Review of Princess of Glass, by Jessica Day George

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Princess of Glass

by Jessica Day George

Bloomsbury, New York, 2010. 266 pages.
Starred Review

I’m becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Jessica Day George. Princess of Glass is a follow up to her excellent Princess of the Midnight Ball, but it’s also an incredibly creative twist on the story of Cinderella.

I thought that the Cinderella story has been rewritten so well so many different ways, there was not much more that could be done with it. Though I must admit all the versions I’ve read are among my favorite fairy tale retellings: Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine, Bella at Midnight, by Diane Stanley, and Just Ella, by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

Jessica Day George does something quite different with the story and wonderfully creative, using the version where Cinderella attends three balls. What if the godmother were really an evil witch bent on entrapping Cinderella for her own evil purposes? What if the prince and all the people at the ball were affected by an enchantment and falling in love with Cinderella despite their true feelings?

Finally, what if a princess who had experience with evil enchantments and how to protect against them was at the court and was falling in love with the prince herself?

The main character of the book is Poppy, one of the younger of the 12 Dancing Princesses featured in Princess of the Midnight Ball. After so many princes suffered fatal accidents trying to break their family’s enchantment, the king tries to build bridges by sending some daughters to foreign courts.

Poppy is a delightfully independent young lady. When she notices strange things going on around Eleanora, a clumsy servant girl from an impoverished family, she determines to get to the bottom of it. I like the way she’s still knitting charms to help, which she learned from her brother-in-law.

The author includes two knitting patterns at the end, one for the poppy-decorated shawl Poppy wears to a ball. My only complaint is that I wish there were a picture. I’m going to have to make one to see what it looks like!

I found it ingenious how Jessica Day George wove in all the motifs of the Cinderella story (except maybe the stepsisters) in a way so completely different than I’d ever thought of them before. Brilliant!

I can’t help but hope that more stories will be forthcoming about some of the other 12 princesses and their adventures in other foreign lands.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/princess_of_glass.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Sky Is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson

Contemporary, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Sky Is Everywhere

by Jandy Nelson

Dial Books, 2010. 275 pages.

The beginning of The Sky Is Everywhere gives you all the major issues the book will hold and pulls you right in:

“Gram is worried about me. It’s not just because my sister Bailey died four weeks ago, or because my mother hasn’t contacted me in sixteen years, or even because suddenly all I think about is sex. She is worried about me because one of her houseplants has spots.

“Gram has believed for most of my seventeen years that this particular houseplant, which is of the nondescript variety, reflects my emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being. I’ve grown to believe it too.”

Lennie’s sister Bailey died suddenly, without warning, from a fatal arrhythmia while in rehearsal for a local production of Romeo & Juliet. Lennie says, “It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way.”

The Sky Is Everywhere is a love story. But the story plays out with the background of Lennie’s grief at the loss of her sister.

Bailey was Lennie’s best friend, and Lennie felt like the stable pony to Bailey’s thoroughbred. Now she’s coming out from her sister’s shadow, but she certainly didn’t want it to be like this.

And the only one who seems to truly understand how much she misses Bailey is Toby, Bailey’s boyfriend. But then with all that understanding, a physical attraction springs up between them that Lennie can’t seem to resist, but that makes her feel terrible.

A new trumpet player named Joe has come to town while Lennie was home, grieving. His playing is amazing. Or, as Lennie’s friend says, unfreakingbelievable. He seems interested in Lennie, and she can’t figure out why. And how can she stand to be happy, when Bailey isn’t here?

Meanwhile, Lennie is writing poetry, poetry on found objects (like a take-out cup) and burying them or casting them to the wind. They’re mostly about memories with Bailey.

For teens who like romance, this one’s a tear-jerker. I’m afraid it kept reminding me of New Moon, simply because Lennie’s favorite book is Wuthering Heights, and she’s read it 23 times. Again we have true-love-as-destiny.

There’s a bit more talk about sex than I find romantic, but otherwise the love story is beautiful, almost too beautiful. However, Lennie’s grief over Bailey is handled so delicately and feels so true, it keeps the book from going over the edge into sentimentality.

Lennie’s Gram and Uncle Big are so quirky and interesting, they come to life for the reader. Lennie’s dealing with grief, identity, passion, true love, and so many other things. This book is a well-crafted story that deals with such strong emotions it almost crosses the line into manipulative. But not quite.

I was reading this at night during Mother Reader‘s 48-Hour Book Challenge. I decided there was no better time to let a book keep me reading until the early hours of the morning, so I actually kept going until 5:00 AM. Crying when I’m that tired is all the more draining, but I did enjoy the book. And I like the way that, even though the book deals with grief, the overwhelming emotion you’re left with at the end is joy.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Ice, by Sarah Beth Durst

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Ice

by Sarah Beth Durst

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2009. 308 pages.
Starred Review

When Cassie was small, when her Dad was away from the station, Gram would tell her a fairy tale:

“Once upon a time, the North Wind said to the Polar Bear King, ‘Steal me a daughter, and when she grows, she will be your bride.’…

“And so, the Polar Bear King kidnapped a human child and brought her to the North Wind, and she was raised with the North Wind as her father and the West, South, and East Winds as her uncles….

“When the Polar Bear King came to claim his bride, she refused him. Her heart, she said belonged to another….

“Knowing the power of a magic promise, the North Wind’s daughter sought to counter it with her own bargain. ‘Then I will make a promise to you,’ the North Wind’s daughter replied. ‘Bring me to my love and hide us from my father, and when I have a daughter, she will be your bride.’ And so, the Bear carried the North Wind’s daughter to her human husband and hid them in the ice and snow….

“In time, the woman had a child. Passing by, the West Wind heard the birth and hurried to tell the North Wind where his daughter could be found. With the strength of a thousand blizzards, the North Wind swooped down onto the house that held his daughter, her husband, and their newborn baby. He would have torn the house to shreds, but the woman ran outside. ‘Take me,’ she cried, ‘but leave my loved ones alone!’

“The North Wind blew her as far as he could — as far as the castle beyond the ends of the world. There, she fell to the ground and was captured by trolls.” Cassie heard the bed creak as Gram stood. Her rich voice was softer now. “It is said that when the wind howls from the north, it is for his lost daughter.”

Cassie blinked her eyes open. “And Mommy is still there?”

Gram was a shadow in the doorway. “Yes.”

After this surprising prologue, the book opens the day before Cassie’s eighteenth birthday. Cassie remembers Gram’s story when she tracks down the biggest polar bear she’s ever seen. She smiles to think that if the Polar Bear King existed, this is what he’d look like. She loads her tranquilizer gun so she can tag and measure him.

And then he disappears.

She stays out late trying to figure out how she missed his trail, and is ready for a scolding from her father, back at the Arctic research station. What she isn’t prepared for is his reaction to her story of the giant disappearing polar bear. He tells her she must leave the station right away, fly to Fairbanks to stay with her grandmother. He says the station can no longer be her home.

When she wakes at three a.m. to the sound of the plane that’s come to take her away, she realizes how serious her father is. Gram is on the plane and she tells Cassie the fairy tale was Gram’s way of telling Cassie the truth. Her mother was the daughter of the North Wind. She bargained with the Polar Bear King, and now, on her eighteenth birthday, he’s coming for Cassie.

Cassie is incredulous, but also feels hurt and betrayed that either her father or her grandmother didn’t tell her the truth. She doesn’t want to leave her home. When Gram gives her time to get ready for the flight, Cassie goes outside and calls the Polar Bear King. He comes.

Now Cassie makes a bargain with the Polar Bear King. If he frees her mother from the trolls, she will marry him.

So begins this striking and original retelling of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” I’ve already read two novelized versions that I loved: East, by Edith Pattou, and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, by Jessica Day George. This one is very different, because it sets the story in the modern day.

I loved the way every chapter begins with Cassie’s GPS readings. They go haywire when the Polar Bear King brings her to his castle a mile north of the North Pole.

Bear is a munaqsri with the task of transferring and transporting the souls of polar bears who die into polar bears who are born. His heart breaks when he is not fast enough to be present at a polar bear birth, and the baby is stillborn.

I was delighted that Cassie comes up with a job, a way she can help, using data from the research station. This is not a heroine who is happy to sit alone in a magical castle! She finds a way to work side by side with Bear.

But what I loved most about the book was how it showed Cassie falling in love with Bear. She teases him and cares about him and sees his love for the polar bears. We can see her love for him blossoming on the page.

As in the fairy tale, he comes to her in the shape of a man at night, and on the first night, Cassie swings an ax at him! But as she comes to care about him, she allows him to sleep in the room, and then later she kisses him. Finally, she gives him a wedding night.

And my paragraph there is just about as explicit as the book gets. It’s beautifully romantic without having to go into detail. As in the fairy tale, though, her husband only comes to her in the shape of a man at night, and doesn’t want her to see his face.

When she breaks that taboo, tragedy strikes.

Cassie has grown up on the Arctic research station, so we believe that she is capable of surviving when she sets out to rescue her husband from the troll castle east of the sun and west of the moon.

This is another book I’d like to get into the hands of teens who love the romance in Twilight, because here, too, we have a story of One True Love. We have a heroine who is devastated by the loss of her beloved and is willing to do anything to bring them back together.

Back when the Harry Potter books were at the height of their popularity, my husband had the insight to say that he believed it was so popular because of the aspect of the chosen child. Everyone would like to be told: Here is your destiny. This is what you were born to do.

I think Twilight‘s popularity is similar. We wish that True Love were as simple as the “imprinting” Stephenie Meyer’s werewolves experience. I think that girls, at least, long to experience love that they feel is their destiny, to find their One True Love. And, take it from me, there’s a real satisfaction to calling the rival who steals away their husband, the Troll Queen!

I admit that I always love novelizations of fairy tales. I honestly thought that I’d read too many versions of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” to be impressed by another, but I loved this. Beautiful writing and a beautiful story. A wonderfully romantic tale of True Love you would go past the ends of the earth for.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Boy Next Door, by Meg Cabot

Chick Lit, Fiction Review, Light Reading, Romance 0

The Boy Next Door

by Meg Cabot

Avon Books (HarperCollins), 2002. 379 pages.

I’m a little embarrassed that when I was shelving books in the Romance section, I actually picked one up, checked it out, read it in one sitting, and thoroughly enjoyed it. To be fair, at least it doesn’t have a picture of anyone’s bare chest on the cover. I was in the mood for something light and fluffy and fun after reading some heavier books, and light and fluffy and fun was exactly what I got.

The story is told through e-mails, and that’s actually carried off well. Fortunately, they don’t use the annoying text message shorthand and it comes out as a fun and believable way people would talk about the madcap adventures of a slightly ditzy but good-hearted co-worker like Mel.

We first meet Mel Fuller in a series of e-mails from her co-workers wondering why she is so late to work. Especially amusing is the one from Human Resources urging counseling if she has serious personal problems causing her excessive tardiness.

It turns out that Mel was late because she found her elderly neighbor had been attacked in her apartment. So she didn’t think to call her employer. In fact, she took care of feeding her neighbor’s cats and walking her Great Dane before she came to work. Isn’t that what anyone would do?

So begins some time where caring and thoughtful Mel takes care of the enormous dog Paco while Mrs. Friedlander is in a coma. Her work does not appreciate her continued tardiness. When Mel finally manages to track down Mrs. Friedlander’s nephew, a notorious womanizer, photographer Max Friedlander, and sends him an e-mail, he’s off at an island with a celebrity model, and doesn’t want to be bothered by a little thing like his aunt’s attack. But neither does he want his aunt to cut him out of her will.

So Max e-mails an old college friend, John Trent, calls in an old favor, and asks John to go to his aunt’s apartment, pretending to be Max Friedlander. John can take care of the dog until Mrs. Friedlander gets out of the coma, and Max’s aunt will never know that her nephew couldn’t be bothered to come to her bedside.

It all might have gone well, if Mel hadn’t found “Max Friedlander” so different from what his reputation suggested. And if John hadn’t had a thing for redheads, combined with never before having known a girl who wasn’t more interested in his money than in him. But you know there’s going to be trouble with a relationship that began with lies.

Reading the flirting, the gossipy e-mails, and the funny misunderstandings is a lot of fun if you’re in the mood for fluff, and this book hit me right when that’s exactly the mood I was in. There are a couple of sex scenes, but they are also kept pretty light, and at least it doesn’t have a steamy cover! There’s even a mystery along the way: Who attacked old Mrs. Friedlander? Is their apartment building safe?

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Body Finder, by Kimberly Derting

Contemporary, Romance, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Body Finder

by Kimberly Derting

Harper, 2010. 329 pages.
Starred Review

Starting to read this book late at night, thinking I could read only a chapter or two because I was so tired, was a major mistake. No, this was one of those books that got me enjoying it far too much to look at the clock until I’d read the last page.

I hope that fans of Twilight will find this book. There’s the same feeling of love destined to happen (with a lot more reasons for it), a paranormal element, the heroine lives in Washington State, her uncle (okay not her father) is a police chief, she falls down a lot (though not quite as often as Bella), and her life is saved by her true love. In fact, with those rescues, I was reminded of good old-fashioned romantic suspense, especially the Mary Stewart novels I devoured in seventh and eighth grade. Best of all, the writing is excellent and the romance is exquisitely done. I think teens will love this book. I know I did!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story opens with a prologue when 8-year-old Violet hears a strange sound her father can’t hear, follows it through the woods, and finds a dead body.

Then we skip to the beginning of Violet’s junior year of high school. Like all teens, she doesn’t feel like she fits in, but she does have some legitimate reasons:

“After all, how many girls had inherited the ability to locate the dead, or at least those who had been murdered? How many little girls had spent hours of their childhood scouring the woods in search of dead animals left behind by feral predators? How many had created their own personal cemeteries in their backyards to bury the carnage they’d found, so the little souls could rest in peace?”

Something weird happened to Violet over the summer. Her best friend, Jay, whom she’s known since they were six years old, changed over the summer. They have done everything together since first grade, and he even knows her secret and keeps it safe. He even helped her make the little graves, by her side, not as if it were something strange. But now…

“She hated these new, unknown feelings that seemed to assault her whenever he was around, and sometimes even when he was only in her thoughts. She felt like she was no longer in control of her own body, and her traitorous reactions were only slightly more embarrassing than her treacherous thoughts.

“She was starting to feel like he was toxic to her.

“That, or she was seriously losing her mind, because that was the only way she could possibly explain the ridiculous butterflies she got whenever Jay was close to her. And what really irritated Violet was that he seemed to be completely oblivious of these new, and completely insane, reactions she was having to him. Obviously, whatever she had wasn’t contagious.”

As if that weren’t enough to deal with, on the first weekend after school has started, she goes to an end-of-summer party at a lake. She’s riding a Wind Runner with Jay when she feels drawn to a certain part of the lake, has to see what’s there, and finds the body of a teenage girl.

When the next girl disappears, people start to get worried.

Now, on top of Violet’s ability to find the bodies of murdered creatures, it turns out that the same echo of the creature sticks to its murderer. She learned this over the years from her cat, a natural predator. If she found a certain dead mouse by an odd taste in her mouth, she’ll have the exact same sensation when her cat, its killer, comes around.

So shouldn’t she use this ability to find whoever murdered the girl? Shouldn’t she finally use her bizarre “gift” for a valuable purpose?

This book reminded me of Num8ers, by Rachel Ward. Both books tell a story in contemporary times with one little addition — a girl who has a paranormal, rather morbid gift. However, The Body Finder tells a story that is much less dark. Instead of being an orphan, Violet has a warm and loving family. She is protected by her parents, her police chief uncle, and Jay, all of whom know about her gift.

But when you go looking for a murderer, you’re bound to run into trouble. Her family and Jay are protective, but they underestimate the strength of Violet’s gift and her obsession as more girls are killed.

Of course, Violet’s putting herself in danger only gets Jay angry and adds to the misunderstanding between the two of them.

This book has more making out than the Mary Stewart novels I used to read in junior high. But other than that, you can think of this as good old-fashioned romantic suspense. Pick this up when you’re in the mood for a dose of danger plus true love. You’d think a book called The Body Finder would be gruesome, but I found it to be sweet.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson

Fiction Review, General, Literary, Romance, Starred Review 0

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

by Helen Simonson

Random House, New York, 2010. 358 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a gentle love story, which reminded me of Alexander McCall Smith’s books like La’s Orchestra Saves the World, or maybe The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Though the story is completely different, the tone is similar, with nice, calm people going about their everyday lives while confronted with problems, and quietly falling in love along the way.

The book opens on the morning when the retired Major Pettigrew has learned that his younger brother is dead:

“Major Pettigrew was still upset about the phone call from his brother’s wife and so he answered the doorbell without thinking. On the damp bricks of the path stood Mrs. Ali from the village shop. She gave only the faintest of starts, the merest arch of an eyebrow. A quick rush of embarrassment flooded to the Major’s cheeks and he smoothed helplessly at the lap of his crimson, clematis-covered housecoat with hands that felt like spades.”

Major Pettigrew’s wife died only six years before, and Mrs. Ali’s husband died the previous year, so they understand each other’s grief and little rituals, like occasionally wearing his wife’s favorite housecoat. They gradually discover they have some other interests in common, including a shared love of books.

Mrs. Ali’s Pakistani family does not approve that her husband left the shop to her and that she is continuing to run it. They are pressuring her to live with her husband’s family now that he is gone.

Meanwhile, Major Pettigrew goes to his brother’s funeral. He is appalled when he learns that his brother did not leave him the second of his father’s fine guns, a gift from an Indian maharajah. Their father had given them each one gun to remember him by, asking that the pair be reunited eventually to pass on further in the family. Major Pettigrew left explicit directions in his will to leave his gun to his brother, if he died first, but it appears that his brother did not return the favor. And his brother’s wife, their daughter, and even the Major’s own son all want him to sell the pair, more valuable together, and they each have plans for what to do with the money.

There was a point toward the beginning of this book when I got annoyed by how no one in Major Pettigrew’s life was very nice at all, except Mrs. Ali. His son is a social climber with a new American fiance, and he seems to think his father is there to fulfill his whims. The local village ladies have their own ideas on who the major should marry. They are planning an elaborate party at his club and rope him in to getting involved, while coming across as interfering busybodies.

But the people did grow on me. Major Pettigrew moves through the uproar of circumstances with dignity and humor. I began to see even glimmers of humanity in his ungrateful son.

Of course, the ladies of the village really get upset when they begin to realize how Major Pettigrew’s feelings for Mrs. Ali are blossoming. And her own family keeps pressuring her to leave the village. Can Major Pettigrew go against generations of tradition and find love with a Pakistani woman who is actually (shudder) in trade?

Here is an exchange I enjoyed between the Major and Mrs. Ali’s nephew about the nephew’s love life:

“I’m only joking,” said Abdul Wahid. “You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care — and humility.” He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. “But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?”

“My dear boy,” said the Major. “Is there really any other kind?”

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Mission, by A. M. Cormier

Adventure, Fiction Review, General, Romance, Suspense 0

Mission

by A. M. Cormier

Xulon Press, 2009. 483 pages.

Physician’s assistant Parry St. Amand was surprised when the brilliant, if socially challenged, Dr. Rand Szabo asks to have lunch with her. Then he surprises her even more by asking her to go with his team on a medical mission trip to a poor former Soviet satellite country. A doctor backed out at the last minute, and if Parry can’t go, they will have to call off the trip.

The particular country involved has been having political unrest, and Parry’s friends and family think she’s crazy. But she doesn’t want to be the one to keep the team from helping where they are badly needed. She decides to go.

There are nine people on the team, including two other women, most of whom Parry knows from the hospital. However, three of the men are engineers, to help set up equipment and do repairs. One of those, Jake Spengler, is a former Ranger, who happens to be handsome and single. He has some tips about how to stay inconspicuous when traveling in a politically volatile area.

The team arrives at their destination and bunk in an orphanage run by wonderful, caring people. They have a busy surgery schedule, putting in long days. Then the unthinkable happens. The country has a military coup and the new dictator has put a price on the heads of Americans.

The team plans to smuggle out six people in vehicles, but the remaining three need to hike out, through rough terrain and the fresh snow of an early winter. Rand and Jake are natural choices, but Parry insists that she is the most fit of those who are left. So the three of them set out on the grueling trip overland, trying to stay unnoticed, but also to stay alive.

Once I got to that part, the story gripped me and wouldn’t let go. I read into the early hours of the morning on a night when I really needed to get some sleep. I expected narrow escapes, physical challenges and plenty of danger, but A. M. Cormier gave them to me with details I didn’t expect at all.

I need to admit up front that the author is a friend of mine, and I’m reviewing the book because I want it to do well, for her sake.

For the sake of my readers, I will admit that I wish my friend had not decided to self-publish. Mission seems to me to be just a professional edit away from being a truly magnificent book. There are some flaws — some scattered misspellings and some gratuitous political rants that have little to do with the plot. Most challenging is the slow start — you could completely skip the first chapter without missing it — but I’m here to tell you that if you persevere, the book will be worth it.

If anything, the author goes too far with the old adage, “show, don’t tell.” There are a few places where she gives us a scene or a flashback scene when all we needed was to be told what happened. We don’t need a flashback to understand that her family is pressuring her to get married. And more interesting than a flashback of her former romance would be to hear her explaining it to her new love. Those are nice scenes, but they do interrupt the flow of the book.

Yes, there is a new love in Parry’s life by the end of the book, and I love the way the romance is handled. This, too, had some nice surprises, and I found it beautiful and satisfying.

Another strength of the book is the author’s facility with medical terms and procedures. You can tell she’s worked in medicine, and her descriptions of medical situations the team faces all ring true.

I should also say that as a reviewer I have a strong prejudice against self-published books. This is based on how many I’ve seen that are truly awful.

However, I honestly believe that Mission is an exception. I admit that fondness for my friend kept me going through the slow start, but it was not friendship that kept me reading until early morning! It was the suspense of wondering how these characters I’d come to care about were going to survive.

I feel risky calling the book “wholesome.” I don’t want to make it sound boring, because it’s far from being that. But it’s refreshing to have a main character with morals, who thinks about how she can honor God and serve others. Unlike the political views mentioned, the talk about God doesn’t come off as preachy at all — just a matter-of-fact part of Parry’s life.

So if you’d like to read a story about people trying to do something good and then getting caught in a dangerous situation, with good, old-fashioned suspense and a dash of romance, give Mission a try.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Review of Legacy, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Romance, Starred Review 0

Legacy

The Sharing Knife, Volume Two

by Lois McMaster Bujold

eos (HarperCollins), 2007. 377 pages.
Starred Review.

The second book I had to read when I got back from Christmas vacation was also the second volume in a story I’d begun.

The Sharing Knife is the story of a cross-cultural romance in another world. Since both cultures are strange to readers, we can read about the troubles of Fawn and Dag with a fresh perspective. She’s one of the farmer people, and he’s a Lakewalker. The two peoples have very different customs, but one they share is that they should never intermarry.

The Lakewalkers use magic to protect the world from Malices, horrible sources of evil that feed on life and possess it for their own ends. The farmers don’t trust them, and horrible rumors have sprung up about the dark rituals they must practice.

Fawn and Dag would like to be a bridge of understanding, but first they need a little understanding and acceptance from Dag’s own family. While they are working on that, a Malice attacks, springing up in a farmer city and killing many. Dag is among those who go to deal with it, and he ends up needing his farmer wife’s help.

This is primarily a love story, but the fascinating setting gives it an extra hold on the reader’s imagination. There are some more volumes in the saga, and I will definitely be reading on.

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Review of The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Romance, Starred Review 0

The Sharing Knife

Volume One

Beguilement

by Lois McMaster Bujold

eos (HarperCollins), 2006. 372 pages.
Starred Review.

A big thank you to my siblings who gave me this book last year for Christmas. When I was on my way to see them this year for Christmas, I thought it was high time I read it, so I brought it along. It was another that I was very sorry I didn’t have the second volume with me, but remedied that as soon as I got home.

Fawn Bluefield has run away from home after she learns she’s pregnant and the father spurns her. She’ll find work in the city, and won’t have to face her brothers on the farm with this.

Along the way, she sees a group of Lakewalkers, including a man with only one hand. There are fearsome tales among the farmers about Lakewalkers, so Fawn hides until they go, not realizing that her spark of life is bright and clear to the one-handed man.

But the Lakewalkers are on the trail of a Malice, a fearsome creature that can enslave animals and humans and destroy their souls. Some of the Malice’s servants are on the road to town, and they find Fawn. The tall Lakewalker saves Fawn, twice, but then she has a chance to save him. His magic knife, bespelled to kill a Malice, has a strange reaction to Fawn’s unborn child.

Their frightening adventures plus the magic knife, create a bond between this unlikely pair. But few things are more forbidden, on both sides, than a romance between a farmer girl and a Lakewalker.

Lois McMaster Bujold creates a fascinating world where the Lakewalkers use powerful and mysterious magic, at great cost to themselves, to protect the farmers. Yet both sides neither trust nor understand one another. Can Fawn bridge that gap?

This is fantasy for adults, with plenty of talk about sex, as Fawn learns from the more experienced Lakewalker. There is more detailed world-building than you usually find in Young Adult fantasy, but I found myself so interested in the pair, I wasn’t as distracted by it as I often am. I definitely plan to read more of the series to find out what happens next.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/beguilement.html

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Fluffy Holiday Reading

Chick Lit, Fiction Review, Light Reading, Romance, Teaser Tuesdays 0

thanksgivingThanksgiving
by Janet Evanovich

Well, on Teaser Tuesday I posted two teasers and asked you to help me choose which to read. I got one comment on Facebook, and I went ahead and ignored that comment!

Yep, my friend Missy told me to skip the Janet Evanovich holiday book, but Wednesday night I went ahead and knocked it off. She said that she’d been disappointed in a different Evanovich holiday book. But I had wanted something light and fluffy, and something I could read in less than two hours.

Sure enough, I read Thanksgiving in about the same amount of time it would have taken to watch a chick flick, it had about that much depth and characterization (not much), was that much fun (lots), and hurt my head a lot less, because it didn’t involve any bright light. So it was exactly what I was in the mood for.

But it was light and fluffy and not highly believable or lasting literature and sexy and silly and fun and not necessarily what I want to be known for recommending. So — I thought I’d just talk about it on this blog but not post a review on the main site. But that way, you’d know how the Teaser Tuesday turned out.

And today I had another long wait at a hospital for an MRI, and read further on The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Okay, it’s quite dry reading, but I’m getting pulled in, little by little. I probably should stop reading it when I have a headache, though, I think, as it needs a little more focus than what I’m giving it.

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, did not need much powers of concentration at all! Basically a young woman with a history of being dumped has moved to Williamsburg and meets a fresh-out-of-medical-school pediatrician when his rabbit (of all things) nibbles her skirt. Then a young teen mother mistakes them for a married couple and dumps a baby on them, and Megan falls for the baby (yeah, right) and they take care of it and have a perfect Thanksgiving with their families and confront her former fiance and have a comedy of errors (of course) and go through lust and love and decide whether to live happily ever after.

Light and fluffy, completely unrealistic, but quite a bit of fun. I was a little annoyed that the rabbit hardly ever came into it after the initial scene where it engineers their meeting, but okay that wasn’t the only quibble. And it certainly didn’t have any more plot holes than a similar chick flick and would make a delightful one.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.