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| 1941360319
| 9781941360316
| 1941360319
| 3.71
| 107
| Apr 21, 2020
| Apr 21, 2020
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really liked it
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Recommendation: An enjoyable novella ostensibly about a Chinese immigrant to California (but which is so much more).
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Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 21, 2024
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Aug 28, 2024
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Nov 16, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0593564065
| 9780593564066
| 0593564065
| 3.88
| 588
| Feb 28, 2023
| Feb 28, 2023
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liked it
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Recommendation: a fun tween adventure story Critique: I really enjoyed reading this story, in large part because it is set in the place where I live - Recommendation: a fun tween adventure story Critique: I really enjoyed reading this story, in large part because it is set in the place where I live - the SF Bay Area. For once, it's not a children's book that is set in New York City! There's a lot of fun banter between the characters. The contrast between the contemporary and the mythological should feel familiar to fans of the Percy Jackson stories, though it is refreshing to feature Japanese mythology rather than the European mythologies we see more often in children's literature. Review: A social outcast, preteen Momo Arashima is drawn into a high-stakes adventure and discovers things about herself and her family along the way. (view spoiler)[Momo interacts with Niko, a talking fox, on her 12th birthday. Not long after, she is being humiliated by some peers - including her childhood friend, Danny, who recently has started to mock her to fit in with his popular friends - at the mall when she attacked by a shikome. Danny, Niko, and Momo flee together. On the way, Niko reveals that Momo's mom is actually the goddess of an island that guards the gate to the underworld where a demon was sealed ages ago. Momo's mom was banished from the island for falling in love with a mortal - Momo's father. Because she hasn't been able to return to her home, Momo's mom has been weakening, and so have the wards placed on the portal protecting our planet from the demon. They become convinced that, to save her mom, Momo must wield Dojigiri, a legendary Japanese sword of heroes that happens to be on display at a museum up the peninsula in San Francisco. They try to steal the sword from SFMOMA, but are thwarted by some yokai. In desperation, they climb out onto the Golden Gate bridge, where Niko opens a portal to the Land of the Gods, where they beseech the gods for aid. The gods suggest a plan that involves using Kusanagi, the Sword of the Wind, that belongs to Susano'o, lord of the gods. The kids undertake a series of quests, including descending to a nation of centipedes below the ocean and stealing Kusanagi from Susano'o, in order to finally get their hands on the sword of the wind. Then there's a big showdown on her mom's island, where Momo is confronted by Izanami, the horrible insidious goddess of the underworld, who reveals that many of Momo's powers are a gift from Izanami. Momo manages to seal the gate again...for now. The kids return to the Bay Area and are reunited with Momo's mom. But they have a nagging suspicion that it's not the last they've seen of Izanami... (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 2024
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Jun 30, 2024
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Jul 30, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 1421509717
| 9781421509716
| 1421509717
| 4.50
| 2,411
| Aug 1999
| Dec 18, 2007
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really liked it
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Recommendation: another great installment in this gripping thriller. Critique: Monster really draws on "The Fugitive" (the TV show, not so much the fil Recommendation: another great installment in this gripping thriller. Critique: Monster really draws on "The Fugitive" (the TV show, not so much the film) and, by extension, "Les Miserables." In Inspector Lunge, we have a Javert-like character who is obsessed with finding Dr. Tenma. He is brilliant, but frustratingly obtuse about recognizing that Tenma is not guilty of the crimes. It's clear that he doesn't care about guilt, but because Tenma has been convicted, he is a criminal and must be captured. His target, Tenma, is like Dr. Richard Kimble of "The Fugitive" because he is a brilliant doctor who, in the course of his ongoing hunt for the real murderer, constantly finds himself in situations where his medical training comes in handy, helping random people in every city. But it's like if Richard Kimble had operated on the one-armed man so that he didn't lose his arm, and then the two-armed patient went and killed Kimble's wife. Tenma is obsessed with finding and stopping Johan because Tenma is the one who saved Johan's life, and he feels responsible for every murder Johan has committed and every suicide he has caused since. The book is grim. This is not a surprise in a series about a serial killer, but the grim tone comes primarily from the tawdry, evil brokenness that the various people in the book exhibit time and time again. Good people are very, very rare in Monster. Review: (view spoiler)[Lunge goes on vacation, surprising everyone. But it is part of his obsession, as he goes to the Czech Republic to continue his investigation in an unofficial capacity as a private citizen. He talks to the chief of police in Prague, who asks him to give advice on a puzzling case. A bunch of his detectives were murdered, and the chief suspect, Detective Suk, has gone missing. But there is a mysterious second suspect: a blonde woman. Lunge notes the similarities to the murders around Tenma, and continues his investigation of the children's book. Going through the author's notes, he finds a book of sketches of the pregnant mother and her twin children. The last page of the book says "I will choose the name Johan." Meanwhile, a bunch of kids living in an orphanage, upset that their friend Grimmer is a suspect, decide to find the blonde woman. Tenma encourages Grimmer to go back to the orphanage to check on the boys, and Grimmer reveals that, because he was raised and abused in 511 Kinderheim, he has never been able to feel or express emotions. He was taught to emulate them, and so tragically the Grimmer character keeps asking Tenma for advice on what emotion he should be displaying. The kids, who have drawn many pictures of Grimmer smiling, report that one of them - Milosh - has gone missing. Lunge, meanwhile, has visited Detective Suk's mother: she reveals that she was visited by a pretty blonde, but that he was a man, not a woman. People believe it's Anna, when it is actually Johan in disguise! Tenma and Grimmer track down "Anna," who has taken Milosh and very quickly manipulated the boy into considering suicide. But they've arrived too late: "Anna" and Milosh have disappeared. Grimmer tells the story of how he was a spy and agreed to marry an infatuated woman as a cover. They had a baby, and the boy died from SIDS despite Grimmer's attempts to save him. Unable to feel grief, Grimmer infuriated his wife, who eventually divorced him. "Anna" has taken Milosh to the red light district, where "she" tells him his mom is. Milosh goes into the red light district and is accosted by junkie whores and contemptuous pimps. The experience of not being wanted breaks Milosh, and Tenma and Grimmer find him as he is about to commit suicide off of a bridge. Grimmer tells him he is wanted, the boy is not convinced at first, and Grimmer finds himself crying. Inspector Lunge manages to track down Detective Suk, who is convalescing in a Prague hospital, but Suk refuses to say who he thinks the real murderer is. On his way out, Lunge confronts an undercover cop and tells him to let "his boss" know two words, "Rose Mansion," which gets Lunge an audience. Captain Lanke is the chief of the secret police. Lunge tells Lanke that he knows that the author of the children's book, Franz Bonaparta, owned that mansion. Lanke is terrified of the mansion, revealing that an entire crew of political prisoners and researchers alike who were at the mansion just disappeared. Lunge discovers that part of the mansion has been walled off, and he breaks through that wall. Meanwhile, Tenma has tracked down Franz Bonaparta's old publisher. The publisher reveals that his daughter was scared of Bonaparta, even though he seemed completely unassuming and gentle. Bonaparta was also a neurosurgeon. WHen they last met, Bonaparta seemed re-energized, and pitched two stories: one about a monster falling in love, and another about a door that must not be opened. After Tenma leaves, the publisher reports to the police that the known murderer Dr. Tenma was there! Past the wall, Lunge finds a mostly-empty ballroom that smells of ethanol. He is convinced that many people died there. Above the fireplace is a picture of the woman from the sketchbook. Back at the orphanage, Grimmer and Tenma observe Milosh socializing, and Grimmer notes that Milosh is getting along better than he ever did. They go to visit Suk's mother. This gets Grimmer thinking about how Suk will end up on the run and never able to see his mother again. So Grimmer decides to make himself the primary suspect so that Suk won't have to be on the run again; he doesn't mind being hunted himself - he's lived as a spy on the run most of his life. Shortly after they part, Tenma is apprehended by the Czech police. We get a series of flashbacks from Herr Schuwald, of his younger years spent with Margot Langer, who revealed that her real name is Helenka. Dr. Reichwein is trying to get Herr Schuwald to take better care of himself, but the Herr says he can't, not while the monster exists. He recounts how he went back to Czechoslovakia in 1980, looking for Margot, and found her friend, who was taking care of the twins. Later, Dr. Reichwein agrees to see a friend of one of his patients, who turns out to be the now-alcoholic Eva. They are both shaken when the TV announces that Tenma has been arrested. They're not the only ones; a support group of people meets regularly to share their experiences of having their lives saved by Dr. Tenma. They are all convinced on his innocence, and they agree to pool their resources to pay for his legal defense. Meanwhile, Eva has stuck with Dr. Reichwein as he's boarded a train for Prague. She reveals that she despises Tenma for ruining her life, and yet she is the only one who can provide testimony that might exonerate him. The book ends with her laughing hysterically. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 20, 2024
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Jul 23, 2024
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Jul 30, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1646517458
| 9781646517459
| 1646517458
| 4.57
| 4,281
| Oct 11, 2022
| Oct 03, 2023
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really liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 02, 2024
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Jan 03, 2024
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Feb 08, 2024
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| 1646516184
| 9781646516186
| 1646516184
| 4.53
| 5,477
| Apr 21, 2022
| Nov 15, 2022
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really liked it
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Recommendation: A good installment of the excellent manga, in which a bunch of complications are introduced as the narrative of the festival continues
Recommendation: A good installment of the excellent manga, in which a bunch of complications are introduced as the narrative of the festival continues. Critique: The artwork is excellent. The pace of the narrative has slowed almost to a stop: as it has since volume 8, all of the chapters in this volume take place during the same three days of the festival. But a lot of this is important development. Volumes 8 and 9 introduced us readers to more ideas of the dangers of magic and this volume really continues to pile on the sinister relationships and foreboding situations that arise because the girls don't have all the information they need to be appropriately wary. We see that the King is a power-mad psychopath who chafes at the idea that magic is denied him, and that the Brimmed Caps are playing upon Custas' desperate love for the only father figure he's ever known in order to twist and manipulate him into darkness. That - showing us readers important information that is withheld from the characters - is a great way to generate and increase tension, but in the case of the witches at Qifrey's atelier, it's also VERY frustrating and somewhat contrived. WHY haven't the masters told their students about the very real dangers that they are likely to face during the festival? It's like setting kids in a Grimms' fairy tale loose in the woods without any warning, when you know that there are cannibals living in candy houses nearby! Summary: (view spoiler)[Richeh succeeds in selling all her contraptions. Agott has run off in a huff, overcome by her desire for revenge on her wealthy noble magic family who consigned her to live like a peasant. Her master, Qifrey, cautions her to take care, because unfettered desires - whether for revenge, or love, or anything - can be twisted and manipulated to serve others. Tetia, meanwhile, meets and befriends a sort of drippy noble, who turns out to the Prince. Everything the Prince says is filled with menace and double-meanings, as he clearly lusts for the secrets of magic just like his father (who we see dissecting victims/patients later). But Tetia doesn't know, and is excited to make a new friend....thus exactly playing out what Qifrey was describing to her classmate. Tartah and Coco, meanwhile, have been played by Custas (twisted as he is by the brimmed cap Ininia) into agreeing to get into the magic procession so that they can present their contraptions to the King...and in so doing, getting Custas and Ininia within striking range of the King without his usual protections, too. Tartah is convinced that Custas is redeemable, so he browbeats Coco into going along with the plan. But when she asks to enter her wing cloak into the procession, Qifrey refuses, as it has not gone through vigorous safety reviews. Coco goes to tell Tartah about this snag, and they set out to find Custas again...but instead, they run into Dagda, Custas' "big brother." Dagda explains that he was looking for Custas (who ran away from him, too), and he offers to escort the kids through the neighborhood they'd entered, called the Muckpool: the unsavory polluted part of the city where all the dregs go. As they proceed, Dagda tells his own story: he was a gutter rat who was shown kindness by an acting troupe he tried to burgle. Instead of punishing him, they gave him a musical instrument and had him join their group as a performer, training him on the condition that he pass the grace along to someone else from the Muckpool in the future. Dagda agrees to play for the kids, and they notice that he has a seal tattooed on his chest. He has no memory of how he got the tattoo, or how he escaped the flooding of the river. In fact, his memory keeps resetting. Coco identifies the tattoo as a "Counter Clock" seal. One of the Knights Moralis, Galga, recognizes the music and goes to investigate, promising his noble lover, Atwert, that he will return shortly. Believing Dagda to be a brimmed cap, Galga attacks to kill. But then when Dagda staggers, dying despite not being hit, Galga recognizes that it is a Counter Clock seal, too, and is horrified. Before he can help Dagda, though, Custas arrives and sucker punches/pounds Galga into the ground with his sorcerous feet. Custas reveals that he's been drawing and redrawing the Counter Clock seal in Dagda's body again and again, desperately trying to keep his "big brother" alive after the died in the river. THIS was the real draw of the Brimmed Caps: their promise that, if he can help break the Pact, they will give him the magic to permanently save Dagda's life. Coco recognizes her own tragedy in Custas' life: how he reached out to magic he didn't understand, with disastrous consequences. So she vows to find a healthy, not proscribed way to save Dagda's life. Tartah suggests that they present him to the greatest doctor of the modern age: the King. Custas reminds them of their promise to get a spot in the procession to get him and Ininia close to the King, and leaves with Dagda's body. Meanwhile, Ininia finds Galga and wipes his mind. Atwert finds him sometime later and takes him to the doctors. They agree that nothing can be done for him, and the Knights decide to send Galga to Adanlee, the Isle of Oblivion, where banished witches are sent, never to return. Atwert vows to resist the Knights' decision and storms off, while Galga's comrades swear to enact revenge on the Brimmed Caps responsible. The Silver Eve procession begins with dragonriders and other "normal" folk in the parade. That night, Coco stays up into the late hours, obsessively trying to draw seals. When Agott finds her, Coco claims that she can't draw anymore. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 2023
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Mar 2023
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Jul 08, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1434260186
| 9781434260185
| 1434260186
| 3.64
| 83
| Jul 01, 2013
| Aug 01, 2013
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did not like it
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Recommendation: A mediocre, mostly-failed attempt at modernizing the tale of Snow White. Critique: Eira (Welsh for "Snow") is a pampered teen living in Recommendation: A mediocre, mostly-failed attempt at modernizing the tale of Snow White. Critique: Eira (Welsh for "Snow") is a pampered teen living in a New York city apartment with her wealthy father and her insufferable stepmother (some people call her stepmother "Queen," others "Witch" because of how entitled and assertive she is). That's OK, but the retelling of Snow White here is pretty faithful to the original, so there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense in a modern context. Why does Hunter (the valet) take Eira to the slums to fake her death? How does he convince the stepmother that Eira's been killed? In the original story, he cuts the heart out of a stag and presents it to the Queen, but here he's got nothing and the Queen has magic (so she can easily discover his lie when she checks it because he provided no "proof"). In the original, the Queen disguises herself as a crone to sell a poisoned apple to Snow as a fallback in case she isn't able to kill the girl herself - she gets interrupted by the return of the dwarves and so the poison apple does its work. Here Eira is all alone and the stepmother has plenty of time to kill the girl without interruption, but instead she uses her magic to put her into a deep sleep for some reason; there's no motivation for her to do this. There's a bunch of other, similar problems in the story, and then there are problems that are introduced by trying to change the story beyond just modernizing it. In the original, the desire was to kill Snow in secret because she was so beloved by the people, who would revolt against the Queen if she was to be publicly executed. In this, that rulership motivation is gone, so Eira's father is still alive, and he has to resolve the conflict in the end, instead of the Prince in the original. There is still a romance angle, but instead of it being a total stranger that falls in love with the sleeping Eira and releases her from the spell, it is one of the thieves, who interacted with her a few times before she ate the apple and was cursed. This is a clumsy attempt to reduce the repulsive impact of a stranger just coming up and smooching sleeping girls, but it isn't really any better. These two don't have a relationship, but they have met, so it's more like a high school classmate creeping up and planting a wet one on a girl taking a nap. A lot of these problems probably stem from the length of the book: it's very short, so doing the work to build the world, establish relationships, and flesh out characters to support these kinds of changes was impossible due to word count limitations. I think it's possible to do a decent retelling of this story in a modern setting, but for me, this isn't it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 30, 2022
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Nov 30, 2022
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Dec 16, 2022
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Library Binding
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| 1646512693
| 9781646512690
| 1646512693
| 4.50
| 7,251
| Dec 23, 2020
| Sep 28, 2021
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liked it
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Recommendation: Another enjoyable part of the Witch Hat Atelier series; this one focuses primarily on the relationship between Coco and Tartah, as the
Recommendation: Another enjoyable part of the Witch Hat Atelier series; this one focuses primarily on the relationship between Coco and Tartah, as they work to help their friend Custas. Critique: This is a cozy friendship volume in the great series, taking a complete break from the main Brimmed Caps plot to explore a side story involving Coco, Tartah, and their relationship with Custas and Dagda. It's mildly funny, quite heart-warming (the intimations of burgeoning romance are very sweet), and some of the line work is magnificent. Review: (view spoiler)[Silver Eve is a big witch festival, where witch society gathers each year to spend money on sampling many foods and many wares, including the clever inventions that Tartah and his master create. Qifrey and his apprentices agree to help Tartah man the booth so that he can take breaks, but almost none of the book takes place in the booth. Instead, Tartah grills Coco for witch minutiae, like how she holds her pen when drawing sigils (this leads to a spark of budding romance as they hold hands on the same pen). In preparing for Silver Eve, Tartah invites Coco to visit his master, Nolnoa, but they are distracted from this by Custas, who falls down the stairs. Custas complains that his leg chair is old and unreliable, so Tartah and Coco collaborate to create an alternative form of transporation for him: a harness of levitation wings that he can use to fly. While they are coming up with the plan and then working on the design, they spend a bunch of time with Custas and with Dagda, the poor witch who has effectively adopted Custas as his kid brother. Dagda has had to take odd jobs to make ends meet, including as a bounty hunter. At the end of the volume as Custas is camping out with Dagda, they are ambushed by bandits seeking revenge on Dagda. Dagda urges Custas to flee while he holds them off, and while Custas escapes, Dagda is killed. A strange young girl who speaks to a staff (calling it "Master Restys") comes across the site of the battle, where Custas is weeping over Dagda's corpse. The girl admits that she is a witch, and that her kind of witch is not constrained by the artificial limitations that apply to witches like Qifrey and Coco...the book ends and she prepares to rewind time on Dagda's body to repair him as if he were a broken pot. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 30, 2022
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Nov 30, 2022
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Dec 15, 2022
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Paperback
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| 164651078X
| 9781646510788
| 164651078X
| 4.55
| 8,236
| May 22, 2020
| Feb 02, 2021
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really liked it
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Recommendation: Another enjoyable part of the Witch Hat Atelier series; this one focuses primarily on the relationship and history between Olruggio an
Recommendation: Another enjoyable part of the Witch Hat Atelier series; this one focuses primarily on the relationship and history between Olruggio and Qifrey. Critique: The line work remains really impressive in this series, though in this volume, there were a few frames in which I couldn't really tell what was happening ((view spoiler)[the water monsters - which look like Chinese dragons with the heads of Nausicaa's Ohmu - defending the tower were either attacking or approaching in many frames, and it often wasn't clear which was happening (hide spoiler)]). It's a sign of how well the author has developed the characters and the story so far that this volume kept my interest so well. This takes the bold step of engaging in very little plot, instead leaning heavily on the two characters, Olruggio and Qifrey, and their interactions. Almost none of the other characters do not appear in this volume...and that's OK. It's still really engaging, as we find out more about these men and their history together. Review: (view spoiler)[Still recovering in the underwater city of witches, Qifrey has dreams of his childhood with Olruggio while Beldaruit tells Coco about Qifrey's past. Beldaruit found Coco's master Qifrey when he was a young boy, barely breathing, buried alive in a coffin by the brimmed caps and with his right eye plucked out. Beldaruit decided to take Qifrey on as an apprentice. Now both Olruggio and Beldaruit suspect that Qifrey has harbored a vendetta against the brimmed caps, and that he's using Coco to lure them out so that he can get his revenge. After telling Coco this, Beldaruit interrupts Olruggio and Qifrey's earnest conversation with the news that Coco has escaped through a portal. Qifrey immediately knows that she's going to try to get into the Tower of Tomes by herself. The three of them go after her, and Qifrey risks his own safety to rescue her. He gives her the choice to return to the city or continue on to the tower while he distracts the giant dragon eel monsters so she can get away safely. She instead decides to rescue him, declaring that she's obviously not yet ready to face the tower alone. There's also a flashback to the time when Qifrey was unconscious and recovering from his ordeal, in which Olruggio and another witch, Hiehart, and his apprentice, Jujy, obey the summons of a surface king whose daughter is about to be married. The king gives them a ridiculous demand: replace all the tile in the palace with glowing blue tile to show off the princess (and her family colors) in a good light during her wedding and reception. Olruggio craftily creates a "stage" - really just an area in the center of the ballroom - in which any dancer will be brightly illuminated with blue light. The King is pleased, and they beat a retreat before he can concoct some other bizarre demands. Olruggio tells Qifrey of this story, and asks Qifrey to trust him enough to let him help with whatever is going on with the brimmed caps. Qifrey reveals that he discovered some truth in his journey to the Tower of Tomes years ago: he was a result of a prototype experiment that the brimmed caps performed, and now they want to use Coco for the final, completed version, to spread the opposite of hope: despair. Qifrey admires Olruggio for waggling the truth out of him, them reveals that his cap actually has a brim that is normally folded up and pinned to the cone. He unpins this, revealing a FORGET seal as he knocks Olruggio's cap off and shoves his cap on his friend's head. With a swipe of his thumb, Qifrey completes the seal. Olruggio collapses, all memory of their conversation and Qifrey's secret forgotten. The next day, Qifrey, Olruggio, and the apprentices all return to the atelier. Tartah appears and asks if they'd like to help man a stall during the Silver Eve festival. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 29, 2022
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Nov 29, 2022
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Nov 29, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0778309401
| 9780778309406
| 0778309401
| 3.46
| 2,132
| Feb 11, 2020
| Feb 11, 2020
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really liked it
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Recommendation: An overall enjoyable but occasionally frustrating fantasy read about five children growing to adulthood without any control over their
Recommendation: An overall enjoyable but occasionally frustrating fantasy read about five children growing to adulthood without any control over their lives: the Unwilling. Review: I really enjoyed the writing in this; in particular I liked (most of) the worldbuilding, the characters, the plot development - I didn't know where the story was going, exactly, which was delightful, and I liked the syntax and sentence structure. The idea of a world that had had magic in the past and then had that magic bound up, sealed away for generations: that's brilliant. Having a secret society that for generations has been working a Grand Plan to restore magic to the world is wonderful, as an idea and as a metaphor for a worker uprising to restore power to the populace. Each of the characters we follow, Nate, the Worker; Gavin, the Prince; Theron, his younger Brother; Eleanor, the Hostage; and Judah, the Foundling, all of them are nuanced, with both endearing and reprehensible qualities. The reprehensible stuff came later, artfully presented at a time that the reader is already sympathetic to each character, and so the reader feels disappointment in the character, rather than revulsion; pity and sadness rather than hatred and rejection. It came across as tragedy rather than horror, and that's good. The difference between tragedy and horror can be a fine line, and how Braffet massaged that boundary worked for me. The ending of the book (view spoiler)[was abrupt and unexpected for me, and I was stunned. In the end, though, I think I was more delighted with it - like being fooled by a magic trick - than annoyed. Even though there is no resolution, the enigmatic ending resonated with me more like the end of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (which also ends with the young woman leaping from a height to an uncertain outcome - is she dead? Is she alive? Is she transformed?) than like any number of other stories where it was clear that there was no ending, that the story just stops. It's the sort of unclear ending that somehow remains provocative, where I want to discuss with others: "What do YOU think happened at the end?" (hide spoiler)] Again, this is a tough trick to pull, and Braffet did it well. The sentence structure and word choice did a lot to help these things along, of course. It may be that I read a lot of books that are aimed at a lower reading level, so writing at a higher than 6th-grade comprehension impresses me. But then I think about Clute's book Appleseed, forcibly reminding me that a higher reading level absolutely doesn't mean better writing. This is just done well. It's not a perfect book, of course. It's very, very dark, with a lot of villainous people being horrible to each other, and the protagonists only occasionally being noble (which is an accomplishment, since they only have horrible, abusive role models). In addition, there were a few small irritants or weirdnesses that struck (or sometimes frustrated) me precisely because of their rarity. A writing weirdness: For the first several chapters, I thought Judah was black, because she had dark eyes and everyone kept trying to touch her hair (which is famously a thing that black girls get all their lives). So I was surprised to discover that she was a redhead. I wasn't expecting it. While I'm familiar with the prejudice that redheads get, it is trivial relative to what black folks get, and also doesn't usually involve people touching their hair (rather it tends to be expectations of hotheadedness, unreliability, or licentiousness). But this is fantasy, maybe people behave differently there. That's on me, I admit; I actually found it sort of a cute surprise, playing on expectations like that. But it was bothersome that there were no people of color in the book: everyone in the City is very pale and blonde. The Slomini are described as of wildly differing shapes and sizes, but none of the characters we see are anything but white (they are bred and chosen for their ability to blend into the City populace). There is hope as you read that the foreigners with the magic power, the Nali, will have some melanin, but it turns out that the one Nali we see, a captured shaman/chieftain, is even paler, with milk white skin. A setting weirdness: The castle from Elban on down is very medieval, but the presence and particularly the presentation of foppish, modish courtiers rang false for me...because historically, the monarch set the mode. Courtiers would dress as dandies to emulate the monarch and/or curry his/her favor. But Elban doesn't care about fashion in the slightest. The courtiers competition for fashion stands out because it seems utterly pointless. A plot weirdness: (view spoiler)[Judah pitches the idea of using her and Gavin as a means of instant communication. Elban is clearly taken with the idea, and declares that he is going to try it. WHY then doesn't he follow through and take them on his next military mission? Why? It makes no sense for the character at all. (hide spoiler)] It has to happen for the plot to advance, but it felt very, very awkward. A publishing weirdness: Normally I like maps in books. But the inclusion of maps in this book is completely unnecessary. The action never takes place outside of the City of Highfall (if a future book does, that book should have the eastern territories map), and the relative positions of the locations in the City are completely unimportant to the story. It's rare to get a fantasy book that is so well-contained and tightly-written that it doesn't need a map, but here's this book. Yet it has two maps! I didn't refer to the maps once in my eager reading of the book. Review: What follows is the plot summary. (view spoiler)[Everyone believes the Slonimi are groups of wandering vagabonds, but in fact they are a tightly-knit society of revolutionaries who are carrying out a multi-generational breeding plan to arrive at a group of powerful chosen ones who will together break the bonds that sealed magic away from the world hundreds of years ago. In ages past, a Mad King hired mages to harness the power of magic in the world to destroy his enemies. The result was that a large swath of the continent was rendered completely lifeless, destroying his strongest rivals. But with no opposition, the Mad King grew paranoid, fearing that someone else would use magic against him. So he caused his council of mages to perform another Great Work, but this one resulted in their death and the sealing away of magic. Before this, everyone had access to magic, but afterward, only the strongest and most gifted had any trace of Power at all. The Slonimi exist to find others who have some magical ability, to recruit them, and to breed them with others to gradually increase the magic power so that their distant offspring will be able to destroy the seal and release magic to the world again. Nate, Charles, and Judah are the result of decades and decades of selective breeding, combining bloodlines to refine and concentrate magic talent to the utmost: Slonimi with amazing Power. Judah was a babe yet unborn when her parents snuck into the Castle of the Mad King's descendant, Lord Elban. As intruders, her parents were thrown to the dogs to be brutally murdered by fang and claw. But a boy working in the kennel took pity and dragged her disfigured, dying body out of the dog pen. There he discovered that the mauled woman was giving birth. He ran to fetch a midwife, not knowing she was another powerful Slonimi (hilariously named Derie). The midwife helped to deliver the baby from the dying woman's womb, and then took the baby with her to visit Lord Elban's wife who was also in labor that night. The midwife manipulated the Lady, and the Lady decided that she was going to care for the "foundling," which they named Judah. Derie completed the ritual and Judah was forcibly bonded with the Prince who was born, Gavin. From that point on, they could feel each other at all times and at any distance. Lord Elban was concerned that his heir would have such a weakness, so he tested the limits of this bond as the kids grew: every instance of torture carried out on Judah left wounds on Gavin, too. Out of fear for his posterity and succession, Lord Elban caused Gavin and Judah to be raised together. A year or two later, Lord Elban tried to get another heir without that handicap, but his Lady died giving birth to Theron, and Gavin's younger brother was too sickly to be considered true ruler material. Years of torturing and otherwise trying to break the bond later, Lord Elban arranged a marriage for Gavin by taking a hostage from a noble family: 8-year-old Eleanor, who'd been physically and emotionally abused by her father and brothers. The four of them became known as The Children, and there was a lot of popular fantasizing about them, particularly about "The Foundling" as Judah came to be known. She was the living embodiment of hope for the working class: people from humble beginnings could go far. But plans set in motion decades before were already in motion: the Slonimi smuggled Nate and Charles into the city. Charles masqueraded as a courtier who introduced Nate to the Royal Physician (they call it "magus") at a time when he could be persuaded to take on an apprentice. Well-trained by his mother and all the other Slonimi, Nate easily improved the magus' work, and also began to treat commoners. In addition to getting very popular with the working class people, Nate soon made himself indispensable to the magus, and was finally trusted enough to accompany the old man on trips to the Castle. Once he was a familiar face in the Castle, Nate began to poison the magus. He took his place when the magus finally died, and began to treat the Children (who were by now adults themselves). Judah in particular needed a lot of care because Elban had never stopped torturing her, trying to break "the curse" of her bond with his heir, Gavin. Lord Elban felt that his son Gavin was getting too soft-hearted from Judah's influence, so he pressured Gavin to murder his brother Theron. It was a close thing, but Gavin resisted and did not kill his brother. Shortly thereafter, the Royal Physician poisoned Theron (though Nate slipped Judah the antidote that kept the boy from dying completely). Theron recovered enough to walk and talk, but all the animation, drive, and passion was gone from him. Lord Elban discovered that a distant country was famed for its shamans, and so he went to war with that country in part to capture some of their Powerful wise men and coerce them to break the bond. But before he could do this, the other hidden plan was put into motion. Lord Elban's Seneschal arranged a coup, killing Lord Elban while he was on campaign in a foreign nation but making it look like it happened at the hands of the opposing army, not assassins from his most trusted advisor. The Seneschal captured one of the Wise Men and brought him back, with the ambition not of breaking the bond but of duplicating it so his forces could instantly communicate across vast distances, enabling a vast empire of industry. The Seneschal's men killed all but the most powerful nobles, and from the survivors he extracted mercantile pledges. He reordered the empire into a capitalist collection of company towns, but he kept the Children around as insurance (they couldn't foment rebellion or become martyrs if he kept them as living prisoners), and because they - particularly Judah - were still popular with the masses. Nate realized that it was the Seneschal, not Lord Elban, who'd ordered Theron's poisoning. He was in many ways worse than Lord Elban, because he did all these awful things dispassionately, only motivated by a calculation of benefit rather than bloodthirst or hatred. Realizing the danger, the Slonimi accelerated the timetable. Nate managed to get Judah to give him a tour of their prison - the old Castle - and gained more of her trust through that companionship. Then he coaxed her into going into the ruined Tower of Power, where the remnants of the bound magic made her woozy and dull. He worked his blood magic on her a little more each day, while the other Children felt that she was angry and hurt and needed time alone (a jealous Gavin had years before lied to her that her one lover, the stablehand, had been murdered rather than smuggled out of the city; she'd just found out about it, so this story was believable). Nate trained her in the use of the Power each day; she was the most powerful Worker he'd ever seen, able to do things effortlessly that took everyone else months or years to learn. Finally, Nate began the big ritual (using Royal blood that he took when murdering Theron minutes before) to break the Seal, bringing Gavin up to the Tower so that she could murder him and thus end the Royal line that had kept magic from the world. But Judah realized what he was doing and recognized Theron's blood. Rather than sever the connection and kill Gavin, she threw herself out of the tower. They did not find a body, but Gavin could no longer detect her. The Seneschal sent him and Eleanor away as prisoners, and the book ends with Judah waking up on a country road and going for a walk to explore the world. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
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Oct 27, 2022
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Oct 29, 2022
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| 1401231608
| 9781401231606
| 1401231608
| 3.80
| 1,049
| May 01, 2011
| Jul 12, 2011
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Recommendation: Good, gory tales of brutality, murder, and struggle to titillate and astonish. Critique: The artwork is decent and appropriate of the Recommendation: Good, gory tales of brutality, murder, and struggle to titillate and astonish. Critique: The artwork is decent and appropriate of the subject matter: often gnarled and twisted, with a predominantly dark palette that presents a world in perpetual gloom. Every character looked anguished, contorted in line as well as in mind. The writing is filled with modern expletives, which makes sense: it is portraying the characters through modern language. Just as it would be jarring to have the characters speak in language closer to the time depicted (medieval Swedish, English, or Gaelic), it would create distance between the reader and the characters if they used modern translations of 1,000-year-old curses. All that does make sense, but at the same time I felt like the repeated "fucks" and "shits" (used in the way we use them, as emphasis or exclamation) pulled me out of the story a bit. I have no idea how to have done it differently. More than in any previous Northlanders volume, the stories in this one reminded me of classic science fiction comics stories (I was a particular fan of Time Warp when I was a kid, which itself was an homage to golden age SF), where there was always a horrific twist or bad ending. Review: This fifth volume contains three unrelated stories reminiscent of old pulp science fiction comics, except instead of on hostile alien worlds, they all take place in our own hostile world, and involve Northlanders (people raised in the wintry northen reaches of the northern hemisphere such as Norsemen or Celts) in some fashion. (view spoiler)[The first story, "The Sea Road," has to do with a poor longboat captain who sails his ship into unknown waters far to the west of the North Sea in a vain search of riches. The second story, "Metal," is about a young dumb Norwegian, Erik, in the 8th century who is so nostalgic for an imagined pre-Christian golden age that he makes a pact with the Goddess of Death, Hulda. She gives him a holy mission to destroy Christians. After much destruction, he rescues and falls in love with a teenaged albino girl, Ingrid. He then stops killing Christians, and Hulda tries to enact her wrath: to her glee, the Christians hire Black Karl, a revenant, to hunt down Erik. Black Karl kidnaps Ingrid, and Erik defeats the undead warrior and swears his defiance to Hulda. They flee into Lapland to escape any other Hulda agents. The last story, "The Girl in the Ice," involves an old Christian hermit in Iceland. He finds a dead girl frozen solid in a lake, tries to retrieve the body without alerting anyone so that he can perform the proper burial rites, but he attracts the ire of some local warriors. He fights them off, but they overwhelm him, find the dead girl, and accuse him of perversion and murder. Before he is killed, the girl's mother secretly tells him she knows that her daughter just ran off with a bauble and drowned. But they need a scapegoat, so the hermit must die... (hide spoiler)] ...more |
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Aug 25, 2022
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Aug 26, 2022
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Oct 25, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0393881148
| 9780393881141
| 0393881148
| 3.91
| 67,832
| Sep 21, 2021
| Sep 21, 2021
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liked it
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Recommendation: A well-written, tough-to-read and often frustrating story about a widower astrobiologist struggling to navigate life with his autistic
Recommendation: A well-written, tough-to-read and often frustrating story about a widower astrobiologist struggling to navigate life with his autistic son. Critique: I knew nothing about this book going in; I grabbed it on impulse while picking up other stuff from the library, as it looked like a quick read. It was pretty quick; it took me days to read mostly because it didn't really interest me very much. But Bewilderment made an interesting contrast to Lem's Hospital of the Transfiguration, which I had finished a day or two before I started this. Both books have protagonists who are alien to me - strange in voice and in viewpoint - so I had a hard time relating to either of them. But I think I enjoyed this one slightly more, overall, even though I was often frustrated with Theo, the protagonist in this book, and how off his interactions with other characters were. It may be that this bothered me because I related to him just that much more than I did with Stefan in Hospital so that I could sympathize with him enough to imagine myself in those situations, and then find myself aggravated at his choices. Theo is bizarrely passive with everyone in the book, not just his son (with whom it is implicit that he's just worn out and convinced enforcing any boundaries just leads to more trauma), which may indicate how he's actually depressed throughout the whole book, his emotions inaccessible or at least remote. We don't see Theo interact with any other people in a normal, everyday way. He filters everything through a thick lens of astrobiology, supporting the central theme of the book that life is both incredibly rare/precious and infinitely varied. Though it may also be that, as I think the text suggests, Theo is and his wife were both on the autistic spectrum also. But it is good writing for all that, because while I was reading I was interested enough to engage in all this character analysis. Also I wanted Theo to do better. There is a lot of foreboding in this book; in his monologue, Theo continually makes reference to the doom that is approaching. There's a clever bit of misdirection in repeatedly mentioning "Flowers for Algernon," too, to make sure we readers are thinking about that story arc if we weren't already (I was, and when Theo mentioned it I had an "Aha!" reaction) so that Powers can then pull the rug out from under us when (view spoiler)[there is no decline into death from the experimental medical treatment. But the foreboding doesn't leave, and when the death comes, it feels simultaneously like a surprise and a fulfilment of a prophecy (hide spoiler)]. The non-medical science fiction element of the book is intriguing, too: every few sections (I call them sections as what would be chapters have no divisions or markings other than starting on a new page) is an interlude where the father and son are observing alien worlds together. It's another clever bit of misdirection here, too: (view spoiler)[at first you imagine that they are actually traveling to those worlds, and you eagerly look forward to discovering HOW they are doing it, but then you accept that these are just yarns that Theo is spinning as bedtime stories for his son Robin. At the close of the book, however, you realize that they may actually be accounts of spirit journeys Theo is taking with Robin's soul after the boy unintentionally commits suicide. Freed of his physical body, they are able to travel the universe together. This method of space travel reminded me powerfully of C.S. Lewis' Space trilogy, which involves spirit travel very much like this (hide spoiler)]. There's lot of clever stuff in this book; even the title is a double-entendre, referring both to Theo's inability to understand the world, and their time that they spend together literally in the Wild. It's not a literary masterpiece, but it is very well-executed. The foreshadowing personal doom is echoed in the approaching ecological collapse of planet Earth. Refreshingly, at one place in the book, Theo makes the observation that is too rarely made in talks of global warming and deforestation and the like. It's not that Planet Earth is going to die, or that all life on Earth is going to die (both statements are often thrown about in such discussions). Life on Earth will survive...but it may very well not be the life that exists now. Just as a tree falling in the forest does make a sound even when there's no person around to hear it, life will still exist even if/when all the species we know now (including humans) have disappeared. Review: (view spoiler)[Theo is an astrobiologist whose wife Aly, an environmental lawyer who lobbied the Wisconsin state legislature to pass laws protecting open spaces and endangered species, swerved to avoid running over an animal and died in a car crash. Theo is left to raise their autistic son Robin on his own. Rather than seek the help of family or friends, Theo gets progressively more and more isolated with Robin. The book begins with Theo trying to calm Robin down (and give himself a break) by taking his son camping in a state park. This is a temporary reprieve, only, and Robin begins to freak out again just about as soon as they return from the trip. Theo discovers that Aly had conducted a long-term affair with a neuroscientist. That neuroscientist has pioneered a way of recording people's extreme emotional states and then doing psychiatric sessions with others while they're in a MRI scanner to help them regulate their emotions to emulate those specific recordings. When Robin has another fit and attacks a classmate at school, the school gives Theo an ultimatum: he must change Robin's treatment in some way or Robin will be expelled. Theo thinks that they expect he will use some kind of drug; he instead approaches his wife's lover and asks if he can enroll Robin in the experiment. While Theo stresses about who Robin's father really is, the man who cuckolded him accepts Robin into the program, and Robin begins to train on self-regulating his emotions. Key to that process is a recording of Aly experiencing ecstasy, which Robin attempts to emulate. Robin immediately begins to change, getting better at managing stressors throughout the day but also becoming charming, personable, and astonishingly empathetic...as well as enigmatically mystical, claiming to be communing with Aly herself, not just one recording of her emotional state. Theo is delighted, but the focus, compassion, and creativity that emerge as Robin's disturbances wane cause him to reject school as pointless. He talks Theo into home schooling him, and, conditioned to catering to Robin to avoid outbursts, Theo gives Robin a bunch of assignments that are tailored to his interests. With his greater empathy, Robin begins to realize how the world's ecologies are collapsing, and for his home school assignments he begins to engage in protest to try to get the spread people's awareness of the danger near the Wisconsin State Legislature (rather than more directly trying to sponsor a bill or get some legislation passed). In this he is inspired by a Greta Thunberg-analog. There are a lot of analogs to real-life people; a key analog is the US President, a loosely-coded Trump, who enacts a number of policies during the book that have direct and indirect effects on Theo and Robin. Foreign nationals start getting deported, which affects Theo's work because grad students and researchers suddenly vanish. Funding for science is cut, which destroys Theo's career and causes the MRI experiments to stop. Robin can no longer regulate his emotions, and he starts to unravel back to his former self. In desperation, Theo instinctively acts as if Robin is the same person he was before the treatment, and he takes him back to the state park. But Robin's new obsession with the ecology is magnified by his returned mental state, and he sneaks out of the tent at night to "fix" a number of rock cairns that other campers have left in and around the river. In so doing, he begins to freeze to death. Theo finds him but the current is too strong and he can't carry Robin back out, so he holds his son as he dies. Then Theo convinces his wife's lover to start up the experimental machines one last time, so that Theo can regulate his emotions, using Robin's recordings as his guide. Theo then experiences communion with Robin's spirit, and they begin to travel to other worlds in the spirit world. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
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Sep 29, 2022
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Oct 02, 2022
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Oct 04, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 1890856304
| 9781890856304
| 1890856304
| 4.30
| 2,604
| 2001
| Dec 03, 2013
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really liked it
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Recommendation: Still just as wonderful a whimsical 19th-century mad scientist comic, only now in vivid color and with a lot more world and character
Recommendation: Still just as wonderful a whimsical 19th-century mad scientist comic, only now in vivid color and with a lot more world and character development than in volume 1. Critique: There's full color this time, but the artwork is still showing that it's an early web comic from 19 years ago: while it just keeps getting better and better, if you're going back to these early volumes from having read more recent volumes (or online) in recent years, it's a bit startling to see how rough the characters are. But this volume really builds and/or begins to deliver on the story promises of volume 1. There's a LOT of the recurring characters that are introduced here, and more of the power dynamics between the different great Spark families of the world are presented. For all that, though, it is still largely building the plot to the payoff of volume 3. Not a lot happens here, but you don't miss it, because the setting and the characters are developed so much. It's definitely rewarding to re-read after going much further into the story, too, as so much that happens later is hinted at and referenced in this volume. Review: (view spoiler)[Agatha wakes up in Castle Heterodyne, where she had been sent to "assist" Moloch von Zinzer. von Zinzer tells her of his plan: play along and try to build some mad device while they use their free time to figure out a way to escape. Agatha meets her roommate, Sleipnir, who introduces her to the various other passenger-hostages, all children of various noble houses around the world who have been taken to study in Castle Wulfenbach. They explain that Gilgamesh Wulfenbach was raised with them without any of them knowing his true identity (they all just knew him as "Gil"), but none have seen him again since he "returned from Paris" with his identity publicly known. Ardley Wooster appears and escorts Agatha to Gil's lab. Gil pumps Agatha for information, revealing his theory that Dr. Beetle was trying to kill HER to prevent some secret from being revealed. Then he pulls a lever and the flying machine they're on plummets through a hatch. Something awakens within Agatha, and the two of them sync in their mad science, tearing the engine apart and rebuilding it on the fly. They crash back into the Castle, right into the chambers of the Jaegermonster Generals, who are about to meet with the Baron. Panicked, Gil dismisses Agatha in a hurry before they can process the Jaegers' reaction to Agatha. Furious at being "dismissed" like a servant, Agatha returns to the hostage area, where she is threatened by a severe dominatrix/schoolmarm clank, von Pinn. But Agatha, tired of being mistreated by everyone, commands the clank to let go...and much to everyone's astonishment, von Pinn does let go. Vowing revenge, von Pinn leaves to start another class. The younger kids are traumatized to see someone provoke von Pinn, so the head boy, Theo, tells them a Heterodyne Boys story in which Barry and Bill Heterodyne rescue Klaus and Bill's father-in-law Dr. Mongfish (who admits that the crisis with the Other is all his fault) from slaver wasps, defeat a slaver dragon, and leave Klaus in charge of Bill's wife, Lucrezia Mongfish, while they disappear with her father through a portal to Mars. This story raises the question of Hive Engines, and the little kids reveal that they have seen one...that was brought in from Beetleburg with Agatha and von Zinzer. A group of the older students and one little kid sneak into a lab to see it and eavesdrop on a conversation between Klaus and some of his Spark doctors ("Is the Hive Engine 18 years old, or brand new?") but a furtive small figure startles the little kid, who shrieks, alerting the Baron to their presence, and they all scatter. Running from the Baron, the students find Gil in a lab. Gil and the other students are hurt because each feels they've been ignoring each other, so it's clear that they've been kept apart. Still upset at being dismissed, Agatha doesn't want to be "rescued" by Gil, so she runs off on her own, and stumbles across a torture cell containing Othar Tryggvassen, an idiotic but talented "Hero" that Klaus has captured. Othar speaks condescendingly to Agatha, trying to convince her to help him escape and destroy the airship, but then some jaegermonsters ("Und any plan vere hyu lose your hat iz...?" "A bad plan?") enter and take Agatha to a tea party with the Jaeger Generals. We find out that they are from Mechanicsburg, were engineered to serve, and that Klaus took control of them when their master(s) disappeared. The Jaeger generals can tell something about Agatha's identity, but they don't agree what it is, exactly. They float the idea of having "the Castle" assess her, but then dismiss the idea because the castle is broken, useless. As they start to fight to "discuss" the issue, they send Agatha back with a jaeger escort. Her jaeger escort, Andre, gets distracted by his "sveethot" von Pinn who starts fight with him, and Agatha slips away. Back in the student area, Agatha declines an invitation to listen with the group of students now reunited with Gil listen to Gil's stories about Paris. In her room, she finds a white cat, and shares her food with it. Then she falls asleep and dreams of her childhood, when someone she called "Uncle Barry" gave her the trilobyte locket and made her swear to never take it off. Agatha wakes up in her underwear in a lab as one of the Baron's officials enters with von Zinzer. von Zinzer covers for them again, and once the official is gone, he reveals a bit more of his backstory: he was a soldier, but soldiers are all mechanics as well. He and his brother crewed a walking tank for a noble whose reign was destroyed by the Baron. They became ronin, raiding the countryside for parts to keep their tank operable. They kept to abandoned, desolate areas of Europe as best they could, but then their tank was blown up by one of the Baron's dirigible patrols, led by a "crazy woman." Omar and Moloch were the only ones to escape. Days pass, and Agatha clashes with Zulenna (a noble daughter who doesn't have the Spark and so leans on her status as a princess) and gets in several disagreements with von Zinzer. When von Zinzer starts to get physical with Agatha, the white cat bites him and she throws him out just as Gil arrives to invite her to work with him. She's delighted that somebody likes her ideas, but then the cat reveals that he can talk and warns her to be "very, very careful." (hide spoiler)] ...more |
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Aug 29, 2022
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Aug 29, 2022
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Sep 29, 2022
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| 006236829X
| 9780062368294
| B01KT0QTZU
| 4.09
| 868
| May 16, 2017
| May 16, 2017
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liked it
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Recommendation: A fun murder mystery for readers in their tweens and up. Critique: This book is a bit like if Agatha Christie read "A Series of Unfortu Recommendation: A fun murder mystery for readers in their tweens and up. Critique: This book is a bit like if Agatha Christie read "A Series of Unfortunate Events" and thought "I could do something like that." Though it isn't necessary for them to do so, a reader will definitely benefit from having read Christie or otherwise having a familiarity with British upper-class cultural tropes: big manor houses, hedge mazes, butlers, garden parties with finger sandwiches, and so on. To an American reader in the 21st century, it would otherwise feel like sloppy world-building. The book starts out feeling almost contemporary, so when it takes a right turn into the early 20th century with people wearing "motorcar goggles" it is very jarring. But familiarity with classic mystery fiction is helpful, too, as each character in the book is loosely based on an existing famous fictional detective. Part of the fun is identifying which investigators are being referenced with each character. But it is a great mystery novel: there are grisly murders, masterful misdirection, and multiple schemes that intertwine to confuse and bewilder. It is a delightful plot. This book shares some of the issues common to other children's fiction: the characters never feel as affected by the mortal peril they find themselves in as they probably should be. This gives the book a breezy, somewhat flippant tone of lighthearted fun, despite the constant threat of murder. To the characters, the threat of abandonment (being shipped off to an orphanage) feels much more real than the immediate threat of death. Review: Toby Montrose's parents vanished in a boat some years ago. Since then, he's been fobbed off into the care of one adult relative after the next. Each one tries to make use of him in their family business until they realize that they can't afford to keep him and send him off to someone else. Usually this happens in the wake of some mistake that Toby made in his job; Toby has internalized these coincidences into a conviction that he is undesirable, and the only way that people (his family) will accept him is if he is perfect and makes no mistakes. His desire to never screw up has made him hyper-vigilant, constantly scoping for the threat of an error. So when he reaches his last relative, his detective uncle Gabriel, he has developed all the observation skills that a good detective needs. The book is set in a city that is obsessed with crime-solving detectives. Gabriel lives on Detectives Row along with dozens of other professional detectives. Customers and tourists flock to Detectives Row every day. Business would be booming, except that everyone only wants to hire the World's Greatest Detective, Hugh Abernathy (loosely based on Sherlock Holmes), who lives in a large house at the end of the block. Toby worries that Gabriel will send him to the orphanage if they can't bring in some money. (view spoiler)[So when every skilled detective on the Row receives an invitation to a weekend contest to determine the next World's Greatest Detective and win $10,000, Toby signs them up to attend even though Gabriel has only contempt for his nemesis Hugh Abernathy. Gabriel leaves for the continent, and Toby sneaks off to the country manor where the contest is being held, prepared to pull a variety of tricks to convince everyone that his uncle is a recluse hiding out in their room, rather than just absent. In parallel, Toby asks Hugh Abernathy to perform him a favor: investigate his parents' disappearance. The boy hopes to find out what has happened to his parents AND earn the $10,000, which he is sure will prove to Gabriel that he is worth keeping. At the manor, Toby meets several other detectives and develops a tentative friendship with Ivy Webster, the rich girl detective who lives in the manor. The two kids decide to becomes partners in a new detective firm, which is timed well for the murder. The rest of the book is spent looking for clues and interviewing the manor's guests. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
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Apr 20, 2022
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Apr 23, 2022
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Apr 24, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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| 0812524268
| 9780812524260
| 0812524268
| 3.81
| 21,324
| Jan 28, 1988
| Jul 15, 1992
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really liked it
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Recommendation: Well-crafted with a lot of supernatural world-building that is almost not connected to the first book, Red Prophet will appeal to fans
Recommendation: Well-crafted with a lot of supernatural world-building that is almost not connected to the first book, Red Prophet will appeal to fans of the supernatural or alternative history in general or Stephen King fans in particular. Critique: One of the more interesting and also frustrating things about this book is how little it continues the themes of the first book. While Alvin Maker appears in this book and plays a pivotal role, the book is not ABOUT him, nor is it about the primary tension established in Seventh Son: the conflict between creation and destruction, the Maker and the Unmaker. Instead, it is a chronicle of the struggle of Native Americans and the land itself against the foreign (mostly white) invaders, who have no connection to the land and who deaden the land by their very presence. This is interesting in that it is a bold move by the author to effectively abandon the primary conflict and make us care about another, separate supernatural struggle, but of course it's irritating if you as a reader were invested in that first conflict. It's really a strange choice. It's engagingly written, and by the end I certainly cared about the characters and exulted at the comeuppance of the villainous William Harrison character. It has some cool ideas regarding magic - that there is power in blood that connects natives to the land, and that settlers who have no connection to the land perforce cannot help but destroy the land by their very presence - and it's cool to see more of the alternative version of our world presented. We find out more about the colonies and free lands, and a bunch of alternative French historical figures also appear: Napoleon and Lafayette among them. Card's concern that we might get offended at portraying Harrison as a villain - the book begins with an "Author's Note" to explicitly make clear to us that the real-world William Harrison was not the blackguard he is in this novel - is a little weird, given that we're reading a book so clearly not actual history. Maybe some descendant of the real-world analog of one of Card's fictional characters got very publicly offended in the past, so he felt the need to explicitly state that "Hey, this is NOT your great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa," perhaps? It only occurs to me now that he doesn't provide such a disclaimer about Andrew Jackson. I wonder why that is...? The book is a celebration of Native Americans as well as early US history, and presents the indigenous people as completely sympathetic, in opposition to various groups of foreign settlers with varying degrees of villainy. But it also presents Tenskwa-Tawa, the Red Prophet of the title, foretelling the major events of the book. Prophecy is always difficult in fiction, particularly when it is presented so clearly and explicitly as it is here. We know what is going to happen because Tenskwa-Tawa foretells it. So a lot of the tension is removed for us as the reader: we never feel like "Oh, how is it going to turn out in the end?" Instead, it is like a Shakespearean or Sophoclean play that tells us what is going to happen in the very beginning, and our tension as viewers is watching the characters tragically play out what we know will occur, despite all their efforts to change or avert their fate. I really liked the sympathy for the natives in this book and the ultimate resolution was satisfyingly cathartic despite the horror, but I didn't care for how it abandoned the conflict of the first book. I was really engaged with the characters of Tenskwa-Tawa and his brother Ta-Kumsaw, and so for most of the book I wasn't bothered by this divesting of the first book's conflict, but Card is not content to just have Alvin present as an observer (I expect - and hope! - that what Alvin witnesses in this book will show up later as a foundational aspect of his character), but jars us with an occasional reference to the previous conflict, without developing it at all. He's almost rubbing our noses in the fact that he's not doing anything with the first conflict. The way he mentions the Unmaker without it having any effect or role to play in the entire novel is thus more irritating than satisfying. It would've been far more preferable for Card to omit any mention of the first book's supernatural antagonist than to name-drop off-hand references like he did. It's one of the few sour notes in the novel for me. La Fayette is an amazing character with a fascinatingly cunning mind and an inspiringly tragic sacrifice. His is a really compelling side-plot, which reminded me of most of the plots from A Song of Ice and Fire, where the reader is horrified and enthralled at the struggles of the characters in schemes and machinations that ultimately don't matter because they ignore the giant problem that somehow they've overlooked. With his intentional sacrifice for his higher goal, I expect that we will not see La Fayette again, though we *might* see Napoleon again. A final note: the massacre at Tippi-Canoe feels like the climactic event of the main plot to me. In writing the review summarizing the events, I initially got the order wrong, because it felt right to have the massacres at Tippi-Canoe and the battle for Detroit happening at roughly the same time. The massacre and the curse at the Mizzipy feels like the emotional peak of the story, so I was surprised to realize I was remembering it wrong: the massacre and the curse happens months before the other battle. I think a big part of that is that Harrison is built up throughout the novel as a traditional, almost melodramatic, villain in direct opposition to the main characters. So his defeat feels like the climax; the other conflicts, though they are important and engaging, don't have the same emotional weight for me. Review: There's a lot here. Don't click if you don't want to read the book's plot. (view spoiler)[William Harrison is a rat bastard who oppresses the native americans he despises by forcing whisky addiction upon them. We meet two brothers, Ta-Kumsaw, who has a strong connection with the land and impresses everyone with his fierce nobility, and Lolla-Wossiky, whose connection with the land is off the charts but who experienced such hideous trauma when his father was murdered in front of his eyes that he forever attempts to dull his senses with alcohol. But when Alvin is born, Lolla-Wossiky begins to feel a call to head north. Eventually he steals a tun of liquor and heads north to Vigor. He has a spiritual experience and is reborn as Tenskwa-Tawa, and it is Tenskwa-Tawa who visits Alvin when he uses his power to entice roaches to torment his siblings (a foundational scene in Seventh Son). Tenskwa-Tawa begins to preach to an ever-growing number of natives who gain a mystical sobriety from alcohol and settle just across the river from Vigor. Harrison gets more and more furious, because his native workforce has dwindled and he has to make up for it by hiring white thugs, vagabonds, criminals, and other lowlifes. He schemes and schemes how to get his slaves back and/or exterminate the natives to appease his bruised ego. Most of his ire is directed at Ta-Kumsaw, an uppity Red who has been seen to escort natives out of their slums and north toward Vigor (that he's doing this as Tenskwa-Tawa's lieutenant is lost on Harrison). Meanwhile, in Canada, the famous general Napoleon Bonaparte has been sent from France, both to lead the Canadian forces as the army commander fop De Maurepas' second-in-command and to get him out of France where his popularity was starting to scare the powers-that-be. The governor of Detroit, La Fayette, sees in Napoleon two things: a brilliant strategist who has a knack for making people love him, and a hope for the democratic future of France free from the tyranny of Kings. La Fayette has a talisman that was sent to him by the Cardinal of France that blocks Napoleon's power. While the unprotected De Maurepas falls under Napoleon's spell, La Fayette hatches a plan for the best hope for France. In parallel, Tenskwa-Tawa and Ta-Kumsaw develop plans of their own to restore the land from the depredations of the mostly white invaders, and have a falling out because they cannot agree on which is the correct course. Ta-Kumsaw believes in uniting all the tribes into one nation that can crush the collected military might of the settlers, after which they can force all the aliens to leave the continent. Tenskwa-Tawa doesn't think this will work; he has had visions of all the different ways the conflict between natives and settlers can play out, and he prophesies that the best possible outcome - which will be very difficult to accomplish - will be to split the continent between them, with the natives all moving across the Mizzipy River to the West, leaving all of the East to the invaders. Most other outcomes lead to the extinction of the native tribes, through war, disease, and relegation to reservations. Livid and more than a little fearful that the natives are going to destroy him, Harrison hatches a plan of his own. He hires some alcoholic native mercenary criminals to frame Ta-Kumsaw to stoke settler paranoia/xenophobia against their neighbors, which will give him an excuse to move in his troops in the name of "protection" but really to preemptively massacre the nascent native nation. It is unclear how much of this Tenskwa-Tawa has actually planned, and how much he has just foreseen. This is where the narrative of this book arrives at the end of Seventh Son: Alvin, escorted by his brother Measure, is leaving for his apprenticeship when they are the ones captured by the mercenaries. The mercs plant a bunch of evidence that wouldn't stand up to any scrutiny or skepticism, but is enough to enflame the prejudices of the Vigor populace. They are convinced that Ta-Kumsaw has stolen the boys to torture and/or kill them. A huge search party is formed. Miles and miles away, the mercenaries are preparing to torture and vivisect Alvin and Measure, but Alvin uses his powers to dull their captors' blades and also to loosen the ropes binding them. This delays their captors long enough that they are found by Ta-Kumsaw. Tenskwa-Tawa charges Ta-Kumsaw with looking after Alvin, which Ta-Kumsaw really doesn't want to do. But he begrudgingly acknowledges Tenskwa-Tawa's wisdom and accepts his authority. Tenskwa-Tawa knows that the boys need to be not found so that Harrison's forces will be called, which will result in tragedy, but it needs to happen so that the least terrible of all the possible futures will come to pass. Ta-Kumsaw takes Alvin with him as his sidekick. Alvin gradually learns some of Ta-Kumsaw's native lore, and begins to experience the union of man and land that comes naturally to nearly all of the natives. In their distress to find the boys and frustration that their leader Armor of God isn't doing more (he urges caution and consideration but is ignored), Alvin's family and their neighbors in Vigor send to Harrison for help. Harrison arrives and quickly turns Vigor into a military camp. They make a show of searching for the boys while actually searching for Ta-Kumsaw and stoking the xenophobia and anti-native feelings. The longer Harrison remains in Vigor, the more he asserts martial law in the region. Far away, Tenskwa-Tawa joins Ta-Kumsaw and Alvin at the Great Lakes, and the prophet uses his blood to still the waters so that he and Alvin can walk out on the waters and summon a twister that bears them aloft. There, suspended in the sky, Tenskwa-Tawa shows Alvin how he sees his visions. They each have their own visions, and then return to earth. Tenskwa-Tawa follows his vision back to Prophet Town for the completion of his plan. Harrison, having raised all the settlers and his mercenaries to a fever pitch of hatred, mobilizes everyone in Vigor to massacre all the peaceful natives in Prophet Town. Measure, who has been racing across country to testify that Ta-Kumsaw didn't kidnap them and hopefully thus prevent the massacre, arrives just too late. The mercenaries - with the help of almost all the men of Vigor - have already turned their cannon on the thousands of native families who stand defenseless on the shores of the Mizzipy River at Tippi-Canoe. The natives are mown down like wheat, and Tenskwa-Tawa works a great curse using all their blood: everyone who participated in the slaughter will permanently have blood leaking from their hands until they tell honestly how they murdered tens of thousands of innocent, unresisting people to anyone in the vicinity who has not already heard the story from their mouths. Harrison has a further geas: every day he must find someone who has not heard the story of his murderous obsession and its eventual outcome, and then he must tell it to them completely and truthfully. Then Tenskwa-Tawa uses the blood to turn the water solid. The few hundred survivors are joined by all the corpses who animate and all walk across the river. Forevermore, the power of their blood will prevent any non-natives from crossing the Mizzipy. Ta-Kumsaw, filled with even more righteous wrath at the news of Tippi-Canoe, roves the continent with Alvin at his side, recruiting different tribes for a vast army with his inspiring vision of a land completely free of any foreigners. The dove did not work, so time for the sword! The various nations of settlers catch wind of this, and they, wary of any threat to their homelands, begin to build up a huge army of their own, led by Andrew Jackson. The plan Ta-Kumsaw has hatched is to build up the native tribes into such a vast force that they must be matched in kind by a vast army of settlers. Then he will use the united tribes in a climactic battle against the white men, breaking the strength and thus the will of the white settlers: showing them that they can be defeated, so that they, demoralized, undefended, will pull up their roots and leave for other lands, recognizing that they're not welcome here and that it would mean death to stay. Instumental to that plan is an alliance with Napoleon, the brilliant strategist, whose French forces will serve as the anvil upon which Ta-Kumsaw's vast native army will hammer the American army into nothingness. Alvin's vision draws him to the Eight-Sided Mound, an ancient sacred site for the natives that is a gate to a space between worlds. Ta-Kumsaw reluctantly takes Alvin there, where they are met by Talespinner, the sort of mountain man character from the first book whose job is to chronicle all the stories. Alvin easily climbs the Eight-Sided Mound, but the way is impassable for Ta-Kumsaw until he hugs Talespinner and they walk three-legged up the Mound. Alvin has a vision of the imminent betrayal and bloodbath that the native army will suffer at the hands of the American army, and he and Ta-Kumsaw rush off to prevent it. Finally it is time for La Fayette to complete his plan. He must have Napoleon return to France in disgrace, so that Napoleon's patriotism will reject the authority of the King and he can lead a popular rebellion to overthrow the monarchy. But for that to happen, Napoleon must be sabotaged. La Fayette prays, and then forges a number of letters to De Maurepas, including the magic talisman. La Fayette, no longer protected, falls under Napoleon's charm, but De Maurepas in his vanity is filled with wrathful spite that he was manipulated by Napoleon - a commoner! - and so he relieves Napoleon of his command and ships him (and La Fayette) back to France as traitors. When the battle comes, the French troops, without Napoleon's leadership, fail to hold their ground against Jackson's American army, which breaks through their lines and sacks Detroit. When Ta-Kumsaw's native army arrives, they find a strong fortress manned by their enemies armed with many cannon. The native army is massacred. Ta-Kumsaw survives only because Alvin is using all his power to instantly heal all of his mortal wounds, and in the end they escape capture by dint of Alvin concealing the two of them from detection. They leave once Alvin recovers enough strength to heal Ta-Kumsaw completely, and they part ways. So the book ends with the continent divided and Alvin returning home to Vigor, the only male free of the curse. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 16, 2022
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Feb 23, 2022
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Apr 16, 2022
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 1982613416
| 9781982613419
| 1982613416
| 4.05
| 4,834
| Sep 10, 2019
| Sep 10, 2019
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liked it
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Recommendation: A well-written story about weird characters dealing with minor talents rather than superpowers, Lost and Found is an adult story about
Recommendation: A well-written story about weird characters dealing with minor talents rather than superpowers, Lost and Found is an adult story about teens rather than for teens. Critique: A lot of SF authors like to write their characters as always intelligent, always ready with witty repartee. The more this is done, the more entertaining it is, but also the more removed from reality the stories seem. The most obvious, egregious example of this is Jack Vance, of course. But in this book the incessant banter is nearly as jarring because the primary characters are all young teens. Part of this can be attributed to the idea that the main protagonist, Ezekiel, probably has Asperger's Syndrome. Like many people with Asperger's, he is hyper-focused, very smart, and not particularly concerned with what others think about him. But he keeps meeting other characters who are very similar to him. This makes for wonderful dialogue, but at the same time it's very jarring how none of the other characters react to the constant unintentional rudeness. There's something about the cover of the book - probably the cartoonish art style depicting two kids - that made me approach this book as if it was a YA novel. This impression may have been enhanced by the fact that most of the other novels I've read recently ARE for the YA audience. No matter how I got the impression, I did, and so I was surprised at the dark adult turn that the story takes pretty quickly: murder, rape, abduction, torture, pornography. This is a dark, DARK story. There's a lot of stuff that happens in the story that doesn't make sense and is never explained. Not only are the adults very willing to overlook how incredibly rude the teens are, but they also are very quick to trust the teens. An example: (view spoiler)[At one point, they discover that Beth has been secretly living with the corpse of her mother decaying in the upstairs bedroom for six months. The FBI investigator who discovers this never even once suspects that Beth killed her mom, even though it is SUPER SHADY behavior and she'd be the first suspect! (hide spoiler)] So the book is fun to read, but light on verisimilitude. The plot developments happen more because they need to happen than that they proceed from any resemblance to how things would play out in reality. Review: 15-year-old Ezekiel, an orphan with Asperger's Syndrome, has been living alone with his dad since his mother was struck and killed by a car when he was 4. He has a talent: a supernatural power to sense objects that have been lost by their owners, and to also know how to find the owners to return the objects. As a result, he is a social pariah, because everyone suspects him of being a thief. Everyone except his father shuns him. A little person, a 13-year-old girl named Beth who, due to her genes looks 6, chooses to ingratiate herself with Ezekiel because she is also a pariah (view spoiler)[(and also because her mom died in her sleep months earlier and she needed companionship as well as a "beard" to appear more like a normal kid) (hide spoiler)]. A cop mysteriously approaches Ezekiel and asks him to help him find a missing girl. The rest of the book is about him exploring how his ability works, and trying to solve crimes. ...more |
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not set
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Mar 19, 2022
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Mar 19, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 163236770X
| 9781632367709
| 163236770X
| 4.43
| 31,030
| Jan 23, 2017
| Apr 02, 2019
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really liked it
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Recommendation: This is a beautifully illustrated manga that could almost have been a Diana Wynne Jones story for the interesting magic and world-buil
Recommendation: This is a beautifully illustrated manga that could almost have been a Diana Wynne Jones story for the interesting magic and world-building. Critique: I really enjoyed this. But it's a little challenging to pin down why I enjoyed it as much as I did. Certain aspects of the book - particularly the characters - are bog-standard manga tropes. But the artwork is exemplary. The character designs are typical manga art with huge eyes and small mouths, but Shirahama makes them exquisitely expressive through body poses and attitudes. A character is tired not just because they hang their head with droopy eyes, but because the character is slumped against a chair, holding themselves up with one hand. Every body is drawn so dynamically! But the line work really shines with the backgrounds. Every scene has an establishing shot with artwork reminiscent of Herge's magnificent backgrounds of nature and ancient stone, and while there are a lot of panels that are just talking heads, every few panels includes these detailed backgrounds to maintain the sense of place and the characters in it. What this all combines to make is a particularly impressive feat: a manga where the reader (well, me) is never confused about what is happening. Even the action scenes are drawn with such attention to detail that you can see what is happening without resorting to text explanations or any guesswork. I would venture to say that the consistent quality of the artwork rivals and, because of the clarity of the action, at times exceeds that of Hayao Miyazaki in his Nausicaa manga. As for the story, again, the characters are manga archetypes: the mysterious androgynous mentor, the fish-out-of-water access character, the brooding loner rival who wants to be the very best, the booster who is determined to be cheerful all the time. The characters are all very standard. What makes the book really exceptional is the setting: Shirahama has created an interesting world of magic that is reminiscent of something that Diana Wynne Jones would have created, in that the setting hinges on a totally unique framework for the use of magic. Back in the 80s, a company called FTL created a video game called Dungeon Master, which synthesized a bunch of game elements that had been done in previous games. What was unique to Dungeon Master and has never been recreated (as far as I know - Grimrock was definitely an homage, while also dumbing-down the magic) is the magic system. In that system, you create spells by combining magic runes, each of which represents a principle or concept such as "fire" or "strength," into magical phrases that result in unique magical effects. The magic in "Witch Hat Atelier" is as if someone took the idea of magic from Dungeon Master and tried to imagine how it would look in real life. In this book, witches - the word for anyone who uses magic - use magic by drawing circular arrangements of runes that affect and enhance each other called "seals," and then cast these seals when the circle surrounding the runes is completed. Like all good takes on magic, this story imagines how this basic approach to magic affects and informs the rest of the world, extrapolating this foundational premise outward to every detail of the setting and characters. It's so compelling that the setting draws me in and makes the very standard manga tropes enjoyable. Review: (view spoiler)[The story starts off with a series of beautiful full-color paintings, with an art style evocative of some of the better Heavy Metal pieces of the 70s. We see a bucolic scene with a young girl, Coco, washing laundry in a magic spring overlooked by a deer. Coco waxes rhapsodic about magic as we find out that she works with her mom, who is a seamstress. Then a pegasus carriage lands at their shop and Coco meets a young man with glasses (one lens is blackened) named Qifrey (which I've been thinking is pronounced "Kiff-ree" but I realize now could just as easily be "Chief-ree") who is very interested in the story Coco shares about her childhood, when she was at a festival in the city and ended up buying a book of magic from a witch wearing a mask (with a big picture of an eye) and a brimmed cap. But back in the present, there's an accident with the pegasus carriage, and Qifrey pulls out a conical cap (like a dunce cap), revealing that he is a witch. Therefore, he has the power to fix the carriage magically. Coco is so curious about magic that she spies on Qifrey. In doing so, she witnesses the witches' greatest secret: that magic is performed through drawing. It means that people aren't born able to do magic, but can LEARN it! Later that night, Coco attempts to draw a spell of her own, taken from the book of magic she got from the Brimmed Cap witch. The spell succeeds but goes disastrously wrong, turning everything in the shop to crystal, including her mother. Qifrey saves Coco, and reveals that the witches' greatest secret is also closely guarded, and anyone who discovers the secret has their mind wiped magically. Coco pleads with Qifrey, and he decides to take her on as his apprentice instead of erasing her mind (primarily because he's concerned about the masked, Brimmed Cap witches, and Coco represents a possible path to finding more out about them). Qifrey takes Coco to his atelier, where she meets the other apprentices, all young girls like her or a little bit older. There's the blondes* Tetia (obsessed with thanks) and Richeh (obsessed with independence), and the older brunette, Agott (obsessed with power and pride). Coco finds out about drawing runes, about how magic was misused in the past, and how magic is now primarily intended to make people happy. She learns that many books of magic exist, any of which could contain a way to reverse the effects of the spell she cast on her mother, but that they are all contained in the Vault of Knowledge, a remote location guarded by four Librarians. A witch must pass the Librarians' Trial to be able to access the Vault. Qifrey goes off to consult with the witch Alaira about the masked witches, whom they call the Brimmed Caps. Angry that Coco has been accepted as an apprentice, Agott tricks Coco into attempting the first test of witchery by herself, with only a single day of training. The first trial is to retrieve a flower from the top of the Dadah Range of mountains (accessed through a magic gateway). The Dadah Range is the site of ancient magic abuse, so it's basically spherical skyrealms. Coco invents a magic way to traverse the spheres and then she returns; Agott is clearly upset that she succeeded. Qifrey berates Coco for attempting the test, then gives her the garb of an apprentice, including her own witch hat. Then they travel to the city of Kalhn to visit the magic stationery shop, where the master stationer, Nolnoa, explains about the special tree that is used to make inks for spell runes. But Coco spots the Brimmed Cap at the window and rushes out. The other apprentices follow and get whisked away to another land, an ancient sandstone city guarded by a dragon. (hide spoiler)] * - My read on Richeh and Tetia as drawn in the monochrome interior artwork is that they are both blonde, but the color cover of a later volume surprisingly shows Richeh as having light blue hair for some reason. Blue hair in manga and anime usually represents a variation on a brunette, but not so here. Even though it doesn't read as any different than Coco or Tetia's blonde hair, from a character perspective it makes sense that Richeh would have blue hair: she's obsessed with doing things her own way, after all. That could easily extend to choosing to modify her appearance to defy everyone's expectations. ...more |
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Jan 15, 2022
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Feb 27, 2022
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Paperback
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| 4800004225
| 9784800004222
| 4800004225
| 4.34
| 5,747
| Mar 10, 2015
| Mar 10, 2015
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liked it
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None
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Jan 06, 2022
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Jan 07, 2022
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Jan 07, 2022
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Comic
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| 162692192X
| 9781626921924
| 162692192X
| 4.33
| 7,513
| Sep 10, 2014
| Sep 01, 2015
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None
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Dec 11, 2021
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Dec 11, 2021
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Jan 07, 2022
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Paperback
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| 1626921873
| 9781626921870
| 1626921873
| 4.26
| 24,834
| Apr 10, 2014
| May 12, 2015
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liked it
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Recommendation: It's an OK beginning to a pretty decent series about an abused girl figuring out how to find solace in a situation that is completely
Recommendation: It's an OK beginning to a pretty decent series about an abused girl figuring out how to find solace in a situation that is completely alien to her...the world of fae magic. Review: This book series really hits home the horror of magic. There are definitely personifications of evil and portrayals of the perils of dealing with capricious fey creatures, but the story begins with horror, as the inhuman magus buys a young Japanese girl named Chise as an object, a bit like a spell ingredient. Chise is so broken, and so abused that she somehow takes this as a good sign, a sign that finally somebody in the world wants her, and values her enough to PAY MONEY FOR HER. Human trafficking is a really steep hurdle to cross at the beginning of a teen graphic novel, but it adds a tension to the rest of the series: is Chise going to gain enough self-image to get angry that she was sold, or to realize that selling people is wrong? Or is the morality of magic already so muddled that she can never get that clarity? As a storytelling conceit, it is an interesting challenge: how would you show a character's development out of abuse and neglect in a world that also regularly interacts with magic and the amorality of inhuman monsters? The first volume doesn't really get into that, going more into fish-out-of-water slapstick routines for most of the volume, as the book is mostly just establishing Chise's current circumstances. (view spoiler)[After being bought, Chise is spirited away to England, where her owner, Elias, reveals that he is a magus...and an inhuman one at that. When he is out in public, he usually goes about with his face covered, or in a seeming of a unexceptional human male, but he is not a man at all. In private, he usually appears as a humanoid body with a fanged cow skull and mandible for a head. He has purchased Chise because she is something called a sleigh beggy - a rare type of human who generates her own magic energy and is thus beloved of the fae. He also reveals that he is (comically?) bad at social cues, and that human emotion is a bit confusing to him. Chise is quite awkward at first, for two reasons: 1) she doesn't know if she will be rejected again and so is in constant fear, and 2) she doesn't know what she's supposed to be doing. She doesn't speak English and so she can't communicate with others in the neighborhood at first. So Elias instructs her in English and calls her part of the family. But what else is she supposed to be doing? For a while, she attempts to slide back into the familiar - she had performed as a servant in previous homes. But Elias has a strange, emotionless doll called "the Silver Lady" (she is either a construct or a captive fey creature), and that creature performs most of the housework. So there is some slapstick conflict as the Silver Lady keeps swooping in to complete its tasks despite Chise's amateurish attempts. But Chise meets one of the fey that Elias draws upon for his magic, Jade Ariel, and that creature comforts and admires Chise in the bath. Then Jade appears later and entices Chise to leave the house, beguiling her with the help of other fey to leave Earth for the land of Faerie. But at the last moment, Chise remembers that Elias called her "family" and she turns away. This gives enough time for Elias to appear and rebuke the fey creatures. (hide spoiler)] Critique: I cannot over-emphasize how problematic the slavery aspect of the story is, not even so much the fact that she's been purchased as property - domination and ensorcellment is a staple horror element of faerie stories, after all - but that her slavery isn't an issue for anyone (including her!) for the rest of the book. It's a shadow that hangs over the reader for all of the book, and any enjoyment of the book is experienced around and despite this really big issue. In another way, it's a very standard Japanese manga, with lots of slapstick and situational comedy that veers briefly into maudlin melodrama and back again (the dramatic feelings Chise has are not about being a slave, but rather standard tween concerns about fitting in despite feeling out of place). The artwork is decent, with lines and shading that testify that it was drawn or at least finished on a computer. The artwork mostly portrays talking heads; wider establishing views of landscapes are rare. Sometimes in fast-moving sequences, the action can get a little jumbled and the dialogue is insufficient to inform the reader what exactly is happening in a given frame. The characters act weird. It's tough to say, reading this, how much of the awkwardness stems from the weirdness of the magic world, and how much stems from Japanese cultural mores that I don't know. For example, Chise repeatedly gets agitated, at which point one or another adult (even strangers) will put a hand on top of her head, like she's a pet animal, but this contact clearly thrills and comforts her each time. When I used to take my cat to the vet, she would get upset, and so I would stroke her head and gently murmur "Subside...subside..." which would calm her down in pretty much exactly the same way that Chise reacts. Is the author intending to show that everyone is treating her like an animal, or is it the intent to show that they are treating her like a beloved toddler? I have no idea, but that uncertainty enhances my read of the story, making it seem more otherworldly. Aside from the big elephant in the room (being property), the writing is gratifying because it incorporates a lot of classic European faerie mythology. Chise being an outsider is the set-up for the author to effectively give the reader a curated tour of a different faerie creature in each chapter. The exposition is very like a guidebook, sort of a manga version of the Spiderwick Chronicles. Being a fan of faerie stories like "Sabriel" or "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell," I really enjoyed this aspect of the book. It's a tough read, and I hope that the slavery aspect does get addressed more directly in the series...soon. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Dec 10, 2021
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Dec 10, 2021
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Jan 07, 2022
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Paperback
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| 4.50
| 3,669,222
| Jun 21, 2003
| Aug 27, 2013
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really liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 13, 2021
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Jan 02, 2022
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Jan 06, 2022
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Paperback
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my rating |
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| 3.71
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really liked it
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Aug 28, 2024
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Nov 16, 2024
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| 3.88
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liked it
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Jun 30, 2024
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Jul 30, 2024
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| 4.50
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really liked it
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Jul 23, 2024
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Jul 30, 2024
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| 4.57
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really liked it
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Jan 03, 2024
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Feb 08, 2024
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| 4.53
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really liked it
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Mar 2023
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Jul 08, 2023
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| 3.64
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did not like it
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Nov 30, 2022
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Dec 16, 2022
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| 4.50
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liked it
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Nov 30, 2022
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Dec 15, 2022
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| 4.55
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really liked it
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Nov 29, 2022
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Nov 29, 2022
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| 3.46
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really liked it
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Oct 27, 2022
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Oct 29, 2022
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| 3.80
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liked it
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Aug 26, 2022
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Oct 25, 2022
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| 3.91
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liked it
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Oct 02, 2022
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Oct 04, 2022
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| 4.30
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really liked it
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Aug 29, 2022
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Sep 29, 2022
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| 4.09
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liked it
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Apr 23, 2022
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Apr 24, 2022
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| 3.81
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really liked it
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Feb 23, 2022
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Apr 16, 2022
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| 4.05
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liked it
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Mar 19, 2022
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Mar 19, 2022
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| 4.43
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really liked it
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Jan 16, 2022
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Feb 27, 2022
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| 4.34
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liked it
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Jan 07, 2022
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Jan 07, 2022
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| 4.33
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Dec 11, 2021
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Jan 07, 2022
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| 4.26
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liked it
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Dec 10, 2021
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Jan 07, 2022
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| 4.50
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really liked it
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Jan 02, 2022
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Jan 06, 2022
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