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bedlamsbardSo, 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.
Let me confess: I have not seen the Broadway musical. And, uh, clearly I hadn't read the book, either, so perhaps that makes it better. One of my friends at Tulane, who is fannish but not in fandom and also the person who puts up with me blathering about Narnia and Dust at her all the time, sold it to me with the words, "See, Maguire did with Oz what it sounds like you're doing with Narnia! Also, there is a scene where this crazy political rebel lands in the middle of a house party with a bunch of snobs and they don't take her seriously, they're just, 'oooh, a political rebel! How exhilarating.'" (Look, let it never be said that I'm not conceited, because I...pretty much am.)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West isn't, strictly speaking, a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, since the majority of the book takes place before The Wizard of Oz begins. Elphaba is a child born green, with sharp teeth (her first action after she's been born is to bite the finger off a woman), to a priest and his wife. She grows up in a Kingdom of Oz that soon isn't, after the Princess Ozma has gone missing and the Wizard has taken over, and goes to university, where she's put into a room with Galinda -- who later becomes Glinda the Good Witch.
There's a lot of world-building in Wicked; not only is Maguire developing the political situation in Oz, but the different regions of Oz (Munchkinlanders are small, etc.) and there are familiar elements that are introduced, like the failed Yellow Brick Road project, the emeralds of the Emerald City, and the infamous ruby slippers that belong to Elphaba's sister Nessarose. There's a lot going on in this book; Maguire introduces a number of elements besides Elphaba's transformation into the Wicked Witch of the West. There's the side plot where Talking Animals are being subjugated and stripped of their civil rights, there's the philosophical and physiological question about whether animals can turn into Animals, there's Elphaba's family issues, there's Glinda's issues, etc., etc. It's almost too much -- in some cases it may be too much, because it feels like we're not getting the whole story, just pieces of it, and sometimes not even the pieces we want.
I mean, I liked it -- I read half of it on the plane from Houston to Seattle and half on the car ride from Seattle to Ellensburg -- but I'm not sure I like it. In the last section of the book, Elphaba snaps too quickly; all of a sudden she's the Wicked Witch of the West. And why is she creating flying monkeys? It seems vastly out of character. And the tragedy isn't...tragic enough, which has a lot to do with her snapping too quickly. I want to see her slow slide into madness! I want Nessarose's death to be the final thread, but I want to see her dangling over the precipice before that! And seriously, what's up with the flying monkeys?
That said, I liked the Elphaba/Boq, partially because I didn't see it coming.
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.
Let me confess: I have not seen the Broadway musical. And, uh, clearly I hadn't read the book, either, so perhaps that makes it better. One of my friends at Tulane, who is fannish but not in fandom and also the person who puts up with me blathering about Narnia and Dust at her all the time, sold it to me with the words, "See, Maguire did with Oz what it sounds like you're doing with Narnia! Also, there is a scene where this crazy political rebel lands in the middle of a house party with a bunch of snobs and they don't take her seriously, they're just, 'oooh, a political rebel! How exhilarating.'" (Look, let it never be said that I'm not conceited, because I...pretty much am.)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West isn't, strictly speaking, a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, since the majority of the book takes place before The Wizard of Oz begins. Elphaba is a child born green, with sharp teeth (her first action after she's been born is to bite the finger off a woman), to a priest and his wife. She grows up in a Kingdom of Oz that soon isn't, after the Princess Ozma has gone missing and the Wizard has taken over, and goes to university, where she's put into a room with Galinda -- who later becomes Glinda the Good Witch.
There's a lot of world-building in Wicked; not only is Maguire developing the political situation in Oz, but the different regions of Oz (Munchkinlanders are small, etc.) and there are familiar elements that are introduced, like the failed Yellow Brick Road project, the emeralds of the Emerald City, and the infamous ruby slippers that belong to Elphaba's sister Nessarose. There's a lot going on in this book; Maguire introduces a number of elements besides Elphaba's transformation into the Wicked Witch of the West. There's the side plot where Talking Animals are being subjugated and stripped of their civil rights, there's the philosophical and physiological question about whether animals can turn into Animals, there's Elphaba's family issues, there's Glinda's issues, etc., etc. It's almost too much -- in some cases it may be too much, because it feels like we're not getting the whole story, just pieces of it, and sometimes not even the pieces we want.
I mean, I liked it -- I read half of it on the plane from Houston to Seattle and half on the car ride from Seattle to Ellensburg -- but I'm not sure I like it. In the last section of the book, Elphaba snaps too quickly; all of a sudden she's the Wicked Witch of the West. And why is she creating flying monkeys? It seems vastly out of character. And the tragedy isn't...tragic enough, which has a lot to do with her snapping too quickly. I want to see her slow slide into madness! I want Nessarose's death to be the final thread, but I want to see her dangling over the precipice before that! And seriously, what's up with the flying monkeys?
That said, I liked the Elphaba/Boq, partially because I didn't see it coming.
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.