Fables Vol. 1, by Bill Willingham

Man, I really wanted to like this book. I tried to like it, all the way through, but save for a few moments of amusement I was largely unimpressed. This is not The Unwritten, sadly, and maybe my love for that comic colored my view of this one? I'll need to do some SCIENCE to find out.

In the meantime, let me tell you why this book should have been awesome:

First, I mean, fables. I have really grown to enjoy satires/homages of fairy tales and the like, and that's exactly what this is. In this comic series, the inhabitants of, like, any imaginary story have been exiled from their respective homelands by some mighty Adversary and now live mostly in NYC, except for the non-human ones (or non-able-to-pretend-to-be-human ones) who live on a farm upstate. Which sounds kind of ominous, actually, I hope they're okay. In this particular volume we have Old King Cole as the mayor of Fabletown, Snow White as his deputy, the Big Bad Wolf (aka Bigby) in pretend-human form as a cop/detective-type, and lots and lots of other favorite characters doing many and varied things. Oh, and Bluebeard shows up and I totally know who he is this time! Thanks, Neil Gaiman!

Second, it's a murder mystery. Bigby's case here is the mysterious disappearance slash probable murder of Rose Red, whose apartment is covered in blood almost like that one episode of Dexter and whose man-friend Jack (of Beanstalk fame) is eager to find out whodunnit. I love murder mysteries, and in this case I get to actually see the crime scene for a change! Graphic novels are cool like that.

So, fables and murder. Fantastic. But, here's why it failed for me: the writing. It was very comic-book-y with the emphasis on all the important words but also sometimes on words that seemed to be fine on their own and I was like, wait, what? He said that sentence how? Does he speak English? (Does he speak English? Does he speak English? I could do this all day...)

Ahem. And then also Willingham tried to be all cutesy and self-aware with the dialogue and it comes out instead all verbose and clunky and awful and like absolutely no one anywhere would actually talk, and I am like, omg chill out, which is easy for me to say from this end of an extremely run-on sentence but WHATEVER. It's a comic book! I want to look at the pictures!

Example: Bigby says to Snow White, "This isn't about Prince Charming. It's about your sister, Rose Red." And of course no one talks like that unless they're Expositing, and so Snow White calls him on his BS and says, "This may surprise you, Mister Wolf, but I'm not entirely an idiot. I actually know my sister's name." Unfortunately, this is ALSO not how anyone talks unless they're putting on a show for a listener, of which there are none that are not the reader. A simple "Yeah, that's her name, what about her?" or "Do I have another?" would easily have sufficed, but no-oooo, and that's how the whole rest of the book goes and it is tiresome.

The concept and the general execution are so good, guys, and if you are more forgiving of terrible dialogue than I am you will probably really like this series, which I imagine goes on in the same vein. But I can't do it. Let me know how it goes?

Recommendation: Fables, MURDER, pretty pictures. Is this your bag?

Rating: 5/10

The Unwritten Vol. 3, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

Nooooo I forgot to pace myself and now I have to wait some unknown amount of time for the next volume! Nuts! But my husband got his hands on it and he's the type of person who accidentally spoils things on a regular basis, so really I had to read it. Had to.

And it is so fantastic. Even if you don't want to read this series, track down this volume at your library and find the page with the amusingly terrible rip-off of His Dark Materials. And then flip forward to the other page that looks like that one and that gets in a dig at George Lucas with a reference to "meta-condrians." Totally worth it.

Other things that are totally worth it: one of the issues that makes up this collection is a Choose Your Own Adventure. Did I mention FANTASTIC? My husband and I proved our perfectness for each other by choosing the exact same path through the story (we apparently are fans of evil evilness), but I also went back and read through a few other iterations and a) they were all interesting and b) some paths made sly winks at other paths that you wouldn't notice except if you read them all. Oh, AND, the whole point of the choosing of your own adventure is to make the point that you, you know, get to do that with your life. Hands-on morals? How intriguing.

Story, you say? There is one, but why aren't you just reading it? Seriously. Okay, fine.

Our friend Tom is presumed dead but still on the run from the Shadowy People. Someone has written a terrible fourteenth (yes, fourteenth) Tommy Taylor book and even though the publishing house knows that it wasn't Tom's dad, they're totes willing to make a jillionty-twelve dollars off of it. It includes the aforementioned scene with Lord Gabriel explaining Powder to Tommy Taylor. Oh, yes. It turns out that the SPs wrote it to bring Wilson Taylor out of hiding, which may or may not end up working. Also, we find out who Tom's mum is and we sort of find out what Lizzie Hexam's deal is ("sort of" because part of it is the CYOA). And if they're giving away all this information now, I am very interested in finding out what they aren't telling me!

I'll just wait here, impatiently, until I can find out.

Recommendation: For people who don't mind parodies of beloved children's fantasy series, people who like to choose their own adventures, and fans of the garrote.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

The Unwritten Vol. 2, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I held out as long as I could, but after The Unwritten's super-intriguing start, I just couldn't stay away! And it's still super-intriguing and also baffling and also heartbreaking.

So last time there was Tom Taylor, the namesake of a bigger-than-but-basically-a-ripoff-of-Harry-Potter book franchise who is either not actually his father's offspring and therefore not worthy of the Tommy Taylor franchise or actually Tommy Taylor and therefore an unknown-to-himself Man Wizard. Which is still pretty much where we are, sort of.

Now, at the end of the last book someone murdered a whole bunch of people and Tom was the only one around to take the blame, so this story arc takes place in a French prison overseen by a governor who is not sympathetic to minor celebrity. But the prison thing isn't really important, what's important is all the people in it. Tom makes unlikely friends and allies with some of the inmates and makes a huge enemy of the governor for what seems at first to be no reason at all. Except that then we go look at the events from the governor's perspective and you find out that he has these kids who are obsessed with Tommy Taylor to the point of believing in his real and actual existence, and the governor is not pleased that Tom has effed things up big-time. Oh, and then those shadowy people from the last book decide to burn down the prison. No big.

Also, a trip to Nazi Germany via magical doorknob and an... interesting meeting with Josef Goebbels. Also, also, in the non-Tom comic at the end, an adventure with a foul-mouthed rabbit in a sort of Winnie-the-Pooh land. It's all very delightful, really.

I think the best part about this series so far is that even with the ridiculousness and insanity, it's all very literary. It loves literature and references it, in the form of the aforementioned Pooh spoof and an extended riff on the Song of Roland and of course all of the Harry Potter/fantasy-in-general allusions. It is also way more than its premise; sure, there's adventure and potential wizardliness, but there's also a lot to think about in terms of the role of media, the effect of childhood heroes on children and the adults who love them, and the magical power of attention. That middle one is what leads to the heartbreak in this volume, big time, as it does in real life.

I am definitely in for the next volume, and almost definitely for getting off my duff and patronizing my local comics shop for the issue-by-issue comics when the time comes. It's good stuff.

Recommendation: Yeah, you'd better have that strong stomach for some of the violence in here, and also a strong heart. A love of the f-word can't hurt, either.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

The Unwritten Vol. 1, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I don't remember where I first heard about this series... one of those blogs or podcasts or something that tells me what's good. I don't remember what I was promised, either, but whatever it was I liked it enough to give it a shot.

That forgetting posed a bit of a problem in the first few pages, which I read and thought, "Whaaaaaaaaat is this? This is not very good. What's with all these words? It's a graphic novel!" And I really almost gave it up right then, but I said to myself, I said self, you've done this before and maybe you should just give it a little bit longer.

And of course, I was right. The second time, with the reading just one more page. Because it turns out that first three pages or whatever are meant to be pages from a not-graphic novel series that is like Harry Potter et al. and therefore is written as a send-up of Harry Potter et al. And once I figured that out, I was much happier!

The real novel, the graphic one, is about this fella called Tom Taylor whose father wrote the aforementioned series that instead of Harry Potter is Tommy Taylor. Tom is emphatically not Tommy, but is still making a living going around to all the cons and whatnot signing Tommy Taylor signatures and talking about his father's work, which his father can't do because he's gone mysteriously missing, or possibly just abandoned everyone. And right now Tom has two opposing problems causing him no end of trouble — a group of people who think he's not really Tommy Taylor but some kid his father absconded with to make himself look good, and another group that thinks he's totally Tommy Taylor, magical wizardry and all. And some people in that last group would really rather him dead...

There's so much to this story, I've barely cracked the surface of it, which makes sense considering these are just the first 5 comics of an ongoing series. But other interesting things so far are Tom's obsession (given to him by his father) for literary locations, a mysterious staircase that has more stairs going down than coming up, people possibly made of words, and some revisionist-history backstory involving Rudyard Kipling.

I may or may not have gone right out the day after reading this volume to get the other two that currently exist. I might have to track down a comic shop if I get through those too quickly...

Recommendation: So far, I'd recommend for people with a good sense of humor about fantasy conventions and a slightly strong stomach.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, A to Z Challenge)

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

I don't want to talk about this book. I want to snuggle with it. Snuggle snuggle snugg—ow, those are some pointy edges! Okay, book, you can just stay over there a minute.

Okay, so, this book. I heard some folks bein' real excited about it earlier this year, and I was like, magicians? Circuses? Secret plots OF DOOM? I am so in. And so I put a hold on it at the library, some ridiculous amount of time in advance. And then in the intervening weeks this book seemed to get ALL the publicity, showing up on lots of blogs and in newspapers and on NPR, and everyone was like OMG THIS BOOK IS TEH AWESOMEST and I was like, ohlord. Because I've read those books before, and I have not liked them.

But as you can tell, this book I liked a ton, possibly because all those things that drew me into the story, and that made me worry that they would not be as good as everyone was shouting about, were really not that important. Yes, there are magicians. There is a mysterious contest so hush-hush that even the competitors have no idea what the contest is or how to win it. There is intrigue and subterfuge. But what I cared about was the circus.

The circus is this nearly completely black-and-white affair, with dozens of little tents with your usual circus fare and a few tents with really magical things — a magician disguised as an illusionist, a labyrinth, a wishing tree, a landscape made entirely of ice but still realistically aroma-ed. And what makes the circus truly special is that the author makes sure you know exactly what everything looks like and smells like and feels like and all those other sensory things. About a bonfire:

"As you walk closer, you can see that it sits in a wide black iron cauldron, balanced on a number of clawed feet. Where the rim of a cauldron would be, it breaks into long strips of curling iron, as though it has been melted and pulled apart like taffy. The curling iron continues up until it curls back into itself, weaving in and out amongst the other curls, giving it the cage-like effect. The flames are visible in the gaps between and rising slightly above. They are obscured only at the bottom, so it is impossible to tell what is burning, if it is wood or coal or something else entirely."

Morgenstern intersperses short sensory passages like that throughout the novel, but she writes all of her scenes in a similarly opulent way. At first I was a bit put off by this seemingly over-verbose writing, and in a few places it sort of gets away from Morgenstern, but in general she makes it work fantastically and it is absolutely my favorite aspect of the book. I really want to get my hands on the audiobook so that this writing and Jim Dale's voice can make beautiful babies in my brain.

Ahem.

If you're more of a story person, I'm not sure you'll be as enamored with the book; the plot is fairly simple, starts off quite slow, and ends abruptly AND with a not-declared-as-such-but-it-totally-is-and-can't-deny-it epilogue, but though I found myself saying more than once "If this goes one step farther I'm calling shenanigans," the book managed never to take that step, at least by my measurements.

I wrote on Twitter the other night that "I've read through the last page of The Night Circus, but I'm certainly not finished with it..." and that holds true today. I spent more than a week reading this book not because I didn't have time to devour it in one sitting but because I didn't want to. I wanted to savor that writing and put off leaving the circus as long as possible. And I'm not kidding about the audiobook. My library doesn't have it yet but when they do, you'll be seeing another post about The Night Circus right here.

Recommendation: If you like shiny pretty things or magic or clown-less circuses, you'll probably be happy here.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, A to Z Challenge)

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Here's a true story for you: The Hobbit is the first book I ever lied about reading, way back when I was but a young Alison looking to score some Summer Reading Club points. My parents totally did not believe my lies, but they allowed said lies to stand anyway, leading to DECADES of shame and regret. Well, not really. Most of the time I forget it even happened. But I've never lied about a Summer Reading Club book since! (Summer reading in general, yes, totally.)

But now I have read it, and I can speak with authority on the subjects of Misplaced Heroism and Wizards That Are Not Very Nice. Seriously, I had no idea Gandalf was such a jerk! Blah blah blah, grand adventures, blah, self-confidence, blah, endless treasure, whatever. No means no, Gandalf!

I know I'm not the last person to read this book, so here's the plot: jerky wizard recruits homebody hobbit to go help some dwarves steal all the treasures from a talking dragon. Said gang wanders toward dragon and gets swept up in some side-quests along the way; a ring is tricked away from a creeper. The gang finally gets to the dragon and fails at stealing all the treasures until someone kills the dragon for them. There is fighting. Eventually, Homebody Hobbit returns home with a handful of treasure, which doesn't last long for an amusing reason.

So. It's a Quest Novel. I'm not always a big fan of these, and I'd have to say this one is all right, I guess. The scrapes they get into are interesting, especially when they ignore directions and go wandering in the woods, and of course I was intrigued by the Gollum aspect of things having seen the LOTR movies (I'll get around to the books someday, maybe). I was a little concerned by the GI-Joe-like refusal to let anyone die, but then everyone started dying and I was like, hey, hold on, this is going a little overboard. But it's really not a quest until someone dies, right?

Of course, the best part was that the audiobook cover had the same picture that graces my engagement puzzle (read: the puzzle my then-boyfriend and I were putting together when I completely ignored his proposal [accidentally, I swear!]), so when things got boring I could just think back on adorable times. I may be a huge sap.

The second-best part was that ears-reading the book meant that the narrator SANG to me, which was absolutely fantastic because a) I always want to know how songs in books go and b) Rob Inglis is probably a way better singer than those dwarves and goblins and whatnot. If he could have sung the whole book to me, that would have been just fine.

And even though I wasn't a huge fan of the book, I liked it enough that I am very interested in seeing the movie — I was going to watch it eventually if only for Martin Freeman, but now I might actually pay to see it, which is just ridiculous. There had better be singing!

Recommendation: You probably already know if you want to read it, but if you're on the fence you should think about how much you like quests, goblins, and riddles.

Rating: 7/10
(TBR Challenge)

Death Note Vol. 8, by Tsugumi Ohba

Nrrrrrrt.

That's about the only sound I was capable of making after this book EXPLODED MY BRAIN. If you've read any of my other Death Note reviews, you're going to be like, "Yeah, yeah, I get it with the brain explosion, get a new phrase, lady." But I can't. Because my brain has exploded. Again.

Okay, so. Light's sister has been kidnapped, and the kidnappers, led by a chocolate-loving mini-L want the notebook in trade. Light comes up with a plan to not do that last part, but the kidnappers are way wily-er and they temporarily hijack a plane and take Light's dad out to the desert where they're keeping his daughter underground in some crazy revolving door trap and there's no choice but to give up the notebook and now the kidnappers are like, sweet, and go killing all the people they don't like.

But of course there's still another notebook, and a person who can see people's names to write them down in it, and so Misa is still useful and Light still hangs out with her, even if her sexy underpants do absolutely nothing for him. Poor Misa.

AND Light is working with the American special ops team headed by the other mini-L, who at first acts like he's never heard of the first mini-L and then is like, "Oh, no, I totes know him. And must defeat him."

Oh, also, there's a third Shinigami who apparently owns one of these notebooks? I don't remember this from the previous books but I remember so little that I will go ahead and believe it, and he totally messes everything up.

And then a bunch of people die, and then Light contemplates killing, like, everyone else, including Misa. Because that's what you do to the people who love you, right?

This is all very confusing, I'm sure, because the book is super confusing, and there are still like five books to go and I might suffer a mental breakdown before I finish them. But I still want to finish them. There is something very wrong with me.

Recommendation: Probably you should NEVER read this series, because you're just going to get sucked in and your brain is going to explode and you're going to think it's a good idea to keep reading them. But still, you should read them.

Rating: 7/10
(RIP Challenge)

The Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

After finishing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was super-interesting in a "So that's how the story is meant to go!" way, I figured it couldn't hurt to try out a completely unknown-to-me Oz story. It didn't hurt, certainly, but it was... weird.

Which, I mean, it's weird in the same ways that the first book is weird, because that's how Baum rolls, except that this time I wasn't prepared for the specific weird-ities and so was like, what?

So there's a kid called Tip, and he tries to pull a prank on his guardian, Mombi, except that the prank totally backfires and now Tip is running away to the Emerald City with a formerly-inanimate pumpkin-head scarecrow-thing called Jack. Along they way, Tip meets a girl called Jinjur who is set to overthrow the Scarecrow as bigwig of the Emerald City because, of course, all of those shiny emeralds and whatnot would be much better served as necklaces and other shiny things for Jinjur's girl army. Of course. So, Tip finds the Scarecrow and they all go running off but even though the Scarecrow is all about abdicating, Jinjur still apparently wants them dead, so she recruits Mombi to pull some hocus-pocus and trap the group. And then some appropriately Baum-weird stuff happens and it turns out that there's someone else who's meant to be leading Oz...

It's all very strange, but also very delightful, and Anna Fields is absolutely perfect in narrating this series. There's not much else to say, really! I am sad that I don't have quick access to the next few books, but considering all I've got on my plate for the near future, I think that's all right!

Recommendation: For those days when you just need something that makes you smile at its ridiculousness.

Rating: 8/10

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

I have been meaning to re-read this series since, oh, the first time I read The Eyre Affair almost exactly three years ago. But I really got it into my head to do it over the summer, and by that time I had lent the first book to a good friend who is apparently bad at returning books, and I was all, fret fret fret. But then I realized — audiobooks! So I grabbed this book on audio from the library, and I can now say that it is a rather different experience.

The idea behind The Eyre Affair is actually a complex set of ideas. You have an alternate universe where Britain has been fighting the Crimean War for, you know, 130 years, no big deal, so you've got the pro-war/anti-war/pro-soldier/pro-let's-have-a-nap-instead set of issues. This alternate universe also includes time travel that is constantly re-writing history. Also vampires and werewolves. Also people who really really know you're talking about them. Also reconstituted dodos. Also many other things, and also, primarily for the book's purposes, a Special Ops unit dedicated to solving crimes against books. Which is awesome.

It's a whole big mess of everything, and so when I read it with my eyes, I necessarily imbued a Hitchhiker's/Buffy/Monty Python snark-the-day-away sort of mentality into it. And in fact, the audio book box promises these things. But what struck me within the first chapter of reading with my ears is that the narrator, despite having a fantastic voice for Thursday, does not choose to play the book that way. She is very very earnest and plays very straight off the page, and I felt like I was missing out on a lot of Fforde's wit and sarcasm.

On the plus side, I can now pronounce a lot of things from the book better than I could a week ago. Darn British people and their un-intuitive spellings.

The other thing I found interesting about re-reading this book is that I had forgotten how different the first book is from all the rest, because Fforde had really intended The Eyre Affair as a standalone. The pacing is slower (we don't even get to the Eyre part until practically the end!), there is a LOT of exposition-y stuff, and Thursday is not quite the BAMF she becomes later. And oh my goodness had I forgotten about Daisy. Let me just go jump into this book and punch her in the face.

Right, yes. On the whole I recommend the eyes-reading experience better than the ears-reading, but either way is pretty fantastic.

Recommendation: Do you like books? Mysteries? Sci-fi? Love stories? Dodos? Characters called Braxton Hicks and Jack Schitt? Fun? Go read this series.

Rating: 7.5/10 (lower than last time for the audio sadness)
(A to Z Challenge)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

Dorothy. Toto. Witches. Wizard. Hot-air balloon. The end! Review over!

Okay, no. I'll tell you more, as I actually found this book quite intriguing. My experience with Oz is primarily Wicked, the musical, which is fantastic; Wicked, the book (and its first sequel), which is frickin' weird; and The Wizard of Oz, the movie, which I have seen all the way through maybe twice and probably not more recently than a decade ago. So as I was reading the book, I was constantly asking the husband, who has seen the movie many times, whether these things in the book were the same at all. Mostly, they were, but even the things that were the same were a little bit different!

The general story is the same, with all those words up at the top. Kansas is still super-duper grey, but no one bicycles outside the window during the tornado. Dorothy still squashes dead the Wicked Witch of the East, but no one really cares about her. The Good Witch of the North is not Glinda, and is also awesomely self-important (see her line that is something like, "The witches of the North and South are the good ones, which I know because I am one"). There's a wonderful road of yellow brick, Dorothy meets some needy fellows, Oz is like, "I'm totally all-powerful but could you maybe go kill the Wicked Witch of the West for me?" Said W³ has not only flying monkeys, but also wolves, crows, and bees, but even with all that at her command she gives Dorothy a bucket of water which ends up melting the witch. The Wizard is like, crap, and placebos the needy fellows but offers Dorothy a ride in his hot-air balloon, which Toto totally screws up. Dorothy journeys to actual-Glinda of the South for help, with the needy fellows getting offered kingships along the way, and Glinda's like, "Well, you could just use those shoes you took off of W²E and wish yourself home," and Dorothy's like, "Sweet," and does just that.

So, interesting! I think that the book version manages to make more internal sense than the movie, except for that whole bucket of water thing, but of course there is no singing in the book and that is just disappointing! So, I should probably go watch the movie again, preferably with my cute little cousin-in-law dressed up as the Tin Man, as she is wont to do.

Recommendation: For lovers of delight and those who want to complete their movie experience.

Rating: 8/10

The Dark and Hollow Places, by Carrie Ryan

I just... I... hmmph. Pout. Frustrated dance. Etcetera.

I shouldn't have picked up this book. I really shouldn't have. I quite liked The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but I did not like The Dead-Tossed Waves, and I knew that I was not going to like this book but I had to give it a chance, right? And when I saw the audiobook sitting on the shelf, just waiting there for me, knowing that I lots of time for listening to audiobooks at work... well, I couldn't resist.

True story: I listened to probably the first three or four hours of this book before realizing that it wasn't still about Gabry of the previous installment. I was very very confused and wondering how I had managed to forget all this stuff that must have happened, and then finally I figured out that it's actually from the point of view of Gabry's sister, Annah. So I gave up and started over, and things made so much more sense then. Well, comparatively.

Right, so, Annah. She's living in the Dark City (no, really), and she's been waiting for her boy-thing to return from the army-type-thing for several years now, but with all the zombies and the really crappy living conditions she's like, okay, fine, I'm out of here. Except then she sees herself, and by herself I mean her twin sister, and she's like, oh, how interesting, considering the last time I saw her I was leaving her to her doom in the woods. And so she heads back into the city to find her sister and, you know, catch up.

But, if you've read the other novels, you know that Gabry doesn't remember a thing about Annah, and also she's trying to run from some zombies and army-type people herself, oh, and also, she's madly in love with Annah's boy-thing. And he's pretty in love with her, too.

And so there is love triangle-age, no, love square-age because another fella is there who was once in love with Gabry and who is now thinking about being in love with Annah, like, seriously? And there is also danger because said fella has this immunity thing to the zombie-ism and the army wants him. And then they get him, and also the other boy fella and also the twins and they aren't very nice and they show Annah that the world has really gone all to crap and so isn't it okay if they leer at her and abuse her? Of course it is.

It's... uncomfortable.

So, yeah. The book doesn't have much of a discernible plot, that I could tell, unless you count making me hate Annah so hard as a plot — if I have to hear one more time about how no one loves her or how her scars make her unlovable or how she uses her hair as a shield or how she once associated a certain affectation with her old boy-thing but now it's totally her new boy-thing's affectation, I may scream a little. I did actually say "I KNOW." out loud a couple of times, at my desk, while listening to this. Frustrating.

I'm not sure how this series went so off the rails (in my opinion, as I've seen many people loving on this book) after this first book — I think part of it is that the protagonists have gotten progressively weaker, and also the fact that the love parallelapiped has gotten progressively more important to the story. Whatever it is, I'm giving this book a solid MEH.

Recommendation: I guess if you're looking for a love story with zombies, you could read the last two books of this series.

Rating: 3/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Anya's Ghost, by Vera Brosgol

I heard about this book over at the NPR a couple weeks ago, which makes this an incredibly fast turnaround, for me, for hearing about, ordering up, and reading a book!

It almost didn't happen, though. The first few pages of this graphic novel are all, "Wah, wah, I'm an immigrant child and I don't wanna be, I wanna be AMERICAN and get skinny by eating LOW FAT POP TARTS and I have crush on a guy with a GIRLFRIEND and I get so little allowance I can only buy ONE pack of cigarettes a month, wah wah," and then Anya falls down an abandoned well and I am like HAH YOU DESERVE IT THE END. And I closed the book, and was like, well, there's that then, but then I was like okay, fine, I'll stick around at least 'til the ghost. And then I didn't stop reading.

So, yes, there's all the immigrant stuff, which is rather like the other First Second book I read, American Born Chinese, and really, I shouldn't have doubted, because also like that book Anya gets hers for all the whining and becomes a much better person by the end. Spoilers? Probably not.

What happens is, she falls down this well and finds a skeleton and then finds a ghost, who is all, "I've been trapped down here for 90 years and really, couldn't you help me see the world a bit?" at first, and becomes very slowly more creepy and then menacing and the art is wonderful because you can literally see this change happening. And, as in all good horror stories, the creepy and menacing parts of the ghost are really just exaggerations of Anya's own life and potential future.

And even if you're not into finding-yourself stories or ghosts or whatnot, there's plenty of horrible high school stuff you can look nostalgically back on, like tests you haven't studied for and showing your British-style pants in gym class and finding out that the hot guy at school is a total loser, actually, and did I say nostalgically? I meant HOLY HECK AM I GLAD I AM NOT IN HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE.

Recommendation: Right, so, yes. Give this one a chance!

Rating: 9/10

Death Note Vol. 7, by Tsugumi Ohba

Hey there, Death Note! How have you beeeeeen for the last seven months? Good? Good!

So when last we left off... um... stuff was happening. There was this notebook, and you could write people's names in it and they would totally die, and that was kind of interesting, and then this kid with God-aspirations was like, "I'm'a totally kill all the bad guys in the world" and that was pretty awesome except that there are, like, laws and stuff and so the police decided to go after God-kid, who happens to be the son of the police chief guy, which is all complicated, and then God-kid started having to kill some good guys, which is terrible, and then God-kid made with the crazy-ass LOGIC and PSYCHOLOGY and managed to escape the police largely by forgetting that he ever had this mysterious notebook in the first place.

Yes. That. That's totally what happened.

And I don't recommend forgetting all of that yourself before reading this seventh volume, because right from the start the writers are like, lets have some weird stuff happen that makes no sense but we'll explain it later! Which is good, except when I don't realize that I shouldn't already know what's going on and sit there with a confused look on my face instead of reading the five pages I need to get to the part with the explaining. Not that the explaining is very explainful. I'm still confused.

'Cause basically, in this one, God-kid, aka Light, remembers that he had the Death Note thing, and it turns out that he totally planned to remember this and that he's got some crazy logic/psychology plan to get his Death Note back without getting caught as the killer, and also to kill anyone who might ruin said plan. And it's brain-hurty but also awesome, and it mostly works, except that the killing-people part only encourages NEW people to come out of the woodwork to track Light down, like I didn't already have enough characters to keep straight. Which I did.

Luckily, I have the next two book in my possession now, so I might actually get around to reading them in a timely manner!

Recommendation: Oh, you should totally read this series (if you don't mind things that make your brain explode), but you should probably start back at the beginning. :)

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Global Reading Challenge: Asia)

Juniper Berry, by M.P. Kozlowsky

One of the nice things about putting the stickers on library books is that I get to see these books before they make it out to the shelves, and often before regular library-goers even know these books exist. Sometimes I have no idea why the library buys some of these books. At better times, I go "oooooooh shiny want" and pull out my smartphone and put the book on hold so I can get it first!

This is, obviously, one of those books, and what struck me about it first was the cover, which is delightfully stylized. Then I saw the bit about "a tale of terror and temptation," and then I looked at the back which reads only "Be careful what you wish for." I didn't even have to read all the way through the book flap to know I wanted this book to come home with me. Phone! Hold!

Now, the book is not quite as exciting as all that, unfortunately, but I still found it rather adorable and worth a read by the braver children in your life. Juniper Berry is our protagonist of the amusing name, and she's the daughter of some very busy acTOR parents who have been acting increasingly weird of late. She is isolated in her giant house surrounded by forest, but one day she meets a boy called Giles in her backyard who is worried about his own strange-acting parents. He followed them to Juniper's yard, where they disappeared. Juniper and Giles set off to find out what their parents are doing, and it turns out to be a lot more creepy and sinister than they might have imagined.

It's sort of like a Coraline, I'd say. Very sort of, actually, but the mood is similar and I think it is looking for the same audience. In this case, it's the parents who have gone off looking for that elusive greener grass, but Juniper is still the one who has to set everything right because, you know, parents are useless. This book is also a little more obvious with its message of "no seriously just chill and make the best of the life you have because the life you want can kind of suck," but it's still a totally valid message.

Recommendation: For those who like kick-butt kids and creepy demon types.

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge)

The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor

A couple weeks ago, when I had run out of audiobooks to listen to at work (and just one day before a bunch of audiobooks I'd put on hold came in, of course!), I made an emergency trip to the library with my husband to find something to fill my time. I had no idea of what I wanted, so I just told Scott to grab the first thing that looked interesting. It was this, and I must say that Scott chooses very well!

Well, maybe. I adored this book, but from what the internets have told me, this is the kind of book that you're going to love or loathe, so be prepared!

What this is is a retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which I also liked quite a lot, largely because of Michael York. You know how it goes. Anyway, in Beddor's version, Alice is not just the overactively imagination-ed daughter of a friend of Charles Dodgson, but also Alyss Heart, Princess of Wonderland. After her not very nice aunt, Redd, comes out of exile, has Alyss's parents beheaded, and takes over Wonderland, Alyss is secretly shepherded out of Wonderland by Hatter Madigan, a Heart bodyguard and elite fighter. She ends up in late 19th-century London, where her story is mangled by Dodgson, and since no one believes her anyway she decides to forget all about having been a princess once. As these things go, of course, once she's grown up and about to be married, her wedding is crashed and she ends up back in Wonderland, where she has to fight Redd and try to win back the kingdom.

Or, to be brief, what this is is Alice with more action sequences.

And I liked it a lot. I'm always a fan of this kind of "true story" of a popular story, and I think Beddor does it quite well. Some of the conceits are a bit of a stretch (Dodgson inventing the White Rabbit from an anagrammatical counterpart, Bibwit Hare? Alyss and a boy being in love-ish at the age of, like, seven?), but for the most part I was totally on board with Beddor's world. I've seen some complaints about the writing, but I wasn't distracted by any of it while I was listening to this at work, so it can't be that terrible. If I ever get through all of the audiobooks that have subsequently arrived for me, I'm sure I will be dipping back into this series.

Recommendation: For readers of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland who thought, "Not enough heads are coming off, here."

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie

Continuing on the theme of books I should have already read, here is Peter Pan, which I have seen in Mary Martin movie form as well as on stage, once, though I barely remember, and of course I have seen Johnny Depp as Barrie in Finding Neverland.

The book, like The Princess Bride, plays out pretty much exactly like the movie I remember (though I'll grant that I haven't seen the movie in ten years or more), with Peter Pan losing his shadow at the Darlings' house, returning to fetch it, and then teaching Wendy, John, and Peter to fly off to Neverland. There they have some adventures with Peter and the infamous Captain Hook, and then eventually they return home to grow up, unlike Peter.

And it's so much more depressing than I remember! Part of this is the narrative around the action in the book, which describes for us poor readers how awful the Darling parents feel about the loss of their children, who are gone for quite a while, with Mr. Darling even taking to sleeping in Nana's kennel. It also describes often exactly how children feel about their parents, which wounds me as a potential parent. Clearly I should not have children.

The other depressing part is the same thing that drives Toy Story 3, which I cried over recently — growing up. The Darlings return home to grow up, and they do, and they become fairly boring and forget how to fly and think that perhaps Peter wasn't real after all. And Peter mostly forgets them, too, returning only sporadically to make good on Wendy's promise of a yearly visit. I'm getting sad just thinking about it!

But it is otherwise delightful, with Indians and pirates and an alligator with a clock in his tummy, and so I am glad to have gotten around to the book. But I think I'll stick with Mary Martin for the foreseeable future!

Recommendation: Definitely a good read, but not quite a good bedtime story.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge)

The Ring of Solomon, by Jonathan Stroud

Okay, so, we've already established that I heart Bartimaeus. I find him delightful and wonderful and lovely and all sorts of other good adjectives. But it turns out that I like him a heck of a lot more when compared to lesser beings rather than when he's just being awesome all the time. It's kind of like how you can't wait for summer to come and be warm all the time, until summer gets there and you're sweltering and envisioning snowball fights.

So, yeah. This is, I guess, the fourth Bartimaeus book, though it's not directly related to the other three except for its protagonist. This one takes place in the time of Solomon, who is the boss of a magician who is the boss of Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is all collecting ice and stuff until such point as he meets a wannabe assassin called Asmira, whom he rescues and convinces to convince his boss to free him. Well, the boss "frees" him into a bottle where he's meant to stay trapped, but then Asmira summons him up all magician-like and then instead of letting him be free she coerces him to help her kill Solomon.

The plot is definitely excellent, with the intrigue and the subterfuge and the awesome. But while I enjoyed Bartimaeus and his trickery, I couldn't have cared less about Asmira, who is quite possibly dumber than Nathaniel and not nearly as entertaining when bad things happen to her, because who cares?

On the plus side, I'm still also in heart with the narrator, Simon Jones, and his soothing voice got me through several hours of stickers and data entry. So... yeah. It's a fun read, even if you haven't read the other books, but I wouldn't say it's as good as the trilogy proper. So go read that instead.

Recommendation: For fans of fantastical swashbuckling, and of Bartimaeus.

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge, What's in a Name Challenge)

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, by Jasper Fforde

Jasper! It has been so long! And even longer back to the last Thursday Next! I have missed you so much.

Okay, soooooooooooo. I tried explaining this book to my husband, but it is in fact quite difficult to explain without the help of five previous novels to get across the whole BookWorld concept. But, basically, there is a BookWorld and it is inhabited by all the characters of all the books you ever or never read, and whenever you read a book these characters are like, "Oh, time to pop on stage!" and act out your book. This is why books are slightly different every time you read them, see? It makes perfect sense.

Hanyway, we found out in the afore-linked last novel that the Thursday Next books have been published within the world of Thursday Next, but they're not the same as the ones we here in our world have been reading, and the chick what plays Thursday is not... not really Thursday-ish. She's kind of a hippie rather than a badass. Nonetheless, in this book the written Thursday gets a big taste of real Thursday life when not only does a strange book-crash (I cannot explain that) mystery leads her to, among other things, find out that Real Thursday is totes missing, which is a problem on many levels.

I thought this entry was brilliant, possibly because I've been severely lacking Fforde in my life recently and possibly because this book was much tighter, I think, than others in the series, and more subtle (especially compared to the last). I also loved that it's from the point of view of a written Thursday, and therefore gives us more insight into the BookWorld, which is decidedly less complicated than the real Thursday's world, and also more predictable but predictably amusing. Because the book has a different protagonist and all, I would say it's difficult to read this without having read the others, but I don't think impossible.

Worrisome is the fact that the book wraps a lot of things up quite nicely, which leads me to think that all of the Thursdays might be getting shelved soon, though if it's in favor of new and exciting series I might be okay with this.

Recommendation: If you like literature and you like satire, this satire of literature is for you. But you should probably start back at the beginning for optimum effect.

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Ptolemy's Gate, by Jonathan Stroud

Eep! Oh, hey again, Bartimaeus, back so soon? I suppose that's what happens when your story is so good...

Soooooo in this book, we've popped forward in time a bit again. Nathaniel is as insufferable as ever, Bartimaeus is sick of suffering him, and Kitty is a burgeoning magician. Wait, what? Yeah.

Story-wise... hold on, I'm going to have to look this up. Doo doo doo. Oh. Right. Okay, so there's a war on in America, and Nathaniel is the new minister in charge of making up stuff that gets people to sign on to fight in the war. That's a fun job. But of course, people aren't happy and there's civil unrest and whatnot. Also, more non-magic types are discovering a resistance to magic that lets them escape demons unharmed or see them even while they're disguised. Not terribly useful for the magicians. Also, Nathaniel is alerted to the suspicious actions of some lower-level government types and goes to investigate. This last bit is the important one, but I quite enjoyed seeing how it all played out so I won't say any more.

Now, if I had been reading this book in print, I have to say I might have given up on it. Most of it is wonderful and up to par with the rest of the series, for sure. But somewhere in the last third of the book, Stroud goes off on what seemed, listening to it, to be a long and tedious tangent about the "Other Place" where demons spend their time when not being enslaved. I was interested to know what it was like, sure, but after just a few sentences of description, I was like, okay, I get it, let's move on? Please? There's also a lot of metaphor and meaning imbued into this Other Place, and I would have at least put the book down and walked away after a few pages of that.

But luckily, I was listening to it at work, which meant I could just ignore the book for a bit and focus on the other tedium around me. :) Then, when the action kicked back in, I was ready to go! Of course, when the end happened, I may have become a bit less productive... I won't say it's an especially good ending, but it was very satisfying. Unlike a few other series I could name...

Recommendation: This series is totally worth your time. Go read it now.

Rating: 8/10 (though the series is a 9 on the whole)

The Golem's Eye, by Jonathan Stroud

Hullo again, Bartimaeus! You are my good friend. Let us hang out.

This book picks up a couple of years after the Amulet Incident, with our hero Nathaniel/John Mandrake using his saving-the-prime-minister karma to move himself up in government. Yes, that's right, our idealistic young magician has grown up into an ambitious but uninspired slightly-less-young magician. I really dislike Nathaniel (pretty sure I'm supposed to, so that's good!).

But! Lucky for me, he breaks his not-summoning-Bartimaeus-anymore promise and my favorite djinni is around to make sarcastic remarks in Nathaniel's direction, which really makes the kid more tolerable. Also interesting, if expected, in this book is the introduction of Kitty Jones, who was in the previous book briefly as a petty magical-stuff thief and returns as a more practiced and awesome magical-stuff thief.

The first part of that last sentence is important; I absolutely loved the first book in this series because it went against every fantasy trope that I anticipated. This book, less so. Lots of fairly obvious things happen, and things that you know are going to be important later are totally important later.

But! I loved the story nonetheless. Kitty's in a group called the Resistance that is made up of non-magicians and is out to undermine the magician ruling class. Nathaniel/Mandrake is charged with stopping the Resistance. Someone else is wreaking major havoc on London and blaming on the Resistance, but Nathaniel's pretty sure it's more sinister than that. And, of course, it is. Love it.

Recommendation: Oh, really, just read this series. Unless you don't like magic or fantasy. No, even if! You might like this!

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)