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So, I read a lot. This is like saying that I breathe a lot, but I just happen to read a whole lot more when I'm not, you know, at school, trying to cram the entirety of Victorian literature into my skull.
( Wicked, by Gregory Maguire )
Bloodhound: The Legend of Beka Cooper, Book 2, by Tamora Pierce.
I love Tamora Pierce a whole, whole lot. Like a lot of other girls my age or older, I started out with the Alanna series, which I still love. The Tortall Legends books take place several hundred years later, in a different Tortall, and are all kinds of delicious. It's not often you see high fantasy mystery (although I wouldn't quite class these books as high fantasy; I'd class them as low fantasy because of the setting), and Pierce plays it surprisingly well. Rebekah "Beka" Cooper, a first year member of the Corus Provost's Guard, is another fantastic female character, one with a handful of unique magical gifts. She speaks to the unquiet dead, carried on the backs of the pigeons that flock to her, listens to dust-spinners that gather the words of those who pass by their street-corners, and has a partner in the form of a familiar purple-eyed cat. Pounce isn't as present in this book as in Terrier, but his lack is made up for by Beka's scent-hound, Achoo. This time Pierce takes Beka and her partner Clary out of the familiar setting of Corus and sends them to Port Caynn, where there are a whole new set of Dogs and a whole new set of problems.
One of my only quibbles with the book was that I think the reason behind the forgery was a little too simplistic, but that's a minor matter, because like all good mysteries it's not really about the mystery, but what you learn about the characters and the world in the process.
Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories, by Diana Wynne Jones
Okay, here is the thing: I don't get short stories. Short stories and I, we don't understand each other. They're too short! There's not enough substance there, there are no bones, they're gone in one bite! They're not even like M&Ms half the time. *sulks* I love Diana Wynne Jones about sixty percent of the time; I think there was only one story here that I really loved, and that was "Little Dot", one of the longer stories in the collection.
Let me just say that I love talking cats, especially talking cats in collaboration with other talking cats. This probably goes back to Morwen's collection of cats in Patricia C. Wrede's Calling on Dragons. Little Dot and her pals can be my friends forever. (Interestingly, "Little Dot" is the second story in the collection narrated by a cat.)
Sorcery and Cecilia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, and, The Grand Tour, by Patricia C. Werede and Caroline Stevermer
Magic and society in Victorian England! Shortly followed by magic, mischief, society, and world domination in Victorian Europe! Two books -- there's a third, The Mislaid Magician, or, Ten Years After, but I haven't read that one yet -- about the exploits of a pair of cousins, Kate and Cecelia. And...I have to admit I always get them mixed up. Um, whoops? In the first book, Kate goes to London for her debut and gets embroiled in a mysterious conspiracy, while back at their childhood home, Cecelia finds herself drawn into what might just be another shade of that same conspiracy. Sorcery and Cecelia is told by letters sent back and forth between the two characters, with slightly overlapping stories.
In the second book, the newly married Kate and Cecelia and their husbands are off on a Grand Tour of the continent, and once again, they find themselves drawn into another conspiracy, where it seem someone might be seeking to restore Napoleon Bonaparte to power using a number of ancient magical rituals. This one is told throughout two separate sets of diary entries, Kate's and Cecelia's, which (I think) works slightly less well than the letter format used in Sorcery and Cecelia. If I could only recommend one of the books, I'd go for Sorcery and Cecelia over The Grand Tour; it's much more fun, less heavy, and doesn't seem to drag quite as much as The Grand Tour does at times.
Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside, by Holly Black
All three books are described as "A Modern Tale of Faerie", and that's what they are, putting faeries in prosaic locations like New Jersey and New York City -- hardly the first or the last time it's been done. They actually reminded me a lot of the Bedlam's Bard series by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill, only not quite as complex.
I have to admit to generally being put off by stories of Seelie and Unseelie Courts; they're often far too simplistic and there's too much opportunity for descriptive overkill. Black's not immune to this, but it's helped somewhat by the outside narrative. Kaye, the main character in Tithe and Ironside, is a human girl who turns out not to be -- a changeling. And she's caught between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. In Valiant, Val runs away from home and finds herself living in the subways of New York City, where she finds a hidden world of exiled faeries and a dangerous drug addiction.
All three books overlap to some extent; Tithe and Valiant both stand on their own, but Ironside combines characters and situations from all three. They're young adult urban fantasy, and fairly quick reads; lots of fun, but not as much substance as there could be, and some darker issues in the books are only touched on.
( Wicked, by Gregory Maguire )
Bloodhound: The Legend of Beka Cooper, Book 2, by Tamora Pierce.
I love Tamora Pierce a whole, whole lot. Like a lot of other girls my age or older, I started out with the Alanna series, which I still love. The Tortall Legends books take place several hundred years later, in a different Tortall, and are all kinds of delicious. It's not often you see high fantasy mystery (although I wouldn't quite class these books as high fantasy; I'd class them as low fantasy because of the setting), and Pierce plays it surprisingly well. Rebekah "Beka" Cooper, a first year member of the Corus Provost's Guard, is another fantastic female character, one with a handful of unique magical gifts. She speaks to the unquiet dead, carried on the backs of the pigeons that flock to her, listens to dust-spinners that gather the words of those who pass by their street-corners, and has a partner in the form of a familiar purple-eyed cat. Pounce isn't as present in this book as in Terrier, but his lack is made up for by Beka's scent-hound, Achoo. This time Pierce takes Beka and her partner Clary out of the familiar setting of Corus and sends them to Port Caynn, where there are a whole new set of Dogs and a whole new set of problems.
One of my only quibbles with the book was that I think the reason behind the forgery was a little too simplistic, but that's a minor matter, because like all good mysteries it's not really about the mystery, but what you learn about the characters and the world in the process.
Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories, by Diana Wynne Jones
Okay, here is the thing: I don't get short stories. Short stories and I, we don't understand each other. They're too short! There's not enough substance there, there are no bones, they're gone in one bite! They're not even like M&Ms half the time. *sulks* I love Diana Wynne Jones about sixty percent of the time; I think there was only one story here that I really loved, and that was "Little Dot", one of the longer stories in the collection.
Let me just say that I love talking cats, especially talking cats in collaboration with other talking cats. This probably goes back to Morwen's collection of cats in Patricia C. Wrede's Calling on Dragons. Little Dot and her pals can be my friends forever. (Interestingly, "Little Dot" is the second story in the collection narrated by a cat.)
Sorcery and Cecilia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, and, The Grand Tour, by Patricia C. Werede and Caroline Stevermer
Magic and society in Victorian England! Shortly followed by magic, mischief, society, and world domination in Victorian Europe! Two books -- there's a third, The Mislaid Magician, or, Ten Years After, but I haven't read that one yet -- about the exploits of a pair of cousins, Kate and Cecelia. And...I have to admit I always get them mixed up. Um, whoops? In the first book, Kate goes to London for her debut and gets embroiled in a mysterious conspiracy, while back at their childhood home, Cecelia finds herself drawn into what might just be another shade of that same conspiracy. Sorcery and Cecelia is told by letters sent back and forth between the two characters, with slightly overlapping stories.
In the second book, the newly married Kate and Cecelia and their husbands are off on a Grand Tour of the continent, and once again, they find themselves drawn into another conspiracy, where it seem someone might be seeking to restore Napoleon Bonaparte to power using a number of ancient magical rituals. This one is told throughout two separate sets of diary entries, Kate's and Cecelia's, which (I think) works slightly less well than the letter format used in Sorcery and Cecelia. If I could only recommend one of the books, I'd go for Sorcery and Cecelia over The Grand Tour; it's much more fun, less heavy, and doesn't seem to drag quite as much as The Grand Tour does at times.
Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside, by Holly Black
All three books are described as "A Modern Tale of Faerie", and that's what they are, putting faeries in prosaic locations like New Jersey and New York City -- hardly the first or the last time it's been done. They actually reminded me a lot of the Bedlam's Bard series by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill, only not quite as complex.
I have to admit to generally being put off by stories of Seelie and Unseelie Courts; they're often far too simplistic and there's too much opportunity for descriptive overkill. Black's not immune to this, but it's helped somewhat by the outside narrative. Kaye, the main character in Tithe and Ironside, is a human girl who turns out not to be -- a changeling. And she's caught between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. In Valiant, Val runs away from home and finds herself living in the subways of New York City, where she finds a hidden world of exiled faeries and a dangerous drug addiction.
All three books overlap to some extent; Tithe and Valiant both stand on their own, but Ironside combines characters and situations from all three. They're young adult urban fantasy, and fairly quick reads; lots of fun, but not as much substance as there could be, and some darker issues in the books are only touched on.