Witch Child by Cecelia Rees

Okay. I can't say I really liked this book as a historian. My skin crawled at the historical inaccuracies in regards to language and some of the social structure of the book. While the story line was fast paced and interesting, the thought that puritan communities would allow an unmarried man and woman live together, even if they aren't sexually involved, is pretty ridiculous. An unmarried woman would live with relatives or alone (but even that would have been rare).

And I also thought the rather overdid the zealousness of the Puritans, loosely basing the story on Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible". It was a little too obvious what was going to happen in the end, because how else would a book end about a girl with witch powers in a puritan community?

Okay, enough with the sarcasm.

I actually like the fast paced story and the tie-in of the Cromwell and English Revolution. I don't see that as often (but then, I avoid fictional histories for obvious reasons). I also liked how that the main character had real power, but wasn't evil or malicious, even when she was being threatened. That was refreshing the lack of revenge! But I haven't read the second book either, so it might come out there.

Overall, I really do prefer Elizabeth George Spears "The Witch of Blackbird Pond". But this one was interesting. I definitely recommend giving this a read...just don't dwell on historical inaccuracies. You will be annoyed. Rather enjoy it for the story. It is an interesting story!

The Magic Thief By Sarah Prineas

I enjoyed these books (there are two of them The Magic Thief and Lost)

It is about a gutter boy named Conn who picks the pocket of a magician and almost dies. Instead the Magician (Nevery) decides to take him under his wing and eventually agrees to teach Conn magic.

It is told from the point of view of Conn and from various letters and journal entries from different people. The story line is light, fun and engaging. The world of Wellmet is an interesting dicotomy of light and dark with its respective rulers. The bad guy is a good bad guy, and the good guys give the reader a warm fuzzy in the stomach. Conn is a believable character, who, inspite of his aptitude for magic, likes to keep to the shadows.

These books are definately worth a read, utterly fun and entertaining, but have a good sense of humor with human interest.

Sheesh I'm tired...I just started working full time again, so it might be awhile till the next entry!

Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynn Jones

I like this book.

The book revolves around Sophie a young woman who is doomed to be the elder of three sisters, and everyone knows that the oldest sibling while be the sister who fails the most and hardest like in all of the fairy tales. Haunted by this fate she is doomed to inherit her father's hat shop and run it for the rest of her life.

This all changes when the Witch of the Waste turns Sophie into an old lady when she (the witch) thinks that Sophie is a competing sorceress.

Sophie leaves home right away to seek her fortune and ends up in Howl's moving castle as the cleaning lady, embarking on a crazy adventure.

I like Diana Wynn Jones for the most part. The only thing that gets me is her apparently random jumps from the fantasy world she has created to the known world. It kind of ruins the mood for me. I get into the fantasy world and allow everything to believable, then she slaps you with Wales or Modern Day Britain. It kinda throws off my groove. I think I like it when the story starts in the known world then descends into the fantasy world, like Harry Potter or Charlie Bone. But that is more personal preference.

I do like that not everything is revealed until the end, and that it is truly told by the point of view of one character (Sophie). Overall I liked it though! The characters were interesting, and Howl really seems like a horrible, heartless flirt.

The movie was really very well done. I'm not a huge fan of Japanese films, but I really like this one. It is definitely worth a shot! So read it and let me know what you think!

King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

Wow.

I mean wow.

Megan Whalen Turner is talented. Somehow she manages to write an entire book without revealing the true intentions of the main characters until the very end, but it still all makes sense.

The King of Attolia is actually the third book in the trilogy, preceded by The Thief, and The Queen of Attolia. I really enjoy these books but The King of Attolia is my favorite.

They are set in a Greece-like setting and are full of politics and intrigues. When I first grabbed The Thief off the shelves at the library, I didn't really have any idea what it was about. At first I was a little disappointed, but in the end Turners unusual style of story-telling is captivating. The Thief is written in first-person narrative, but you still don't know all of what that character is thinking or even who they are. By the end of the book the narrator reveals some character traits that he has kept hidden from everyone, including the reader! In a way, it describes the personality of the narrator even more, hooking the reader on for the sequel.

In every book, the main character, Gen, manages to beguile the reader, even when he isn't the narrator. His actions are shrouded in secrecy, especially when they appear to be open and above board to the reader, making it a fascinating read all around.

Now, I know I haven't given much plot background, but I'm afraid of giving anything away. Just go read it!!

Warning: These are political fantasies....so if you don't really enjoy reading fantasies about government policies and intrigues, you might not enjoy it...I like that kind of thing, especially when it is written the way Turner does!

Philisophical Thought...

So I was listening to 'Viva la Vida" by Cold Play...I love that song. Mostly because it reminds me that no one will remain in power forever!! I think that is one of my favorite things about Fantasy literature...

Like in Eragon, the whole point of the story is for a young man to come into his own and overthrow the tyranical king. As a rule I am ticked that these books that were supposed to be a trilogy are now a quartet, but I am picky...

Harry Potter (here it comes, I warned you...) is about the hero overthrowing the supervillian, Lord Voldemort.

I think what I like about these books, and numerous others, is that they are, in a sense, true. The overwhelming, selfish, tyranical ruler can not stay ruler. It is quite impossible. There are enough people who are either selfish or selfless that cannot allow a ruler like that to remain. I never like "1984". Mostly because it doesn't makes sense to me. It is impossible to crush someones will who refuses to be crushed. If a government falls apart, it will be in Anarchy, not dictatorship or "communism" that the country will fall into. (I put communism in quotations because China and the former USSR were basically dictorships under the guise of communism...don't deny it, because it is true!!)

The Human race has a lot more gumption than many so called modern "realist" authors give credit (like Zadie Smith, Orson Wells, etc...). Those authors (at least to me...) tend to dwell on the many faults of mankind, instead of their persistent virtues in spite of faults. Man cannot exists with out some kind of virtue. It is just impossible. I hate movies that are complete doomsday, where everything is doomed to failure and the end of the world without any hope.

People would say I am an escapist reader, or that I choose to ignore the 'realities' of life. No. I just choose to dwell on realities that don't make me depressed. I know that mankind has many faults and I know (from first hand knowledge) how horrible they can be. But I choose not to emerse myself in them. Mostly because I have too vivid of an imagination....

Fantasy isn't an escape from reality. It is a way to learn to deal with reality. The reader relates personally to Frodo's journey into Mordor and feels every one of his trials and the eventual joy when the ring is destroyed. In that readers own life, they have their own Mordors and rings to bear, reading about how Frodo survived and was able to complete his task helps the reader with their own problems. And anyways, if it was true escapism, it would be a book about fluffy bunnies that have no character development. What is the fun in THAT?

The argument is that people become obsessed with these books and never emerge back to their real lives. Fantasy literature has got to be the least of the things that causes this obsession. Video games, on-line reality games like Second-life, and online chat rooms takes a person away from reality far more literally than any book would. You can actually learn things from Fantasy literature, but I doubt that much is learned from playing mindless video/online games..

Sorry, I got a bit on a soapbox. Let me know what you think!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Can I say HILARIOUS???

So the author, Seth Grahame-Smith basically took Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and added a sub-plot of Zombies that the Bennet sisters are trained to defeat.

If you have ever read (especially if you have read it a million times) "Pride and Prejudice" this will leave you rolling on the floor in laughter.

Mr. Bennet was worried about the lives of his daughters during the time of this horrible plauge (aka Zombies) so he sent his daughters to China to learn to fight and defend themselves from the 'unmentionables'. But this dampens considerably the Bennet girls chance of marriage.

I think what Seth Grahame-Smith did was take the original story and whenever it started to get a little boring, added a zombie attack. I laugh until I cry when I read this book!!

If you like spoofs, you will definitely enjoy this one. Please go read it! MWA HA HA HA!!

His Dark Materials, Phillip Pullman

Okay, first things first. I'm Christian. So naturally I shouldn't be a huge fan of these books, right? Because of the whole killing god thing, but actually that isn't why I don't like these books. I don't like them because they are a soap-box for atheism and it gets boring...

The first book is pretty interesting, has a suitable villain and a good story line, interesting setting in an alternative universe. But the second book dives right into the weird. Most fantasy books are slightly weird, but this is a bit too much for me. Pullman brings in the "real world" (I hate that term...) suddenly, then is having characters cross back and forth between, for the lack of a better word, dimensions. They have some kind of a goal, but it is never very clear what, and the bad guy turns out not to necissarily be bad, just possesive, and the good guy turns out to be a power-hungry crazy guy! (I'm talking about her father..)

Then it starts to be this whole soap box about how Christianity isn't true and organized religion is just a conspiracy theory to gain power and control over people. So in the end of the third book, their is basically another 'War in Heaven', this time with the renegade angels winning...I'm confused just trying to write a description!!! So he is against Christianity, but he uses Christian motifs throughout the whole book to prove how Christianity isn't true? Including 'killing' God?

I think Pullman is trying to use Milton's idea in Paradise Lost of Satan being the true hero of the Fall, but he uses too many ideas that contridict each other. It isn't really a children's novel, it is an academic essay encouched in what looks like a children's novel.

I can also see that Pullman is trying to go against the genre of the Hero Cycle, which usually includes a definate goal, a definate enemy, and a definate higher being (kinda like Dumbledore in Harry Potter, or Gandalf in Lord of the Rings..). Pullman pretends like it is going that way, then pulls the rug out from under the reader, which just adds to the confusion. Instead his characters have to relie on their own ingenuity and figure out what must be done, even though the main characters are 11-12 year old children. It is unrealistic, and too far-fetched for the genre these books seem to be.

These books are interesting to read, mostly because of the spin Pullman takes and the academic arguments that are involved. But they aren't children's books. Far from it, in my view. There is a lot of ethical, religious, and moral debate in these books that can be difficult to understand in the best of times. Some portions of this book I have to read like a textbook, not a novel, to follow the plot at all.

Now, I don't like these books because they are confusing, contradictory, and not what they profess to be. Not because the author is atheist and trying to convince others to be atheist. No matter what an author does, he/she can not change the readers mind about what they already believe. And if I were going to be convinced that there was no God, these books would not prove it. They aren't logical enough and too contradictory to do prove anything other than an interesting twist on High Fantasy, one that I don't think works very well. I commend Pullman for what he is trying to do, but I don't think he succeeds.

"His Dark Materials" are not evil books, as the rumor has been going around the Christian Community. They take an interesting spin on High Fantasy, atheism being a part of that spin, because most High Fantasy (its true!!) has a strain of Christianity in them. Read them, they are very interesting, but I only bought them so I could write a paper about how I didn't like them.

Jane Austen on Love

I love Jane Austen. Period. Those books are some of my favorite, and yes I have read every single one of them. Except Lady Susan...I hate reading unfinished books, so I tend to skip them. I also hate people who think they have the right to finish them....They aren't the author and they shouldn't try to finish something when they have no idea what was in that author's head,...any amount of reading up about the original author's life still doesn't give them the right...BAH. Okay, enough soap box...

A modern idea of love is that you see someone and automatically fall in love with them! Or you sleep with somebody you sort of know and after awhile all the sleeping together turns into love. Why, why, WHY!! Jane Austen knew a thing or two about love, although never married herself.

All of her characters know their future spouse for a long while before they actually, truely become enamored with them. Fanny Price lived with her cousin for many years before she (and he) saw each other as potential suitors. Elizabeth Bennet actually hated Mr. Darcy before having her vision corrected about his virtues. Marianne Dashwood watched the object of her desire go through a horrible engagement to another woman because of his honor before she was able to marry him. Emma married a man SIXTEEN years older than herself who used to play with her as a child! My point is that these women knew the men they married.

Love at first sight is a bit of a hoax. Even Mr. Darcy didn't fall in love with Elizabeth right away. He actually made it very clear to all of his friends that he didn't think there was an attractive feature in her face before realizing other features that he liked. It didn't happen as quickly as the movies often portray. If you read the book the entire progression of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy's regard for each other took the better part of a year, as did Jane and Mr. Bingley, and not without alot of bumps along the way.

In the end though, each party had realized the virtues and FAULTS of the other. I have to point that out because some women get into their heads that their man should be perfect. Good heavens no! Austen plainly points out the flaws of all her characters, but she also includes their virtues and shows them striving to overcome their flaws.

Austen also critizies women who do marry with little or not regard for their spouse, such as Charlotte Lucas and Miss Bertram, both of whom marry for money and comfortable homes, albeit different reasons why. She points out that both extremes are bad and instead is very careful about culturing the relationship between her heroine and hero.

Charlotte Bronte thought that Austen wrote romances for cultured gardens, while hers occupied the windswept moors. Actually, I don't think Austen wrote romances at all. She was writing about the relationships between people, all kinds of people. Between sisters, between husband and wife, between suitors, between aunt and niece, between friends and between casual aquantances even. She is always discussing conversation between people, not necissarily describing landscapes or houses. Her characters do the talking and thinking for most of the book. They are books about people and the energy between them, one of which is love.

Chronicles of Pellinor by Alison Croggan

Okay, I'll be honest. These books drove me CRAZY. I mean, it was a nice epic story about a girl who is the "one who will save us all", as she discovers her powers as a Bard in a mythical land. Sound familiar?

Ya I thought so too.

Let me put it this way. It was basically "The Lord of the Rings" only with a 15-16 year old girl instead of a hobbit. Now I like "Lord of the Rings" knock offs, most modern fantasy is in some way is copied from Tolkien's work. But this one was a little TOO obvious. This girl has a tragic history as a slave in a cruel mountain fortress of sorts. She is helped to escape by a Bard, and suddenly he decides that she is the daughter of the Head Bard of a lost city. And she has immense power that scares everybody, good and bad.

Croggan is creative with the culture she creates with all the signs of being a true Tolkien knock off including random apostrophes in the middle of the names of villages like Cai'paval or something similar. But she follows the genre and outline too closely. Nothing is a surprise, you kind of can predict what will happen before it happens. From the beginning of the first book "The Naming" to the last book "The Singing" you know that she is going to save the day. Usually in books like that there is always a point where you aren't sure. Even when the girl spends most of the second book as a hormonal witch, you still know that in the end she is going to defeat the big, bad guy at the end of the fourth book. It was too predictable.

Even in Harry Potter, you don't know if Harry dies or not. There is still that level of unpredictability, even though the reader knows that Harry will save the day. You still don't know if he will survive it. In the Chronicles of Pellinor the author goes on and on about how the main character had no real childhood and that she was deprived of all that was truly hers, so OF COURSE she is going to live. The author couldn't bear to kill her off after all that!!

In "Lord of the Rings", in spite of what everyone says about it being a happy ending: FRODO DIES. Not only does Frodo fail in his mission (he did too, Gollum did it for him), it eventually kills him, thats what going across the sea means...he did what he did to save the Shire, to stay and live peacefully in the Shire, but HE DOESN'T!! Most fantasy's don't have happy endings for the main characters. The Chronicles of Pellinor's ending is WAY too happy. None of the main charaters die and they all live happily ever after with no real lasting effects of their adventures...BLAGH..

So over all it is worth a read, but I won't buy these books. Too predictable. Like I knew that girl was going to get together with her mentor at the end of the books from the very first book. DUH!

Creative, but predictable. And believe me. High fantasy is rather predictable, but this was overly so.

Dorothy Sayers vs Agatha Christie

So I love to read. I don't just read a book a week or anything like that. I read a book a day, at least! I went to a book club once where the ladies kept talking about how they hadn't read a book in a month or more. Needless to say, I have NO CLUE how they could not pass a day without reading something!

I dedicate this blog to all those who are addicted (as I am) to reading and have a craving for a good book ALL THE TIME.

This morning instead of work, I read one of Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Whimsy mysteries. I should have worked, cleaned my house, scrapbooked, cooked, did the dishes, or worked (I said that twice, huh?), but did I? NO.

I love Dorothy Sayer's mysteries because they are not just about solving a mystery or catching the bad guy. That has a lot to do with it, but she also looks at the main characters and develop them with every new book. They are written post-WWI and set in England, mostly London. It is fun to see how different England and London were before WWII, at least I find it interesting, but then again I am a history buff...But I hate the History Channel.

Anyways, I love Agatha Christie novels (set at about the same time at the same place) but hers aren't quite as deep as Sayers are. She kind of skims the surface of the mystery, following a very similar pattern in all of her books (believe me I have read almost all of them, if not all of them). Sayers varies her technique a little bit, and I especially loved "Gaudy Night" because it was all set in Oxford, giving an idea about what Oxford was like before WWII. Sheesh, it would be nice to have lived in an era of servants! :)

If you don't know who I'm talking about or what books I'm talking about, shame on you!! Go look them up in your local library. Mostly library have TONS of books by both authors (especially Agatha Christie...she wrote over 100).

I would recommend "Whose Body" by Dorothy Sayers and "Orient Express" by Agatha Christie. But any of them would do. Dorothy Sayers are in a kind of order, but you can actually pick up any of hers at any given time. Agatha Christie are set in what ever year she wrote them and have no real order. Although "Final Curtian" was technically one of her last books, she wrote it long before she died, then had it published posthumously.

Anyways, enjoy reading!