The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Due to constraints on time and inspiration, Faithful Readers (all 6 of you),  in place of a long article on one book, here are some brief thoughts on other books I've read recently, that don't quite have enough to get their own article.   Plus, my camera is broken. His Majesty's Dragon Naomi Novik, 2006 Sometimes I see a book that seems to say, "I was written just for you!"  This is one of those books.  In sketchiest outline, the plot is a little bit like Eragon , (person imprints on dragon, life changes), if Eragon were any good.  And set in the Napoleonic Wars.  And starred a Naval captain.  The author is, like me, a great fan of both JRR Tolkien and Patrick O'Brian, and it comes through in the writing. The protagonist, Captain Laurence, is a proud, hot-tempered man who clings to duty and responsibility when his life is turned upside-down.  His unexpected bond with Temeraire, a rare Chinese Dragon captured from a French ship, m...

The Chronicles of Narnia C. S. Lewis, 1954 (FYI, this is my goodreads review reposted for those of you who may have read it last year) Fair Warning: I am reading (in some cases, rereading) this as an adult, one who is most decidedly Not Christian, and somewhat against religious children's books. If that doesn't describe you, your mileage will obviously vary. The following is very long, as I sum up each book. Spoilers aplenty. After seeing the new Prince Caspian movie last summer, I decided that, as a fan of both classic children’s literature and fantasy literature, I should really take another look at The Chronicles of Narnia. As a child, I read what I considered to be “the good ones” of this series (Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, Caspian, Dawn Treader, Silver Chair) although the little I remember is mostly from the BBC TV specials. Overall opinion: Any book with the default plot of “kids fall into fantasy world, proceed to defeat evil” is going to have at leas...

By Heresies Distressed David Weber, 2009 Vaguely Spoiler-y for the trend of the series and events of the book. Impossibly likable protagonists, creepy fanatical killers, six-legged lizards and a history lesson.  It could only be the latest from David Weber... This is the third one in the “Safehold” series, which I've previously described as Arthurian legend meets Protestant Reformation plus alternate Industrial Revolution...IN SPACE.  (Even though the IN SPACE part is mostly theoretical, more like IN THE FUTURE ON A DISTANT WORLD.) The third volume is better than the second, but still prone to brain-twisting naming conventions.  Conventions arrived at by (I presume) postulating what modern Earth names might look like after being wrung through the generations during 800 years of medieval society.  It turns out he's gone so far on that continuum, that he's come out the other end at fantasy names with too many Y's.  (Byrtrym?  Really?  Just...

As you probably noticed, I like books. I also like lists.  So, for your reading amusement (and not just because I'm super-busy this week), I'm wrapping up the Animal Society Theme with a quick statistical-ish comparison of the six books I read. Reviews, in case you missed 'em: Wind in the Willows The Rescuers Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Redwall Mouse Guard Watership Down Stats Away! Continuum of Anthropomorphism: Extremely human-like society Wind in the Willows Redwall The Rescuers Mouse Guard Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Watership Down   Slightly human-like Positions on various species: Weasels are jerks, along with all their kin Wind in the Willows , Redwall , Mouse Guard Cats are bastards The Rescuers , Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH , Watership Down Rats are evil Redwall , Watership Down Rats are great! Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH , Wind in the Willows Birds?  They're okay Redwall , Mrs. Frisby and the Ra...

Watership Down Richard Adams, 1972 I first read Watership Down in tenth grade, I think.  We had to read one extra book per term that had some scholarly merit, and everyone seemed surprised that I was jumping at the chance to lug around the giant hard cover edition of this book.  At the time, it was one of the longer books I'd read (hadn't started in on Tad Williams at the time). It has some of the most wonderful world-building I've ever read.  As a society of non-humans, it is clear and complete.  The adventures of Hazel and the others seem plausible, their behavior not too out of line for real rabbits.  Both the greatness, and the weaknesses, come from how rooted in reality the story feels. The trouble I had on this read-through was with occasional bits of the narrative voice.  Adams presents his book as if it were translated from the rabbit language, and so, especially at the beginning, there are needless asides explaining this and that from a...

Mouse Guard Fall 1152 Mouse Guard Winter 1152 David Petersen, 2005-2009 (Spoilers for events of the first issue.) If you were ever a fan of Redwall, you owe it to yourself to check out Mouse Guard .  Petersen's comic tale of mice with swords doesn't always have inspired text, (the poetry in particular is weak), but so what?  The illustrations are what you're here for.  You have to pay attention to keep up, because with only 6 issues of 20-24pgs to tell a story arc, there is very little wasted space. Now, these are swordsmice.  Trained, disciplined, ruthless in the defense of their fellows.  The Guardsmice are an organization charged to uphold peace and the common good, but during the time we follow them the tiny swords are often bloodied.   The first arc describes a betrayal of the organization, the second, the aftermath.  There is a lot of mouse vs. mouse internal strife, but the really striking images are the tiny mice going up agai...

Redwall Brian Jacques, 1986 I loved the Redwall books when I read them, mostly in middle school and early high school as I recall.  This one doesn't hold up quite as well as I may have hoped.  There are definitely things to enjoy here; the story clips along at a good pace, the characters are amusing and often adorable. The thing I expected to criticize, the stereotyping of species, didn't bother me as much as I anticipated.  In this world, rats, stoats, ferrets, etc. are bad, untrustworthy creatures.  Mice, badgers, squirrels, rabbits, etc. are good, kind, etc.  It's a little odd, especially given how anthropomorphic they are.  They are fully sentient, society based creatures, and it's not just predator animals vs. prey animals, although that seems to underlie much of it.  (I know that Jacques changes it up a bit in some of the later books, but I'm only looking at the first today.)  Add to that that many of the species are typed by broad...

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Robert C. O'Brien, 1971 A few months back I re-watched the animated movie adapted from this book, and it lead to a strong desire to reread the book.  The movie, Secret of NIMH , is fine for what it is, but the book is far more subtle. And there's no magic. And the plot is much less melodramatic. The things I found most striking re-reading this book was how even-handed it was.  The scientists who turn the rats into super-rats are perhaps unthinking, but well-meaning, and they care for their lab animals.  The farmers only want to drive out the rats because they steal.  The owl makes Mrs. Frisby understandably nervous, but is generally courteous to her.  The only openly cruel character is Dragon the cat. Mrs. Frisby is a widowed mouse caring alone for her kids.  She is naturally timid, as a mouse is, but when needed becomes brave and strong, running risks that go against her instincts, for the sake of her family....

The Rescuers Margery Sharp, 1959 I reread the first four books in this series, though I'll mainly talk about the first one ( The Rescuers itself) here. They are adorable.  Garth Williams' illustrations in my edition only make them even more adorable. I love Margery Sharp's writing.  She has a way with gently ironic turns of phrase, or bits of description which completely capture the whimsy of her world of mice.  pg 6- “There is nothing like breeding to give one confidence: [Madam Chairwoman] was descended in direct line from the senior of the Three Blind Mice.” It's interesting to me that it was clearly not intended to be a series when the first one was written.   The Rescuers sums up each character's probable future at the end.  There is no explanation at the top of book two as to why they're all back together.  Also between books one and two the relationship between Bernard and Bianca changes from open flirtation with the st...

The Wind in the Willows 1908, Kenneth Grahame The above is what people often remember from The Wind in the Willows.  I blame Disney.  For a book that everyone seems to vaguely remember, there's very little in the way of plot.  Toad's story is a plot, misadventure piling on misadventure, thrown in jail, escape, battle, the final defeat of vanity.  The other chapters, which I find much more interesting, are almost a series of sketches exploring the significance of place: Dwelling Places, Wild Places, Play Places, Holy Places, Exotic Places. The lyrical descriptions leave no doubt in my mind of the affection Grahame held for the countryside where he lived.  In the first chapter, Mole meets the River: The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chatt...

In searching through Children's sections on the hunt for Girl's Books , I discovered another genre I'd been meaning to re-read a bunch of. For each of these books I plan to chat both about the book itself and the structure of the animal society. Planned Subjects: Wind in the Willows The Rescuers (and sequels) Watership Down Redwall Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Mouse Guard (Graphic Novel)

 Hyperion Dan Simmons, 1989 There are lots of reasons to like Hyperion.  The form is intriguing, the characters complicated, the plot mysterious, and the prose lovely.  But aside from all that, I'm glad I read Hyperion because it gives me more ammunition in my long-standing fight to prove that The Time Traveler's Wife is a pointless book. One of the main conceits in Hyperion is "time-debt".  Time-debt is what happens to people who travel via FTL drive (somewhat adorably called Hawking Drive), as they enter a kind of stasis and age slower than people who stay on planets or travel via a kind of tele-portals.  So if your friend travels to a distant world and back, you will end up many years older than the traveler.  In several of the novellas which make up the backbone of the novel, this disconnect between those who go and those who stay behind is explored beautifully.  This is a good, emotionally effective use of time "travel", even though it's...

Foreigner C. J. Cherryh, 1994 I enjoy thinking about the link between language and cognition, and this work manages to delve into this subject on a deeper level than the back-of-the-book-copy would have you believe.  "...one human's fondness for a species which has fourteen words for betrayal and not a single word for love?"  I'm glad I didn't actually read that before picking up the book.  In fact, Foreigner does a nice job not playing into that "Eskimos have x number of words for snow" silliness, instead subtly exploring the fundamental differences between two sentient races, reflected in their language. The aliens, called atevi , aren't less moral, or less good, or less or more anything than humans, but they are irrevocably different.  It's actually refreshing for a sci-fi piece not to go with the easy out of 'we are all the same at the core'.  It's a completely separate sentient species, developed on a different wor...

The Deep Beyond C. J. Cherryh, 2005 It's two books in one!  Two... completely unconnected books.  According to Wikipedia, they take place in the same universe, but I didn't get that from reading them. Cuckoo's Egg (1985) Intriguing premise that never really goes anywhere, more of an extended character background than a novel in it's own right.  The identity of the main character is interesting, but not surprising the way the book seems to imply it should be.  The politics are slightly too muddled, the plot fuzzy.  The last little bit has all the plot, and then it ends.  It does bring up some intriguing ideas, and the society of Space-Cat-Samurai is fairly original, but I'd prefer if those ideas were attached to more of a plot.  Serpent's Reach (1980) Very cool world, interesting, if confusing, plot.  Again I could have wished for a bit more resolution (Of the situation outside of the planet the plot ends on), but this one's much ...

On Basilisk Station David Weber, 1993 (Free at the Baen Free Library ) Just reread On Basilisk Station, first of the Honor Harrington series.  I have to say that I respect Weber's extremely prolific career.  I also must say that while I have enjoyed most of what I've read by him, I've read so MANY pieces, that I have become somewhat sensitive to his personal favorite narrative crutches.  (For example, six legged aliens, evil zealots along with guys on the other side just doing their jobs, letting the reader in on at least some of the antagonist's plan way before the protagonists know, stupid bureaucrats getting in the way of honest military folk, many characters with complicated naming structures.) As one of his earlier works, this book is good, but not great.  It takes a while to get going, and the exposition is crammed in awkwardly.   There are some things he's setting up quite far in advance, characters and things he has to then reintroduce in...

As I'm coming to the end of this cycle of books, I'd like to leave with a (lengthy) selection of quotes I found interesting and entertaining. I present the following for your consideration and amusement, without commentary. I'm off to wash my brain out with something containing spaceships and explosions.  Enjoy! On Dress: Anne of Green Gables : "Pretty!" Marilla sniffed. "I didn't trouble my head about getting pretty dresses for you. I don't believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I'll tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they're all you'll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and Sunday school. I'll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to tear them. I should think you'd be grateful to get most anything after those skimpy wincey things you...