so I took a lot of notes. Fortunately, I was reading this as an ebook and there are multiple bookmarks all through it as I highlighted passages that either seemed important or were confusing. (Those notes are over on my Spoilers, Notes and Theories blog.) By taking time to highlight text and then typing it out earlier today, I feel I do pretty much understand what was going on in the book. There are only two things I remain puzzled about and while one is a case of mild confusion (why is the Council’s last step in their plan to erase Sira’s mind to escape the “dictates of Choice”?), the other is something that I hope will be addressed in a later book (if Sira has given her Power-of-Choice to Morgan, how has and will that affect him?). But all in all, I feel Czerneda put in everything the reader needs to understand what is going on, and the degree to which one wants to understand determines how much work one needs to put into it.

This is a book about ideas (or perhaps more the ramifications of a particular idea) than it is a book about characterisation, but I still found the characters interesting and likeable. Sira and Morgan, as the main protagonists, are by far the most developed characters, while the more satellite characters are less rounded. Personally, I was reading the book for Sira, Morgan and the idea, so this worked fine for me. The others are sufficient for the tale that is being told and certainly don’t hurt it in any way. I very much liked the way Sira slowly found herself as the book progressed – and then discovered that the person she had been before was not someone she particularly liked. Her conflict at being two people, the now-Sira she has been since she lost her memory and the old-Sira who is a stranger to her, is nicely portrayed as is her journey from wanting to stay who she is now, even if that means not being a fully integrated person, to being ready to take the risk to become a third Sira who is a combination of the other two. While this is not really a book about identity, Sira’s struggles with these issues are nicely done.

I wasn’t until I read the author’s introduction to Ties of Power, the sequel to A Thousand Words for Stranger, that I realised we know very little about Morgan’s past beyond a vague reference to having made some bad choices. For all that, I got a solid feeling for his character and I like him a lot – which makes me look forward to Ties of Power all the more where Czerneda implies in the introduction that his past while be explored further. I’d particularly like to know what inspired him to paint most of his cabin with flora and fauna and when and how he discovered he had the talent to do so. (Me, I struggle with stick figures, so I appreciate how much talent is required to do something like that.)

Julie Czerneda is currently writing the third book in a trilogy about the Stratification, the time when the Clan spilt into those who could touch the M’hir, the main source of their power, and those who could not. Hints about this time are tossed out in A Thousand Words for Stranger, and knowing about the new trilogy, I made a point of taking notice of them. It looks like an interesting time and it should cover the origin of the biological impasse that is the crux of this book. After that, Czerneda plans to come full circle back to Sira and Moran and I guess/hope that she will come up with the solution to that issue. I’m looking forward to reading Ties of Power and I do hope that books continue to hold my interest as I like Sira and Morgan and the ideas Czerneda is exploring. If they do, there’s going to be a lot of good, biological SF in my future and that will be a good thing.

As I said right at the beginning, I do love the title of this book. There is something just so evocative about it. Everyone has become a stranger to Sira, and she says this to a woman who claims to be her sister. Rael replies:

There must be a thousand words for stranger in the explored galaxy. Let one of them be sister.

It doesn’t really mean anything special – or maybe it means everything – but I like it.

This isn’t the best SF novel I’ve ever read, but it is far, far from the worst as well. It was Czerneda’s first novel and I look forward to reading more of her work and seeing how it has developed in the years since A Thousand Words for Stranger was first published.

A Thousand Words for Stranger
Julie E. Czerneda
Trade Pact, Book 1
8/10
Notes for A Thousand Words for Stranger

Qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge, eBook Reading Challenge

Trade Pact:

1. A Thousand Words for Stranger
2. Ties of Power
3. To Trade the Stars

Next part for Book of Ink Circles

We got a lovely little bird to stitch this time around. I got it stitched in a day and now I’ve only got one part left. It comes out on the 24th February. I can’t believe this is nearly finished.

And the Random Number Generator says…

According to the RNG, my next book up is Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas. That works for me. A bit of romance for a change of pace will be nice. After that though, it had better be another library book or I won’t get them read before I have to take them back.

Whee!

Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs has shipped from Amazon. Yay! I wonder which will arrive first, Horizon or Bone Crossed?

And as an aside, isn’t it such a pretty cover? I do love pretty covers. I’ve spent today finding images of the covers of my (244) ebooks. I like to have them in a directory so that I can “browse” them, just as I would browse the shelf if they were paper copies.

While looking for covers for the L. M. Montgomery Anne books I had as ebooks, I discovered that Australia has a Project Gutenberg site too, and now I have copies of all the Anne books as well as several of Montgomery’s others. Those others include my all time favourite L. M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle. That one went straight onto the PDA and the TBR.

Of course, the danger of looking through all those books was finding ones I wanted to read that aren’t actively on the TBR. I think I actually only added The Blue Castle, which I think was very restrained. All the same, the TBR has now hit 47 books and if it gets to 50 I’m going to start feeling stressed about it again. After all, that’s about six months solid reading!

Talking of ebooks, I had a weird day today with Fictionwise. I have always been interested in trying Rob Thurman’s Cal Leandros series, but the first one, Nightlife, wasn’t available as an ebook and I didn’t want to pay New Zealand paperback prices for trying a new author. In Fictionwise’s new books today, there, finally, was Nightlife, so I bought it. I downloaded it, transferred it to the PDA and opened it. After a moment of confusion, I realised that the book in the file was actually Night Life by Elizabeth Guest (a book I did buy as a paperback and what a waste of money that was, as it was total crap). I have emailed Fictionwise to get the problem fixed.

I thought that was the end of my Fictionwise issues for the day, but no. From last week’s new releases I bought Lora Leigh’s latest Breeds book, Coyote’s Mate (I wanted it anyway and the 100% rebate was suitable temptation). It came available today and I downloaded it, transferred it etc. Turns out it won’t open and I get an error message saying the file isn’t complete. Off goes another customer support email to Fictionwise. Hopefully there will be some answers by the time I get up tomorrow morning. I’ve never had any problems before, so having two on the same day is kind of weird.

First Day at School

Today was Marcus’ first day at school. It’s taken a bit of work to pry any details out of him, but we know he went swimming (he could touch the bottom, which he thought was very cool – our pool is about three or four inches too deep for him), and the teacher read a story and he drew some pictures. The kids get their stationery tomorrow and since Friday is a holiday I suspect learning starts seriously next week. Here’s the new schoolboy in his school uniform (and one photo from his birthday party on Saturday since I haven’t posted any pics from that).

Call me a geek…

…but I just have to listen to this:

The Science and Psychology of Cricket, Part 1

Weekly Geeks 2009-04

I’m afraid I skipped Weekly Geeks last week. I had a really busy week getting ready for Marcus’ birthday and all our visitors and I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say about Classic books. They’re something I don’t read a lot of – more out of some vague fear than anything else – and I couldn’t form a coherent post. But this week is much more my thing. Here are the instructions from the Weekly Geeks site:

#1. What are you passionate about besides reading and blogging? For example, are you crafty (knitting, woodworking, scrapbooking, model building)? Do you cook? Into gaming (computer or board)? Sports (player or spectator)? Photography? Maybe you like geocaching, rock climbing? Or love attending events like renaissance fairs, concerts? Music? Dancing? You get the idea.

Tell us why you're passionate about it. Post photos of what you've made or of yourself doing whatever it is you love doing.

#2. Get us involved. Link to tutorials, recipes, Youtube videos, websites, fan sites, etc, anything that will help us learn more about your interest or how to do your hobby. Maybe you'd like to link to another hobbyist whose work you admire or tell us about a book or magazine related to your interest.

#3. Visit other Weekly Geeks. Link in your post to other Geeks who've peaked your interest in their passion. Or maybe you might find a fellow afincionado among us, link to them.

1. Other Passions

As anyone who has ever browsed this blog (or even just read my little “About Me” profile) will know, I’m an obsessed cross stitcher. I started stitching when I was about 17 and now, over 20 years later I’m still going strong. Between my health and a small child I don’t get as much done as I would like, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop completely. Right now, I’m working on a design called Second Chances by designer Tracy Horner from Ink Circles. I’m stitching it with very small stitches – 32 of them to an inch – so it’s a bit of a challenge, but I’m really enjoying it. Fortunately, my eyes can cope fine. In fact, I need to take my glasses off to see most clearly. When finished, it should look like this, but I haven’t done a lot yet. Here’s my current progress:

 

I run a small home business called Character Creations, where I convert artwork into cross stitch designs. I generally don’t stitch my own designs – all my creativity goes into the designing and I don’t have a lot left to consider actually stitching the piece. One picture I did like was the art for the cover of The Dawn Star by Catherine Asaro (who is also a favourite author). Stephanie Law (the artist) is one of the artists whose work I chart, but unfortunately she didn’t own the rights to this one. In the end, I managed to get permission from Harlequin to do it just for myself. It’s a really huge project (know as a ‘BAP’ among cross stitchers, which stands for ‘'Big A** Project’) and I’ll be doing it for years, but I love how it is turning out. Here’s my current progress on this one:

Other crafty things I do include some patchwork (I learned out of self-preservation when I got a job in an embroidery and patchwork store) isn’t a major hobby, but one I enjoy when I get in the mood for it. It makes a pleasant change from cross stitch when I still want to be creative and crafty, but need to do something a little different.

I’m currently working on a Triple Irish Chain quilt that has been many years in the preparation (and the making), but I’ll get it finished in the end. You can see some of my quilts here (the gallery is out of date now, but the pictures are all still there to see – oh, and the thumbnail of Dawn of the Third Age is wrong because it is actually a Babylon 5 quilt). This one below resides on Dave and my bed and is a bit faded these days from repeated use and washing, but it is still a favourite:

Last year, I got into digital scrapbooking. My enthusiasm has faded a bit since then and I only do some now and then. I have an album of layouts that doesn’t include the most recent ones as lately I’ve just been doing them for myself rather than sharing them online. We recently brought a new printer that will print them at excellent quality, so my current goal is to (very slowly) print them out and make a physical album I can go through myself. Marcus also really enjoys seeing all the pictures of himself, so it will be good when he can just pick up the album and take a look as the mood strikes him, rather than me having to pull up the appropriate directory on the laptop. This one was done to commemorate the first Christmas Santa came to give Marcus presents.

(Frames by Nancy Comlab; everything else by Kate Hadfield and Kaye Winiecki.)

I’ve flirted with a few other things like stamping and Hardanger, but these three are the ones that have stuck. I’ve also tried knitting, but it just won’t click in my brain. When I was pregnant I imagined I would knit something for the baby, but when I couldn’t even follow the instructions in the book to let me cast on, I faced up to the fact that knitting isn’t for me and I’ve never tried again. What with the reading, stitching, patchwork and scrapbooking, when would I have time anyway?

2. Online Resources

Hmm. In terms of cross stitch, I don’t really visit “resource” sites. My travels around the web mostly include shops – it’s always nice to drool over some pretty stuff one can’t afford to buy and doesn’t have the time to stitch – and blogs to keep an eye on other people’s works in progress.

There is a very good set of starter FAQs written by Kathy Dyer which cover all the basics and a bit more.

What about some of my favourite designers? There’s a core of them who consistently create beautiful things that tempt me, and here’s a list of some of them with links to their websites.

• Chatelaine
• Mirabilia
• Teresa Wentzler
• Little House Needleworks
• Ink Circles
• Heaven and Earth Designs

I went exploring the links I’ve just typed to make sure I had everything spelled correctly and I’ve found a lovely new dragon scissors fob by Teresa Wentzler that I’d never seen before. Oh dear, something else to go on my wish list. This is proving to be a dangerous exercise!

I love looking at other stitching blogs as it is always fun to see what other stitchers are working on – even if it is something I would never consider stitching myself. For example, I love the art conversions of Heaven and Earth Designs, but I find them very fiddly to stitch (which is why my one, Defender of the Kingdom, is going very slowly). So checking out the progress of other stitchers is the perfect way to get vicarious satisfaction.

Some of my favourite stitching blogs:

• Stitching Diva
• Plush
• Obsession… Confessions of a Serial Starter
• Feather Stitching
• No Sampler Left Behind
• Crazee4books-Cross Stitch-Cats

Of course, as I’ve already said, I also browse craft shops for things I wish I could buy. If you’d like to look at my current dream list (as in ‘in my dreams’), it’s up online here.

3. Other Weekly Geeks

I’ve had a lovely time browsing through the other Weekly Geeks posts (okay, occasionally looking at the pictures more than the text as it’s getting late here and I really should go to bed). The following are the ones that attracted my eye the most.

• Fiddle-de-dee's not English: Yati shares her love of patchwork with some beautiful photos and I also loved the way her books wormed their way into her photos even when it’s a post about other things. Yati, if you see this, Niccolo Rising is a bit of work, but well worth the effort and I’ve just recently reread (or technical relistened to) The Dark is Rising but I refuse to even consider watching the film.
• Infant Biblophile: Another patchwork post, with lots of beautiful finished quilts. I especially like the last one – and the necessary book edition of The Lion in the Meadow which is a favourite in this New Zealand household too.
• Random Wonder: I loved this post about scrapbooking, especially digital scrapbooking, and the way all the whole post is decorated with scrapbook pages. But I admit, it was the layout of the bookshelves at the bottom that really won my heart.
• Crazy Comma Momma: I really admire a person who does “real” paper scrapbooking. I’d be too afraid ever to cut anything up or glue anything down. That’s why I scrap digitally. I love my ctrl-Z. Beautiful layouts in this post and some great links.

This had been a great theme for the week and even if it’s taken me several days to get my post together, I’ve really enjoyed doing it.

February Releases for Character Creations

I’ve just released two new designs for February. Both are from art by Christy Babrick and I’m pleased with how they both turned out. Both designs are 20% off until 7th February.

Last Look

In the Treetops

For feed readers

I’ve changed my blog layout if anyone cares to take a look. The main reason for making the change was that I wanted to have a chance to use the pretty dinosaur picture I have up on my livejournal (but since I don’t use that any more he’s languishing unloved). That then meant adjusting the colours of an existing theme to work with it since I didn’t have to have to do lots of html work (I only king of vaguely understand it, so the results can be interesting to say the least). It’s not as smart as any decent web designer could do, but I have my dinosaur, so that’s the main thing.

January 2009 Reading

Rather than posting everything twice, I’ll just add a link here. My list of January 2009 Reading is now up on Lists and Such.

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)