A Rising Thunder by David Weber

I've followed the Honor Harrington series since On Basilisk Station and have loved many of the books in the series.  Others have been less appealing, and unfortunately, A Rising Thunder falls in the less appealing category.  


The Solarian League, manipulated by Mesa, becomes more and more foolhardy in its attempts to hold on to its power.  Manticore and Haven make an alliance, previously supposed impossible.  New weapons, many characters, machinations by the Mesan Alliance, nanotechnology....


Strangely, I was involved as I read this one, while at the same time thinking that there was nothing much to hang on to.  


Honor has taken a smaller role in recent novels (perhaps this is a good thing), but the number of characters has increased exponentially over the thirteen or so books in the series.  


The result (for me, at least) is that by giving approximately equal time to all characters and situations, it becomes difficult to develop a rapport with any of them, to latch on to their particular stories, to even sort them out as to planet, star system, history, etc.


Someone mentioned that A Rising Thunder is a kind of "bridge" to the next H.H. installment.  Hopefully, the next one will give us some time with a set of characters.
---
Don't get me wrong, Weber is a mastermind in creating characters and worlds.  Having my attention spread so thin, however, didn't allow me to become attached to a particular plot wrinkle or its participants.


Fiction.  Science Fiction.  2012.  464 pages.

River Secrets by Shannon Hale (Once Upon a Time Challenge)

River Secrets continues the Bayern cycle that Hale began with The Goose Girl.  It is another fine  novel by Hale, filling in the niche between children's books and YA novels for the older set.


Young Razo is chosen to accompany the group from Bayern that travels to Tira in an exchange of ambassadors.  Razo is young, small for his age, and without the skills or the strength that others in the expedition possess.  He is a goofy, Bantam rooster kind of  kid, with great personal charm, an interest in other people, and unusual powers of observation, but he feels inferior and doesn't know why he has been chosen for this mission.


All of the members of the group are aware of the danger that threatens their mission in Tira (recently defeated in the war with Bayern).  Not all of Tira's citizens are over the grief and outrage of their losses, and some are actively calling for a return to fighting. 


When Razo discovers a burned body on their journey to Tira, no one is sure who caused the death and their concerns increase, only to multiply when they are actually ensconced in Tira itself and more burned bodies are discovered.


 Enna (of Enna Burning, the second novel in the series) is also part of the group.  Although she has come a long way in conquering her gift of fire, Razo and Finn worry about her for several reasons: they fear that she is not yet fully in command of her powers, they fear the Tirans discovering that she is responsible for so many of the Tiran deaths during the war, and against their wills, her friends fear that Enna may be the one who has burned the bodies they find.


I loved The Goose Girl and liked Enna Burning, but Razo's personality marks this book in a different way.  It is a coming of age story about a rather delightful young man and is lighter in tone (despite the many dangers) because of Razo's outlook on life.


The beginning is slow, and it took me a while to become fully invested in the story, but once there...a pleasure and a very fast read!


Fiction.   Fantasy.  2006.  310 pages.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon moves from WWII to the 1990's, from Shanghai, to the U.S. to Britain, to Manila--globe-hopping across the world, character hopping across the novel.

There are two basic stories:  one involves the WWII code breakers and the other, the programming geeks in the "present" who want to set up a data haven of encrypted information.

 How are they connected?  In many ways that are not obvious at first: through descendants of the characters involved in the WWII story line; codes, computers, and code-breaking; and gold.

The children and grandchildren of many of the characters from the war era, as well as some of the original characters themselves, find themselves coincidentally entangled in the second story line.

Stephenson's entire book works as a puzzle in itself as he moves from one character and one time period to another with little preparation or explanation.  First, you are in Shanghai with haiku-writing Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe, then in North Dakota reading about the genealogy of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, and then at Princeton with Waterhouse, Alan Turing, and "Rudy von something-or-other"  discussing complex algorithms (Waterhouse can't remember names; he would no doubt be diagnosed today as having Asperger's Syndrome, but Lawrence does have some social skills), and then to the present and his grandson, Randy Waterhouse in Manila, and so on and on.

Everything and everyone is connected eventually.

One of the most interesting characters is Enoch Root, a Catholic priest and member of the Societas Eruditorum.   He doesn't get as many pages, but he pops up to save Bobby Shaftoe at Guadalcanal, he pops up in Finland, in Manila, etc. and always plays a pivotal role.

 (spoiler:  at one point, I grieved for Enoch Root's death in Finland and was a bit annoyed, hoping it might be a trick.  Yet, even allowing for that possibility, it did seem that he died.  I thought maybe the emails from root@pallas.eruditorum.org were either from the organization itself or from a descendant of Enoch Root.  I'm still not sure about Enoch Root; he is a mysterious character, indeed. At one point in a jail cell with Randy in Manila...I heard Neal Stephenson rather than E.R. discussing myth)

Goto Dengo, the Japanese soldier who befriends Bobby Shaftoe before Pearl Harbor, also has fewer pages, but turns up in different scenarios and also plays a crucial role in the plot(s).

Shoot!  I can't even begin to get into the complexities of this book and all of the characters (I haven't even mentioned all of them).  I give up.

Cyptonomicon is fascinating, involved, unbelievably detailed, and covers so much territory that reducing it to a review is beyond my abilities.

What I liked best:
1) the alternate view of history and inclusion of idiosyncratic versions real characters like Turing and MacArthur, etc., and especially, everything about Bletchley Park which has long fascinated me
2) the development of the fictional characters
3) the remarkable detail, and
4) all of the marvelous excerpts that I failed to flag so I could use them as quotes.


What I liked least:
1) the role of Andrew Loeb.  It didn't hang together that well for me.
2) the abrupt conclusion

I've read many books of 900-1000 plus pages, but this one is in a league of its own.  It is a slow read and a satisfying one.  Fascinating.

Fiction.  Science Fiction/ Alternate History.  1999.  910 pages.

This and That

My goodness, I've been an absent blogger so often lately.  My good intentions don't always come to fruition; despite my goals of keeping up with this blog, I repeatedly fall behind.  Keeping up with more than one blog appears to mean that I can keep up with only one blog at a time.

At least, I finally posted my review of Sheri S. Tepper's Beauty on Sunday-- that is quite an accomplishment.  Katherine Langrish liked it, and Katherine's knowledge of fairy tale and fantasy is pretty thorough.  Not that I'm changing my opinion; I was disappointed, but Katherine has made me think about the book again.  Anyone else read this one?

My quilting and miscellaneous blog has been getting much more attention lately because I've been stitching prayer flags and experimenting with surface design techniques.  Most evenings I've settled in for stitching and watching television instead of reading, but I think I'm beginning to experience a sea change, the reading bug has begun to catch on again.

Like Carl, I'm a great fan of The Guild, but I'm all caught up with those episodes and have to wait for more.  (AACK - a note from Carl...they haven't even begun filming the new episodes).

Lately, I've been deeply immersed in Korean television series and highly recommend Tree With Deep Roots .  My friend Thomas got me addicted to this one, and now my husband is also addicted.

Finally finished Cryptonomicon!  Loved it!  Well worth the time expended on this one.  The closer I came to the end, the slower I read, the more pauses I took, the more I tried to delay the conclusion.

Almost finished with A Rising Thunder, the latest in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber and have begun River Secrets by Shannon Hale, which is part of the Bayern series and will go toward my Once Upon a Time reads.

Has anyone read the Shadow Prowler?  The third and final book in the trilogy is out, and I'm wondering if I want to give it a try.  So much better to begin a series that is already complete than having to wait for each new book.

Beauty by Sheri Tepper

Beauty is retelling of Sleeping Beauty with several other fairy tales mixed in.

(I started this review after reading the first chapters, then finished the book, and have had a huge delay in completing the review because my pleasure didn't continue.)

3/31/12 I've decided to take a few notes as I read because the Foreword intrigued me and then, in the first few pages, other incidents caught my attention.

The Foreword is written by Carabosse, "the fairy of clocks, keeper of the secrets of time."  Carabosse remarks that Beauty was given many gifts when she was born, "Though it is regrettable that no one gave her the gift of intelligence (a  gift not highly valued in Faery, she has a practicality that often makes up for that lack."

Now, intelligence is rarely mentioned in fairy tales, so I'm curious already.

A few pages into the story, Beauty describes the education she receives from her aunts.  She is taught sewing by her Aunt Marjoram "(who was herself educated by the Sisters of the Immediate Conception at St. Mary of Perpetual Surprise)" and music by her Aunt Lavender "who, though tone deaf, plays upon the lute with great brio and a blithesome disregard for accuracy."

Tepper has my full attention now and has made me smile.

-----------

4/18

The first section was so charming, so delightful.  Unfortunately, the rest of the book, although interesting, was not at all charming.  I was so disappointed.

With the first incidence of time travel, things degenerate.  Up until Beauty leaves her own time period for the first time, the story was a delightful alternative version of Sleeping Beauty--unfortunately, that was only a very small percentage of the book.

While Tepper makes several points with which I completely agree, the book becomes an unpleasant polemic.  While I can understand and completely agree with her views about our lack of care concerning the environment and her distaste for books that  celebrate violence and abuse, her bitterness defeated the purpose for me.  Tepper's inclusion of violence and abuse, her completely dark view of the fate of the world--leaves a feeling of despair.

What would have pleased me much more would have been a story that presents alternatives and inspiration for working for a change.

From such a bright beginning, the book turned into a struggle to read and on finishing it, a feeling of having accomplished nothing.

Fiction.  Fairy Tale/Time Travel/

Everything I Need

milkweed

My friend Thomas sent me this quote:


 “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." —Cicero

  I love this quote!  Thomas has been reading Fung Yu-lan, History of Chinese Philosophy.  In Mandarin or Cantonese or something, no doubt.  He did lift his head from translation long enough to think of me when he saw this quote, however.  Yea, Thomas!


Back to the quote--I have both a garden (although not nearly as wonderful as my previous garden, the one wiped out by the tornado) and plenty of books.  I'm posting  pictures of a few of my  delights as I work on creating a new garden .  

Cleome

garlic

For the last two years, I've done nothing much with my new small garden, but this year, I'm determined to include more plants that I love...thus the two new milkweed plants and the cleome.  The garlic is a volunteer from last year.  I love garlic, in food and in the flower bed.

And books--there are always books.  Some that are wonderful and some that are disappointing, but always a book to read for entertainment or information.  

I  finished Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper a while back and have been thinking about how to review it.  Such an auspicious beginning!  Sadly, after falling in love with the beginning, I found the rest of the book a painful contrast.  I've resisted reviewing it because ofthis, but do want to make some comments about it.  Has anyone else read this one?

On the other hand, I'm loving Cryptonomicon and am in awe of Neal Stephenson.   The more I read, the more invested I become in the characters.  At the moment, I'm very concerned about Bobby Shaftoe who is now in Manila awaiting the arrival of General MacArthur.  Stephenson deals with Japanese atrocities in a way that does nothing to ameliorate the horror,  yet somehow manages to keep enough distance (and enough satiric humor) to make it bearable.  

In the present day section, I think Randy Waterhouse will be OK, despite being in jail because someone planted drugs in his luggage.  The section on Randy's wisdom teeth is priceless and comparing the removal of his wisdom teeth to his love for Amy is...somehow...oddly perfect.  Randy was not one of my favorite characters initially, and I'm glad that I've grown so fond of him.

Stephenson is a Wizard!  

Slight Digression:  Has anyone watched The Guild?  Wil Wheaton has become a regular and the guest stars in Season Five are amazing!

This post jumps around like I was on Benzedrine (via Bobby Shaftoe)!

Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George

Believing the Lie is an Inspector Lynley mystery.  Although George's books are long, they read very quickly.  Unfortunately, I have not enjoyed the series as much since she killed off Helen.

Description from Amazon:  Inspector Thomas Lynley is mystified when he's sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Cresswell at the request of the man's uncle, the wealthy and influential Bernard Fairclough. The death has been ruled an accidental drowning, and nothing on the surface indicates otherwise. But when Lynley enlists the help of his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, the trio's digging soon reveals that the Fairclough clan is awash in secrets, lies, and motives.


What I like:  the book reads very quickly and does keep my attention.  I like Barbara Havers and Winton (although Winton is not really a part of this one).  As a side note, Barbara mentions Lynley's Lobb shoes.  I looked Googled it, and Lobb's boots and shoes are quite expensive  -- check the price list.   Got several grand to spare, get a pair of Lobb's boots. 


Not so much: 


1)  Simon and Deborah St. James have, in the last several books, become more and more  annoying.   The plot line about their inability to have a child is supposed to support the main plot line, but is irritating.  Deborah's behavior is idiotic.


2) The reporter for the scandal sheet and his "girl friend" -- silly.  Their phone conversations are too silly to discuss.   Not a bad idea, but ultimately, a failure. 


3) Lynley's attraction to Isabelle.  Didn't like it much in the previous book, either, but at least it is resolved in this one.


4) The story line with Tim, Ian's young and troubled son--he was an interesting character until it just got out of hand.   Troubled is one thing, where George carries it, quite another.
------
Remember these are just my personal opinions.  I used to love this series, but ...


Fiction.  Mystery.  2012.  624 pages.

Back From New Orleans Trip

We had a short road trip following Bayou Teche from Port Barre to Morgan City.  Then on to New Orleans and back through Baton Rouge.  It was great fun, and I've covered the highlights over at Bayou Quilts.

I've got a review of Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George scheduled and need to write a review of Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper.

Cryptonomicon is still in progress, and I'm still enjoying it, but have to include other books as breaks...thus the two mentioned above.


Watched an interesting documentary, Millay at Steepletop.  Edna St. Vincent Millay is one of my favorite poets, and I enjoyed the documentary in honor of National Poetry Month.

Here is one of her poems that fits the Once Upon a Time Challenge.

Bluebeard

This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed... Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see... Look yet again—
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

---------

Ten Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn from Albert Einstein posted on Dumb Little Man.

The Apothecary by Maile Meloy (Once Upon a Time)

The Apothecary is a book for young readers, but like all good books, it is a story that appeals to all ages.  A fantasy with some important and often neglected history mixed in, the novel begins with a move from the U.S. to London for fourteen-year-old Janie Scott.

Janie's parents are screen writers in 1952 during the time of the Hollywood Black Lists.  When Janie's family comes under surveillance, her parents know that if they are called to testify, they would be asked to name names, putting an end to many careers.  They decide to move to London where they have been offered a job working on a television series about Robin Hood.

(By the by, this period in our history is a shameful one that really does deserve more attention.   Many innocent people were denied the right of the First Amendment and lost their jobs during the McCarthy witch hunts.   John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye were among those who protested and formed The Organization for the First Amendment. )

Back to the novel, Janie is very unhappy with her parents about this move (something I could identify with as a move at that age brought out the worst in me and drove my poor parents crazy).  She misses her old school and her friends; she must attend a new school as the odd-man out.  She even has difficulty understanding the English -- same language, different pronunciation.

She does make a new friend, however, in Benjamin Burrows, son of the local apothecary.  The Cold War is at its height, the Russians are the enemy, the "duck and dive" mentality is the useless caution against nuclear warfare, spies are everywhere for both the good guys and the bad guys, and treasonous activities occur.

 Janie and Benjamin become involved in an adventure neither could have imagined, complete with spies, kidnappings, and magic.

I'm not going to tell you any more, but I am going to send you to Nan's review (Letters from a Hill Farm) because her review is the reason I checked out this book.

I have already Googled a bunch of sites on the Hollywood Blacklist and the House of  Un-American Activities Committee and plan to eventually do some nonfiction reading about this period.  Although this is background material only for the novel, and I've read some in this area before, my interest has increased.

Fiction. Fantasy/YA.  2011.  353 pages.

Saturday Thoughts

Yes, I'm still reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and will be reading it for at least another week.  I'm liking the WWII parts much better than the more current story line.  I enjoy Stephenson's sly humor and there are sections that make me stop and ponder how much research he did before altering history, must have been pretty exhaustive.  This sends me to the internet to check out events and characters in actual history.  The section on Yamamoto is some of his best tongue-in-cheekiness.

Reading the Stephenson version of Yamamoto's thoughts makes me wonder what Yamamoto was actually thinking as he considered  Japan's Imperial Army vs the Americans.  Anyway, here is an excerpt of Yamamoto's fictional thoughts:

The Yanks call this type of plane "Betty," an effeminatizing gesture that really irks him [Yamamoto].  Then again, the Yanks name even their own planes after women, and paint naked ladies on their sacred instruments of war!  If they had samurai swords, Americans would probably decorate the blades with nail polish.

To say the novel is complex, however, is understating the situation.  Stephenson slips from one character to another, from one time period to another, from one location to another with little warning.  He indulges in detail that obviously tickles him, but that I often have no clue about--especially when talking computers in the modern sections of the novel.

Earlier in the novel, there was a section that most certainly referenced Operation Mincemeat (Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory).  The actual body used for the real Operation Mincemeat was not a butcher frozen to a pig, but the idea speaks loads for preservation.

In the meantime, I'm also reading Elizabeth George's Believing the Lie...an Inspector Lynley mystery which reads a whole lot faster than Cryptonomicon.

I have a third Once Upon a Time review scheduled.  I checked the library for several books I was looking for with no luck.  I guess I'll have to order a couple of them and get the rest on interlibrary loan.

The ARCs are piling up.  Most are unsolicited and many don't appeal to me, but this one looks interesting:  A Silence of Mockingbirds -- arrived Thursday.  Except this book is nonfiction about a child murder--I don't usually want that kind of reality.  An article in the Huffington Post gives the author's reasons for writing the book.  Maybe later...but not now.

At the moment, I'm looking more for escape literature, not reality.  The world is harsh, give me fictional drama, hopefully happy endings.  Fairy tales and fantasy and mysteries.

What are you reading?

Heartless by Gail Carriger (Once Upon a Time)

Heartless is the 4th novel in the Parasol Protectorate series about Alexia Tarrabotti.  I loved the silliness and satire of the first book in the series, but enjoyed the next two much less.  Heartless is definitely an improvement over the last two.

 Minor characters are becoming more interesting to me than Alexia and Conall.  Mr. Floote, the butler, has such aplomb.  Professor Lyall and Lord Akadelma are both intriguing.  Werewolves and vampires and more.

While I did like Heartless better than the two previous books, I still can't say that I felt any where near the pleasure of Soulless, the introductory novel to the series.  The first one was a delight.

The Once Upon a Time Challenge.  My second book for the challenge.

Fiction.  Urban Fantasy.  2011.  374 pages.

I MUST See This!

Oh, the timing is so perfect for the Once Upon a Time Challenge.

The Summoner: Book I in the Chronicles of the Necromancer

The Summoner  recounts  a "hero's journey" a la Joseph Campbell.


Here is the formulaic plot line:  Prince Martris Drayke is the only survivor of his brother Jared's coup. When Jared has the rest of the royal family murdered,  a wounded Tris manages to escape with the help of his friends.  Always able to communicate with the palace ghosts, the trauma of his family's murders releases additional powers that Tris has been unaware of possessing.

And then:

He must find a way to control his powers and use them to defeat Jared and put an end to the senseless brutality that Jared and his own mage have forced on the kingdom.

 His friends are helpful.

 He meets new friends who join his cause.

There is a beautiful warrior princess.

 He finds tutors to help him understand his magical powers.

While there is no real depth to the novel or the characters,  it is a quick and easy read.   I don't regret having read it by any means, but neither am I inclined to  seek out other books in the series.

Once Upon a Time Challenge VI

Fiction.  Fantasy.  2009.  Print version - 644 pages.  I read an e book on my Kindle.

Fairy Tales and Poetry

I was looking through some old drafts and found several fairy tale poems that I'd linked to or posted for the Once Upon a Time Challenge several years back.

I love poetry, and combining poetry and fairy tales has produced some wonderful, delicious, frightening, and/or funny poems.

Here is a delightful poem "How to Change a Frog into a Prince" by Anna Denise; originally published in The Poets' Grimm: 20th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales.  I posted this poem a couple of years ago during the Once Upon a Time Challenge, and still it touches me with both humor and truth.

Another post that I've had in draft form for about a year is a poem by Jane Yolen (can't beat Jane Yolen for poetry and fairy tales).  Another transformational poem.

Swan / Princess by Jane Yolen 

1
When the change came
she was sitting in the garden
embroidering an altar cloth,
thin gold thread working the crown of Christ.
First her neck
arching like cathedral vaultings.
Dress rippling at the shoulder accomodated wings:
white-vaned, white-feathered like Oriental smocking.
Hands and feet tangling into orange legs,
inelegant, powerful as camshafts.
When her head went, she cried,
not for pain, but for the loss
of her soft, thin lips
so recently kissed by the prince.
Not even the sweet air,
not even earth unfolding beneath her
recompensed for those lost kisses
or the comfort of his human arms.

2

When the change came
she was floating in the millpond,
foam like white lace tracing her wake.
First her neck shrinking,
candle to candleholder,
the color of old, used wax.
Wings collapsed like fans;
one feather left,
floating memory on the churning water.
Powerful legs devolving;
Powerful beak dissolving.
She would have cried for the pain of it
had not remembrance of sky sustained her.
A startled look on the miller's face
as she rose, naked and dripping,
recalled her to laughter,
the only thing she had really missed as a swan.


(via Endicott Studio)

There are several lines I love, but the last 6 lines are my favorites.

Since I am, for the first time in a couple of months or more, settling back into reading mode, my nightly activities have switched from 4-6 hours of sewing, crafting, and watching tv series on Netflix as I sew and craft--to reading like someone starved for words.

I've finished Heartless by Gail Carriger, The Summoner:  Bk. I by Gail Martin,  and The Apothecary by Maile Meloy (thanks to Nan) and enjoyed all of them.  Heartless is Steampunk fantasy, but I'm undecided as to whether or not to include it as a Once Upon a Time book choice; the other two definitely fit into the Once Upon a Time category.

I've started Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, a massive and complicated tome that was not really what I intended to check out, but the library didn't have Snow Crash.  So...how did I end up reading Neal Stephenson, an author I was not familiar with until a few days ago?

I stopped in at So Many Books and read her post about optimistic science fiction (you can find the post here), then followed her links, then put Snow Crash on my list.  The library didn't have Snow Crash, but they did have Cryptonomicon, and I remembered that Stefanie had given it high praise.  I have also long been fascinated by codes and code breakers, especially anything to do with the Enigma machine and the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII.

Hesitating when I saw the size of Crypto, and knowing how much I love the fairy tale, fantasy, and myth to which I intended to devote myself, I just couldn't resist the connection to Enigma and tucked the huge book in my bag.  What I didn't bargain for was the complexity of the book...it is gonna' take a while to get through these 800+ pages!  I could have read an entire book or two in the time I spent getting through about 75 pages until after midnight last night!

I like it, and I like the tongue-in-cheek-iness of it, but NUMBERS and FORMULAS are not my thing.  On the other hand, I'm always so impressed with individuals who do understand math and physics and abstractness to the most randomness possible.  I'm as captivated by these individuals as I am by David Weber's weaponry and military tactics (another realm of possibility beyond my abilities).

I am an eclectic reader.  :)

Lists and DNF

 Are you one of those individuals who love lists?  I am.  I make them, lose them, find them, usually too late to make use of them. And I enjoy reading lists that other people make.

Dickens now qualifies as my favorite list maker of all time.  He created this list of fake books for his library at Tavistock.  And then, AND THEN...he had a bookbinder create the fake book backs and added them to the shelves.   (found via Mary's Library--thanks, Mary!)

The first few titles from his list:

History of a Short Chancery Suit
Catalogue of Statues of the Duke of Wellington
Five Minutes in China. 3 vols.
Forty Winks at the Pyramids. 2 vols.

My embroidery interlude appears to be waning, and I'm enjoying a return to the reading cycle.  I'm so ready to immerse myself in the Once Upon a Time Challenge and have finished The Summoner: Book I of the Necromancer Chronicles by Gail Martin.

Today, I have a trip to the library scheduled to see if I can find some of the titles I've added to the list of possibilities for the challenge.  I love our library, and although they don't always have the books I'm looking for, I usually find plenty to keep me busy.

In the DNF file:  Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi.  I got half way through, sometimes thinking I'd like it, then openly bored, then a little interest...until I finally decided I didn't really like Mr. Fox, or Daphne, or Mary Fox enough to continue the strange little chapters of stories that were only vaguely connected.

I really enjoyed The Icarus Girl by Oyeyemi, and even enjoyed much of her style in Mr. Fox, but the fairy tale variations didn't engage me--or maybe they did, but they didn't satisfy.  It would have been a good read for Once Upon a Time, but just didn't work for me.

Great cover, though, don't you think?  Has anyone read this?  What did you think?

How Firm a Foundation by David Weber

I have some favorite authors whose books keep me enthralled, and David Weber is my very favorite in the science fiction genre.  How Firm a Foundation is the 4th in the Safehold series; I love this series, maybe even more than the Honor Harrington books.

I read a lot of series out of order and don't usually find it a challenge, but David Weber's books really do need to be read in order.  All of his books are long, complex, and full of characters; in How Firm a Foundation there are 28 pages listing characters.  By this latest book in the series, of course, many of the characters are dead, having met their ends in previous books in the series, but new characters have been added.

But here's the thing that really makes me marvel--almost every character has a distinct personality, even if that character doesn't last long.   None are simply cardboard drones. There are a lot of major players located in different countries, and each of these have fully rounded personalities and lives.

How Firm a Foundation continues the saga of the fight for survival of the Charisian Empire as they battle The Church of God Awaiting and its corrupt and fanatic leaders.

The series begins with Off Armageddon Reef which I reviewed in 2007.  I love the way the people of Charis begin a renaissance of technology.  Now I have to wait for September for the publication of the next installment.

Fiction.  Science Fiction.  2011.  607 pages.

Once Upon a Time

It is time for Carl's annual Once Upon a Time Challenge!  It is hard to believe that this is the sixth year.  I participate every year, although I'm not always so good about posting on the review site.

I've gotten a few ideas from Marg and Kailana about some possibilities for this year's list of books.  Marg was interested in Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth, but since Amazon didn't have it listed yet, and  I haven't read any Forsyth, I added  Witches of Eileanan (Book 1) to my wish list.

Kailana did the worst damage to my resolution not to order anything more from Amazon this month because I downloaded The Summoner:  Book I in the Chronicles of the Necromancer to my Kindle and added several others to my wishlist.

I'll probably do













Read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time categories. They might all be fantasy, or folklore, or fairy tales, or mythology…or your five books might be a combination from the four genres. 


Carl offers several Quests for this challenge, including The Journey-- It means you are participating, but not committing yourself to any specific number of books. By signing up for The Journey you are agreeing to read at least one book within one of the four categories during March 21st to June 19th period.Just one book. If you choose to read more, fantastic!

I've enjoyed this challenge every year and have read a variety of fantasy each year, but I do enjoy the retellings of fairy tales and have three picked out:

 Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley
 Beast by Donna Jo Napoli
 Beauty by Sherri Tepper.

I'm not sure if I'll read all of them, three retellings of the same fairy tale may be too much in two months.  But there are plenty of other retellings-- for example, of Repunzel--that I'm interested in.  I've read Zel by Donna Jo Napoli and liked it very much.  Other possibilities here.

A favorite nonfiction Challenge read from the past:  Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales by Kate Bernheimer is a fascinating look at the importance of fairy tales in the lives of various authors and includes essays by Le Guin, Julia Alvarez, Margaret Atwood.

Do you have any suggestions for books that fit the fantasy, fairy tale, folklore, myth categories?

I can't wait to get started!

The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney

The Invisible Ones is an intriguing mystery about a private investigator who is half Romany. Ray Lovell's father was a gypsy who married a gorgio, a non-Romany, and who gave up the traveling life to settle down in a house.

The novel opens with Ray in the hospital after a car accident, but the injuries from the accident are not as important as the fact that when he was found, he was paralyzed and unable to talk.  The doctors are trying to discover what happened:  brain tumor, stroke, drugs?

The next chapter starts at the beginning, when Ray reluctantly takes on a missing persons case from Leon Wood, a man searching for his daughter Rose, who disappeared seven years ago.  Leon is an English Gypsy and has chosen Ray because he knows that Ray, as half-Roma, is the only investigator who might be able to  discover what happened to his missing daughter.  Ray with his half-Romany heritage is the only one who can make any headway with members of the Romany community who would refuse to communicate with outsiders.

The next chapter introduces J.J., a fourteen-year-old member of the Janko clan, whose mother is a Gypsy, but whose father was a gorgio.  J.J. is bright and caring, but he, too, is a kind of half-breed who doesn't completely fit into either community.

The chapters continue to alternate between Ray and J.J. as the author introduces information about clannish Romany life and customs and develops the characters first from Ray's perspective, then from J.J.'s.

 Ray meets one dead end after another is his attempts to find out what happened to Rose after she married Ivo Janko.  J.J. has his own mysteries and concerns to unravel.

Ray is a likable protagonist, but frankly, J.J. steals the show.  We root for each of them as the mystery deepens and twists and as both man and boy try to come to grips with some personal problems.

There are no gruesome scenes, there is no serial killer, but the mystery has some dark elements that keep it interesting.  Stef Penney is a skillful writer who doles out information that keeps you turning the possibilities over in your mind in a way that makes you appreciate her ability to keep you involved, but she is never condescending.

Fiction.  Mystery.  2021.  399 pages.

Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time has Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant  flat on his back in a hospital after having fallen through a trap door.  Poor Grant, reduced to examining the ceiling of his hospital room, is in a despair of boredom and needs something to occupy his mind.  His friend Marta decides to cure his boredom by presenting him with a choice of historical mysteries to solve by bringing him copies of portraits, including a portrait of Richard III.

Grant, who has made a useful habit of studying faces, doesn't see a villain in the portrait's features and is surprised to learn that the subject is Richard III.  He asks several people, including his doctor, what kind of person they would think the face indicates.  Without knowing who the portrait depicted, the answers varied--sadness, illness, suffering-- not one said they thought it was the face of a murderer.

Inspector Grant's boredom is ended:  he is on a case.  Determined to discover whether or not Richard was guilty of the crimes with which he was charged, Grant has help from several sources who provide him with history books and primary documents, but his greatest help comes from Brent Carradine, a young American, who becomes as deeply immersed in the mystery as Grant himself.

I read Daughter of Time years (and years and years) ago, but I liked it so much that I've checked the library for it in recent years, only to discover that although I originally read it as a library book (in Lincoln Parish), our Bossier Parish library no longer has a copy.  The book was published in 1951; evidently the library culled the novel when making room for new books.

Recently I watched  Looking for Richard on Netflix, the Al Pacino documentary about the preparation for a performance of Shakespeare's Richard III.

"This strange and charming documentary by Al Pacino, in which he also stars, is an exploration of several topics: Shakespeare and his hump-backed villain, the impulse to act, the way actors work--and Pacino's single-minded effort to make the Bard accessible to all audiences and not just the effete few. Over the course of the film, Pacino alternately discusses the role and the text; roams Manhattan, talking about Shakespeare with everyone from scholars to people on the street; and re-creates scenes from the play in a production staged at the Cloisters, an evocative castle-like museum on the north end of Manhattan. He assembles a cast that includes Kevin Spacey, Winona Ryder, Estelle Parsons, and Alec Baldwin to perform the scenes, and he slips back and forth between text and discussion of the play in a way that makes Shakespeare comprehensible and fascinating to viewers who know or care nothing about his writing." --Marshall Fine

While I did find the documentary interesting (if a bit self-indulgent), I don't think it accomplished its purpose, at least as far as I was concerned.  Watching the film did, however,  persuade me to order a copy of Daughter of Time so that I could compare Tey's view of Richard with Shakespeare's character.  The actors, producers, etc. in the documentary  were only concerned with Shakespeare's Richard, the evil villain--the character in a play, not the historical king.

But here's the thing:  Shakespeare's Richard III was written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a Tudor.  It was certainly in an author's best interest to please the current ruler, and Shakespeare was no exception in this regard.  The Tudor Dynasty needed to have Richard III  considered a villain to validate the Tudor right to the throne, and Shakespeare obliged by creating a truly wicked, if fascinating, version of Richard.

Who can forget that view of Richard, the wicked hunchback, the repellent uncle who ordered the murder of the two princes in the tower, his own nephews?  History books record the facts.

Or do they?   This is one of the interesting facets of the novel:  Who writes history?  Whose version of history is accepted as fact?

Inspector Grant and Brent Carradine present evidence that contradicts the history created to oblige the Tudors--following in the footsteps of Horace Walpole, who also considered Richard innocent.  The evidence Grant and Carridine present (garnered mostly from primary documents) may change your opinion of Richard III, the last Plantagenet.

There is even a Richard III Society:

The Richard III Society was founded during the summer of 1924 by a Liverpool surgeon, Saxon Barton, and a small group of friends. They were all enthusiastic amateur historians with a particular interest in the life and times of Richard III. Their motivation was a belief that history had not dealt justly with the King's posthumous reputation and they wanted to encourage and promote a more balanced view. I

Branches of the society span the globe, including an American branch.  Interesting, isn't it, that so many people are so dedicated to this rehabilitation of Richard III.

I highly recommend this mystery if you have any interest in history, but I have to admit Tey had me within the first two pages with her humor and her deft characterization, long before the mystery was introduced.  How wonderful to discover that this book is as good as I remembered.

Fiction/Nonfiction.  History/Mystery.  originally published 1951.  206 pages.

Introvert/Extrovert?

Are you an introvert, an extrovert, or perhaps a mixture that you can't quite explain?

Has anyone read Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking?

I haven't.  After reading a review of the book page of the local paper recently, I decided it was of little interest to me.

I'm an introvert.  I'm also short.  Each quality has occasionally been a drawback (sometimes I have to ask my husband to hand me something from a high shelf-- if he isn't there, however, I have a step stool).   On the other hand, there are times and places when when being tall (or being extroverted) could be a problem.

I skimmed the review with little interest.  I'm an introvert, and I like extroverts because they pull me into conversations and activities that would otherwise pass me by; I'm not unhappy with my introversion, although I have to be careful to avoid becoming a recluse.

Today my interest in the book was revived because I read two reviews of the book in The Guardian, one by an introvert and one by an extrovert.

What I found most interesting and reassuring in reading the reviews is that both Sara Maitland, the introvert, and Miranda Sawyer, the extrovert, are offended by the book's premise.  Neither were pleased by the dichotomy set up in Cain's book.

When I checked Amazon, I discovered that reviews were overwhelmingly positive--which certainly came as a surprise to me.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

113 Reviews 5 star:  (68) 4 star:  (28) 3 star:  (8) 2 star:  (5) 1 star:  (4)

 I'm curious...have any of you read the book?  If so, what did you think?

  I may have to read it after all.