(Although posted by Vanessa, this is by Elaine)
–I was posed with this question: How does fiction reveal truth? I decided to write a blog post in which the form reflected the content. For those of you who don’ t know, two friends and I have been role-playing as Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, and Hermione Granger from J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels. We pretend to be in some nebulous time after the books end. But in this letter, it’s early July, just after the end of the sixth novel. And so I, Hermione, write the following letter to my friend Luna.–
Dear Luna,
Oddly enough, Horatio arrived just as Ellowyt did, so they’re hanging out on the balcony right now with Andromeda, chattering on about who knows what. I suppose you would know. Watching Horatio collide with the window and hearing Ellowyt chide him in her high, breathy voice made my day.
You asked how my summer has been. Luna, you’ve no idea what it’s like, being here. Mum and Dad are clueless. I haven’t told them much. I told them that the headmaster died, so the school was in transition. I didn’t tell them that a teacher killed him, or that said teacher works for a dark wizard. They do know about Voldemort, though—I told them about him years ago, before any of this really started—and about Death Eaters. When I told Dad about how Mr. Malfoy put that diary in Ginny’s cauldron, he instantly knew that Malfoy’s with Voldemort. Sorry, You-Know-Who. I forget.
How’s your dad? The latest edition of The Quibbler was excellent. Your column on the wrackspurts’ war effort was especially fascinating. The coverage of Dumbledore’s death and funeral were touching. Touching isn’t the right word. But you know. People in wizard photographs move, unless they’re dead. And that picture of Dumbledore…he wasn’t moving.
I’m putting off reading Ginny’s letter, if you can’t tell. Not that I’m afraid of what she’ll say—I’m afraid of what she won’t.
Rather like me with my mum, I’m sure. Neither of us says much. But Mum took the last four weeks off, says she wants to spend more time with me this summer. And when I’m planning what I’m planning!
I’m reading this book my parents have. I read it a million times as a kid, before I knew I was a witch, and I hadn’t picked it up again until now. It was written by a British muggle in the 1950s, but I think he must’ve had wizarding relatives or something, because he knows too much. It’s a book about these little people called “hobbits” who live in a world called “Middle Earth.” They have furry feet and like to eat six meals a day. Yes, they like pudding. I think you’d like them. They garden and play checkers and run around outside all day. And then everything goes wrong—an evil being, an immortal, inhuman sorcerer, makes a magical gold Ring into which he pours all his cruelty, his malice, his will to dominate all life, even until the ending of the world. The evil sorcerer was killed, but not entirely: his soul lived on in the Ring.
Oh, Luna, if only I could tell you everything. If only you knew how much we Hogwarts students are like hobbits in the Shire. You ask, again, if I can tell you anything more about what happened the night Dumbledore died. I can’t. I’m sorry. I promised. But I can tell you this—I’m not going back to Hogwarts in the fall. You probably already figured that out.
It’s weird, thinking I’m not going to be at school in the fall. I’m reading constantly, just as if I were—and not just muggle novels, but every book of spells, potions, history, whatever I can get my hands on. I’ve been apparating around the country collecting books. Did you know there’s a wizarding library under a pub at Oxford? I stumbled on it when I was really hungry after copying down runes all day at Stonehenge. The pub’s called “The Eagle and Child.” Ironically, that’s where the muggle who wrote those hobbit books had a writing club with some other muggles.
So although I’m still reading, studying, planning….I’m not getting a grade. It’s strange. I came across a boggart when I went to Snowdon last week—I’d contacted a witch who had a six hundred year-old book on patronuses (patroni?) and psychology that I want to read—and anyway, it wasn’t McGonagall telling me I’d failed all my exams anymore. It was….well, I can’t really tell you. It was Dumbledore telling me something else, something that I’ve been so worried about for the last four weeks I can’t sleep. Something about defeating You-Know-Who. I can distract myself from it when I’m, you know, off reading runes at Stonehenge or Avebury or something. But then I try to sleep….and I can’t not be terrified that the worst, the absolute worst, might be true.
So that’s when I pick up the hobbit books again. You’ll tell me, I know, that I should get out my quill, ink, and parchment, and write you or Ginny a letter, but I can’t tell Ginny what I’m thinking. I just can’t! It’s like this wall has come down between us in the last four weeks. She’s so scared, but she won’t say it…and I can’t tell her not to be scared, because it’d be a lie.
I wish I could tell Mum.
Anyway, so that’s when I pick up the muggle novel. I just finished the second book in the trilogy. The two main hobbits, Frodo and Sam, are carrying the Ring into Mordor, the evil sorcerer’s stronghold, where they can finally destroy it by casting it into the fire from whence it came. But right as they’re about to enter Mordor, they get attacked by a giant spider, and Sam thinks Frodo is dead. When some goblins show up, Sam takes the Ring and hides, determined to press on and destroy it in spite of his grief. Then the goblins discover that Frodo really isn’t dead—the spider’s venom has just made him unconscious—and so Sam is furious with himself and decides he must go rescue Frodo. And so Sam carries the Ring into Mordor.
Luna, Sam is a gardener. He hasn’t studied magic like I have. And he’s not even four feet tall. But he presses onward, on his own, into Mordor. He has courage and loyalty that I just don’t have.
I know how the third book ends. Sam rescues Frodo, and they get all the way to Mount Doom where they can destroy the Ring. At the last moment, Frodo—who’s obsessed with the Ring at this point—refuses to throw it into the fire. There’s a scuffle involving a very creepy creature that ends with said creature biting the Ring off Frodo’s finger and tumbling into the fire with the Ring.
There’s a horrible moment that I’m dreading reading when Frodo nearly falls into the fire, too. And I can’t help but wonder—what if he had fallen in? What if Frodo had been unable to give up the Ring? What if, to save the world, it had been necessary for Sam to push Frodo into the fire?
You’ll tell me that while it may be necessary and honorable to sacrifice oneself to save others, it’s never necessary to kill another person to save everyone. But what if it is necessary for one person to sacrifice him or herself, and he or she doesn’t know it? What do you do, if you—
Never mind. I ought to burn this letter. But if I do, I’ll feel even more alone than I do now.
Luna, I wish we could have tea and talk in person. But you’re tied up at home with your dad’s restoration project, and I’m terribly busy, too. I’ll be going to the Burrow in another week, so you’ll have to send Ellowyt there with your next letter if you don’t write back directly.
I’m sending Andromeda back with Ellowyt today. Thanks so much for agreeing to take her for now. I don’t know what I’d do with her otherwise. She’ll likes you and will enjoy being at Hogwarts again. You and Ginny will take good care of her.
Ginny. I should read her letter. Have you heard from her? Has she said anything?
Well, I should go. I’m writing a new undetectable extension charm. None of the existing ones are good enough; I can’t fit enough stuff in a hand-held bag for three people. I need to have it done before I go to the Burrow.
Hope this letter finds you and your dad well.
With love,
Hermione
P.S. I saw a golden snidget yesterday in the Yorkshire Dales! I took a picture of it on my—well, you call it a “tella shell” but it’s not a shell, it’s a cell phone. I’ll have to show you sometime since I can’t exactly send it to you. No, I’m not going to explain; it’d take another whole letter.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
10 Novels for Lazy Beach Days
Requirements: Must be happy, easy to read, thoroughly engaging, and quite clean.
In no particular order.
1) The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall. Vish Puri, owner and operator of Most Private Investigators, Ltd., knows a few things for certain: violent crime is rising in a Delhi transformed by Western influences; someone is trying to kill him; the only honest lawyer in town is being framed for murdering a servant girl who wasn’t murdered at all; and women cannot be detectives. Hall’s lush descriptions of Delhi enchant the reader; his intricate, masterful weaving of his main plot and several perfectly complementary subplots keep the reader quite happily ensconced in the deceptions and dangers of modern India. Beware the Punjabi curse words; the glossary of Punjabi words at the back is very helpful except when the word in question is an f-bomb, Punjabi-style. Enjoy that amusing syntax of the Indian characters’ English; the quirky dynamic between mother, son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter in Puri’s home; and Puri’s aptly descriptive nicknames for his employees, such as “Torchlight” and “Facecream.” Possibly one of the all-around-best mysteries I’ve ever read. Five stars.
2) Roverandom by J. R. R. Tolkien. After a puppy named Rover is separated from his little boy at an English beach, an evil wizard transforms Rover into a stuffed animal! Rover travels to the moon and to the depths of the ocean searching for a good wizard to turn him back into a real dog so he can go home to his little boy. Adorable, brilliant, and short. Children’s books aren’t written like this anymore. Five stars.
3) Flabbergasted by Ray Blackston. A contemporary Christian chick-lit novel….except that it’s told from a male, Texan stock-broker’s perspective, which makes the genre’s many clichés funny all over again. Ridiculously funny. In one of the novel’s early highlights, the South Carolina church’s single’s group goes on a beach retreat. The guys, sprawled over their two-small cabin’s floor trying to sleep, get buzzed by mosquitoes. In the middle of the night, one particularly brilliant young man decides it’s a good idea to grab the insect repellant and spray it in the air at the bugs. It succeeds and the mosquitoes vanish. But the next morning, the guys awake to blue spray paint all over them, their stuff, and the rented cabin’s interior. Joy comes with the morning. Four stars.
4) Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino save the world again from Neo-Nazis who are using Atlantean artifacts to destroy the world, much like the original Nazis did with Judeo-Christian relics in Indiana Jones. Keep in mind that Pitt and Giordino pre-date Jones—they’ve been defeating evil villains who plan to use ancient artifacts to destroy the world since the 1960s, while Indy’s only been in action since 1980! A fun, fun, fun novel, my personal favorite of the series. It’s also one of the cleaner of the Dirk Pitt novels…and the one in which Giordino gets the girl! Four stars.
5) The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. Ok, so I don’t know what a “determined chin” looks like, but I do know that Tuppence, the girl who sports said chin, is one of Agatha’s most fun female sleuths. She and her partner (turned fiancé turned husband), Tommy, completely out of work in the declining British economy in 1922, decide to put an ad in the Times: two young adventurers, willing to do anything and go anywhere, provided it’s reasonable and the pay is good. You can imagine the rest. Four stars.
6) The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Precious Ramotswe is rather happy with being a “traditionally built” woman in her upper thirties, the daughter of one of the best men in Botswana, and the sensible, resourceful owner of the only private detective agency in Botswana. As a mystery novel, McCall Smith’s work is an oddity, is it is more character-driven than plot-driven. Like real-life private and police detectives, Mma Ramotswe works several diverse cases at once and sometimes none at all, allowing the main plot to be structured around the ebb and flow of a quiet life on the edge of the Kalahari desert. McCall Smith’s descriptions of Africa and its people are intoxicating in their simple beauty. The novel feels effortless in spite of its perfect characterizations and atmosphere; I often wondered about McCall Smith’s editing process and wished that I could replicate it. A delightful novel whose delightful characters will bring you back for more. I’ve read four of its sequels so far. Five stars.
7) Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. Not the greatest mystery Peters has ever written, but the highly amusing first book in a riveting saga that takes three generations of the Emerson clan from 1870s through the horrors (and antics) of World War I espionage to the 1930s. Peters’ intelligent, self-reliant, strong-willed, and yet very Victorian Amelia Peabody is one of the best female narrative voices I’ve read (better than Agatha Christie’s Anne Beddingfield); Amelia and the bellicose Radcliffe Emerson’s repartee at times rises almost to the height of that of Beatrice and Benedict. Peters’ prose is magnificent; through the course of the novel, the reader will learn a great deal about Egyptology, archeology in general, British Egypt, and Victorian society. Five stars.
8) Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan. Twelve-year-old Perseus Jackson—afflicted by ADD, dyslexia, mean bullies, a crippled best friend, and a concatenation of very strange events that make him think he’s gone mad— just wants to live an ordinary life with his adored mother, but the Fates clearly have other plans. Percy discovers he’s the son of Poseidon, the Greek sea-god, and that nearly god, demigod, or monster wants to kill him for something he didn’t do. Oh, and his very existence is a mistake, which helps a Jr. Higher’s self esteem a lot. But throughout Percy’s adventures/misadventures, he makes some great friends, learns some mean swordplay, and learns how to sacrifice his own desires to help others. Greek mythology in modern America. So much fun. And it just gets better. Four stars.
9) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling. On orphaned Harry Potter’s eleventh birthday, a huge, bumbling, and endearing man named Hagrid tells Harry his true identity: he’s a wizard! Moreover, his parents, a wizard and witch, did not die in a car accident, but were murdered by the most powerful and wicked wizard of the 20th century. Hagrid takes Harry along for a joyous, wonder-ful romp through a magical London and to the now legendary Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rowling’s first novel’s plot is basic Hero’s Journey stuff; the “mystery” Harry and his new best friends Ron and Hermione must solve is a bit elementary. But Rowling’s skilled ensconcing of important clues to events later in the series even in the first installment would make Charles Dickens proud. Also noteworthy, an Ivy League grad student just published her successful doctoral thesis…proving that Harry and Ron wouldn’t have even survived The Sorcerer’s Stone without Hermione. Tons of fun and surprisingly profound; don’t miss it. Four stars.
10) The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. Have not yet read this novel; it’s next on my own list! Turning from the Botswana he grew to know so well during regular trips to the country as an adult, McCall Smith now writes about his native Edinburgh, Scotland; its quirky inhabitants; their various amusing foibles… and occasionally violent actions against their fellow human beings.
See you at the beach!
In no particular order.
1) The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall. Vish Puri, owner and operator of Most Private Investigators, Ltd., knows a few things for certain: violent crime is rising in a Delhi transformed by Western influences; someone is trying to kill him; the only honest lawyer in town is being framed for murdering a servant girl who wasn’t murdered at all; and women cannot be detectives. Hall’s lush descriptions of Delhi enchant the reader; his intricate, masterful weaving of his main plot and several perfectly complementary subplots keep the reader quite happily ensconced in the deceptions and dangers of modern India. Beware the Punjabi curse words; the glossary of Punjabi words at the back is very helpful except when the word in question is an f-bomb, Punjabi-style. Enjoy that amusing syntax of the Indian characters’ English; the quirky dynamic between mother, son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter in Puri’s home; and Puri’s aptly descriptive nicknames for his employees, such as “Torchlight” and “Facecream.” Possibly one of the all-around-best mysteries I’ve ever read. Five stars.
2) Roverandom by J. R. R. Tolkien. After a puppy named Rover is separated from his little boy at an English beach, an evil wizard transforms Rover into a stuffed animal! Rover travels to the moon and to the depths of the ocean searching for a good wizard to turn him back into a real dog so he can go home to his little boy. Adorable, brilliant, and short. Children’s books aren’t written like this anymore. Five stars.
3) Flabbergasted by Ray Blackston. A contemporary Christian chick-lit novel….except that it’s told from a male, Texan stock-broker’s perspective, which makes the genre’s many clichés funny all over again. Ridiculously funny. In one of the novel’s early highlights, the South Carolina church’s single’s group goes on a beach retreat. The guys, sprawled over their two-small cabin’s floor trying to sleep, get buzzed by mosquitoes. In the middle of the night, one particularly brilliant young man decides it’s a good idea to grab the insect repellant and spray it in the air at the bugs. It succeeds and the mosquitoes vanish. But the next morning, the guys awake to blue spray paint all over them, their stuff, and the rented cabin’s interior. Joy comes with the morning. Four stars.
4) Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler. Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino save the world again from Neo-Nazis who are using Atlantean artifacts to destroy the world, much like the original Nazis did with Judeo-Christian relics in Indiana Jones. Keep in mind that Pitt and Giordino pre-date Jones—they’ve been defeating evil villains who plan to use ancient artifacts to destroy the world since the 1960s, while Indy’s only been in action since 1980! A fun, fun, fun novel, my personal favorite of the series. It’s also one of the cleaner of the Dirk Pitt novels…and the one in which Giordino gets the girl! Four stars.
5) The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie. Ok, so I don’t know what a “determined chin” looks like, but I do know that Tuppence, the girl who sports said chin, is one of Agatha’s most fun female sleuths. She and her partner (turned fiancé turned husband), Tommy, completely out of work in the declining British economy in 1922, decide to put an ad in the Times: two young adventurers, willing to do anything and go anywhere, provided it’s reasonable and the pay is good. You can imagine the rest. Four stars.
6) The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Precious Ramotswe is rather happy with being a “traditionally built” woman in her upper thirties, the daughter of one of the best men in Botswana, and the sensible, resourceful owner of the only private detective agency in Botswana. As a mystery novel, McCall Smith’s work is an oddity, is it is more character-driven than plot-driven. Like real-life private and police detectives, Mma Ramotswe works several diverse cases at once and sometimes none at all, allowing the main plot to be structured around the ebb and flow of a quiet life on the edge of the Kalahari desert. McCall Smith’s descriptions of Africa and its people are intoxicating in their simple beauty. The novel feels effortless in spite of its perfect characterizations and atmosphere; I often wondered about McCall Smith’s editing process and wished that I could replicate it. A delightful novel whose delightful characters will bring you back for more. I’ve read four of its sequels so far. Five stars.
7) Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. Not the greatest mystery Peters has ever written, but the highly amusing first book in a riveting saga that takes three generations of the Emerson clan from 1870s through the horrors (and antics) of World War I espionage to the 1930s. Peters’ intelligent, self-reliant, strong-willed, and yet very Victorian Amelia Peabody is one of the best female narrative voices I’ve read (better than Agatha Christie’s Anne Beddingfield); Amelia and the bellicose Radcliffe Emerson’s repartee at times rises almost to the height of that of Beatrice and Benedict. Peters’ prose is magnificent; through the course of the novel, the reader will learn a great deal about Egyptology, archeology in general, British Egypt, and Victorian society. Five stars.
8) Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan. Twelve-year-old Perseus Jackson—afflicted by ADD, dyslexia, mean bullies, a crippled best friend, and a concatenation of very strange events that make him think he’s gone mad— just wants to live an ordinary life with his adored mother, but the Fates clearly have other plans. Percy discovers he’s the son of Poseidon, the Greek sea-god, and that nearly god, demigod, or monster wants to kill him for something he didn’t do. Oh, and his very existence is a mistake, which helps a Jr. Higher’s self esteem a lot. But throughout Percy’s adventures/misadventures, he makes some great friends, learns some mean swordplay, and learns how to sacrifice his own desires to help others. Greek mythology in modern America. So much fun. And it just gets better. Four stars.
9) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling. On orphaned Harry Potter’s eleventh birthday, a huge, bumbling, and endearing man named Hagrid tells Harry his true identity: he’s a wizard! Moreover, his parents, a wizard and witch, did not die in a car accident, but were murdered by the most powerful and wicked wizard of the 20th century. Hagrid takes Harry along for a joyous, wonder-ful romp through a magical London and to the now legendary Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rowling’s first novel’s plot is basic Hero’s Journey stuff; the “mystery” Harry and his new best friends Ron and Hermione must solve is a bit elementary. But Rowling’s skilled ensconcing of important clues to events later in the series even in the first installment would make Charles Dickens proud. Also noteworthy, an Ivy League grad student just published her successful doctoral thesis…proving that Harry and Ron wouldn’t have even survived The Sorcerer’s Stone without Hermione. Tons of fun and surprisingly profound; don’t miss it. Four stars.
10) The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith. Have not yet read this novel; it’s next on my own list! Turning from the Botswana he grew to know so well during regular trips to the country as an adult, McCall Smith now writes about his native Edinburgh, Scotland; its quirky inhabitants; their various amusing foibles… and occasionally violent actions against their fellow human beings.
See you at the beach!
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
My First Kiss
Yes. It's true. I saw him on Saturday while I was sitting outside Starbucks with my friend. He was picking up pizza and cookie dough with his family. I discussed the cookie dough with him. When I saw him at church on Sunday, he appeared quite pleased to see me two days in a row. (And, at the end of the day, as he left, he said something about not being able to see me the next few days. But anyway...) After service, I was out front talking to him about something or other. I honestly can't remember what I was saying. But all of a sudden he leaned forward and kissed me right on the mouth. There was a great uproar and I think I walked away to tell all my friends. My mom made some comment about not being able to say I've never been kissed anymore. I gave in to a momentary appreciation of his cuteness.
Of course, it's not really going to work out. He seems to be quite the player. As soon as he kissed me my sister accused him of cheating, I know he has a thing for my best friend, and later another friend warned to back off for fear of a cat fight. It's really too bad. We had so much going for us. I mean, it's a slight drawback that he won't graduate from high school for another sixteen years, but a face like that is worth waiting for, isn't it?
Of course, it's not really going to work out. He seems to be quite the player. As soon as he kissed me my sister accused him of cheating, I know he has a thing for my best friend, and later another friend warned to back off for fear of a cat fight. It's really too bad. We had so much going for us. I mean, it's a slight drawback that he won't graduate from high school for another sixteen years, but a face like that is worth waiting for, isn't it?
Monday, July 12, 2010
Say Anything
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Summer Book Review: Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara
Touted as both a wildly original fantasy novel and a solid police procedural, I was crazily excited to read this book. My two favorite genres combined into one book!
Not really.
There’s only one scene—a magical autopsy that’s pretty cool—that’s anything like a police procedural. The book is structured more like a thriller than a mystery novel, as Sagara’s cop protagonist Kaylin Neeya more stumbles upon clues rather than uncovering them. Yes, down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid, and that’s totally Kaylin and her partners Severn and Tiamaris (a dragon who can turn into a humanoid figure. Totally fun!). And the tension between Kaylin and Severn ever-present in the novel’s substrata propels the emotion forward.
The world Sagara creates is vivid and dangerous, not at all reeking of The Lord of the Rings like many fantasy novels on the market (Eg: Terry Brooks’, R. A. Salvatore’s, and Margaret Wies and Tracy Hickman’s novels. If you don’t believe me, pick up five random books by different authors in the fantasy section at Borders and see what percentage have elves, orcs, and hobbit-like characters in them. It’s called “high fantasy” but I think it’s cheating. My sister tells me Sagara writes “high fantasy” as well.). But Sagara uses the first half of the novel to describe the world, not the develop the plot. Which makes the first two hundred pages—and believe me, you feel each of the two hundred—torture. Once you’ve made it through the first half, however, the plot flies and one will have I-just-can’t-put-it-down syndrome.
My sister tells me the series gets increasingly better as it goes, a lá Harry Potter, so I’ll probably read the next book. Yes, the second half of Cast in Shadow totally made up for the first half.
And, best of all, I can rate the novel PG for violence and occasional mild swearing! That doesn’t happen every day.
Four stars
****
Not really.
There’s only one scene—a magical autopsy that’s pretty cool—that’s anything like a police procedural. The book is structured more like a thriller than a mystery novel, as Sagara’s cop protagonist Kaylin Neeya more stumbles upon clues rather than uncovering them. Yes, down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid, and that’s totally Kaylin and her partners Severn and Tiamaris (a dragon who can turn into a humanoid figure. Totally fun!). And the tension between Kaylin and Severn ever-present in the novel’s substrata propels the emotion forward.
The world Sagara creates is vivid and dangerous, not at all reeking of The Lord of the Rings like many fantasy novels on the market (Eg: Terry Brooks’, R. A. Salvatore’s, and Margaret Wies and Tracy Hickman’s novels. If you don’t believe me, pick up five random books by different authors in the fantasy section at Borders and see what percentage have elves, orcs, and hobbit-like characters in them. It’s called “high fantasy” but I think it’s cheating. My sister tells me Sagara writes “high fantasy” as well.). But Sagara uses the first half of the novel to describe the world, not the develop the plot. Which makes the first two hundred pages—and believe me, you feel each of the two hundred—torture. Once you’ve made it through the first half, however, the plot flies and one will have I-just-can’t-put-it-down syndrome.
My sister tells me the series gets increasingly better as it goes, a lá Harry Potter, so I’ll probably read the next book. Yes, the second half of Cast in Shadow totally made up for the first half.
And, best of all, I can rate the novel PG for violence and occasional mild swearing! That doesn’t happen every day.
Four stars
****
Summer Book Review: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
Fun, but predictable and bland. Two siblings—the fourteen-year-old son and twelve-year-old daughter of a Nubian father and a white mother—are separated after their mother’s tragic death and suddenly reunited on the night that their father basically blows up the British Museum. Don’t worry, the Rosetta Stone-turned-shrapnel reassembles itself…like magic. Because it ‘s ancient Egyptian magic!
Carter and Sadie are apparently descendents of the Pharaohs and thus have great magical powers. And Sadie’s cat—reminiscent of both Ramses Emerson’s feline partner-in-crime Bastet and Hermione Granger’s too-intelligent kitty Crookshanks—turns out to be Bast (or “Bastet”), the cat goddess, whom Carter and Sadie’s father Julius sent to protect his children. Although the “revelation” that Muffins was actually a goddess was, well, hackneyed, the antics that result are the best parts of the novel. Bast must protect Carter and Sadie, right? Well, that includes protecting them from giant steel balls (which pass for modern art in NYC). After she pounces on the priceless piece of “art” and makes it disintegrate, she tells the children, “It was a ball! You never know with balls!” At another point, the adolescents must turn themselves into birds. Bast applauds their first successful transformation: “Good job! You look delicious… I mean wonderful!” The silly scenes birthed from the irony of two humans turned into birds and the cat goddess turned into a human are the best parts of the novel.
But the novel is rife with plot elements as predictable as the whole Muffin=Bast "exposé." If you’ve read the first Percy Jackson novel, The Lightening Thief, you’ll be able to predict every single major plot twist in The Red Pyramid (Except for two, one of which I predicted about 150 pages before Riordan actually revealed it. The other, however, was a complete shock.). Riordan’s creative enough to give us a pimpled, wedding-dress clad satyr named Grover (who loves enchiladas) who, trapped in a cave by Polyphemus, must forever weave and unweave his bridal veil in an effort to postpone his wedding with the vicious Cyclops until help arrives (that was in Sea of Monsters, the gloriously hilarious second Percy Jackson book). So I don’t understand why Riordan has to resort to the same old plot.
Moreover, while Percy’s quirky, snarky narration made Riordan’s first series a standout among young adult literature, Riordan’s choice to use both Carter and Sadie’s POV in his narration ultimately makes the novel fall flat. Riordan has Carter and Sadie speak the story in turns into a tape-recorder during a car trip after the story takes place. So we switch, every two chapters, from a level-headed, American, teenage guy’s voice to a disrespectful, quasi-British, preteen girl’s voice. Carter’s a much more engaging narrator, partly because his “obnoxious” sister really is a bit obnoxious. And Sadie sounds more like someone trying to sound British than someone who is British. That’s probably Riordan trying to dumb down the Englishness for a readership of American kids who don’t watch BBC like I do…or it’s Riordan not knowing what he’s doing. That said, the narrative device would work if Sadie wasn’t obnoxious and Carter so bland.
If you want a witty, easy-to-read, PG-rated novel populated by snarky teenagers, mythic figures, and enough magic to make The Wizard of Oz in Technicolor look as insipid as ordinary suburbia, read The Lightening Thief and its excellent sequels, not The Read Pyramid. Better yet, pick up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone if you haven’t yet. Or reread The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Two Stars
**
Carter and Sadie are apparently descendents of the Pharaohs and thus have great magical powers. And Sadie’s cat—reminiscent of both Ramses Emerson’s feline partner-in-crime Bastet and Hermione Granger’s too-intelligent kitty Crookshanks—turns out to be Bast (or “Bastet”), the cat goddess, whom Carter and Sadie’s father Julius sent to protect his children. Although the “revelation” that Muffins was actually a goddess was, well, hackneyed, the antics that result are the best parts of the novel. Bast must protect Carter and Sadie, right? Well, that includes protecting them from giant steel balls (which pass for modern art in NYC). After she pounces on the priceless piece of “art” and makes it disintegrate, she tells the children, “It was a ball! You never know with balls!” At another point, the adolescents must turn themselves into birds. Bast applauds their first successful transformation: “Good job! You look delicious… I mean wonderful!” The silly scenes birthed from the irony of two humans turned into birds and the cat goddess turned into a human are the best parts of the novel.
But the novel is rife with plot elements as predictable as the whole Muffin=Bast "exposé." If you’ve read the first Percy Jackson novel, The Lightening Thief, you’ll be able to predict every single major plot twist in The Red Pyramid (Except for two, one of which I predicted about 150 pages before Riordan actually revealed it. The other, however, was a complete shock.). Riordan’s creative enough to give us a pimpled, wedding-dress clad satyr named Grover (who loves enchiladas) who, trapped in a cave by Polyphemus, must forever weave and unweave his bridal veil in an effort to postpone his wedding with the vicious Cyclops until help arrives (that was in Sea of Monsters, the gloriously hilarious second Percy Jackson book). So I don’t understand why Riordan has to resort to the same old plot.
Moreover, while Percy’s quirky, snarky narration made Riordan’s first series a standout among young adult literature, Riordan’s choice to use both Carter and Sadie’s POV in his narration ultimately makes the novel fall flat. Riordan has Carter and Sadie speak the story in turns into a tape-recorder during a car trip after the story takes place. So we switch, every two chapters, from a level-headed, American, teenage guy’s voice to a disrespectful, quasi-British, preteen girl’s voice. Carter’s a much more engaging narrator, partly because his “obnoxious” sister really is a bit obnoxious. And Sadie sounds more like someone trying to sound British than someone who is British. That’s probably Riordan trying to dumb down the Englishness for a readership of American kids who don’t watch BBC like I do…or it’s Riordan not knowing what he’s doing. That said, the narrative device would work if Sadie wasn’t obnoxious and Carter so bland.
If you want a witty, easy-to-read, PG-rated novel populated by snarky teenagers, mythic figures, and enough magic to make The Wizard of Oz in Technicolor look as insipid as ordinary suburbia, read The Lightening Thief and its excellent sequels, not The Read Pyramid. Better yet, pick up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone if you haven’t yet. Or reread The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Two Stars
**
Summer Book Review: The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
I’m always up for a riveting mystery-thriller; having heard this novel’s praises repeatedly sung as a enthralling new addition to the genre, I bought it for my family’s Hawai’i vacation.
Indeed, Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel is a riveting mystery-thriller. But it’s not beach reading. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is an intense tale of family intrigue, commercial corruption, sexual abuse, and serial killers. I’d say the novel is for the seventeen-and-up crowd only; I’m not surprised the film version is (I hear) grotesquely violent and quite unrated. In short, sensitive minds should not read this book. The novel exposes the evil and brutality rampant across Sweden—each section of the novel begins with a startling statistic about sexual abuse in Sweden today—and, in the process, evokes the same rage and disgust in the reader that Aeschylus did by describing Iphigenia’s murder in ancient Greece.
Did you know that 18% of women in Sweden have been threatened by a man at least once? Did you know that 46% of women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man? That 13% of women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship? That 92% of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police?
I know now. Larsson ensures his readers know not only the numbers, but also how it feels to live in such a country.
Larsson chose his novel’s Swedish title—“Men Who Hate Women” –for a reason.
As an exposé of a society’s injustices, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is the best I’ve read. As a mystery novel, unfortunately, it’s not quite up to standard. It’s an Agatha Christie-style murder. The crime takes place on an island from which no one can escape; the setting of Larsson’s Tattoo limits who could have committed the murder as in Christie’s And Then There Were None. But while Agatha tricked me, Stieg failed to deceive. I knew the great secret from the beginning.
On the other hand, as a character study, it’s again one of the best I’ve read. The novel’s greatest fascination is its protagonist—Lisbeth Salander, the twenty-five-year-old, anti-social, bi-sexual, liberally-tattooed hacker genius who responds to the oddities of ordinary life and the atrocities of Swedish society in the most bizarre ways.
(spoiler alert!)
What does she do when her “guardian” rapes her? Go to the police? Flee the country? Buy a gun and shoot his head off? No. She buys a video camera, which she tapes inside a backpack as any good PI (which she is) can. She buys tattoo equipment and a taser. She returns to his house—i.e., asks for a second rape—and tapes the second rape. Then she returns a third time to taser him, chain him to his bed, and tattoos his crime on his stomach. She forces him to watch the video and then blackmails him. She’s quite willing to post a video of herself being raped on youTube to get what she wants: Freedom.
To what depths has Swedish society fallen, when this is the way a woman responds to injustice?
(spoiler over)
Lisbeth’s behavior is completely unpredictable. Which makes her extremely likable, in spite of her five-year-old’s moral sensibility. Actually, most of these characters have infantile moral standards. Mikael Blomkvist, a forty-something journalist hired to solve the mystery, has sex with three different women throughout the novel, for instance. Oh, and he’s divorced. And a rotten father. But he’s sympathetic—the novel opens with him being convicted and incarcerated for a bogus libel charge. He’s immediately the underdog journalist defeated by the commercial superpower. As his daughter says, who doesn’t like a guy who’s willing to go to jail for what he believes in?
And who doesn’t like a girl like Lisbeth Salander?
Weighed down by oppressive scenes of violence, a plot line rife with sexual abuse, 664-pages of bland English prose translated from (I hear) a vivid Swedish, and a dozen or so carefully-placed f-bombs, the novel derives all its charm from its excellently-drawn main characters. And that’s a lot of charm, considering The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and the last book of the trilogy, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest have both bivouacked on Barnes and Nobles’ top-ten bestsellers list for the past two weeks.
Four stars
****
Indeed, Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel is a riveting mystery-thriller. But it’s not beach reading. The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is an intense tale of family intrigue, commercial corruption, sexual abuse, and serial killers. I’d say the novel is for the seventeen-and-up crowd only; I’m not surprised the film version is (I hear) grotesquely violent and quite unrated. In short, sensitive minds should not read this book. The novel exposes the evil and brutality rampant across Sweden—each section of the novel begins with a startling statistic about sexual abuse in Sweden today—and, in the process, evokes the same rage and disgust in the reader that Aeschylus did by describing Iphigenia’s murder in ancient Greece.
Did you know that 18% of women in Sweden have been threatened by a man at least once? Did you know that 46% of women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man? That 13% of women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship? That 92% of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police?
I know now. Larsson ensures his readers know not only the numbers, but also how it feels to live in such a country.
Larsson chose his novel’s Swedish title—“Men Who Hate Women” –for a reason.
As an exposé of a society’s injustices, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is the best I’ve read. As a mystery novel, unfortunately, it’s not quite up to standard. It’s an Agatha Christie-style murder. The crime takes place on an island from which no one can escape; the setting of Larsson’s Tattoo limits who could have committed the murder as in Christie’s And Then There Were None. But while Agatha tricked me, Stieg failed to deceive. I knew the great secret from the beginning.
On the other hand, as a character study, it’s again one of the best I’ve read. The novel’s greatest fascination is its protagonist—Lisbeth Salander, the twenty-five-year-old, anti-social, bi-sexual, liberally-tattooed hacker genius who responds to the oddities of ordinary life and the atrocities of Swedish society in the most bizarre ways.
(spoiler alert!)
What does she do when her “guardian” rapes her? Go to the police? Flee the country? Buy a gun and shoot his head off? No. She buys a video camera, which she tapes inside a backpack as any good PI (which she is) can. She buys tattoo equipment and a taser. She returns to his house—i.e., asks for a second rape—and tapes the second rape. Then she returns a third time to taser him, chain him to his bed, and tattoos his crime on his stomach. She forces him to watch the video and then blackmails him. She’s quite willing to post a video of herself being raped on youTube to get what she wants: Freedom.
To what depths has Swedish society fallen, when this is the way a woman responds to injustice?
(spoiler over)
Lisbeth’s behavior is completely unpredictable. Which makes her extremely likable, in spite of her five-year-old’s moral sensibility. Actually, most of these characters have infantile moral standards. Mikael Blomkvist, a forty-something journalist hired to solve the mystery, has sex with three different women throughout the novel, for instance. Oh, and he’s divorced. And a rotten father. But he’s sympathetic—the novel opens with him being convicted and incarcerated for a bogus libel charge. He’s immediately the underdog journalist defeated by the commercial superpower. As his daughter says, who doesn’t like a guy who’s willing to go to jail for what he believes in?
And who doesn’t like a girl like Lisbeth Salander?
Weighed down by oppressive scenes of violence, a plot line rife with sexual abuse, 664-pages of bland English prose translated from (I hear) a vivid Swedish, and a dozen or so carefully-placed f-bombs, the novel derives all its charm from its excellently-drawn main characters. And that’s a lot of charm, considering The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and the last book of the trilogy, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest have both bivouacked on Barnes and Nobles’ top-ten bestsellers list for the past two weeks.
Four stars
****