Title: Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron

Author: Jasper Fforde

Genre: Speculative Fiction, Dystopia

Publisher: Viking (US) / Hodder & Stoughton General (UK)
Publication Date: December 2009 (US) / January 2010 (UK)
Hardcover: 400 pages (US)

Part social satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, Shades of Grey tells of a battle against overwhelming odds. In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means.

Eddie’s world wasn’t always like this. There’s evidence of a never-discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion.

Eddie, who works for the Color Control Agency, might well have lived out his rose-tinted life without a hitch. But that changes when he becomes smitten with Jane, a Grey Nightseer from the dark, unlit side of the village. She shows Eddie that all is not well with the world he thinks is just and good. Together, they engage in dangerous revolutionary talk.

Stunningly imaginative, very funny, tightly plotted, and with sly satirical digs at our own society, this novel is for those who loved Thursday Next but want to be transported somewhere equally wild, only darker; a world where the black and white of moral standpoints have been reduced to shades of grey.

Stand alone or series: Book 1 of a planned trilogy

How did I get this book: Review Copy from the publisher

Why did I read this book: You already know my weakness for all things apocalyptic and dystopian. Blend that addiction with the quirky, absurdist style of Jasper Fforde, an innovative use of color, and I am a happy, happy girl.

Review:

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn’t really what I’d planned for myself – I’d hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio and explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient.

So begins the narrative of Eddie Russett; twenty-years old, son of a well-reputed Swatchman (doctor of sorts), almost engaged to the well-connected Constance Oxblood, and secretly can perceive of a shockingly high percentage of Red. Eddie’s world is a Colortocracy, with a strict hierarchy (called the Chromatic Scale) based on the colors that individuals can perceive – Purples are the highest, followed by Greens, Yellows, Blues, Oranges, Reds, and, at the very bottom of the scale, the subservient Greys (incapable of perceiving any significant amount of any color). While each class can perceive of their own color in nature, every other color appears gray – unless it’s artificially painted and enhanced (a very expensive, and seen by some as a garish, ostentatious flaunting of wealth).

As such, Eddie, although part of the nouveaux couleur Russett family, has a carefully planned, bright future ahead of him. That is, until he and his father are sent out by the Collective from their cushy city life in Jade-Under-Lime on assignment to East Carmine, in the Outer Fringes of society – Eddie’s father is to fill in Swatchman position, while Eddie is assigned to conduct a census of all the chairs in the town (as Eddie explains, “Head Office is worried that the chair density might have dropped below the proscribed 1.8 per person.”). On the way to East Carmine, however, everything changes for the young Russett. He and his father discover a Grey masquerading as a Purple and a beautiful but prickly young Grey named Jane – whom Eddie instantly is smitten with (at their first meeting she threatens to break his. When they finally reach the Outer Fringes, Eddie discovers secret plots, cutthroat politics, and murder cover-ups – and again that strange, abrasive (but beautiful, retrousse-nosed) Jane. Eddie begins to question his entire society, and why he was sent out to East Carmine in the first place.

Shades of Grey is unquestionably one of the most deeply original books I have ever read. It’s bizarre, it’s absurd, it’s detail-laden, and, well, it’s…awesome. As quirky and smart as this book is, Mr. Fforde’s writing and his strange world never feels forced or contrived (a “trying-too-hard” pitfall I’ve unfortunately seen in other works of quirky, absurdist fiction). Rather, Shades of Grey puts me in the mind of the strange, delightful humor and world building of Terry Pratchett. Part of Mr. Fforde’s success is in those devilish details, as I adored all of the details in this novel. The ridiculous rules imposed on this Colortocratic society (“The Word of Munsell was the Rules, and the Rules were the Word of Munsell,”) range from an absolute prohibition on the production of spoons (causing a spoon shortage, making spoons one of the most valuable commodities), acronyms are outlawed, and handkerchiefs must be changed daily (and always folded). These rules are enumerated in pre-chapter epigraphs throughout the book, for example:

1.1.19.02.006: Team sports are mandatory in order to build character. Character is there to give purpose to team sports.

or

3.6.23.12.028: Ovaltine may not be drunk at any time other than before bed.

These sort of flourishes are everywhere, delighting and enhancing the reader’s picture of the world. Trains and the occasional Model-T are the primary modes of transportation (and are very limited). Familiar ancient relics are in this strange new world too – the Oz Monument (yes, for that Oz), the boardgame Risk, the strange A Christmas Story like throwback to Ovaltine.

In the midst of this rich, bizarre bouquet, the plotting falls second to the world building. Which is perfectly fine by me, as the story thread is there, and though it’s left behind at times for description, there’s enough mystery and plot to keep readers thoroughly engaged. In terms of characters, they too come short when compared to the details of the novel, but they are still undeniably compelling. The first person narrative voice of Eddie is delightful – he’s a bit of an unintentional fool, in his schoolboyish optimism, his crush on the antagonistic Jane, and his unquenchable curiosity. Jane is another stellar character too – her first lines to Eddie floor me (upon being elbow-grabbed by our intrepid hero, she responds, “Touch me again and I’ll break your fucking jaw.”). The other, assorted characters are varied and quirky, adding, if you’ll accept a lame pun, another layer of color to the story.

And then, there’s the reason I picked up this book in the first place – the dystopian and post-apocalyptic elements. And, I’m happy to report, just as with the details and world building aspects of the Shades of Grey, the dystopian angle is exquisite. One thing I absofreakinglutely love in a book is an author that doesn’t hand-hold his or her readers – unlike, say, the most recent episodes of LOST where subtext is as elusive as a hot shower. That is to say, Mr. Fforde lets these dystopian elements and the backstory of his world come out gradually, as Eddie reveals, piecemeal, little clues about the history of the Collective. What eventually becomes clear is that something has happened to Eddie’s world (referred to throughout merely as “The Something That Happened”), that changed everything – people became only able to see certain colors, chaos ensued until the great Munsell imposed order with a set of rigid, unchangeable rules. Outside of the Colortocracy’s borders there are the dreaded “Riffraff” – only alluded to as savage, uncivilized heathens. And then, there’s “The Rot” – a mysterious, fast-acting disease that infects citizens seemingly at random, and for which there is no cure. There’s a stagnation of ideas, a loss of technology (relics of which remain, silent and unused). These dystopian elements are little tidbits, revealed throughout the book (biochemical weapons, the presence of dangerous things in the Night, the intense fear and sensitivity the people in this world have to the dark)…and it’s very cool stuff.

In fact, the only place where Shades of Grey falls a little short is in extending some social commentary or analysis (as the blurb of the novel alludes to). The Color caste system is unflinching and based not necessarily on birth or wealth, but on the percentage of color seen (as taken in the one time only Ishihara exam) – an intriguing idea. But Mr. Fforde doesn’t really go into a true social critique of his color-caste world, which seems almost an automatic assumption. He could have taken this in a commentary on race, on apartheid, on classism, in a satyrical way. Reading, I found myself asking a number of questions that didn’t really get addressed – for example, are all these peoples’ skin tones the same? Even in shades of grey, a black person would look different than a white one. I even found myself questioning if these characters were even really PEOPLE at all! I felt like it could have been a lost Twilight Zone episode, in which Eddie, Jane and all those in this strange Collective are dolls or automatons. Regardless, even though Mr. Fforde never really “goes there” and doesn’t address any deeper rooted issues, this just means there’s room for exploration of these in the next two books. Plus, everything else is so wonderful in Shades of Grey, I could care less.

Overall, I loved this novel. LOVED it. I cannot wait for more, with the next two books!

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

A Morning in Vermillion

2.4.16.55.021: Males are to wear dress code #6 during inter-Collective travel. Hats are encouraged but not mandatory.

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn’t really what I’d planned for myself— I’d hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio and explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient.

But it wasn’t all bad, for the following reasons: First, I was lucky to have landed upside down. I would drown in under a minute, which was far, far preferable to being dissolved alive over the space of a few weeks. Second, and more important, I wasn’t going to die ignorant. I had discovered something that no amount of merits can buy you: the truth. Not the whole truth, but a pretty big part of it. And that was why this was all frightfully inconvenient. I wouldn’t get to do anything with it. And this truth was too big and too terrible to ignore. Still, at least I’d held it in my hands for a full hour and understood what it meant.

I didn’t set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind. I found Jane, too, or perhaps she found me. It doesn’t really matter. We found each other. And although she was Grey and I was Red, we shared a common thirst for justice that transcended Chromatic politics. I loved her, and what’s more, I was beginning to think that she loved me. After all, she did apologize before she pushed me into the leafless expanse below the spread of the yateveo, and she wouldn’t have done that if she’d felt nothing.

So that’s why we’re back here, four days earlier, in the town of Vermillion, the regional hub of Red Sector West. My father and I had arrived by train the day before and overnighted at the Green Dragon. We had attended Morning Chant and were now seated for breakfast, disheartened but not surprised that the early Greys had already taken the bacon, and it remained only in exquisite odor. We had a few hours before our train and had decided to squeeze in some sightseeing.

“We could always go and see the Last Rabbit,” I suggested. “I’m told it’s unmissable.”

But Dad was not to be easily swayed by the rabbit’s uniqueness. He said we’d never see the Badly Drawn Map, the Oz Memorial, the color garden and the rabbit before our train departed. He also pointed out that not only did Vermillion’s museum have the best collection of Vimto bottles anywhere in the Collective, but on Mondays and Thursdays they demonstrated a gramophone.

“A fourteen- second clip of ‘Something Got Me Started,’ ” he said, as if something vaguely Red- related would swing it.

But I wasn’t quite ready to concede my choice.

“The rabbit’s getting pretty old,” I persisted, having read the safety briefing in the “How Best to Enjoy Your Rabbit Experience” leaflet, “and petting is no longer mandatory.”

“It’s not the petting,” said Dad with a shudder, “it’s the ears. In any event,” he continued with an air of finality, “I can have a productive and fulfilling life having never seen a rabbit.”

This was true, and so could I. It was just that I’d promised my best friend, Fenton, and five others that I would log the lonely bun’s Taxa number on their behalf and thus allow them to note it as “proxy seen” in their animal- spotter books. I’d even charged them twenty- five cents each for the privilege— then blew the lot on licorice for Constance and a new pair of synthetic red shoelaces for me.

Dad and I bartered like this for a while, and he eventually agreed to visit all of the town’s attractions but in a circular manner, to save on shoe leather. The rabbit came last, after the color garden.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: As I’ve mentioned before, there are two more adventures planned for Eddie and company – Painting by Numbers and The Gordini Protocols.

Understandably this review might be a little confusing – and reading Shades of Grey takes some getting used to as there’s a lot of terminology and crazy stuff going on. Luckily, Jasper Fforde has an awesome primer on his book website to help keep things straight. The website also has a ton of awesome extras, such as an interview with Jasper Fforde, downloadable content, and a series of wicked cool movies – there’s the official book trailer:

…and then check out one of these National Color ” Peril Infogandas”:

I need to read more Jasper Fforde. STAT. Suggestions, anyone?

Also, on one final note – aren’t these covers grand? Both the US and UK ones truly rock.

Verdict: Skimpy on the thematic punch, but delectably juicy in all the details, world building and characters – I loved this book. Shades of Grey is seriously smart, chock full of bizarre humor with brains and heart. This is an amazing, truly original, highly imaginative work of fiction. And it is at this point my single favorite read of 2010.

(Ok, one last note – I know these books are marketed in the “literary fiction” section of bookstores, but this is a feast for the dystopian, for the Terry Pratchett-lover, for the Douglass Adams fan. Seriously. READ IT, folks!)

Rating: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Reading Next: Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep

Today, we have the proud honor of being the official Book Blog Partner on Harper Teen’s 28 Days of Winter Escapes Tour! First, we give you our joint review of our participating title, The Girl with the Mermaid Hair by Delia Ephron. Then, we bring you an exclusive Q&A with the author and a chance to win a copy of the book (and an iTouch).

Title: The Girl With The Mermaid Hair

Author: Delia Ephron

Genre: YA / Contemporary

Publisher: Harper Teen
Publication Date: January 2010
Hardcover: 320 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand Alone (although one of the secondary characters was the protagonist of the author’s previous book, Frannie in Pieces).

Click. Sukie Jamieson takes a selfie after her tennis lesson. Click. She takes one before she has to give a presentation in class. Click. She takes one to be sure there’s nothing in her teeth after eating pizza at Clementi’s. And if she can’t take a selfie, she checks her reflection in windows, spoons, car chrome—anything available, really. So when her mother gives her an exquisite full-length mirror that once belonged to her grandmother, Sukie is thrilled. So thrilled that she doesn’t listen to her mother’s warning: “This mirror will be your best friend and worst enemy.” Because mirrors, as Sukie discovers, show not only the faraway truth but the truth close up. And finding out that close-up truth changes people. Often forever.

How did we get this book: Review Copies from the publisher

Why did we read this book: When we were contacted to be part of the Winter Escapes event hosted by Harper Teen, we were allocated this book and we couldn’t have been happier – it was a perfect fit.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Ana: I started to read The Girl with the Mermaid Hair and my first reaction after reading the first few pages was: this is quite possibly one the weirdest books I have ever read, this girl is barking bonkers and completely unlikable and what in the world is going on. A few pages more and all of that changed – the book was still weird, but a wonderful weird, the character still crazy but with reason and I couldn’t put the book down until I was done and I ended up loving it. It is, hands down one of the best contemporaries YA I have read and a fantastic story about a girl, for girls, about what is like to be a girl.

Thea: The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is a bizarre book, and completely out of the range of YA titles that I usually read.

And I absolutely, out-of-my-mind LOVED it.

My experience with the book was very similar to Ana’s – I started it and couldn’t make heads or tails of what the frak was going on. Sukie is, for lack of a better word, deranged. At first glance, she’s narcissistic and irritatingly bland – but she’s not, really. This is a beautiful, unexpected, heartbreaking work of staggering genius (yes, I just ripped off Dave Eggers, but THAT is how good this book is – heck, better than Eggers’ narcissistic memoir, in this reader’s opinion). Against all my cynicism and predisposition against this book, The Girl with the Mermaid Hair blew me away.

On the Plot:

Ana: Sukie Jamieson is perfect: with her perfect blonde hair (like a mermaid’s), her perfect skin and her beautiful body with strong muscles built over her perfectly honed Tennis skills. Living in a perfect, beautiful house, with a perfect family composed of a loving father and a slightly crazy mother, a cute younger brother and the family dog Señor who even has a place at the dining table (first warning signal: his place it is at the head of the table). Sukie is a top student, brags about a quarterback boyfriend, she is beautiful and everybody is jealous of her and she spends hours in self-adoration and constantly takes selfies – pictures of herself with her cell phone.

One day her mother gives her an antique mirror as a present with the warning: “This mirror will be your best friend and worst enemy.”

As Sukie becomes more and more enamored with herself little cracks appear in the mirror – and ironically in her life – it becomes clear to the reader that Sukie only believes herself and her life to perfect. The truth is something else altogether.

There is very little in the way of a plot in The Girl with the Mermaid Hair , as this is really a character-driven novel at its core. Nothing really momentous happen in the novel and the story is propelled by Sukie and Sukie alone, as little by little is like the curtain is suspended and she can SEE her life for what it is and so can the reader. The result is sometimes hilarious but often sad too. Sometimes I write: this is so and so’s book but it is not every time that I am completely overcome with the strange sensation that I had when I was reading this book. This is Sukie’s book: I couldn’t tell where the writer or the narrator was, it was like neither existed and all I could see was Sukie. I was inside her head at all times and it felt like it was just me and her. That is also dude to the writing technique – extreme “showing,” no “telling” whatsoever, with the author, having the utmost faith in the reader to “get” what she saying. And I really dig that.

Thea: I have to wholeheartedly agree with Ana in saying that this indeed is Sukie’s book, and it is all the more awesome because of how committed it is. There really isn’t much plot or action, but that doesn’t mean The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is slow or dull – quite the opposite, actually. Rather, this is a wholly immersive reading experience. I have to emphasize again what Ana has said before me; reading The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is an experience unlike any other. It’s not so much a “reading a book” experience as it is a, “Holy Crap, I’m actually seeing Sukie’s mind at work” experience. (But more on that in the next section)

Also, I must say that Ms. Ephron’s writing is just…awesome. Not only is it incredibly clever (for example, one particular passage has Sukie debating what text to send – “WHEN WE KNOW EACH OTHER BETTER” – and deletes her text, letter by letter before inadvertently sending simply, “WHEN”), but it’s also memorably strange. The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is a trip – we readers are only given Sukie’s word as truth, and it becomes painfully, excruciatingly clear that Sukie’s judgement is not completely sound. She talks about her new “boyfriend” that she met at the mall (popular quarterback of the local highschool, named Bobo), but it soon becomes very apparent that Sukie’s relationship – along with so many other things in her life – is a fantasy. A delusion.

And that’s what I loved the most about this book: how it completely messes with reader perceptions. I found myself thinking, Sukie is a gag-inducing Mary Sue! No wait, she’s a narcissistic snot! I hate Sukie! No wait, she’s completely insane! No wait, I LOVE Sukie! and so on and so forth. How often does a book come along that does this to you? Not often. And, as Ana says, I can totally dig that.

On the Characters:

Ana: As a reader who loves character-driven novels, this book was a perfect fit for me. And I was not expecting it. Yes, I started the book disliking her superficiality and her weirdness but ended up loving and rooting for her once I got to know her better. When the story begins, she is too good to be true – too perfect. The image she has of herself and of her parents for example is a complete illusion and it is as though she doesn’t see those illusions because she does – it her interpretation that is all warped. Because for example this sequence about her father:

Sukie loved to watch her dad operate. That’s what he called it. Once at Cones, when he’d offered to pay for a woman’s sprinkles (a woman they’d never met before), the woman said to Sukie, “Your father makes everything more fun, doesn’t he?” As soon as they’d left the store, she reported the compliment to her dad, and he whispered (so her mom and Mikey couldn’t hear), “I’m a real operator”. Clearly this was information he could entrust only to Sukie

To her, he is a winner. To me, it is clear what he is. Eventually, yes, this is one of the things she comes to realise, one of the realities she has to face. But there is so much more to it. All the pressure she suffers from her mother to be beautiful and perfect; her mother who has a facelift and gets rid of her nose – the nose that was a trait she shared with Sukie – what does that to a girl’s psyche?

The book deals a lot with image and in several levels as well:, in mirrors, in photography; public image, self-image, the image one has in the family life or at school. Sukie is carrying her cell phone at all times and yet it never rings, her quarterback fling is not really interested in her, she is truly and really lonely and alone. She hits rock bottom and has to resurface (which is a cool image because of the mermaid hair) and re-imagine herself and I loved that it was all done alone. There was no hot boyfriend to help. No parents to help. Nothing, nada. It was all Sukie (with a little help from her friends).

When the book closes, she is much more real character than she was in the beginning.

As for the other characters, the mother was a sad example of a mother, someone I pitied more than anything. As for the father, I absolutely loathed the individual – not because he was a sleaze ball but because he used Sukie in the war against his wife. You do not do that with your child. But then again, as my parents often said: parenthood does not come with a manual.

But hands down, best secondary character was Señor, the Dog. The fact that he was the one the family turned to, to ask for advice should give you an idea of how dysfunctional they were.

One final thought: one of Sukie’s main concerns is about being original (or not). Is about striving to being unique without having a clue how to. My heart nearly broke into a million pieces several times during this book – and it may sound as though it is all very angsty and sad but it is not, really.

Thea: Well, The Girl with the Mermaid Hair *is* angsty and sad. But ultimately it’s an uplifting, triumphant book, and that’s ALL because of its protagonist Sukie.

I’m something of a plot junkie, as you may or may not have realized over the past couple of years here. But when a character-study type of book is done well, I will never complain about a shortage of action or parallel storylines or whatever, and such is the beauty of this novel from Delia Ephron. As I said before, I had no idea how to interpret and categorize Sukie as a heroine. At first glance, she’s irritating and vain, admiring herself in her grandmother’s antique mirror, mind-numbingly preoccupied with her appearance (especially with her titled hair, and with what she perceives of as an imperfect nose), constantly snapping “selfies” (that is pictures of herself on her cell phone). I shudder at the thought of this sort of vapid heroine, and found myself agreeing with Sukie’s tennis coach when he remarked that she had a marshmallow for a brain.

But…

Then Ms. Ephron works her magic. Sukie in fact isn’t a vain imbecile – she’s a very lonely, hollow young woman that perceives the world around her so differently than anyone else. She lives in her own fantasies. She takes “selfies” and is so preoccupied with her looks not because she is vain, but because she has nothing else. She throws herself into her school work and extracurricular activities, not because she enjoys any of it, but because she is trying to impress her father, to placate her mother, to be perfect for everyone else. Her perfection is not perfection at all; it is obsessive, and heartbreakingly tragic.

And HERE is what makes The Girl with the Mermaid Hair a damn near perfect book for me – in my opinion, it is a jarring look at gender roles and expectations. It is, as I told Ana in an email, the 21st century, teen female version of Catcher in the Rye. Before you tune out, let me explain – I abhor Holden Caufield with every fiber of my being. I have no patience for the embodiment of overprivileged, adolescent male malaise that Holden represented – but this is something that resonates with a lot of readers, in particular male readers. What I mean by comparing Catcher In the Rye to The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is simply this: Sukie is the female answer to Holden Caufield in the new century. Sukie is the embodiment of pressures put on young adults, especially females, in our own age. She’s the daughter of a very rich and handsome father, a beautiful mother, older sister to a loving younger brother. She’s a perfect student, amazingly smart, and breathtakingly beautiful. But she’s far from perfect. She’s friendless, she thinks she has no personality, and she’s ultimately…hollow. Sukie lives to please everyone else, to play by the rules, and to maintain her appearance. Ms. Ephron takes that beautiful, perfect reflection, and just as with the antique mirror in the novel, she distorts the image bit by bit, ultimately shattering the readers’ perception of Sukie with stark reality.

And, yeah, she shattered this reader’s heart too.

Final Thoughts, Observations & Rating:

Ana: A surprisingly moving, funny and sharp character-driven story which I absolutely adored. It is as of now, one of my favorite reads of the year.

Thea: The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is a rare gem of a book, and it completely took me by surprise. Almost against my will, I loved it. I agree once more with Ana – this is the first truly memorable new release I’ve read in 2010. In fact, it’s my favorite book published in 2010 so far. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Notable Quotes/ Parts:

I am so unoriginal. Sukie recorded the dreaded feeling in her journal that night while senor snored next to her, taking up most of the bed.”Do you agree, Senor?”

Senor twitched, indicating that he was dreaming.

Unoriginal. She hoped it wasn’t true but despaired that it was.

She collected stuffed penguins. Was that unoriginal too? Was lining them up in a row on the windowsill a conventional way to display them? They all had names. She’d started with A, Anton, and worked her way down the alphabet to M, Marshmallow, a very small bird with a yellow bow. Sometimes she thought of them as friends, sometimes as audience. Tonight they sat in judgement. Over their furry black heads the moon was bright white, so low in the sky that it might roll off a rooftop, and perfectly round. A storybook moon, she thought. A wishing moon. She wondered if that thought was especially original; probably not. Could she fake being original, or was that something you couldn’t fool anyone about? I wish I knew what everyone thought of me, really, she wrote. No, I take that back.

You can also read the first 64 pages of The Girl with the Mermaid Hair using Harper Teen’s awesome Browse Inside feature, below:

Additional Thoughts: The Girl with the Mermaid Hair is today’s stop on Harper Teen’s 28 Days of Winter Escapes! For a chance to win The Girl with the Mermaid Hair and an iTouch, make sure to go to the official page for today and answer the daily poll!

And make sure to stick around, as later today we have an exclusive Q&A with Delia Ephron!

Rating:

Ana: 8 – Excellent

Thea: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Reading Next: Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep

Title: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Author: J. K. Jemisin

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Publisher: Orbit
Publication Date: February 4 2010 (UK) / February 25 2010 (USA)
Paperback: 448 pages / 432 pages

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky – a palace above the clouds where gods’ and mortals’ lives are intertwined. There, to her shock, Yeine is named one of the potential heirs to the king.

But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with a pair of cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother’s death and her family’s bloody history. But it’s not just mortals who have secrets worth hiding and Yeine will learn how perilous the world can be when love and hate – and gods and mortals – are bound inseparably.

Stand Alone or Series: Book 1 of the Inheritance Trilogy

How Did I Get This Book: Review Copy from the publisher

Why Did I Read This Book: I think I do not exaggerate when I say that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is one of the most highly anticipated reads of 2010 in the Fantasy metier. Then the reviews started showing and they were very positive. Even with all that, I was not prepared for how GOOD this book turned out to be.

Review:

I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore.

I must try to remember.
_____________

My people tell stories of the night I was born. They say my mother crossed her legs in the middle of labor and fought with all her strength not to release me into the world. I was born anyhow, of course; nature cannot be denied. Yet it does not surprise me that she tried.

It says a lot about me, as a reader, that I read those first few lines and am immediately hooked. I think to myself: is Yeine protagonist and first person narrator of this story, a reliable one, if she is trying to remember the story she is about to tell? I am therefore, engaged in her tale from the beginning, because unreliable narratives happen to be one of my favourite narrative styles.

Thus, I am comfortable in my belief that I know what the author is doing and the chapters pass me by and I am slightly disappointed because well, if there are no surprises, where exactly is this going?

But then, the slow realisation that: no. I do not know exactly what she is doing. I was wrong, what she is effectively doing is even better. I go back to the beginning. I re-read the two first chapters. It is a different story now.

It says a lot about N K Jemisin, as a writer, that I am now, more than engaged. I am committed to this story. There is a rapport between this book and I that is a direct consequence of the mix of elegant writing, fascinating story and awesome characters.

But I think I am ahead of myself.

I must start again.
______

Young Yeine Darr, is summoned by her grandfather after her mother’s death to the floating city of Sky, the seat of the powerful Arameri, the family that controls the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. To her dismay, she is named heir and is on the run for the Succession which is to happen in a couple of weeks. It is a wild competition against her two cousins which might well end up in death. Coming from the “barbaric” North, where she was the head of her matriarchal tribe, a position she has to relinquish once she leaves for Sky, Yeine has to learn (and fast) the rules of Sky, adapt to the political intrigues and to basically learn the ropes of the Arameri culture. Part of it means to understand how every single inhabitant of Sky is a member of the Arameri family only to different degrees : Quarter, Half-Bloods, Full Blood. The lowest from the top are servants and the Full Bloods like Yeine and her cousins are the top dogs. And in charge of the Weapons.

And here is where things get really interesting.

Once upon a time, there were three Gods. The Nightlord (or Nahadoth) who came first; Bright Itempas , the god of day, and Enefa, the goddess of twilight and dawn. Or light and darkness and the shades between. Or order, chaos, and balance.

The three Gods were siblings and lovers in what can be called the most beautiful and yet terrifyingly sad story ever.

Falling out. Death. Betrayal, Enslavement. The outcome is this: Enefa is dead, Itempas is the sole remaining God, the Skyfather worshiped by the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. The ancestors of the Araremi were his devoted priests and in reward they were given the weapons: Nahadoth and three of his Godling children, entrapped and enslaved in (somewhat) human vessels controlled by any Highblood who dares to (because there is a catch – any command you give must be very carefully phrased as the Gods tend to take them very literally). Still, weapons they are, hence, the power the Arameri hold all over the world. Who would stand up against a family who wield the power of Gods?

And there comes little Yeine. Whose motivations are much different than expected. Revenge. Because her mother was killed and who killed her? Inheritance is the least of her concerns. And then the novel is a murder mystery: because she wants to learn who her mother is and why she left Sky in the first place, why the falling out with her father?

But Yeine is not the sole protagonist of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Oh, no. She shares it with the Gods: Nahadoth and his son Sieh (the trickster or the eternal child). And then the story has yet another layer: as Yeine is caught in the middle of the Gods’ scheming against their oppression. It might come as a surprise the use of the word “oppression” in the same sentence as “gods” but this is exactly the extent of the ruthlessness that the Arameri family has come to. The horrible torture that the gods must endure is tremendous. For two thousand years these beings have been shaped and limited by human forces.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is basically the story of two very dysfunctional families. On one side, the Arameri is the cautionary tale of the maxim: that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not only does that apply to the enslavement of the gods and peoples of the world, it also applies to a day-to- day life and fundamental relationships with others. Everybody is expendable in their pursuit for power.

On the other side, the cosmic Family: Itempas, Enefa and Nahadoth. In this mythology created by N K Jemisin, there is a mixture between concrete and abstract that is very interesting. These gods are both representations of ideas and nature forces such as chaos, balance and order; heat, cold, change; day, night, dawn, life and death but also very tangible, concrete, human emotions like hate, lust, love, fear. Bearing in mind that humans are their creations, it is almost like their own mirrors: with all the grandeur but also all the pettiness. The only difference is that when any of these things are felt by a God, the cosmos feels it too. This concrete x abstract occur even as Nahadoth talks to Yeine: sometimes looking at him is like staring into an abyss sometimes he is much humanised.

And in the middle of it there is Yeine. Not entirely Arameri, not a God. She is the most human character of them all: when she realises she might not survive her own story, she cries for hours, a very human reaction and one I deeply commiserated with. Her position is a very complicated one. Unused to diplomacy, used to situation when the drawing of a knife is the best way to deal with it, sometimes she is utterly incapable of making any move at all. But she adapts and in this adaptation, she reinvents herself. I thought Yeine to be a very sympathetic protagonist. And it is because of this humanity, that she dares hope for a romantic relationship with Nahadoth (he might be the God of change and chaos, but he is also the God of seduction) and those who tried in the past millennium have not survived the deed for a myriad of reasons best left for the reader to discover but is all part of the complexity of who Nahadoth is. It doesn’t surprise me the least that Yeine has fallen in love with him because I have too, a little bit. This is a larger than life character – consider this: a supreme being, the first ever living being in the universe cursed to live like a lowly slave. And yet, he still has the capacity for tenderness because after all he is the God of change (and adaptation).

As a Fantasy novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has an evocative world and a unique, creative mythology and I found myself wholly invested in the latter. It was definitely reminiscent of Hinduism for example and the concepts of creation, destruction and preservation, personified by Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu; or even Greek mythology in which the Gods are definitely out and about mingling in the daily life of humans and have themselves very human traits. It is interesting to note that a sexual aspect that connect all three examples (there are no asexual Gods present in this tale .)

The novel has its fantastic characters and a great plot and that includes the romance thread as well. But it goes beyond that. It is a very emotional novel, and I went through a broad range of emotions while reading it: fear, rage, hate, compassion, sadness, lust; and finally, there was the writing. It felt very welcoming. I don’t think I ever used this word to describe someone’s prose but that is exactly how I felt, as the author eased me into a story that started thousands and thousands of years ago like I was just there.

All the different layers of the novel intertwine to a very satisfactory self-contained ending. And when I closed this book, I realised that the author did something to me, broke my mind open and torn out my heart several times throughout the book, but in the end I knew exactly who I am. A fan.

And I didn’t even tell you half of it.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

Another tale from my childhood occurs to me here.

It is said the Nightlord cannot cry.No one knows the reason for this, but of the many gifts that the forces of the Maelstrom bestowed upon their darkest child, the ability to cry was not one of them.

Bright Itempas can. Legends say his tears are the rain that sometimes fall while the sun still shines. (I have never believed this legend, because it would mean Itempas cries rather frequently.)

Enefa of the Earth could cry. Her tears took the form of the yellow, burning rain that falls around the world after a volcano has erupted. It still falls, this rain, killing crops and poisoning water. But now it means nothing.

Nightlord Nahadoth was firstborn of the Three. Before the others appeared, he spent countless aeons as the only living thing in all of existence. Perhaps that explain his inability. Perhaps, amid so much loneliness, tears become ultimately useless.

Verdict: Damn Near Perfect debut novel that is a great blend of fantasy and romance, religion, mythology, politics, gender and race. The writing is lovely, the plot is superb (with a few surprises) and the characters made a hole in my heart the size of a volcano. The only thing that can fill it now is book 2.

Rating:9 – Damn Near Perfection

Reading Next:: The Bride and The Buccaneer by Darlene Marshall

Title: Irredeemable vol.#1

Author: Mark Vaid/ Artist: Peter Krause

Genre: Graphic Novels/ Comics

Publisher: Boom! Studios
Publishing Date: October 6, 2009
Paperback: 128 pages

Stand Alone or series: This volumes collects the first fours issues in a brand new and ongoing comic series.

Why did I read the book: Author Kate Noble, in her Smugglivus entry listed this as one of her top reads of 2009. I bought it as soon as I read her post.

How did I get the book: Bought

Summary: IRREDEEMABLE dares to ask the question: what if the world’s greatest hero decided to become the world’s greatest villain?

Review:

Sometimes I really wish I could create new words, because I don’t think there is a word in the dictionary that can convey the awesomeness that is Irredeemable. And ok, let’s acknowledge the known fact that I have a tendency to exaggerate a little bit but this is really, really damn good.

Irredeemable is about how the world’s greatest, most powerful superhero becomes its greatest villain. This first volume #1 collects the first four issues and it opens with some of the most shocking pages I ever read: with an attack by the aforementioned former superhero, the Plutonian, on the house of another superhero and one-time ally. He proceeds to annihilate the Hornet’s entire family (including children) but for one child whom he ironically asks after murdering her father right in front of her eyes:

Do you know who I am, Sarah?
I am a superhero

After this intense introduction, the story focuses around his former teammates trying to find out what the hell happened to make such a good, heroic person turn into such an evil maniac out to get everybody and how in the world will they stop him. On the other side of the spectrum, the supervillains are also trying to figure out what to do. They don’t know whether Plutonian is now their ally or still their enemy. What everybody, heroes, villains, innocent bystanders agree on is that Plutonian is dangerous, to the entire world.

The first and most important point about Irredeemable is the author’s intense, deep study of what is like to be a hero and the cost of superheroics; about failure and villainy and what the path to both is. What is the emotional aspect and what is the burden of being a superhero? How can a person be prepared for all the adulation, responsibility that comes with their powers? How does one deal with family, close relatives, lovers and friends and foes? Although these four issues have not yet fully explored all of those they do open the possibility for those questions to be asked.

The second is fear. The Plutonian is the most powerful being in the world. It is as though Superman decided that he has had enough and decided to blow the Earth to smithereens. The thing that has always sort of frustrated me is how in the comics no matter how powerful the supervillain they are never as powerful as the superhero. In Irredeemable, the fear is absolute. There is not a question, that the Plutonian is unstoppable. Although, there is a shadow of hope which lies in the hands of a villain called Modeus, his arch-nemesis, still it says a lot , that humanity’s last chance may be in the hands of a supervillain. That’s supernovelty right there. But yes, fear. Irrevocable, irreducible, inescapable fear.

I also quite liked the format, the investigate tone of the story with the other superheroes investigating Plutonian’s past unveiling his journey from heroism to villainy to the reader.

And finally, there is the art, the absolute superb art. Beautiful and clean, it also sets the mood perfectly between past (bright, light colours) and (dark, shadowy colours) present. Consider:

The forth issue ends with a bang that left me with my mouth hanging open. No doubt that the Plutonian is indeed irredeemable regardless of who he used to be or what has led him down this path. All I know is that volume #2 cannot come soon enough. I shall devour it.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: The first 8 pages which you can read here, in the publisher’s website.

Additional Thoughts: Volume #2 collecting Issues 5-8 will be released in March and Volume #3 (issues 9-12) in July (although the individual issues are out and about up to issue 10).

This link will take you to see all the different covers of the different issues, I think this one is my favourite:

Also by the same author out last December following up on Irredeemable:

Super villain Max Damage had an epiphany the day The Plutonian destroyed Sky City. When The Plutonian turned his back on humanity, Max Damage decided to step up. Now Max Damage has changed his name to Max Daring and turned from his formerly selfish ways to become… INCORRUPTIBLE.

Verdict: Incredibly ballsy, interesting and gripping. Irredeemable is a read I highly recommend to those who love to read about a different side to superheroes.

Rating: 9 Damn Near Perfection

Reading next: Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs by Molly Harper

Title: Going Bovine

Author: Libba Bray

Genre: Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Literature, Young Adult

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 2009
Hardcover: 496 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did we get this book: Bought

Why did we read this book: We have heard nothing but rave reviews for Libba Bray’s newest novel. And, as Thea was a fan of A Great and Terrible Beauty (and will seriously, honest to god finish reading and reviewing the Gemma Doyle books soon), and Ana was excited to try Ms. Bray’s writing, we eagerly plunged into Going Bovine.

Summary: (from amazon.com)
Can Cameron find what he’s looking for?

All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Thea: As we’ve said above, both Ana and I were *extremely* excited for Going Bovine – it came highly recommended by bloggers, official critics and friends alike. In fact, both Ana and I were SO stoked for Going Bovine that we both began the book with expectations that it would crack our top 10 of 2009 lists! And though this novel didn’t quite make my top reads list, it comes pretty gorram close. I loved Going Bovine – there’s no other way to say it.

Ana: From the get go, I thought the book had Ana-Crack (thanks, Thea) written all over it: unreliable narrator + humour = win. The idea of this book was so promising, I had an allocated slot for it in my top 10 of 2009. Although, just like with Thea, it didn’t quite make it, I still loved it to bits. And I am completely infatuated with Libba Bray’s writing right now.

On the Plot:

Meet Cameron.

He’s an apathetic, modern day impersonation of Holden Caufield. Privileged, intelligent enough, solidly middle class, son of two professor parents and twin brother to a popular cheerleader sister who can do no wrong. Cam really doesn’t care about…well, anything. He goes to classes and does the bare minimum to pass, and smokes a lot of weed. But soon, Cam’s aimless existence takes new direction when he learns that he is sick. Terminally sick. Dying in a couple of weeks sick. Cam has an extremely rare neurological disease – the equivalent of mad cow for humans – which causes heaving spasms, hallucinations, and has him bedridden in the hospital in the very, very faint hope that experimental treatment may cure him.

But then, Cam gets a visit from a strange, beautiful angel with spray painted wings and hot pink hair – Dulcie’s her name. And Dulcie offers Cam the chance of his lifetime: help her and the folks upstairs by finding a dimension hopping physicist named Doctor X and stop the end of the world (which he has unwittingly unleashed via his wormhole-traveling hijinks) – and Dr. X will be able to cure him. Faced with certain death on one hand, and a dim hope for life on the other, Cam agrees and sets off on a cross country mission with a hypochondriac dwarf named Gonzo, encountering cultists, physicists, Norse Gods, and Fire Demons…and finally experiencing life.

Thea: From a plotting standpoint, Going Bovine is a schizophrenic, surrealist comic tragedy – and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s an adventure, a road story across an America that is both familiar and alien, blending everything from bowling, smoothie happiness loonies to theories of relativistic physics. And Disneyworld. And Norse mythology. So, it’s fair to say that Going Bovine covers a whole lot of ground. Some readers might get a little frazzled or bored with the jumping, episodic nature of Cam & Gonzo’s adventures, but for me? Well, I loved it. It’s quirky, weird, and completely winsome. Yes, there were some extraneous encounters on Cam’s long road, and yes, there were some passages that felt as though they were unnecessary and written for the sole purpose of being quirky – but like all road stories, the destination isn’t the important part; the journey is. And Cam (& Gonzo)’s journey was completely worth it.

From a writing standpoint, Going Bovine is an incredibly smart book. I loved how the entire novel is open to interpretation – is Cam simply hallucinating the whole thing in his hospital bed? Or is it something more? For my take, I loved how the whole book was essentially a giant Schroedinger’s Cat – both realities, where Cam is in his hospital bed near death & on the road in an old busted up caddy fighting off an evil snow globe corporation, coexist (just as Schroedinger’s cat is both alive and dead within the box before it is opened). I loved the Don Quixote parallels/inversions too. Very cool stuff, Ms. Bray. Very cool stuff indeed.

Ana: I agree with Thea – if there is one word that captures the feel of this book, “cool” it is. But the very best type of “cool” : the bold, cheeky, smart, quirky, type of cool. The type that combines several ideas – for there is Philosophy, Mythology and Physics , for example, in the book – with a bit of heart and soul (literally and metaphorically) added to it. Plot-wise the novel is surreal and completely trippy and one does need to have an open mind to read this book. I love this passage here – it encapsulates the feel of the book perfectly:

“As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or a rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr X, who would cure me from mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe”.

Thea aptly refers to the Schroedinger’s Cat experiment to describe the book and I think her insight is genius, for the story is exactly like this: both realities may be happening at the same time, it doesn’t have to be one OR the other. But regardless of how cool the idea or the execution are, the book would mean nothing to me, if there wasn’t heart and soul added to this recipe. And those come partly from the lovely writing, partly from the relationships that Cameron starts during his journey. I got a quote that is another perfect embodiment of what exactly I am talking about:

“Cameron, look at me” she whispers.
I Do. I see her. Really see her. And in that moment, I know she sees me.
She smiles, and in her smile is everything I could ever want. Her face looms closer, closing the impossible distance. Her lips are near mine.
And when it comes, her kiss is like something not so much felt as found.”

I get goose-bumps every time I read this sentence. And as much as this book is funny (out-loud funny even) , it is also very sad and I did find myself bawling a couple of times.

I do have to mention something else that really bothered me though (although I am sure, this will not bother 99% of the people that read this book) : Cameron’s favourite musician is a Portuguese guy called the Great Tremolo (quite possibly, worst made-up Portuguese name ever) for his cheesy songs and lyrics. A couple of times, some of his lines are reproduced in the book. Like this one, for example:

“Para Mí He Visto Angeles”

I hate to be the one to break this to you but THIS IS SPANISH AND NOT PORTUGUESE. This was enough to put me off reading the book for a couple of hours. For example this other sentence here:

“Eu considerei a sua cara e sabia a felicidade”.

Which is supposed to mean “ I looked upon your face and knew happiness” but doesn’t really mean anything. The Portuguese line is all wonky and plain wrong – it doesn’t make sense.

Being Brazilian (and Portuguese being my mother tongue) this frustrates me to no end. It is obvious that a lot of effort was put into creating this book: the cover art is amazing, this is a hardcover plus there are beta readers, editors etc who must have read the book, so it sort of infuriates that no one thought of spending half an hour to check that the language is correct and no, online translation softwares or BabelFish are NOT the way to go – as evidenced by the above line – a prime example of a translation gone wrong.

But yeah, a minor quibble for an otherwise great book.

On the Characters:

Thea: This is where things get REALLY interesting. See, Cam is a character that I began the book not liking. Check that, I began the book DESPISING Cam. He’s everything I hate in a character – he’s whiny and apathetic, he’s disinterested and has no reason to be such a…wanker. He’s a modern day Holden Caufield, in other words – and I loathe Holden Caufield. But rather than being some crackshot Catcher in the Rye, male angst rehash, Ms. Bray does the incredible with Going Bovine…she makes me CARE for the characters. This book is the equivalent of what would happen if you took an apathetic asshat like Holden and made him CARE about something – forcing him to live his life. And ultimately, that’s what makes Cam such an endearing character – the fact that he finally, at the end of the day when faced with certain death and hope, he chooses hope. I finished the book loving Cam for all his imperfections, for his bravery and his – if you’ll pardon the pun – ability to seize life by the horns.

The secondary characters are also fantastic – I loved Dulcie, the hot-punk-goth angel with a sense of humor and an appreciation for the small things in life (like microwaveable popcorn). I loved Gonzo, the Eddie Kaspbrak of Going Bovine – a little person with an overbearing mother and a severe case of hypochondria. I loved Balder, the garden gnome that insists he’s the entrapped visage of the Norse God, tricked into gnome form by Loki. I loved them all.

Ana: I too, started the book disliking Cameron and his Holden persona intensely. But at some point in this journey my opinion changed as the story and the character’s arc progressed and I ended up caring for Cameron very much. For all that the book has this extreme cooky story with exaggerated plot points ( like for example their visit to CESSNAB – the Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack ‘N’ Bowl); There were quite a few, quiet moments that were extremely poignant and important like Cameron holding his mother’s hand or talking to his father on the phone.

I did wonder about something: if taking the Holden archetype and adding an external influence to it, by making the character realise he needed to change but only because he was at the brink of death, wasn’t a little problematic and perhaps not really organic. But then it hit me: as much as sometimes we would like to see a story explained, compartmentalised, defined, real life is not really any of these things is it? It is chaos and tragedy and that is even truer when the unthinkable happens – when a 16 year old boy is faced with death when he hasn’t had the chance to yet live – he never even got the change to grow beyond his Holden persona on his own time.

This is the beauty of Going Bovine: that it takes chaos and tragedy and makes them more bearable, meaningful and perhaps even a bit amazing.

As for the other characters, I loved all of them from Gonzo and Balder to Dulcie and even the The Wizard of Reckoning – that was a surprise I did not see coming.

Final Thoughts, Observations & Rating:

Thea: What more is there for me to say? I loved Going Bovine. I wholeheartedly recommend it to EVERYONE – especially to reluctant dude readers, or literary snobs who think male ennui is the magnificent apex of character development. [snorts]

Ana: Going Bovine was a wonderful , cool reading experience to me: it made me laugh uncontrollably many times and it made me sob quietly when the right time came. I loved it.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the First Chapter:

CHAPTER ONE
In Which I Introduce Myself

The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.

I’m sixteen now, so you can imagine that’s left me with quite a few days of major suckage.

Like Career Day? Really? Do we need to devote an entire six hours out of the high school year to having “life counselors” tell you all the jobs you could potentially blow at? Is there a reason for dodgeball? Pep rallies? Rad soda commercials featuring Parker Day’s smug, fake-tanned face? I ask you.

But back to the best day of my life, Disney, and my near-death experience.

I know what you’re thinking: WTF? Who dies at Disney World? It’s full of spinning teacups and magical princesses and big-assed chipmunks walking around waving like it’s absolutely normal for jumbo-sized stuffed animals to come to life and pose for photo ops. Like, seriously.

I don’t remember a whole lot about it. Like I said, I was five. I do remember that it was hot. Surreal hot. The kind of hot that makes people shell out their life savings for a bottle of water without even bitching about it. Even the stuffed animals started looking less like smiling, playful woodland creatures and more like furry POWs on a forced march through Toonland. That’s how we ended up on the subterranean It’s a Small World ride and how I nearly bit it at the place where America goes for fun.

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced the Small World ride. If so, you can skip this next part. Honestly, you won’t hurt my feelings, and I won’t tell the other people reading this what an asshole you are the minute you go into the other room.

Where was I?

Oh, right—so much we share, time aware, small world. After all.

So. Small World ride, brief sum-up: Long-ass wait in incredibly slow-moving line. Then you’re put into this floating barge and set adrift on a river that winds through a smiling underworld of animatronic kids from every country on the planet singing along in their various native tongues to the extremely catchy, upbeat song.

Did I mention it’s about a ten-minute ride?

Of the same song?

In English, Spanish, Swahili, and Japanese?

I’m not going to lie to you; I loved it. Dude, I said to myself, this is the shit. Or something like that in five-year-old speak. I want to live in this new Utopia of singing children of all nations. With luck, the Mexican kids will let me wear their que festivo sombreros. And the smiling Swedes will welcome me into their happy Nordic hoedown. Välkommen, y’all. I will ride the pink fuzzy camel in some vaguely defined Middle Eastern country (but the one with pink fuzzy camels) and shake a leg with the can-can dancers in Gay Paree.

Bonjour.

Bienvenido.

Guten Tag.

Jambo.

I was with the three people who were my world—Mom, Dad, my twin sister, Jenna—and for one crazy moment, we were all laughing and smiling and sharing the same experience, and it was good. Maybe it was too good. Because I started to get scared.

I don’t know exactly how I made the connection, but right around Iceland, apparently, I got the idea that this was the after?life. Sure, I had heatstroke and had eaten enough sugar to induce coma, but really, it makes sense in a weird way. It’s dark. It’s creepy. And suddenly, everybody’s getting along a little too well, singing the same song. Or maybe it had to do with my mom. She used to teach English classics, heavy on the mythology, at the university B.C. (Before Children) and liked to pepper her bedtime stories with occasional bits about Valhalla or Ovid or the River Styx leading to the underworld and other cheery sweet-dreams matter. We’re a fun crew. You should see us on holidays.

Whatever it was, I was convinced that this ride was where you went to die. I would be separated from my family forever and end up in some part of the underworld where smiling kid robots in boater hats sang nonstop in Portuguese. I had to keep that from happening. And then—O Happy Day! Salvation! Right behind the Eskimo igloo (this was before they were the more politically correct but slightly naughty-sounding Inuits), I saw this little door.

“Mommy, where does that door go to?” I asked.

“I don’t know, honey.”

We were headed for certain death on the River Styx. But somehow I knew that if I could just get to that little door, everything would be okay. I could stop the ride and save us all. That was pretty much it for me. My five-year-old freak-out meter totally tripped. I slipped free of the seat and splashed into the fishy-smelling water, away from the doe-eyed, pinafored girl puppet singing, “En värld full av skratt, en värld av tårar” (Swedish, I’m told, for “It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears”).

The thing is, I didn’t know how to swim yet. But apparently, I was pretty good at sinking. You know that warning about how kids can drown in very little water? Quite true if the kid panics and forgets to close his mouth. You can imagine my surprise when the water hit my lungs and I did not immediately start singing, “There’s so much that we share.”

The last thing I remember before I started to lose consciousness was my mom screaming to stop the ride while crushing Jenna to her chest in case she got the urge to jump too. Above me, lights and sound blended into a wavy distortion, everything muted like a carnival heard from a mile away. And then I had the weirdest thought: They’re stopping the ride. I got them to stop the ride.

You can read the full excerpt, and more, HERE.

Rating:

Thea: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Ana: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Title: Girl in the Arena

Author: Lise Hines

Genre: Dystopia, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: October 2009
Hardcover: 336 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did I get this book: Bought

Why did I read this book: A dystopian, slightly futuristic gladiator-to-the-death novel with a female protagonist? The question should be, why did it take me so long to read this book. This has “Thea-crack” written all over it.

Summary: (from amazon.com)
It’s a fight to the death—on live TV—when a gladiator’s daughter steps into the arena

Lyn is a neo-gladiator’s daughter, through and through. Her mother has made a career out of marrying into the high-profile world of televised blood sport, and the rules of the Gladiator Sports Association are second nature to their family. Always lend ineffable confidence to the gladiator. Remind him constantly of his victories. And most importantly: Never leave the stadium when your father is dying. The rules help the family survive, but rules—and the GSA—can also turn against you. When a gifted young fighter kills Lyn’s seventh father, he also captures Lyn’s dowry bracelet, which means she must marry him… For fans of The Hunger Games and Fight Club, Lise Haines’ debut novel is a mesmerizing look at a world addicted to violence—a modern world that’s disturbingly easy to imagine.

Review:

I’ve been in a bit of a reading rut lately. It’s not so much that I have been reading horrendously bad books recently; rather, it’s that I have been lukewarm and strangely apathetic towards the books I have been reading of late. I needed something different to save me from the sea of indifference, and I was betting on Girl in the Arena to do the trick (especially after rave reviews like this one from Angie started popping up online). And wouldn’t you know it? Girl in the Arena was EVERYTHING I wanted, and more.

I loved this book.

Not only does Ms. Haines employ a bold, effective writing style refreshingly different from anything else on the YA market, but the story itself is phenomenal, with one of the finest heroines I have had the pleasure of reading all year. It’s also a scathing look at our society of violence, greed and instant gratification, and an effective cautionary parable for present day America.

For all of her life, Lyn has lived as a neo-Gladiator’s daughter, following the Gladiator Sports Association’s (GSA’s) stringent bylaws as best she can. Her mother, Allison, prides herself on her occupation as a Glad wife – that is, a perpetual bride to neo-Gladiators. Allison brags that Lyn is the daughter of seven Gladiators, the maximum number of times a Glad wife can marry according to the bylaws. But Lyn is dissatisfied with her mother and the life that she is forced to live as a Glad daughter – instead of eagerly planning her future as a Glad wife, she yearns for a way out of the game, much to her mother’s chagrin. Though Lyn hasn’t gotten along with her prior fathers too well, her seventh, an incredibly popular neo-Gladiator named Tommy, is someone she actually loves – which makes her all the more scared of Tommy’s upcoming fight against the much younger and very promising fighter named Uber. To make matters worse, Lyn’s autistic and oddly prophetic younger brother, Thad, makes a chilling prediction that Tommy will die, and nervous, Lyn gives Tommy her dowry bracelet for good luck.

When the fight arrives, Tommy is slain quickly in the arena by the monstrously powerful Uber while Lyn, Thad and Allison are forced to watch on. For Allison, this means the end of married life – per the GSA bylaws, she’s forbidden from marrying any other Glad, and if she wants to keep the insurance money from Tommy’s death and their family home & assets, she cannot marry anyone outside of the Glad world either. For Thad, it means he has lost the only father that truly cared for him, though he’s confused about what has happened. For Lyn, though, things are infinitely worse – because in the arena, right after killing her father, Uber picks a trophy from his corpse. Lyn’s dowry bracelet. Per the GSA guidelines, only a girl’s father and her husband can touch her dowry bracelet – and Uber’s innocent mistake means that now he and Lyn are betrothed. Threatened by Caesar’s Inc. (the corporate entity behind the GSA) with her family’s destitution and ruin, Lyn is forced with the reality of marrying her father’s murderer…unless she can find another way to placate Caesar’s and save her family.

I have to admit that I was expecting quite a different book when I started Girl in the Arena. From the title, the jacket blurb and the cover, I was a bit wary that the book would be about some unbelievable badass female neo-Gladiator – but that’s not what Girl in the Arena is about at all. Lyn doesn’t even step into the Arena as a fighter until the very end of the book, as a measure of last resort, which was an incredible relief to me. There’s a tendency to create these Super!Badass!Warrior! heroines sometimes, which is cool and all – but sometimes it’s a lot more engaging to have a heroine that isn’t naturally gifted with the ability to blow all the competition away. In Lyn’s case, were she some unparalleled kick-ass chick whom after only a few scant months of training could take down men twice her size (who have been groomed as gladiators for their entire lives), well, let’s just say that would be quite a fish to swallow. Instead, Lyn’s story is much more emotion-driven, much more focused on her inability to do anything to fight a corrupt and bloodthirsty system from which there seems to be no escape. Though there is a good share of violence in the arena scenes, Girl in the Arena is not so much about fighting or action, as, say The Hunger Games is. Rather, this novel is more introspective, a dystopian anti-corporation thriller, if you will (more along the lines of a younger Blade Runner).

The most impressive thing, to me, about Girl in the Arena was how very plausible everything seemed. Ms. Haines looks not at some distant future society trying to recover after some apocalyptic/socio-economic collapse – rather, she takes the present day United States and makes a few significant embellishments. The GSA itself feels very familiar – a sort of cross between the Ultimate Fighting Championship (the UFC) and the World Wrestling Entertainment/Federation (WWE). The prologue, Lyn’s opening report on the history of the GSA, explains in a shockingly realistic way that corporate-sanctioned to-the-death fighting could occur – and it really makes one think. I, for one, love watching fights. Boxing, UFC, you name it, I’m a fan. And Girl in the Arena makes me question this inherent bloodthirst. Not to say that Ms. Haines uses her novel to pass judgement on fighters – it’s actually quite the opposite. As Lyn, her family and her friends are all entrenched in the Glad lifestyle, she doesn’t view the neo-Gladiators as wasting their lives or as some barbaric, blooddrenched ritual. There’s honor to be found in the Arena, and I was really, really pleased to see that Ms. Haines managed to convey this appreciation and balance (saving what easily could have been a preachy, one-dimensional feeling novel).

So far as technicalities of plotting and character go, what can I say? Ms. Haines has a gift for writing. The story is paced excellently without a single hitch. The writing itself is wonderfully different, as Ms. Haines uses a unique abbreviation style (no quotation marks for dialogue, instead employing dashes) and perfunctory sentences for Lyn’s narrative. Though a bit strange at first, I loved the brisk feel this style gave Lyn’s voice. As a heroine, Lyn is exquisite. She’s smart, but not snobby or overbearing; she has a load to carry with her manic depressive mother and autistic younger brother, but she manages to keep it together for her family’s sake; she’s pretty, but not fussy about it (in fact, for most of the novel, she has a shaved, stitched head). She’s incapable of bullshit, and she’s one tough cookie – though she’s not some badass automaton. I loved her. I loved her emotional struggles, I loved how fair she was when it came to evaluating her choices and making decisions. I loved Lyn.

What else can I say about Girl in the Arena? This is a book to be bought, to be read, to be remembered. I loved it wholeheartedly, and I recommend it to everyone. Ms. Haines has left her mark, and I cannot wait to read more from this promising author.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From the fight between Tommy and Uber:

Uber enters the arena first to thundering applause. I’ve read in Sword and Shield that he rubs a quart of Glow on his skin before a match. With the black lights that rim the stadium, as soon as he starts to overheat it will look as if that peacock green sweat is pouring out of him like in those sports drink commercials.

My brother, Thad, tugs at me until I get a Freeway bar from my sack and peel back the wrapper for him. They make my mind too speedy and I think it would be easy to go into road rage even if you weren’t driving, but with Thad, they soothe him. His whole sense of time and space has always been jumbled up. Sometimes I think he’s living at the speed of light, only I can’t see it.

Uber checks his helmet repeatedly and then crosses himself.

When Tommy, our stepfather, steps into the arena, all of us stand and flood the air with sound. Everyone loves Tommy.

I see he’s chosen the short sword today. But he still looks off to me. There’s almost no swagger as he walks into the center of the arena and raises his arms.

—Tommy looks good, I say to Allison.

—Do you think so? our mother shouts back above the cheering.

—He’s all over this, I say.

—I’ve heard Uber wasn’t born in to the Helmet Wearers, she informs me.

Allison likes to make a point of these things. Born Ins are first- generation Glads, their relatives and descendents. Tommy’s a Born In. It’s a point of pride. I don’t know if Uber’s a gladiator born and bred but the blog Desperate Glad says: He lights up the game. And the Chicago Tribune says: He’s money in the treasury.

Time feels sped up as the cheers build. Tommy and Uber start to circle. I don’t know why, but I thought they would take longer to size each other up, that time would stretch out on this one. Competitions often feel slow to me, especially at the beginning.

Tommy slams his shield against Uber’s. They deliver several blows in succession, each one striking the other’s shield or sword, each sound enlarged by the sound system and the roar of the arena. I want to look away, but today I can’t.

Tommy knocks Uber’s shield so hard it flies out of his hand. As Uber moves to pick it up, Tommy makes several small slices up Uber’s left arm. That’s Tommy’s signature as he’s warming up, to make the small cuts. The crowd loves this. They chant, —Tommy, Tommy.

But then in one move, Uber suddenly grabs his shield, turns, and strikes Tommy with his long sword. When I open my eyes I see he’s practically taken off Tommy’s left kneecap.There’s blood everywhere, spurting and soaking into the sand. Before Tommy can right himself, Uber slices him across his stomach. Thank God that one’s a shallow cut.

—Why isn’t he fighting back? Allison asks.

—He’s waiting for the right moment, I say, though I’m wondering the same thing.

Thad’s trying to say something now, his mouth full of thick, sped-up chocolate. Everything about him looks urgent as I glance over. I don’t know if he understands what’s going on with Tommy, if he understands fully, or if this is about something else, because thoughts are often urgent with Thad. I kiss his forehead. I’m trying not to cry, and I tell him to chew slowly, and to wait, just wait. I tell him everything is going to be okay.

A low rolling chant starts as Uber seems to be giving Tommy time to concede, to pull himself together—I’m not sure what. I’d say this is not the kind of calm you want. If I were a forecaster, I’d say we’re in earthquake weather, just before it hits.

When Thad can’t take another moment of stillness, he stands in his chair and starts to leap toward Allison, jumping up and down. As I try to restrain Thad, I look at his big eyes, his soft square face, and I imagine how much would die with Tommy. Maybe everything, everything as we know it. Then Thad gets quiet again and slumps back into his seat. I want to take his hand and run away with him but this is one of the first bylaws I was taught; number 96:

Never leave the stadium when your father is dying.

So I’m here when Uber raises his sword suddenly and slices off Tommy’s right hand cleanly at the wrist joint.

I’m out of my seat, standing in the bleachers as his hand drops to the sandy floor like a chicken wing into flour. Tommy’s bludgeon flies and the bracelet I lent him for good luck launches from his arm and rolls to a stop at Uber’s black athletic shoes.

Sixty thousand fans rise to their feet shouting:

—UBER! UBER!

For a moment Tommy stands there in his blood- drenched Nikes as if he’s thinking over his next move. Of course the point, the whole point, of Glad existence is to die well. And I know Tommy G. is going to die well when it’s his time. But I’m looking at Allison now, looking for something in Allison’s face to say he’ll pull through this one. That the ambulance will scoop him up and get him to the hospital in time. I stare into Allison’s mirrored sunglasses, where I see Tommy suddenly arch back. His chain- mail guard swings out from his hips and lashes his groin. His legs buckle, and his body drops in both halves of her.

Tommy dies right there in Allison’s lenses.

tommy.

You can read the full excerpt online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: YA Dystopian Fiction – one of my all time favorite subgenres, as I’m sure any regular reader of ours here on The Book Smugglers knows! If you liked Girl in the Arena, and you want something else to satiate your hunger for dystopian futures, you might want to check out some of these posts for more.

And, while you’re at it, why don’t you check out this…bizarre…but fun book trailer:

Verdict: Girl in the Arena is one for the keeper shelf; one that has earned all the raves it has received; one that deserves its praises to be shouted from the mountaintops. A fabulous book, and on the shortlist for one of my favorite reads of 2009.

Rating: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Reading Next: The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima

Title: The Road Home

Author: Ellen Emerson White

Genre: Young Adult, Fiction, Historical

Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: 1995
Paperback: 469 pages

Stand alone or series: Can be read as stand alone but is the 5th book in a series about the Vietnam War (read the Additional Thoughts for more information)

How did we get this book: Bought

Why did we read this book: A month back, we had the lovely Angie of Angieville over here for a Guest Dare – and wouldn’t you know it, she Dared us right back! The Road Home is one of Angie’s all time favorite novels from one of her favorite authors, so naturally, we were very excited to give The Road Home a read. It took us a shameful amount of time to actually read the book (we’re blushing right now), but better late than never, right?

Summary: (from Amazon.com)
Rebecca, a young nurse stationed in Vietnam during the war, must come to grips with her wartime experiences once she returns home to the United States.

REVIEW:

First Impressions:

Ana: When Angie dared us to read this book, I admit that I trembled inside. The idea behind the “Dares” is to make people read outside their comfort zones – little did she know that this book fit the idea to a “t” . I HATE war stories. Hate reading them with the force of a thousand hurricanes because every time I read a war story, every time I watch a war movie, I am reminded of the worst, the most stupid thing civilization ever created. Bearing that in mind, it is rather shocking that I LOVED The Road Home. It is a dark, gritty, almost unbearably sad book; it is also a beautiful character-driven book, with a wonderful protagonist and a heart-warming love story.

Thea: I have to agree with Ana – I was a little nervous going into this read. This isn’t the type of book that I’d normally pick up of my own volition (though I have read and loved war novels before – The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien especially comes to mind). In many ways, The Road Home reminds me of my middle/high school required reading – I’d begin the assignments with low expectations, but once I got into the rhythm, I inevitably ended up really enjoying these novels. Regardless of my fears and prejudices going into The Road Home, I knew Angie loved it – and her taste has rarely steered me wrong before! And, of course, I ended up loving The Road Home. It’s a beautiful insight to the Vietnam War and its aftermath through the eyes of a brilliant, layered protagonist.

On the Plot:

Rebecca Philips is close to the end of her Vietnam tour – as a lieutenant nurse she has witnessed the worst of the war: deaths, injuries, the very waste of life. She has done unspeakable things, seen friends die, suffered wounds and is on the brink of collapsing of exhaustion. Only painkillers, beer and Michael’s – the soldier whom she recently met – letters keep her going. Surely when she goes home, things will get better, won’t they?

Ana: The plot of The Road Home is quite straight forward and very, very simple – it is about this nurse Rebecca who is suffering of PTSD which starts during the war itself. It opens:

On Christmas morning, Rebecca lost her moral virginity, her sense of humour – and her two best friends. But, other than that, it was a hell of a holiday.

Rebecca’s struggle to cope with the horrors of war, with what happened to her and her friends and ultimately with The World is what moves the novel making it an essentially character-driven novel. In other words: nothing really HAPPENS in the way of plot.

Divided in two sections, The War and The World, the book is an insight into the life of this one person who went to Vietnam and lived to tell the tale. The first part concentrates in Rebecca’s day to day life at the hospital and it is absolutely, tremendously sad and gritty. It shows the horrible decisions doctors and nurses have to make in a hurry as injured soldier after injured soldier is brought in. It shows the stress and the tiredness of impossibly long shifts under extreme circumstances; the horrible food they have to eat which they invariably ingest with either cold, strong coffee or beer. The amount of alcohol and drugs ingested in an attempt to stay awake/sleep/deal is unbelievable and on top of everything all of the doctors, nurses, soldiers are dealing with some level or another of alcoholism or substance abuse. It is horrible and it made me extremely depressed to read about it – especially when kids were brought in, dying.

In the second part, when Rebecca is released to the World, when you would expect things would be a bit better? It almost broke my heart to see that actually no, getting back to the world, is nowhere near the end of all problems. The PTSD, the injuries, the nightmares, the dependence on alcohol, all is there and no one can really understand. To make things even worse, it is disheartening to see the anti-war sentiments and protests against the SOLDIERS when they come back.

These people have lost friends, have lost limbs, almost lost their mind and they still have to face this when they come back? It is ugly and it is again, unbearably sad because the soldiers, the nurses, etc do what they are told to – it’s the politics and the politicians behind the war that should be the one target. Having said that, the book is not an anti-war plantlet and it never falls into dreaded preachy territory. The story SHOWS , the reader reacts. And this is really, what it is down me, as a reader, reading, experiencing this book: I can’t remember the last time when I read something I did not pay attention to POV, writing, the mechanics of a book. I only felt.

The whole book is absolutely brutal and yet, still hopeful. I wouldn’t have loved if darkness and sadness was all there was to it. The love story between Rebecca and Michael, the small moments of lightness where we could see the shadow of a light hearted Rebecca who loved to sing and tell jokes, the friendships that were possible in the middle of it, it all contributed to making this a fabulous read to me. It helps that I love character-driven books, of course.

I had a most guttural, emotional reaction to this book. I had to read it really slowly, often stopping so that I could examine my reactions and to think about what I was reading. When the ending came, and it was a happy ending, I cried. I will paraphrase Angie here: Michael and Rebecca deserve every scrap of happiness they can get and I am glad I was able to witness that.

Thea: As Ana says, the plot is pretty straightforward. A girl goes to war as a nurse, and she returns home to deal with the trauma of her experiences. As far as reading goes, I finished this book in a day without any problems. It’s a quick read, though it does tackle some heavy issues – the usual horrors of war; the chaos and senselessness of it all; a touch on drug abuse and a passing glance at sexism and gender relations during war. This is pretty standard fare in the war literature canon, and while Ms. White does a solid job of portraying the cruelties of Vietnam, it’s nothing really new or particularly resonating (at times it did feel like The Short-Timers or Paco’s Story – the Lite version). What impressed me much more was the way Ms. White examines the other side of the anti-war sentiments of the 1960s and ’70s. Upon Rebecca’s return home, she is avoided and sneered at by her old friends and sneered at by random people (the scene on the airplane as she flies home to Massachusetts next to a businessman that treats her as though she has the plague because of her uniform). It’s a timely and important message – regardless of politics, regardless of how someone personally feels about a war, it’s not the fault of the young men and women who are dying in the fields or deserts. The anti-war sentiment bleeding into hate and animosity towards veterans is something that continues to happen today, and Ms. Emerson’s portrayal of this misdirected anger is incredibly thought-provoking and resonated with me far more than the familiar, less-inspired themes of the senselessness of war.

At the end of the day, I was moved by the story, and particularly by Rebecca as a character (but more on that later). There wasn’t much that physically happened in terms of plot which is a little disappointing, but as this is more of an introspective, quieter novel, it simply works. Though I do wish there was a larger scope for the story, for its contained nature, it is pretty damn good.

On the Characters:

Ana: Now, this is where this book really and truly, shines. I had a field day with Rebecca as a protagonist. She is complex and oh boy so freaking effed-up. When in Vietnam Rebecca moves about almost like an automaton performing tasks and trying not to think about the Christmas day when she lost friends, and nearly lost her own life. The happenings of that day are only alluded to until it becomes clear that there is something ELSE that happened there, when she was out in the jungle, alone for more than one day before being rescued. It is also pointed out by another character how much she changed after the incident: she used to be the person that lifted everybody’s spirits but she just lost the will to make jokes and to laugh. The memories, the survivor’s guilt are almost too much for Rebecca, nearly as much as the thought that she is down there out of her own accord, based on a stupid decision she made when her childhood sweetheart was killed in the war and her brother disappeared to Canada to avoid going.

For the duration of the book she just….keeps going and it is hard to say what it is exactly that fuels her: there is all sorts of guilt here and also hope. There is so much that is happening to her. There is her own family situation that needs to be addressed: her father who hates that she wanted to be a doctor, her brother who just ….went away. When she goes back to the real world who can possibly understand her? For the second part of the book, Rebecca does little more than to sleep and drink and it is heartbreaking to see someone so strong, so interesting that lost.

And then there is Michael. Even though the only point of view we get is Rebecca’s, I absolutely LOVED Michael. She keeps getting letters from him and they are amazing, I loved waiting to read them as much as Rebecca did.

“Everyone’s talking guy talk, and someone says, okay, Meat, you got the Lieutenant (yeah, that’s you), the Playmate of the Year, and Raquel Welch, and they’re all standing here, smiling at you – which one do you pick? So, of course, I said you. And you know what, I mean it. Because – I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you – but, you are really built, Rebbeca.

Love(!),
Mike

P.S. Are you laughing, or sitting there all pissed off?”

It is interesting how at first, she just keeps herself in check because he is out there, and the possibility that he will end up killed is huge and she needs to protect her heart. But he is so insistent she really can’t help falling in love with him. And every time someone was brought in , I held my breath along with her, until he did eventually come. When he was sent home, and gave her the picture of his beloved dog as a goodbye gift, it was all I could do stop from sobbing.

Another point is how both characters are extremely young – and
Michael is even younger : she is 21 , he is 19. That they are both so fucked-up is so freaking sad. But again, I just loved how Rebecca went after him to see if what they had was real or not. I have no idea if they will ever really work. He is not only younger and injured but also from a different background which in real life may prove their doom but he is also quite possibly the only one who will be there and UNDERSTAND when she wakes up screaming from her nightmares. And then, there is one scene when he gives her flowers – and it is fuelled with meaning and with the sense of humor they both shared and I think: yeah, they will be alright.

Plus, they have Otis, the dog.

Thea: Again, I have to agree with Ana – this is a character-heavy book, and it is in Rebecca’s characterizations that this novel really shines. Frankly, if it wasn’t for Rebecca’s heartfealt, painful narration, The Road Home would not have been half as good because of how skimpy it is in terms of plot – but because Rebecca is such a compelling, strong-yet-broken character, the novel just works. Rebecca is tough, physically pushing herself to the edge of sanity and exhaustion as she dedicates herself to her job, triaging as the never-ending stream of injured men following the Tet flood the base’s hospital. In an attempt to keep herself from thinking too much about any one thing, Rebecca dedicates herself to work. One of my favorite passages from this book is from Rebecca, trying to explain why one particular death at her hands affected her so much more than any of the other atrocities she’s seen – she focuses on the one death, because the others are too overwhelming. As Rebecca tries to cope with her own demons, drinking heavily to take the edge off, she also relies on her friendships with her superior officer, Major Doyle, and a romantic friendship with a drafted grunt named Michael.

I too loved Michael’s letters to Rebecca, and his character (though an aside: I fear I will never understand why Ana creates these emotional bonds to such a minor character in the overall scope of the novel! He’s barely in the book, and this is Rebecca’s story, not really Michael’s! But again, that’s a difference in our reading habits. I digress). The strained romance between these two very damaged characters is a touching one, though in the big picture, the appeal for me is not so much the romantic love between the two as it is about both Rebecca and Michael trying to become whole people again, and supporting each other to find whatever strength and happiness they can.

More interesting to me than Michael and the romance, however, was the character of Major Doyle and the odd friendship she and Rebecca form. Unlike the usual butch or hardass army woman stereotype, Major Doyle is a tough, no-nonsense career nurse, but she’s also a physically beautiful woman. She feels a responsibility for Rebecca much in the way an older sister would, and as Major Doyle’s story is gradually revealed, her friendship with Becky is one of the highest points in this novel. When Rebecca returns to “the World” and meets with her old friends, other well-to-do 22 year olds who are married happily with children and working dutifully as secretaries and wives, the contrast between Rebecca’s old friendships and the tough, soul-searching talks she and Major Doyle had are all the more glaring.

Other characters that bode mentioning are Rebecca’s family – Rebecca’s strained relationship with her father, her worried mother, and her draft-dodging brother. Things are tough all around, and Ms. White tackles these different relationships with gritty realism. Rebecca’s relationships are forever changed just as Rebecca is changed by the war, and Ms. White does not try to talk-down or sugar-coat any of it. There is a lot of darkness and grit to this book – but there’s also hope and the promise of future happiness and healing.

Final Thoughts, Observations & Rating:

Ana: This is such a hard book, made so easy to be read; with no easy answers, loads of truly flawed characters, and problems with no simple solution. I LOVED this book. Oh man. I loved this book so much I feel like reading it again. Rebecca and Michael are awesome. Yes, I have resorted to “love” and “awesome” because I am reduced to a puddle of blubbering nonsense. Well done Miss Angie and Thanks.

Thea: The Road Home is a gritty read, full of horror and hope. As a heroine, Rebecca is one of the finest characters I have read in a long time. Though it is a bit light on plot and content in terms of the war itself, the strength of its characters and its dedicated, respectful message to veterans more than compensates for any thematic skimp. Powerful, raw, and emotional, The Road Home is a book that deserves to be read by all.

Notable Quotes/Parts:

The War

“Bodies – some alive, some not – were literally stacked up all over the place, a scene so grisly that even one of her nightmares couldn’t have created it.
By the third day, they were being given amphetamines to stay awake, pausing only long enough to slug them down with cold strong coffee before moving on to the next patient. Rebecca worked on complete medical auto-pilot, starting IVs, stopping bleeding, and cutting off limbs that were only hanging by tendons to save the surgeons time. “

Additional Thoughts: The Road Home is actually a fifth book to complement a series of books about the Vietnam War but the only one with Rebecca as the main character. The first four books were written by the author under the name of Zach Emerson and are known as the Echo Company series. The books follow Michael Jennings – Rebecca’s romantic interest – from the moment he is drafted to go to War until the night before the Tet Offensive. It is in these books that we actually see how they met and how he fell in love with Rebecca.

* Echo Company #1: Welcome to Vietnam (1991)
* Echo Company #2: Hill 568 (1991)
* Echo Company #3: ‘Tis The Season (1991)
* Echo Company #4: Stand Down (1992)

I had a hard time trying to find covers for these and they all seem to be out of print!

Rating:

Ana: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Thea: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Today we bring you the latest installment in our new feature, “What She Said…” in which we both review books that the other has already read and reviewed. The idea arose because of the dilemma that if one of us reads and reviews a book, the other can’t really post again about it, right? WRONG! Hence, “What She Said…” was born. For those books that we REALLY want to read after the other has reviewed – and gushed – about it.

For today’s post, we take on Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier, and The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier
Roc (US)/Tor (UK), November 2008, Hardcover 416 pages

Original Review November 2008
Original Rating: 9 Damn Near Perfection

What Thea Said:

There are very few books that I have read this year that have left me dreading each turn of the page–not out of fear or distaste with the writing, but out of a passion to keep reading the book. Out of the knowledge that once the last page turns, that inevitable ache of loneliness will settle in–because the book is just that damn good.

Such is Heir to Sevenwaters.

This is a beautiful tale of family, courage, and–most importantly of all–love. I finished this book and was urged to flip back to the beginning just to read it again. I can only hope that Ms. Marillier plans on revisiting Sevenwaters again. And hopefully very, very soon.

What Ana Says: Oh my sweet baby Jesus – this book is made of awesome. Thea was absolutely right about it, this is the sort of book I love to read with its wonderful, perfect blend of Fantasy and Romance. Under Juliet Marillier’s expert writing, I am nothing but a puppet having my heart’s strings pulled. I laughed, I cried, I sighed more times than I can count. At one point, I thought I was going to drown in my own tears only to be rescued a few pages later by a scene that put a huge smile in my face. And this, THIS is what makes her books so damn good, the ability that this woman has to write amazingly emotional, romantic stories.

As with Daughter of the Forest, the author takes her sweet time with the setting of her story. It is not until way over page 100 that the plot gets moving but it doesn’t matter. Because the first 100 pages are the insight into the lives of the characters that you need in order to care: this is where you learn everything about Clodagh, the narrator of the story.

About her dedication to her family and to her family’s stronghold, Sevenwaters. About the family’s connection to the Good Folk who inhabit the forest around Sevenwaters. About how important is this moment in time, when her mother is pregnant once again, at a dangerous age, in the hope of giving birth to a son, who will be Heir to Sevenwaters. Everything is building up to that moment and it is a though things are suspended in time, waiting to see what is going to happen. Her father for example, has to deal with political complications stemming from Clodagh’s sister marriage but can’t concentrate on the matter. There are also visitors staying at Sevenwaters including the current Heir, Johnny and his band of warriors. Amongst them, there is one man who might be Clodagh’s sweetheart and his best friend, Cathal who is rude and distant.

This suspense affects Clodagh as well, who is in charge of the house, doing what she does best: organising the day to day life of Sevenwaters. Because they don’t know if the mother or the baby will survive, Clodagh has to put away plans to maybe one day get married until further notice. Then the baby is born and to everyone’s relief both mother and child, a boy, are well. Then something strange happens. One day Clodagh is taking care of her little brother when Cathal, mysterious, obnoxious Cathal, shows up at her bedroom to say goodbye and kisses her. When she is back inside the room the unthinkable has happened: the baby is gone and in his place, a changeling was left, a baby made of twigs and leaves. With Cathal gone at the same time, suspicions fall on him and on the possibility that the kidnapping was carried out for political reasons. No one thinks that there might a different explanation; expect for Clodagh who is the only one that can hear the changeling baby’s cries. She is convinced that this is not a mere kidnapping and that her brother’s survival is connected to the changeling’s survival; and because she is the only one that can see that he is alive, she is the one that has to make sure that he remains so, because no one will believe her. She is sure an exchange needs to be made soon and she takes the changeling baby in a journey to the Otherworld. She knows that the journey is full of dangers and she might not survive but on the way there, she is joined by Cathal who offers his help. And this is only the beginning.

After those first pages, I was completely INVESTED in Clodagh’s story. Understanding her need to save her brother AND the changeling’s life; compassionately feeling her frustration that one will believe her and her relief when Cathal can too, hear the baby.

All of Juliet Marillier’s protagonists are women, quietly strong and capable of sacrifices and Clodagh is no different. She has a capacity for compassion towards the baby made of twigs and faith towards a man who at first comes across as undeserving and these two traits, compassion and faith are what keep her going, fuelling this amazing woman ‘s actions.

And then there is Cathal. I can not dwell too much on him because I might spoil part of his mystery but let me just say that Cathal is one of those characters who grow on you little by little, as layer upon layer is disclosed to the reader and to Clodagh. But once you see who he is and how much he cares for Clodagh (like in this one scene, when he thinks she is gone and when he realises she is safe, he does something that is completely, totally aw-worthy, sigh-inducing and heart-warming) he is revealed as a Hero of the highest calibre.

Even if I don’t take into consideration the several aspects that make this book an excellent read: the lovely writing, the fantastic elements of Irish folklore, the politics involving the different chieftains around Sevenwaters, and concentrate only in the story, at its purest form and on the characters, it would be enough to put this in my keeper shelf.

There are several twists and turns, revelations and surprises to the point where by the end, the book you find yourself reading is not the book you thought you were when you first started. It also happens that the Fantasy elements are of the variety I most like: there is a Quest (a There and Back journey) with dangerous, scary threats; High Sacrifices; a trickster that needs to be tricked and tasks to perform. But in the end, this is a book about fighting for one’s True Love and Clodagh and Cathal’s story is one of the best love stories I ever read: full of loyalty and passion.

After reading three books by this author, I can appreciate Thea’s devotion to her books and I have now joined the ranks of devoted Marillier’s fans. Heir to Sevenwaters granted me that perfect reading experience and put me on a Book High. This is definitely a M.F.A. (Made For Ana) book and one that I wholeheartedly recommend to Fantasy and Romance readers alike.

Rating: I will see Thea’s 9 and raise it to a 10. This book, it was a perfect read for me.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Daw (US)/Gollancz (UK), March 2007 (US)/September 2007 (UK), Hardcover 662 pages

Original Review May 2009
Original Rating: 10 and I quote: “A solid, perfect 10 which just set the bar higher for everything I read henceforth”

What Ana Said:

If I had any talent for poetry I would write an Ode. If I could compose songs, I would make one for the lute and call it “The name of the Wind knocked my socks off”. But I don’t. As it stands, the ONLY thing I can do to convey how much I love this book, is to write this review, hoping against hope that it will be enough, and say that whenever Patrick Rothfuss takes Kvothe next, I will follow, blindly and willingly.

And I will finish by saying the following: I don’t want to run into any rushed declarations but The Name of the Wind may well be the best book I read since The Book Smugglers’ inception.

What Thea Says:

This installment of What She Said is a tall order – both of the books that Ana and I read were among our favorite reads of 2008 and 2009. In my case, with The Name of the Wind, there’s a little history. See, I bought my copy back in early 2008. I even told Ana about the book. We were SUPPOSED to do a joint review of the book. But then, one day in March, I start getting these emails from Ana, in which she is squeeing over the wonder that is The Name of the Wind! (That hussy, she betrayed me! She and my book were cheating on me!) And wouldn’t you know it – she absolutely loved it. LOVED IT. I’m talking drooling, crying, cradling it near her body when she sleeps at night, obsessed with it. And it is partially out of this situation that “What She Said” was born – because Ana loved this book so much, and I was desperate to read it and review it too.

THUS, “What She Said” was created. And now, seven months later, I finally had the opportunity to read The Name of the Wind…

And I finally see what all the fuss is about – because The Name of the Wind is one damn fine novel. So far as first novels go (not only as the first novel in a fantasy series, but as a debut novel, mind you), The Name of the Wind is undeniably, absolutely, positively brilliant.

This is the story of the innkeeper Kote – Kvothe that was. This is the story of the fabled, revered and simultaneously feared Kingkiller; a man who has done incredible things in his life, and still is not yet thirty years old. He has stolen princesses, fought demons, and slayed dragons. He has defied Kings, and mastered magic and music alike. He is A Hero. The Name of the Wind tells Kvothe’s story as he shares it with Chronicler, the finest story recorder in the land. Though Kote is hesitant to tell his long story, he agrees to let Chronicler transcribe it over the course of three days – The Name of the Wind is the first day.

What can I say about this book that hasn’t already been said? Mr. Rothfuss’s debut effort is a gorgeously work, written in rich, almost musical prose. This is a story to be savored, as it unfolds slowly, following Kvote’s life as a happy child in a troupe of legendary performers, to wretched, impoverished life on the streets after the murder of his family. It is an epic Hero’s Journey, encompassing a childhood full of love and cruelty alike, as Kvothe grows into a brilliant young man. Kvothe is perhaps too good to be true – he’s literally a genius as well as a master musician and an unparalleled talent with sympathy and his other university studies (“sympathy” being the arcanists’ magic in this world). He’s also charismatic, charming, and, judging from the ladies’ reactions, a looker too. He could easily have been an exhaustingly Mary Sue as a character, but he wasn’t, thanks to Mr. Rothfuss’s sure hand. Kvothe’s voice is that of a true performer, and he – through Mr. Rothfuss – knows how to tell a story. A dash of healthy arrogance throughout, Kvothe keeps Chronicler and Bast enthralled as he pours his heart out, and all his impressive accomplishments seem the results of a carefully constructed reputation as well as the fruit of very concentrated efforts. In short, Kvothe isn’t pretentious. I loved him and his story.

To this accomplishment, add the fact that the other characters were solid all around, if a tad predictable and less developed than Kvothe (but, being honest, this is Kvothe’s story, and he is the one we care the most for as readers). The world building, complete with an entirely new mythology and opposing religions was awesome, on a re-interpretive level reminiscent of Jacqueline Carey’s alternate world with the stories of Elua and his companions. The University too was a fabulous new location, where Kvothe learns his magical craft (though perhaps too much time is spent on his monetary woes and inability to enter the mysterious archives). I also loved how Mr. Rothfuss subverts fantasy tropes subtly – taking familiar settings and characters, and spinning them. The entire novel is, in fact, a tale in a tavern. He takes the tavern trope, the tales within a tale, the grand adventure, the Great Hero and makes them all his – as Ana would say, he “takes the mick out of them.”

In terms of shortcomings, there were only a sparse few – my biggest complaint (if you could call it that), is that not much happens in the story. While Kvothe goes through a lot, this first novel barely scratches the surface of Kvothe’s legacy. The promise made at the beginning of the book with Kvothe’s adventures and accomplishments are barely seen in this novel – in a way, it’s a whole lot of set up for action that hasn’t yet come. Also, as far as stories go, Kvothe’s tale is surprisingly mundane, taking a day to day look at his young life. While most fantasy novels that I’ve read spend some time on childhood and move on, jumping even, to the hero’s adult life, Mr. Rothfuss takes his time and shows everything – which is both admirable and infuriating. The way that the trilogy is set up, book 2 is where the great action, where the real meat and potatoes of the story comes in. The Name of the Wind is an amuse bouche, tantalizing the tastebuds with the promise of more to come…and I, along with the rest of fantasy-fandom, am hungry.

This is the greatest strength and curse for Mr. Rothfuss – how damn good this debut novel was, because now we are ravenous for more. I cannot wait to read The Wise Man’s Fear. I need to know why Kvothe became Kote, the reason for the lines on his face and his faded vibrance and lost magic. I want to know what these demon spider creatures are that are invading the land.

I cannot wait.

Rating: 9 – Damn Near Perfection – and it can only get better from here…

Reading Next on What She Said:

Ana: Resenting the Hero by Moira J. Moore

Thea: Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

Title: Heart’s Blood

Author: Juliet Marillier

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: Roc (US) / Tor (UK)
Publication Date: November 2009 (US) / October 2009 (UK)
Hardcover: 416 pages (US) / 560 pages (UK)

How did I get this book: Review Copy from Publisher

Why did I read this book: It’s no secret that I love Juliet Marillier. Her Sevenwaters books are among my all time favorites – I’ve even got Ana into them. I’ve also loved her young adult novels, Wildwood Dancing and Cybele’s Secret, so when I heard about Heart’s Blood I was literally salivating.

Summary: (from Juliet Marillier.com)
A haunted forest. A cursed castle. A girl running from her past and a man who’s more than he seems to be. A tale of love, betrayal and redemption…

As time passes, Caitrin learns there is more to the broken young man and his unusual household than she realised. It may be only through her love and determination that the curse can be lifted and Anluan and his people set free…

Review:

On a cold misty evening, a fair young girl travels a lonely road. Caitrin, beloved daughter and sister, runs away from a home that has become cold and spiteful since her father’s death and her sister’s elopement. At the hands of her cruel kinsmen, Caitrin becomes a husk of who she used to be, constantly terrified and powerless under their abusive blows – both verbal and physical. So, she gathers her father’s old writing tools and flees, in hopes of finding a distant relative, or work to support herself as a fully trained scribe. After hard traveling, she ends up on a wagon that takes her as far as Whistling Tor, a secluded, mist-shrouded village that holds many secrets. Taking rest in the village inn for a night, Caitrin overhears that the local Lord has need of a scribe – someone who can read and translate Latin, and organize old documents.

Though Caitrin hears the rumors of ghosts that plague Whistling Tor and tales about the creatures that lurk in the castle’s mists, she gathers her resolve and presents herself for the job. It is then that she discovers the extent of the curse that lays upon the chieftans of the Tor, and the heavy burden that rests on the current lord’s, Anluan’s, shoulders. As the weeks pass, Caitrin comes to understand and love the Tor and its inhabitants and will lend all of her hope, determination and strength to break the enchantment.

Heart’s Blood is easily one of my most highly anticipated books of 2009 – and with such high anticipation comes a directly proportional increase in the possibility for disappointment. But, as always seems to be the case with the esteemed Ms. Marillier, I was not disappointed – Heart’s Blood is a truly gorgeous, winsome book from beginning to end, and another book on the shortlist for favorite reads this year.

One of the things I love the most about Ms. Marillier is her ability to weave magic, mythology and folklore into every sentence on the page, and this latest novel is no exception. Heart’s Blood takes place in twelfth century Ireland, on the precipice of the Norman Invasion. Though I don’t know much at all about Irish history, Ms. Marillier manages to bring this medieval setting to life with the customs, language, and even the laws of the time, painting a vibrant, luscious and wholly convincing portrait of the period. There is magic too in Heart’s Blood, as Whistling Tor falls on a century of hardship. This is a different type of magic than the meddlesome Fair Folk of Sevenwaters or the gods of Piscul Draculi, though; in Heart’s Blood, the enchantment is rooted in human sorcery, in unrest and suffering. The atmosphere is distinct, different from the previous books in Ms. Marillier’s repertoire, and I genuinely loved the variation. There is a palpable danger in Heart’s Blood, a threat of nearly overwhelming hopelessness and darkness – but balanced with the endearing characters and beauty of the overarching story, it’s a bearable darkness.

Similar to Daughter of the Forest and Wildwood Dancing, Heart’s Blood is also a retelling of a classic tale; in this case, it’s a re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast, with the disfigured and misunderstood chieftan Anluan, and the brave, fair Caitrin, determined to rescue her prince. As with her previous books based on fables (The Seven Swans, The Twelve Dancing Princesses), Ms. Marillier not only takes a familiar tale and retells it, but she reconstructs the fable in its entirety. In the exquisitely plotted Heart’s Blood, the curse that lies upon Whistling Tor has its roots in human treachery, with a power-hungry, cold-hearted chieftan who would stop at nothing to amass an army to seize power – defying even the boundaries of death. But something went wrong with the enchantment, and has since plagued his descendants. Ms. Marillier’s plotting is as deft as ever, intricately weaving old curses with new doubts, mingling Anluan’s insecurities and fears with Caitrin’s troubled past, but keeping the promise of unrelenting hope for the future of these characters.

For, what is a Juliet Marillier novel without a devastating romance?

Heart’s Blood is one of the best, with all its angst and sweetness. Caitrin is another strong addition to the ranks of Awesomest Heroines Ever (many of which are from Ms. Marillier’s books). Caitrin is hopeful, even in the darkest of hours, but she is never saccharine sweet or unrealistic. Caitrin, for all her belief in her friends at the Tor and for all her faith in Anluan as a leader stumbles when it comes to facing her own demons, but gradually is able to discover that she has strength enough for herself too. Her wit, her tenacity, her admirable bravery – these are all qualities that Caitrin has in abundance, making her a heroine worth fighting for. And then, of course, there’s Anluan, the “beast” himself. Suffering from a palsy at a young age, Anluan’s body is not strong and hale – though he can walk and speak, his right side suffers from a severely limited range of motion and partial paralysis – and his uneven features have caused the villagers in Whistling Tor and outsiders to rumor him as a monster or freak. And Anluan, having lost his mother and father at a very young age, believes that he is not a whole man, much less a deserving leader. But beneath Anluan’s fears and insecurities, he is a strong willed man with an ability to lead his people and love deeply – as he gradually comes to understand. The romance that unfolds between Caitrin and Anluan is delicious, building slowly over the course of the novel and dramatically coming to fruition just when it needs to. This is a bittersweet romance, and a powerful one. It tugs at the heart-strings, it sweeps you up into its splendor, it gives you the warm fuzzies inside and leaves you smiling like a goon by the end of the book.

In short, I loved it. I fell in love with both Caitrin and Anluan just as they stumbled into love with each other.

I haven’t even mentioned all the other wonderful, detailed characters that fill this book’s pages – the ghostly little girl with her pleas for “baby,” the camaraderie that Rioghan and Eichri give both Caitrin and Anluan, the clever and dependable Magnus…and of course, the mysterious, antagonistic Muirne. Even Whistling Tor with its castle and surrounding woods is a character in its own right – as much as the moors of Wuthering Heights or the gothic landscape of Jane Eyre played in their respective books – with its twisting corridors, mist shrouded hill, and magic mirrors.

Heart’s Blood is a true gem, another beautiful novel from Juliet Marillier. Absolutely recommended, for old and new readers alike.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

At a place where two tracks met, the carter brought his horse to a sudden halt.

‘This is where you get down,’ he said.

Dusk was falling, and mist was closing in over a landscape curiously devoid of features. Apart from low clumps of grass, all I could see nearby was an ancient marker stone whose inscription was obscured by a coat of creeping mosses. Every part of me ached with weariness. ‘This is not even a settlement!’ I protested. ‘It’s – it’s nowhere!’
‘This is as far west as your money takes you,’ the man said flatly. ‘Wasn’t that the agreement? It’s late. I won’t linger in these parts after nightfall.’

I sat frozen. He couldn’t really be going to leave me in this godforsaken spot, could he?

‘You could come on with me.’ The man’s tone had changed. ‘I’ve got a roof, supper, a comfortable bed. For a pretty little thing like you, there’s other ways of paying.’ He set a heavy hand on my shoulder, making me shrink away, my heart hammering. I scrambled down from the cart and seized my bag and writing box from the back before the fellow could drive off and leave me with nothing.

‘Sure you won’t change your mind?’ he asked, eyeing me up and down as if I were a prime cut of beef.

‘Quite sure,’ I said shakily, shocked that I had been too full of my woes to notice that look in his eye earlier, when there were other passengers on the cart. ‘What is this place? Is there a settlement close by?’

‘If you can call it that.’ He jerked his head in the general direction of the marker. ‘Don’t know if you’ll find shelter. They’ve a habit of huddling behind locked doors at night around here, and with good reason. I’m not talking about troops of armed Normans on the road, you understand, but … something else. You’d far better come home with me. I’d look after you.’

I slung my bundle over my shoulder. On the tip of my tongue was the retort he deserved: I’m not so desperate, but I was not quite brave enough to say it. Besides, with only four coppers left and the very real possibility that pursuit was close behind me, I might soon be reduced to accepting offers of this kind or starving. It had taken all my courage to run away. After three days I was finding life on the road more difficult than I’d anticipated.

I turned my back on the carter and stooped to examine the weathered stone. The inscription read Whistling Tor. An odd name. If there was a hill nearby, there was no telling where. The vapour was thickening so fast that I could hardly see an arm’s length in front of me. As I traced the moss-crusted letters, the man drove away without another word. The drum of hoof-beats and the creak of wheels diminished to nothing. I took a deep breath and ordered myself to be strong. If there was a sign, there must be a settlement and shelter.

You can read the full excerpt HERE.

Additional Thoughts: I love the international covers for this book – they’re gorgeous and atmospheric. Check out the Australian cover image below:

The US cover is also relevant to the story and pretty in its own way, but I think international wins this round.

Also, author Juliet Marillier has an essay on her website about Heart’s Blood, her inspirations and the Beauty and the Beast tale. WARNING: The post contains plot spoilers for the book, but it a wonderful read for those who have already read the book or do not mind being spoiled. You can read the essay HERE.

Rating: 9 – Damn Near Perfection

Reading Next: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Giveaway Details:

We are giving away ONE copy of Heart’s Blood (with the US cover pictured above)! The contest is open to residents of the US and Canada, and will run until October 24 at 11:59 pm (PST). To enter, simply leave a comment here. Good luck!

Title: The Ask and the Answer

Author: Patrick Ness

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Young Adult

Publisher: Walker Books (UK) / Candlewick Press (US)
Publication Date: May 2009 (UK) / September 2009 (US)
Hardcover: 528 pages (US)

Stand alone or series: Book 2 in the Chaos Walking trilogy.

How did I get this book: Bought.

Why did I read this book: I read The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking book 1) earlier this year…and I loved it. From the unique writing style, to the ingenious premise, to the genuine characters, and the white-knuckle action, I loved it. And, given that book 1 ended with a killer coronary of a cliffhanger, I was ALL OVER The Ask and the Answer when it finally made its way here to the US for release!

Summary: (from Patrick Ness.com)
Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor’s new order.

And then, one day, the bombs begin to explode…

**As The Ask and the Answer is book 2 in an ongoing trilogy, please note that this review contains spoilers for book 1, The Knife of Never Letting Go. If you have not read book 1 and do not wish to be spoiled, please back away from this review! (However, this is a spoiler-free review of The Ask and the Answer itself)**

Review:

At the end of The Knife of Never Letting Go, Todd and Viola have made it to Haven in hopes of sanctuary from their pursuers, the ever-growing Prentisstown army…only to meet with grim news. Haven has been surrendered to Mayor – that’s President, now – Prentiss, and Viola is near death from her gunshot wound. When Todd awakens at the opening of The Ask and the Answer, however, he is alone with the enemy, with Viola nowhere in sight. Todd struggles awake with a single thought in his mind – to find her, to save her, to keep the both of them alive and out of the Mayor’s (the President’s) reach. But Todd finds himself trapped, ensnared in the Mayor’s web of manipulations, lies and truths. Forces larger than the two young teens pull them apart and test the strength of their relationship, as two warring camps emerge with the Mayor and men of New Prentisstown on one side, and the insurgent, mysterious “Answer” on the other.

This is a tough review to write (especially without spoilers), as The Ask and the Answer covers a LOT of ground, with each plot development and twist building on the last to a dramatic climax. The plotting, in itself, is effing brilliant. While The Knife of Never Letting Go was more of a quest/chase novel with Todd and Viola racing on an alien landscape to outrun the men of Prentisstown and warn other outposts, The Ask and the Answer is more contained and cerebral – but don’t let that fool you because it is every bit as thrilling as its predecessor. Driven by politics and tackling some big questions about absolute power, imprisonment, and even insurgent terrorism, this second book is a very timely and intelligent novel but never feels heavy-handed or condescending. Rather, Mr. Ness integrates these current issues into a savvy, inquisitive narrative. There are twists and turns and twists upon those twists and turns, and so much delicious heartstring-pulling drama in this second novel too, making it impossible to put down. I finished the whole thing (over five-hundred pages, mind you) in a single day’s frenzied reading flurry. It’s that good.

While the plotting had me on tenterhooks the entire time, the Chaos Walking books are really all about the strength of their characters. And in The Ask and the Answer, the characters we know and love (and some that we hate with every fiber of our beings) are back with a vengeance, just as compelling as we remember them from The Knife of Never Letting Go, but growing and changing too. Both Todd and Viola are growing up – maybe not in actual years, as it has only been weeks since their dramatic adventure across the New World together, but in terms of their emotional maturity. These are two characters who have been through hell, and are believably forever changed by their ordeals, and this is reflected in how each character becomes something more and different from the young teens we meet in the first novel. As with Knife, Todd is the main protagonist and his narrative drives this novel. He has become a man, not just by Prentisstown standards, but in a wisdom and weariness that belies his young 14-New World years age. How dearly do I love Todd? He is passionate and strong in this novel, but he’s ultimately human and goes through a lot in this second book – from his feelings of worry and fear for Viola, his mistrust of Mayor Prentiss, and his own position in New Prentisstown society. When we first met Todd in Knife, he was preoccupied with becoming a Man and finally being treated as an equal and as someone important; but in this novel, Todd is forced to grow up very quickly, and sees what being a man is truly about.

Viola too has changed from the untrusting girl from the first book, and gets her own voice in this second novel as The Ask and the Answer alternates between Todd’s and Viola’s points of view. This alternating narrative is incredibly effective, lending Viola more color as a character as readers are able to connect with her own thoughts beyond the lens of Todd’s narrative. We learn about her fears for Todd and herself, and her own independent questions and doubts. Seeing Viola in this new light, she’s every bit as sympathetic and genuine a character, and perhaps even stronger and steelier than Todd. Viola, plainly, rocks.

And then there are the OTHER characters – both old and new. The Mayor, now President, is an initial enigma, drawn painfully realistically by Mr. Ness as a layered character. I am loathe to spoil anyone, so I will simply say that no one is what they seem. These characters are genuine creatures, with feelings and their own endearments and shortcomings – from the alien Spackle (who play a much larger role in this novel), to the Davy Prentiss, to the mysterious Answer. (Although I will say, I’m not too keen on the appearance of a new character named Lee. That is all. )

Finally, the writing in The Ask and the Answer is fantastic and one of the things that sets this dystopian/science fiction series apart from the rabble. Todd’s narrative is as emotional and honest as ever, punctuated with his innocence (despite everything he has seen and been through), his sympathetic feelings, his intriguing perceptions & descriptions of Noise, and the occasional childlike spellings of certain words (i.e. “celebrayshun” for “celebration”). Contrasted with Viola’s more refined narrative, no less emotional or introspective, the overall effect is surprisingly stunning. Just like the plotting and the characters, I loved the writing.

This is one damn fine book, even better than its predecessor, and I cannot wait for the third and final book of the Chaos Walking series, Monsters of Men.

Oh yeah, and an FYI – as you might have guessed, The Ask and the Answer? It ends on another killer cliffhanger. Let the countdown for book 3 begin!

Notable Quotes/Parts: I was near tears at a pivotal, showdown scene near the end. I refuse to elaborate more – just know that there is some serious EMOTION comin’ atcha when you read this book. Guh.

Additional Thoughts: Author Patrick Ness has written a new story set in the Chaos Walking universe. Following Viola after her ship crashed, “The New World” is a short story you can read in full online. Huzzah!

‘There it is,’ my mother says, and what she means is that the dot we’ve been nearing for weeks, the one that’s been growing into a larger dot with two smaller dots circling it, has now become even larger than that, growing from a dot to a disc, shining back the light from its sun, until you can see the blue of its oceans, the green of its forests, the white of its polar caps, a circle of colour against the black beyond.

Our new home, the one we’ve been travelling towards since way before I was even born.

We’re the first ones to see it for real, not through telescopes, not through computer mapping, not even in my own drawings in the art classes I take on the Beta with Bradley Tench, but through just the couple centimetres of glass in the cockpit viewscreen.

We’re the first ones to see it with our own eyes.

You can read the whole thing online HERE.

Also, as I’ve mentioned above, the title of the third and final book in the Chaos Walking series has been announced by Patrick Ness: Monsters of Men. If you’ve read these books, you’ll be familiar with these strange but very significant and subtle titles. Mr. Ness reveals a little of the story behind the new title on his blog:

On page 430 of The Knife of Never Letting Go, Todd has a flash of memory: “War makes monsters of men, I hear Ben saying.”

On page 102 of The Ask and the Answer, Viola remembers it, too: “War makes monsters of men, I say, quoting Ben…”

And in the final volume, they’ve come to it at last. They’re going to find out for themselves how true that is, whether they want to or not.

Intrigued? I know I am. Monsters of Men comes out in May 2010 in the UK, but not until September 2010 in the US.

Also, fellow blogger and fan of the Chaos Walking series Rhiannon Hart has just recently had a great interview with Patrick Ness – make sure to check it out for little tidbits about the upcoming book!

Verdict: I loved The Ask and the Answer from beginning to end, and am on pins and needles waiting for Monsters of Men. Absolutely recommended. This series is amazing.

Rating: 9 – Effing Near Perfection

Reading Next: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro