The Secret Garden

I remember enjoying the movie The Secret Garden when I was younger, but I never did read the book. So when I saw it recently at work, I decided to give it a try. After all, it's a children's classic (the edition I saw was an Oxford Children's Classic). I thought there must be a reason that it's still in print.

The Secret Garden is, if I'm being charitable, the story of the friendship between three young people: Mary Lennox, the spoiled orphan who finds herself suddenly alone at her uncle's Misselthwaite Manor after her parents dies of cholera in India; Colin, his sickly (and spoiled) son; and Dickon, the sweet animal charmer. The three of them get into Colin's mom's walled garden that his father shut up when she passed away 10 years ago, and bring it back to life. Though if I'm being more realistic, it's the story of two incredibly spoiled and privileged young people somehow becoming good friends because they won't put up with each other's shit while Dickon tags along. And while that is a less charitable explanation, it's also very true. Both Mary and Colin were incredibly spoiled because they were only children whose only companionship was servants who gave into their every whim. Mary's mother just wanted to party and forget about her, while her father was too busy governing or something. Colin's father didn't want to even look at him because he was the reminder of his wife who died in childbirth (and even had her eyes). Both of them had servants tending to their needs (and servants who would never say no to them), so they both grew up to be terrors.

But after Mary's family passed away in India, she found herself shipped off to her uncle's house in England. There, the servants had no time for her, and sent her to amuse herself outside. Having grown up without any real experience with the authority of adults, she does as she pleases and finds her way into the locked garden (while fully aware of the history of why it was locked and forbidden in the first place). At night she sometimes hears someone crying, and though the servants tell her it's just the wind on the door, one night she takes it upon herself to go see what's going on and so discovers Colin. Contrary to everyone's expectations, Colin takes a liking to her, and so their friendship starts. But where he is used to getting his way, so is she; when he has a tantrum she is the first person to ever stand up to him and just tells him off.

While I found the beginning of the book a bit slow and hard to get into, I did like how Mary grew as a person. She starts taking an interest in her surroundings and the people around her, and slowly finds herself liking more and more people. And while Colin has a similar arc to her, he remains a kind of overbearing child, lecturing the others and leading their activities. Unfortunately the latter part of the book seems to switch to be about him; the book ends with the servants seeing him and his father (and so learning of his recovery) and ignores Mary (I was really hoping to see the three of them together at the end, actually becoming a family, because that's what both of them needed. Not just Colin).

I liked Dickon, but he is a much more minor character. He doesn't grow or change at all in the book - he remains the same sweet and rather saintly boy who everyone, human or otherwise, trusts.

The book also took a bit of a weird turn when the children started talking about Magic in relation to Colin gaining strength and recovering. While I think it was supposed to be a nod to children's games, it felt a lot like we were being preached at (especially with Colin lecturing about the subject). I felt like that was a rather unnecessary addition in the book, as just going outside and starting to move around was magic all on its own. 

While a bit tough to read at times (and sometimes a bit odd), I do like the book's message about getting outside and getting fresh air. Just reading it made me want to go out and start playing in my own garden (though I admittedly have to wait awhile still as my garden is still currently sleeping under a blanket of snow)!

Warriors: Fire and Ice

 I finished Warriors Books 2: Fire and Ice the other day.  Overall I found the book okay - I didn't like it as much as the first one though.

Fire and Ice picks up right after Into the Wild. Fireheart and Graystripe are warriors now, and just finished their vigils.  They are then sent on their first warrior mission: to bring WindClan back after they were driven off by ShadowClan.  

This....happened a lot easier and quicker than I thought it would.  They picked up the trail fairly quickly, and basically brought everyone back without incident.  But on their way back to ThunderClan, they returned through RiverClan territory because it was a shorter route, and managed to get into a fight.  A ThunderClan patrol headed by Tigerclaw came to their rescue, but in the scuffle, a RiverClan warrior fell into the river and drowned.  Everyone said there would be consequences from that, but the consequences never really materialized during the book, so I'm not really sure what will happen with that.

In the wake of those events, Bluestar declares they need to train more warriors, so both Fireheart and Graystripe are given new apprentices.  While training their new apprentices, Graystripe encounters a she-cat from RiverClan whom he falls in love with.  And with Graystripe being distracted and unavailable for Fireheart (and even for Graystripe's own apprentice), Fireheart finds himself spending more and more time back at the Two-Leg place with his sister (who brings her firstborn son to Fireheart to train as a Warrior, too).  

Fire and Ice deals primarily with issues of fitting in, and loyalty.  As a former kittypet, Fireheart feels he doesn't fit in with the others (some of which still bring up his kittypet roots), and doesn't have a shared history and culture with them.  This is made even worse when he and Graystripe start scrapping because Fireheart is worried about (and uncomfortable covering for) him during his affair with the RiverClan cat.

While these are interesting topics (and important for kids to think about - these are children's books, afterall), I felt that the execution wasn't very good.  The book felt like it was written mainly in a telling fashion, and so I had a really hard time picturing anything.  It also kind of moved abruptly - something would happen, and suddenly it was months later.  

So this definitely wasn't my favourite book.  But I am hopeful that the next book, Forest of Secrets, will be better!

Warriors: Into the Wild

A while ago, a friend of mine got me the first five Warriors books by Erin Hunter. After finishing The Unfamiliar Garden, I wanted to read something totally different from what I've been reading lately, and thought this would be a good time to give them a try!

Into the Wild is about Rusty, a pet cat who dreams of a wild life. A chance encounter with some of the wild cats of ThunderClan from the nearby woods gives him the choice of joining them, or remaining a house cat with an easy life (though, the wild cats assure him that life too has some sacrifices in that he will not remain an intact Tom cat). Opting to fulfill his dreams, he joins ThunderClan, embracing their training to become one of their Warriors.

One of my biggest complaints about the story, particularly in the beginning, was that it was hard to keep all the characters straight (I realized near the end of the book that there was actually a character list in the beginning pages, but I missed it when I first started reading - that would have been very helpful to realize it was there sooner!!!) Once I got to know the characters, that got a bit easier, and I found myself enjoying the story a bit more. But I still found myself tripped up from time to time, particularly when cats from other clans were involved. 

I also had no idea how dark this book would be. It's a story for I think tweens (it felt a little on the easy side for a young adult book), and it has a lot of characters die in it, mostly from battles between the clans. 

While most of the characters were a bit two-dimensional, I still liked them a lot, especially the friendship between the three apprentices Firepaw (Rusty renamed once he joined ThunderClan), Graypaw, and Ravenpaw. I also really liked Yellowfang - she was a lot more nuanced than most of the other older cats. But I will admit that at times it was hard to remember that they were all cats - some of the words and actions that Hunter used kept making me picture them all as humans. 

Overall though, Into the Wild was a solid introduction to the world of Warriors. I'm looking forward to reading book 2.

Prisoner of Ice and Snow

Back when I bought Ship Breaker, I also bought Prisoner of Ice and Snow by Ruth Lauren.  After finishing Divergent, I saw Prisoner of Ice and Snow sitting on my shelf and decided to give it a read too. And you know what was way more fun than jumping into and out of trains?  A prison break by thirteen year olds in fantasy Russia!

Valor's twin sister Sasha was given a life sentence in jail after stealing from the royal family.  So Valor decides to spring her sister from the inside!  She gets herself thrown into the same jail by shooting an arrow at the prince.  So now she just needs to find her sister and get the two of them out.  Unfortunately they are in Tyur'ma, the prison for young offenders; no one has ever successfully escaped from Tyur'ma.  But that doesn't stop Valor!  She has a plan to get them both out!

Prisoner of Ice and Snow is a lot of fun.  Seeing how Valor needs to outsmart the warden (and the prince, who has taken an interest in her), all while trying to figure out who among the prisoners she can trust (and while dealing with unexpected setbacks) was great.  There's also some really great worldbuilding - the Kingdom of Demidova is ruled by the Queen and passes through the female line.  Valor was supposed to be following in her mother's footsteps as Queen's Huntress, and Sasha was training to be the future Queen's Advisor before she was sent to jail.  I didn't get a great sense of what most of the men in the kingdom do, but Valor's father was the current Queen's Advisor before their family was disgraced by the theft, so men do not seem to be treated as second-class citizens in Demidova, which was nice to see (I remember men being second-class citizens in Melanie Rawn's Exile's series, which I read long before starting this blog).

All in all, this was a fun, super fast read that i quite enjoyed.

Castle in the Air

I've been meaning to start Diana Wynne Jones' Castle in the Air for quite a while now.  It's literally been sitting on my shelf, staring me in the face for many months.  I think I grabbed it with the intention to start it maybe a month or two back, but something happened and never actually read more than like the first sentence.  So after finishing Designing the Digital Experience, I grabbed this and started to read!

Castle in the Air is the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, a book that I really, really liked.  At first it seems completely unrelated to the first book in the series, as it follows a new protagonist (Abdullah) in a new land (Zanzib).  Abdullah is a carpet salesman who spends most of his time daydreaming.  One day, a stranger sells him a flying carpet.  The first night, the carpet whisks Abdullah to a garden where he meets the beautiful Flower-in-the-Night.  He is convinced that she is a dream, but he finds himself back in the garden the next night, too.  On the third night, when they are ready to run away together, she is snatched by a Djinn.  It's up to Abdullah to go and save her.  Along the way he gets into all sorts of trouble, thanks in part to the genie who he finds (the genie will grant one wish a day, but goes out of its way to make the granting of said wish as terrible as it can possibly be for everyone).

I had really high hopes for this book.  As I said, I loved Howl's Moving Castle and thought the sequel would be just as enchanting.  But I found that just wasn't really the case.  I honestly never really cared about Abdullah, even though I knew I should.  He was full of flowery language which made him quite polite in its own way, but he was so self-centered through the entire book that he never appealed to me.  I realized part way through the story that he never actually asked the name of his companion the soldier (I assume this was done on purpose, to keep the soldier's identity a secret?  But there was no reason why the soldier couldn't have had a fake name ready to give to people?) I honestly caught myself thinking "Oh good, now there'll finally be better characters" when Abdullah was making his way to what I presumed was part of Howl's house; that, to me, spoke of a major problem in this book. 

Honestly, pretty much all of the kidnapped princesses were more interesting than Abdullah.  I would have loved to read more about them (honestly, any of them probably would have been more interesting than Abdullah).  Flower-in-the-Night in particular would have had a great perspective; she had been scheming to set all of the princesses free from the moment she got there.  I think that would have been a great story! 

The ending also felt really tacked on.  It seemed to wrap everything up a little too conveniently in like five pages.  This isn't a bad thing in a kid's book, but I was expecting so much more out of this book I guess that it left me feeling really disappointed.

I think one of the coolest parts of the book was when a kitten turned out to be a baby.  The baby's mom was like "oh he's super mad that he's a baby now - as a kitten he was able to move around so much more."  It's so true - what a neat thought!

Jones' writing is of course wonderful.  Her style is so much fun to read, that I felt like that alone got me through this book as quickly as I did.

So all in all, I found Castle in the Air to be a big disappointment, which makes me very sad.  I had very high hopes for this book.  :(

Where is my Sister?

Well this is it, the last book in Scott Butcher's Fairly Stillwart Chronicles, Where is my Sister.

Where is my Sister was an extremely odd book in the context of the Fairly Stillwart Chronicles.  Stillwart disappears very early on in the story, and remains mysteriously absent for the majority of the book.  Appleblossom and all of Stillwart's friends and family are left worrying about Stillwart for seven years.  Appleblossom and Nightwood, the pixie knight who was sent by Queen Pridella to bring Stillwart home, look for the missing Stillwart.  But Appleblossom is forced to abandon the search because she has been absent from the South too long; as Queen of the Southern Fairies, her people need her to come home.  Nightwood agrees to continue the search for Stillwart; Appleblossom hears from him for a few years, but then he, too, disappears.

Out of these three new stories in the Fairly Stillwart Chronicles, Where is my Sister was hands down my least favourite.  To explain why, I'm going to give a spoiler warning here.  So if you haven't read the stories in The Fairly Stillwart Chronicles: Volume 2, don't keep reading this post.

Stillwart is gone without a trace for seven years, the length of time that the Magic Sisters (the daughters of the helpful human) are serving the Morrigan.  At the end of their servitude, they bring Appleblossom some visitors from the North: Stillwart and company!  It turns out Stillwart made a deal with her brother to avoid the war he was starting in the North.  He agreed to surrender to Queen Pridella if Stillwart disappeared.  During these seven years, Stillwart has been helping the Morrigan.  But her brother decided that Stillwart doesn't have to stay hidden anymore, and so she has come back home to the South and to her heart sister, Appleblossom.  Stillwart is also taking her place as the Queen of the Southern Pixies, which she always has been, even if no one realized it.

One thing that I liked about Where is my Sister is that I didn't have a hard time keeping track of characters.  In my first two posts about The Fairly Stillwart Chronicles: Volume 2 (Tory Blithe and the St. John's Pixies and The Hidden Chronicle), I noted that this was a bit of a problem because there were a ton of characters around all the time.  Where is my Sister dialed back the number of characters who were around, which was a really good thing.   

One thing that I really disliked about Where is my Sister is that the majority of the action is just told to us after the fact.  Sure, Appleblossom and Nightwood spend some time looking for Stillwart at the beginning of the story.  But Nightwood (and Stillward herself) only tell Appleblossom and the reader where Stillwart has been hiding after the fact.  We aren't shown any of it.  We don't even get to see Nightwood's quest to find Stillwart because the narrator of this story is Appleblossom.  Appleblossom was a fine secondary character, but as narrator (especially of this particular story) she falls short: she ends up going and living her life, worrying about Stillwart but ultimately being unable to look for her.  A better choice of narrator would have been Nightwood, who was actively searching for Stillwart.  Or even Stillwart herself.

Another thing that I really disliked was that like in Tory Blithe and the St. John's Pixies, we don't get to see much of Stillwart.  This time I felt like we saw far more of the Magic Sisters than we saw of the fairies and pixies, which was really unfortunate; I was reading this series for the spunky Stillwart and company, not for the magical humans. 

So unfortunately, as much as I loved the first few books in the Fairly Stillwart Chronicles (especially A Pixie Pilgrimage and The Scotti and 'Fairies Don't Exist'), I found the latter three, and in particular Where is my Sister?, to be disappointing. 

The Hidden Chronicle

I started reading the fifth book in the Fairly Stillwart Chronicles, The Hidden Chronicle, and found myself rather confused. Tory Blithe and the St. John's Pixies ended implying Stillwart and company would finally make it to the Northern Pixies and that Stillwart would take her place as their princess. But the prologue of this book says that didn't work out and so instead she is working at the library in Tintagel as a scribe. This was a bit of a letdown. But I do admit that I was curious to see how this happens.

This time, Stillwart and company decided to visit Tintagel before going to the Northern Pixies with the fairy grains; they need to look for information on the Morrigan. The Morrigan is the most powerful banshee, so Stillwart thinks the Morrigan will be their best shot for undoing some of Tory Blithe's magic (in particular, making Lucy and Phoebe human again). Of course, the Morrigan is also the most fearsome magical creature in existence, so Stillwart's friends agree to help her out with this quest. In total, seven royal pixies and fairies and their entourages seek Tintagel with the help of their human allies.

But Tory Blithe has other plans for them. Having escaped St. John's, Tory has made it to Europe ahead of Stillwart and company. He has managed to raise a new army of pixies and is determined to stop Stillwart. 

Once again, I did have a hard time keeping all the characters straight. But it was nice to see a bit more of Stillwart this time around. This is the first book that has Stillwart as the narrator; it was interesting to see things from her perspective for a change.  Although I do believe having the chronicle narrated by Stillwart herself meant The Hidden Chronicle lacked some of the comedy (in the case of Appleblossom harassing the human narrator of books 2 and 3) and the extra characterizations (like how Belinda was able to look back on her earlier experience and acknowledge she was wrong) that earlier books had.

I'm not at all sure what's going to happen in the final book of the series, but I do think that Stillwart and company will finally meet Queen Pridella of the Northern Pixies. Luckily I don't have to wait to find out! I'm also very interested to see who the narrator of Where is my Sister? will be.

Tory Blithe and the St. John's Pixies

Scott Butcher once again gave me a review copy of the newest book in his Fairly Stillwart Chronicles. It looks like the final three books in the series just came out in a new omnibus edition (and not individually), which is why it's been a little over a year since I reviewed The Scotti and 'Fairies Don't Exist.' Even though the final three are together in The Fairly Stillwart Chronicles, Volume 2, I've decided I'm going to review them all separately here, starting with Book Four: Tory Blithe and the St. John's Pixies.

Tory Blithe and the St. John's Pixies is a very different book from the first three. This one opens with Stillwart, Appleblossom, the human child Phoebe (who has been turned into a fairy), and the pixie knight Nightwood captured by Tory Blithe, leader of the St. John's Pixies. Their friends have heard that Tory Blithe is planning on marrying Stillwart, and so are planning a rescue. But Stillwart is not demurely accepting his plan: the pixie princess wants to level Tory Blithe's stronghold. The only thing stopping her is the fact that Appleblossom and Phoebe are here too. And Tory Blithe has threatened to kill them if Stillwart doesn't marry him.

Now as I just mentioned, it's been over a year since I read Book Three. Which means my memory for exactly what happened leading up to this book was a bit hazy. Luckily, Butcher builds little reminders right into the story, making it easy to follow along.

One thing that was odd was that this book does not follow Stillwart very much. And while that is necessary for this particular story, it was rather unfortunate because Stillwart is the star of the show. I love her character, and missed seeing her ingenuity at solving the problems at hand. Hopefully she'll be more centre-stage for book five, The Hidden Chronicle.

I also think Tory Blithe and the St. John's Pixies may be suffering a little bit from having too many main characters. Personally I was having a bit of a hard time keeping everyone straight (but again, it has been awhile since I read the first three, so that's not helping me either). And not just too many, but having them all going off in different directions. Hopefully book five will have the characters in one main group again, which will help with this a lot!

So all in all, Tory Blithe and the St. John's Pixies was by no means my favourite book in the Fairly Stillwart Chronicles. But it was still an interesting tale that brought to light the darker side of Stillwart's world. It also gives you a bit of a glimpse into what Stillwart's mother is like. So now I'm really looking forward to reading The Hidden Chronicle!

The Book of Three

Back when I was in school, I had to read The Black Cauldron. I don't remember it very well, but I do remember liking it a lot. I liked it enough that I bought the first book, too. I was planning on getting the other ones and reading all five, but it's seven years later and I never did get them. So I figured I might as well read The Book of Three now (especially since it's a shorter book and I'm on a quest to read 50 List books this year).

Unfortunately, The Book of Three was nowhere near as good as The Black Cauldron. I found Taran to be super annoying throughout at least two-thirds of the book, which made it super hard for me to read. So what should have taken me maybe two or three days to read ended up taking double that.

The Book of Three is the first of Taran's adventures. Taran dreams of adventure and being a hero. When Hen Wen the Oracular Pig runs off, Taran, the Assistant Pig-Keeper, heads off after her. In his quest to bring her home, he encounters all of his friends for the first time, notably Prince Gwidion, Gurgi, Eilonwy, the bard Fflewddur Fflam, and Doli. All the while, Taran complains about everyone (especially Gurgi and Eilonwy, both of whom are extremely helpful) and makes multiple bad decisions that almost repeatedly get the group of them killed (Gwidion isn't with them at this point - they believe he perished in Spiral Castle, which is where Taran met Eilonwy and the bard. Taran actually blamed Eilonwy for his death at one point because she rescued Fflam instead of Gwidion, but it was Taran who insisted she rescue the man in the other cell because he assumed it had to be Gwidion).

I understand that The Book of Three was all about Taran having his first adventure and growing up a bit because of it (and he actually did mature a bit by the end). But honestly, if I had read The Book of Three before The Black Cauldron, I would never have picked up the second book. As it stands, The Book of Three turned me off of the Chronicles of Prydain.

Howl's Moving Castle

A friend at 4th Street Fantasy recommended Diana Wynne Jones this year.  So when my brother and I were coming home and found Howl's Moving Castle, I decided I had to get it.  I saw the movie years ago and remember liking it.  But other than remembering that the castle was much smaller on the inside than it was on the outside, I don't remember anything else about the story.

Howl's Moving Castle is the story of Sophie.  Sophie is the eldest of three daughters, which everyone knows means she is destined to fail at everything.  Sophie gets cursed by the Witch of the Waste, who turns her into an old woman.  And so Sophie sets out on an adventure in the hopes of getting the curse reversed.

Her adventure takes her straight to Howl's Moving Castle, which has been seen from her village moving around in the hills.  Sophie strikes a bargain with Calcifer, the fire demon who moves the castle.  If she can figure out how to break Calcifer's bargain with Howl, Calcifer will remove the curse that is on Sophie.

Howl's Moving Castle was a super cute story.  I am so glad I read it, and I really am looking forward to reading more of Jones' books (...especially since Goodreads tells me there are more stories in this series!)

The Scotti and 'Fairies Don't Exist'

Here we are with The Scotti and 'Fairies Don't Exist,' the third Fairly Stillwart Chronicle from Scott Butcher. The Scotti picks up just after A Pixie Pilgrimage left off: Stillwart and company are still trying to make their way to the Northern Fairies in Ireland. They've managed to go from Vancouver to Montreal, but here they've been stopped by customs because they don't have the proper paperwork. Rather than wait around for weeks, they decide to bust out of the airport and find another way to Europe. Luckily the two daughters of their human friend, Phoebe and Lucy, live in the city; with a bit of convincing that fairies really are real, the gang is on their way to Newfoundland to catch a chartered flight to Dublin.

But along the way, Fairies Don't Exist, the feral fairy Stillwart and company picked up in Vancouver, tells them that a Thorn Tree is calling to her. Following her directions, the company finds a group of fairies named the Scotti. The Scotti's Thorn Tree was damaged by human hands long ago; with its magic blocked, the Scotti have been slowly dying. It's up to Stillwart and company to save the day!

Like the other Fairly Stillwart Chronicles, The Scotti and 'Fairies Don't Exist" is another quick and enjoyable read. Just be warned: this book ends on even more of a cliffhanger than A Pixie Pilgrimage did.  I can't wait for book 4 to read more of Stillwart's adventure!

Dragon's Bait

Vivian Vande Velde's Dragon's Bait caught my eye several weeks ago at work.  I finally sat down and read it today.  I read most of it this afternoon, then finished it off after work.

Dragon's Bait is the story of Alys, who is accused of witchcraft by her neighbours.  Her neighbour was after her father's land, and accused Alys of witchcraft after her father refused to sell.  During her trial, her father passed away, leaving no one to defend Alys (some of the villagers tried, but the Inquisitor confused them into believing she really was a witch).  Rather than burning her at the stake, she is sentenced to be used as a sacrifice to appease a dragon that's been seen in the area.  But rather than eat her, the dragon decides to help her get revenge on the people who accused her of witchcraft.

I honestly don't have a lot to say about this book.  While I liked Selendrile (the dragon), I found the book to be entirely too predictable. I also thought it was taking place on another world, and so got disappointed at how very Earth-like the setting was.  That may not be a fair criticism, but it's still how I felt.  That being said, Dragon's Bait was a fast read.  And I'm probably not the intended audience for it (it felt like more of a kid's book, even though the library marked it as young adult).

A Pixie Pilgrimage

Today I read the second book in Scott Butcher's The Fairly Stillwart Chronicles, A Pixie Pilgrimage.  Like Stillwart and the Southern Fairies, book 2 was a super fast read.  I think I finished reading it in less than an hour.

A Pixie Pilgrimage picks up where the first book left off.  A pixie knight from the Northern Pixie Queen has arrived, informing Stillwart that she is a princess.  The Pixie Queen needs the fairies' help because her people are dying.  When pixies and fairies live together, both are strong.  But the Pixies have been without fairies since Fiona left them to track down the missing fairy grains.  Unlike fairies, pixies mourn their dead; without the presence of the fairies, these mourning pixies are following their loved ones into the afterlife.

Bellinda, Appleblossom, and Stillwart agree to help the pixies by bringing several new fairy grains to the Thorn Tree.  And so, along with the pixie knight and Mr Sooty the owl, they set out to save the Northern Pixies.

I really, really liked this story.  Where Stillwart and the Southern Fairies was more of an introduction to Stillwart's world, A Pixie Pilgrimage was a faster-paced adventure., feeling very much like where the story really begins.  Unfortunately it ends on a sort of cliff-hanger, meaning I need to wait for book 3 to find out what happened to the group on their adventure!

Stillwart and the Southern Fairies

Scott Butcher, the local author who asked me to review An Eagle's Heart, sent me copies of the first two books in the Fairly Stillwart Chronicles, Stillwart and the Southern Fairies, and A Pixie Pilgrimage.  I've had Stillwart and the Southern Fairies for a couple of months now, but just found the time to read it today. 

Stillwart and the Southern Fairies is the story of Still, a pixie found by Fiona, the mother and old Queen of the Southern Fairies.  As a pixie, Still is considered to be an ugly girl, particularly when compared to her cousin, Appleblossom.  On her first day of school, the other fairies nickname her 'Stillwart' because she is so much uglier than them.  But while Stillwart may not fit in with the fairies, she has an affinity for animals; Stillwart makes friends with the owl Mr. Sooty, and ends up in charge of neighbour relations on the fairy council while only a teenager. 

The whole book is narrated by Stillwart's aunt, Belinda, who is chronicling the first part of Stillwart's life.  Belinda tells the story from her perspective, freely admitting that there are events she found out about after they happened.  Overall I thought this was a really interesting way to tell the story, especially since Belinda was able to revisit her feelings, often admitting that at the time she may have been wrong about Stillwart.  But there were a couple of her asides that I wasn't fond of because they knocked me out of the narrative; my least favourite was chapter 10's "oh, I've dropped my glasses...hold on one sec, where have they fallen to" because there's no reason that someone writing a story down would have written that.

Stillwart and the Southern Fairies is a very quick and enjoyable read.  I'm looking forward to starting the second book in the Fairly Stillwart Chronicles, A Pixie Pilgrimage.

The Fairy's Return

I saw Gail Carson Levine's The Fairy's Return and Other Princess Tales at work the other day.  I've previously read Ella Enchanted, so I know that Levine is an excellent author.  I've never heard of these other stories, and I was in the mood for something silly and fun, so I decided to give them a shot.  The Fairy's Return and Other Princess Tales is made up of six Princess Tales, all set in the land of Biddle.

In The Fairy's Mistake, twin sisters Rosella and Myrtle look alike but are polar opposites personality-wise.  Myrtle is the spoiled favourite child while Rosella is the sweet and kind sister.  When Rosella goes to fetch water from the well, she gives an old lady a drink.  That old lady is actually the fairy Ethelinda, who rewards Rosella for her kindness; every time Rosella speaks, jewels will fall from her mouth.  When Myrtle hears of this, she runs off to the well in search of the same thing.  But Myrtle is mean and ends up cursed; every time she speaks, snakes and bugs fall from her lips.  But things go awry when a greedy prince spies Rosella; he whisks her off to the castle and makes her keep talking so he can fill chests with the precious stones.  Meanwhile Myrtle terrorizes her village, threatening to speak unless people give her things!

The Princess Test was a retelling of "The Princess and the Pea."  The blacksmith's daughter, Lorelei, is the fussiest baby in the village.  Nothing can be too hot or too cold; everything must be perfect.  To make matters worse, she easily gets sick or hurt while playing or doing chores.  Her loving parents do their best for her, but after her mother dies, her father brings on a housekeeper, Trudy.  Trudy finds the girl useless, and soon plots to kill her.  Meanwhile, Lorelei catches the eye of Prince Nicholas.  The prince loves her and wants to marry her, but his parents have decreed that he can only marry a princess that passes all of their tests, including feeling a pea through twenty mattresses.  How can a blacksmith's daughter possibly pass such tests?

Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep is a particularly funny retelling of "Sleeping Beauty."  At her naming ceremony, the fairies bless her to be beautiful, graceful, and brilliant, meaning ten times smarter than other humans.  So Sonora grows up as a very a-typical child - she speaks perfectly when she is still a baby, she reads all the books in the library, and generally spends her time coming up with ways to improve the lives of those around her.  Of course, no one really wants to listen to a child telling them how to do their job.  Sonora was also cursed to prick her finger on a spindle and die, which gets softened to meaning she and her castle will sleep for 100 years.  So Sonora grows up refusing to sleep, figuring she will have more than enough time to sleep once the curse happens.

Cinderellis and the Glass Hill is of course Cinderella, but with a twist.  Ellis is a boy who grew up with his two older brothers, Ralph and Burt.  He earns the nickname of Cinderellis when he is testing out one of his inventions near the fireplace.  All Cinderellis wanted was the love of his brothers, but they barely seemed to notice him.  So he grows up inventing things, all the while hoping that one of his inventions will earn their love and respect.  When their fields of hay are eaten, Ralph and Burt blame goblins, but Ellis knows it's actually a horse.  Over the course of three years, he ends up finding three beautiful mares, one copper, one silver, and one gold.  By touching their bridles, he breaks the spell binding them to an evil magician; the mares love him for it and will do anything for him.  Ellis would have gladly given the mares to his brothers, but as usual, they won't even admit that he had anything to do with the hay problem.  So Ellis keeps the mares happily fed with his horse treats in a special stable he made by his workshop.  Meanwhile, Princess Marigold is also lonely.  Her father goes off questing for things, staying for maybe a week before he is off again.  He was planning on looking for a suitable husband for her, but when he is cursed by an imp to stay put for five years, he comes up with a crazy scheme to bring the eligible bachelors to him: Marigold will be placed on top of a glass pyramid with three golden apples.  If anyone with armor and a horse can ride up the pyramid to get the apples, he will become a prince and marry Marigold. Of course, Marigold isn't too keen on this arrangement, and brings her own secret weapon to stop people from making it to the top!  Cinderellis and the Glass Hill was a really cute take on the classic "Cinderella."

At first I thought For Biddle's Sake was based off of "Rapunzel."  While the beginning might have been, the story was actually based off of "The Frog Prince."  Of course it was with a twist, for this time it wasn't the prince who was the frog!  As a baby, Parsley (Patsy by birth) would only eat parsley.  Her father had to get it from a fairy's garden.  Eventually the fairy, Bombina, came home to find him stealing her parsley.  She demanded to see the baby, and promptly fell in love with Parsley's green smile.  She adopted the girl and brought her to live in her fairy castle.  Bombina was good to Parsley, but had a habit of turning people into toads.  She promised the girl she wouldn't turn any more people into toads in an effort to get Parsley smiling again.  But when Bombina sees Parsley smiling at the three princes of Biddle, she grows jealous.  Preparing to turn them into toads, she is horrified to discover Parsley went in front of her spell; Bombina turned her beloved girl into a toad!  And plead as she does with the fairy queen, Bombina discovers that the only way the spell can be undone is if someone proposes marriage to Parsley.  Meanwhile, the three princes are sent on three quests: first to find linen fine enough to fit in the King's ring, second to find a dog small enough to fit in a walnut, and third to find the most beautiful bride.  The king believes that his youngest son, Tansy, is a terror and doesn't want him to participate, unaware that his older twin sons have been blaming all of their mischief on him for years.  He reluctantly allows Tansy to participate.  While the tasks are impossible, Parsley, discovering she can do magic like Bombina because she is now a magical creature, helps Prince Tansy with the tasks.  All the while, they discover they have much in common, and Tansy falls in love with the toad's beautiful smile.

The last story, The Fairy's Return, was probably my least favourite.  Robin is the baker's son.  On a routine trip to the castle with his father and two older brothers, he wanders into the Royal Gardens and befirends the princess.  Princess Lark has always had people behave very carefully around her - they don't want to anger her, and they don't want her to lose at games.  So when this commoner comes in and starts telling her jokes, treating her like a real person, she finds herself falling in love with him.  But neither of their fathers want them marrying. Because robin makes her laugh, King Harrumphrey decrees that any prince who can make his daughter laugh will have her hand in marriage.  As a baker's son, Robin cannot compete.  But with the help of Ethelininda, who has lost all confidence in herself after her reward and punishment went so awry in The Fairy's Mistake, ad a golden goose, Robin sets out to win the hand of his princess, all the while dodging the arranged marriage his family has set up for him!

Overall, The Fairy's Return and Other Princess Tales accomplished exactly what I wanted: it was both silly and fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the land of Biddle.

An Eagle's Heart

A local author contacted me after a book review I wrote was published in the local paper.  He asked me if I was interested in reviewing a book he had written, called An Eagle's Heart.  I don't normally take requests like that, but after reading the reviews on Amazon, I was intrigued (especially after seeing that one commenter called An Eagle's Heart the heir to Douglas Adams's Watership Down).  And so I agreed to read the book.  The author, Scott Butcher, gave me a .pdf copy which I started reading on my tablet.  But I got annoyed at that, and ended up just buying the book from Amazon so I could read it on my Kindle.

An Eagle's Heart is mainly the story of several birds.  The Merlin Falcon, a killer of crows, is desperate to find food for him and his mate.  The Great Golden Eagle makes mention that there is prey to be had in the human's Stone Forest.  The two fly there to investigate whether or not this is true.  While in the Stone Forest, the Merlin Falcon kills a crow, an act the other crows will not stand for.  Their leader, Grandfather Crow, forces a Chickadee to either find the Merlin Falcon or else his life and the lives of his friends and family are forfeit.

All in all, I found Butcher's bird drama to be fantastic!  An Eagle's Heart never failed to keep my interest; I kept turning the pages, wanting to know what would happen next.  I was particularly impressed with Butcher's characterization of the birds; he managed to make a cast of unique characters who all behaved very true to their different species.  
My one issue with the book was the dialogue.  I know that the birds are supposed to be speaking in "early dialects that reflect respect and courtesy," which was largely fine; I didn't have an issue with the formality of their speech.  But I found a lot of the dialogue to be repetitive, rather long-winded, and unnatural-sounding.  This was a real shame, as it took away from an otherwise excellent book.

But overall, I really enjoyed An Eagle's Heart.  It's a great story that readers of all ages will enjoy.

The Last Hunt

I waited a long, long time to finish reading Cara Diana Hunter's story.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, I started reading the Unicorn Chronicles when the first book came out in 1994.  Now, almost twenty years later, I finally know what happened when Beloved invaded Luster with her army of Hunters.

Egged on by the Whisperer, Beloved has torn a new hole into Luster.  This hole is through the Axis Mundi, the world tree that holds Luster togethe. In damagin it, the world is very quickly falling apart.

With the arrival of the Hunters, Cara is sent to one of the seven dragons for help.  The Unicorn Council, led by the new queen Amalia Flickerfoot, has decided that Graumag is the best choice.  Graumag is an unusual dragon (she is actually the same dragon from "After the Third Kiss;" it was rather fun being able to make that connection), one who owes her very life to Luster and so she agrees to help. 

But after enlisting the dragon's aid, Cara and Graumag are attacked by Hunters who were tasked by Beloved to capture Cara.  Graumag holds them off while Cara escapes, thus seperating Cara from all of her friends (except the Squijum).  Cara is left to find her way to the Axis Mundi where the largest battle to ever be fought on Luster's soil is about to begin.

I enjoyed reading The Last Hunt quite a bit (well I did manage to get through all 600 pages yesterday).  But I did miss some of the characters.  As always Cara is the main character, so we got to follow her through most of the story.  But many of the other characters did not play as big a role in this book as they have in previous ones and that made me sad.  For one thing I often found myself wondering what Lightfoot was up to.  And near the end of the book I found that the focus shifted away from Cara's father Ian which was a real shame; Coville set some great character things up for him in the third book (especially concerning what he had to go through in the Rainbow Prison to find his wife) which seemed forgotten about in the Last Hunt.  And I think the very end, wrapping up what had happened, needed a little more (I don't want to give this away in any more detail  as that is a spoiler).  But besides these issues, it was an interesting (and enjoyable!) book and I'm glad to finally know how Cara's story ended.

Dark Whispers

After all this time, I was finally able to read Dark Whispers, the third book in Bruce Coville's Unicorn Chronicles.  As I mentioned in my post about Into the Land of the Unicorns, that first book was published in 1994, while the second book came out in 1999.  Dark Whispers was originally published in 2008, nearly ten years later.  That's a long time to wait.  It was an even longer time because this final volume was split into two, making the entire series four books long (and about fifteen years in the making).  Dark Whispers is also the first book in the Unicorn Chronicles that I have not read before; I elected to wait until I had a copy of The Last Hunt before re-reading the entire series.  I apologize as there will be some spoilers here.  I'll try to keep them to a minimum, but the books are all related.

Dark Whispers begins where Song of the Wanderer leaves off.  Amalia Flickerfoot has been crowned the new Queen of the Unicorns.  And while learning how to be Queen, the Unicorns must face their greatest threat ever: Beloved and the Hunters have one of the Queen's Five Lockets, gateways into Luster.  It is only a matter of time before they cross over into Luster for the Last Hunt.  And thanks to the Geomancer, they know exactly when Beloved will cross: the Blood Moon. 

Grimwold, the Keeper of the Unicorn Chronicles, comes across an oddity within the Chronicles.  There are a few pages missing, as well as a crossed out passage.  He thinks he can make out a reference to "the Whisperer."  An old human who is also at the council, Alma Leonetti, is the only one who has heard of the Whisperer, and though she cannot remember from where she heard the reference, she suggests that the Queen send someone to the Centaur King in order to ask if he has the tale.  And so Cara, along with a small group, finds herself once again travelling through Luster in search of this elusive story.

Meanwhile on Earth, Ian Hunter, Cara's father, goes in search of his wife and Cara's mother.  He knows she is a prisoner of the Rainbow Prison, which is made of different shafts of light between Earth and Luster.  The problem is that once he is in the Rainbow Prison, it will be much harder to leave.

I honestly liked Dark Whispers better than Song of the Wanderer.  Dark Whispers had a better pace than the previous book.  I also don't think Cara's group ever got to be as big as it did in the previous book.  And by shifting the narrative from Cara to other characters, the reader is able to get to know these other characters a lot better.  Although it took me almost twenty years from when Into the Land of the Unicorns was first published to get this far into the story, I think it was well worth the wait.

But now onto The Last Hunt, the final book in the Unicorn Chronicles.

Reread: Song of the Wanderer

Today I finished rereading book 2 of the Unicorn Chronicles, Song of the Wanderer (I started it late last night but decided to sleep rather than force my way though it last night).  I've read this book once before, when I first got it.  I honestly didn't remember anything about it (except for the very basic quest).

Song of the Wanderer continues the story of Cara.  This time Cara is tasked by the unicorn queen to go find her grandmother and bring her back to Luster.  So Cara sets off with a small glory of unicorns made up of Belle, a female fighting unicorn, Finder, a large unicorn who is himself a wanderer, and Moonheart, the uncle of Lightfoot, as well as the Squijum and Thomas the Tinker.  Cara must first find the geomancer, a sorceress who is adept with earth magic, who will find Cara a path back to her grandmother.  Unfortunately the path is a dangerous one.  Along the way Cara meets up with friends new and old.

Song of the Wanderer is a good book, but it isn't as good as Into the Land of the Unicorns. For one thing, Song is longer and at times it feels like it takes a lot longer to get to its point.  For another thing, there are a lot of characters (there's something like ten + characters in Cara's party by the end of the book), which also made it harder to give them all enough time at the forefront of the story (I remember writing a story like this years ago where I had such a large party it was unwieldy to write!); Into the Land is a lot better because the party of characters is smaller and so you get to know all of them much better.

As I said though, it is still a good story.  Some crazy things happen which lead staight into book three, Dark Whispers, which I am really looking forward to reading for the first time ever!

Reread: Into the Land of the Unicorns

I first read Into the Land of the Unicorns when it first came out in 1994.  I bought it at a book fair at the time.  I read it and loved it, recommended it to people, and waited patiently for the second book (which finally came out in 1999). I reread it a few times, the last of which was probably when I read the second book whenever I got it (I don't know if I got Song of the Wanderer right when it came out or if I found it sometime later).  I knew there was a third book, but I decided not to bother getting it until the fourth (and I believe final) book was released and in soft cover.  Having waited for quite sometime and the final book is still in hard cover, a few years after being released, I finally picked up the final two and am going to read the entire series.  My original plan was to read them during the week of my birthday but that didn't happen. So here we are, the beginning of July, and I'm going on a unicorn reading spree.

Into the Land of the Unicorns is the story of Cara.  Heading home from the library one day with her grandmother, they are chased into a church.  Desperate to save her granddaughter, Grandmother Morris gives Cara her "special," an amulet she always wears and sends her granddaughter to the magical land of Luster.  Cara meets many strange and wondrous creatures, chief of which is the unicorn Lightfoot.  Together, Cara and her friends must keep the amulet out of the grasp of the man who followed her from Earth.

Into the Land of the Unicorns was one of my favourite books when I was younger.  And having reread it today, it still stands up as one of my favourites.  The writing is fantastic, the story is excellent, I love the characters, and I just really like the land of Luster (especially the history of how the unicorns came to be there instead of on Earth).  I'm glad I reread it and I'm looking forward to reading the remaining three books (especially 3 and 4 which I've never read!)