So Many Books...

11:15 pm - My umbrella may not be red, but it's packed.

Off to Bristol tomorrow, to the Diana Wynne Jones conference which starts on Friday. Up until now, I've been helping steepholm organise only to the extent of saying things like 'So-and-so's talk has been moved so it clashes with Such-and-such's? That's a pity!'. Okay, not totally - I did suggest we go visit a few restaurants in person to see about gluten-free and vegetarian catering, and have visited the campus so I'm all set for Friday meeting-and-greeting with fjm and chilperic, while steepholm is external examining Elsewhere.

Everybody on my flist probably knows about this con already, from one source or another, but may not know that we're off to Wales on Monday to another conference! This one is the rather nicely named Asterisks and Obelisks in Lampeter. steepholm is giving a paper there, again nicely named 'The Eagle Has Landed'.

Packed? Ha. Not a chance. Though my mobile phone charger, camera are, and I've got yarn wound up (Shibui Sock, in Dragonfly) and pattern (CanCan fingerless gloves, for Y.D.) printed out! Good time to go organise, right? Instead, a quick - no really! this time quick - write-up of The Patriot Witch. Finished that on the way back from Bristol last time, and though I very much enjoyed many aspects of it, and thought the setting was wonderful, there were two things that kept bouncing me out of the book. One was an unevenness of narrative, as we'd go from seeing things quite naturally from Proctor's POV to seeing things from a very much older, rather flat-in-tone omniscient narrator moving Proctor's lips, as it were.

The other, though, was the language, and that's a constant interest because of the famed History Project. (Famed, right? Okay, I've rattled on about it a bit from time to time. Historical books set in Britain for children/teens. As per steepholm's talk mentioned above.) Others have said it before us, but the register used for historical fiction always presents the author with an interesting choice - and Rosemary Sutcliff may have set a high standard, but her style of writing historicals isn't the only way to do it. Consistency, though, is surely almost always required - unless the author's playing an intentionally twisty game, and is using a startlingly modern term to indicate alternate universe or the like. But for all Finlay's historical Revolutionary War America is different in the existence of magic, he doesn't seem to be playing on that difference in the use of anachronisms. Because the characters generally talk as might be expected for the time and place, the anachronistic words really stand out. steepholm made a list, and as always, we checked his O.E.D. online. There were a few surprises, but only one (which I've totally forgotten now) about which we were wrong and the term far older than either of us had thought. I do remember a couple of 'Hi's, which were doubly wrong in context, a bunch of 'Yeah's, and a night watchman who called "Nine fifty pee em', and then 'Nine fifty-five...' . I think the three worst for us were 'Enough with the second-guessing', ''The way I figure it, we've got a little window here' (that being a window of opportunity), and 'Hack it off already!' (that's her hair, lest anyone be left boggling). The one place where it really got in the way of characterisation was when Proctor's mother and aunt switched into -- oh, I can't think of any way of putting this except to say that they sounded like a seriously stereotypical Jewish (or Irish!) mother and aunt. Right down to his aunt 'on a roll now', telling Proctor how many hours his mother was in labour with him, and then - then - he didn't even wear the good linen jacket she'd given him!

It was only frustrating because so much was good in the story, and a lot of historical research showing, and there's a lot to look forward to in the two books to follow. But every time - bounced out hard. So - did we miss something? Or misread something? (Mind you, the blame is mine if so, as steepholm hasn't read the book itself yet, and just took interest because I never shut up about something like this when he's handy!) Other perspectives welcomed.

10:04 pm - Random bits and pieces

I had a very nice birthday indeed yesterday, despite its (almost) starting with the noise of breaking glass and a resounding 'Fuck!' coming from steepholm* downstairs, and its (almost) ending with Becca and Y.D. passing on the news of Michael Jackson's death**. And despite a chunk of the in-between being taken up by a trip on the Bristol Flyer (involving an interaction with an incredibly annoying group of potential Bristol University students - I would worry for gair but they were SO. Not. Going to Bristol) to Bristol Airport and then on Ryanair to Dublin. Still - many kind wishes and lovely gifts and all appreciated.

Today I ventured into Spectra Camera in Dun Laoghaire to get a new iMac for my mother and found amazingly that they were on 15% off sale (*never* happens because Apple knows we Maccies are all diehards anyway so they don't need sales) and I got the last remaining one for her with the offer of Office for Macs installed for €39.99. Up until now her receiving an email with an attachment has caused major trauma, usually ending eventually in her forwarding the email to me.

While waiting for them to install and reboot and polish up the iMac I went into a café to get my tea-fix and was highly amused to hear the following said by an older man sitting at the table next to me. He was pontificating to the woman (not his wife, but I couldn't figure out the relationship) a bit about when the Irish came here and so on and then:

Yes, they know that from DNA evidence. DNA is the new archeology.

steepholm

04:16 pm - Yet another Sartorias-sparked ramble

AKA 'another one of those nice confluences to which serendipity sometimes treats us'; in this case, 2 books and 1 post. I recently finished Elizabeth C. Bunce's A Curse Dark as Gold, which I liked a lot, with some reservations. Then sartorias posted this about paranormals. More than ever after reading comments I'm unsure about the differences between the various types of books involved, but what Sherwood said about romance in historicals was very interesting, and I was chiming in with many others on the dislike for the Big Mis as the keep-'em-apart device for the romance. Meanwhile I was reading Madeleine E. Robins' Point of Honour, and finished yesterday, though a crashing headache kept me from doing more than a quick Goodreads rating then.

Short version is that the two quite different books - one decidedly fantasy (based on the fairy-tale 'Rumplestiltskin') and the other only fantastic in being a slightly alternate Regency England - won me over big-time for the same thing, and disappointed me in the romances which they could be said to inherit from their (much-changed) original sub-genres. The win-over: both took a type of story in which economic realities are either brushed over sketchily or have protagonists who are poor but will by the end of the story marry out of poverty. Both books treated economics very seriously indeed, dealing with a particular level of society usually ignored in their sub-genre of origin: the small, struggling mill-owner determined to keep the business alive in Curse and the 'Fallen Woman' who manages to maintain her independence in Point of Honour. In neither case did marriage rescue the heroine from her financial troubles, though the marriage of the fairy-tale did take place, in recognisable form.

( Longer version )

10:26 am - Love! Of Oktapodi and trees

via coffeeem.

And check out myntti's set of pics - trees outside her flat (in Finland) going from almost bare to incredibly lush and green in three-day increments...

04:09 pm - Recent Listening - The Order of Odd-Fish

I'm trying to keep this cover image on the opposite side of the page from my userpic, as less complementary images are a bit hard to imagine. But James Kennedy could probably not only imagine it, but would come up with a whole group of people who've dedicated their lives to searching out the most appallingly jarring images, and -- well, James Kennedy's imagination is such that I've not the slightest idea what he might do with anything. As those who've read this post will maybe agree.

I got the audiobook, and was well pleased to find it, as Audible.co.uk doesn't always get US-published books that aren't by big names at all, or at least not quickly. (Still no Paper Towns, for example.) And the narrator does an amazing job - very consistent on the different voices and accents for each single one of a huge number of characters. Still, listening to an audiobook can leave you at a bit of a loss when it's time to write about it - have to go rooting around for spellings of the characters and places, and in this case it's hard to give even good paraphrases, so much stuff is there! I wish it could be got out of the library just for that, but not over here, and I'll definitely get a copy of the book for rereading.

The story in stripped-down form, is of Jo, who lives with her Aunt Lily - not really her aunt, but has taken care of Jo since having Jo was found in her house with a note saying that she's a 'very dangerous baby', 13 years before. They live out in the middle of the California desert, with Jo doing more taking care of the scatty, ex-film star Lily than the other way around. Lily knows nothing about why Jo was dropped with her, why she's supposed to be dangerous, or who Jo's family is. And then, really bizarre things start to happen, leading Jo and Lily, in the company of Colonel Korsakov (an elderly Russian colonel obsessed with his digestion) and Sefino (a large talking cockroach) - via a plane and then the stomach of a giant fish (I think) to Eldritch City, where they find Lily and Korsakov are knights of the Order of Odd-Fish, who were exiled years before. Once they get there, Aunt Lily's memory returns, and she warns Jo never to tell anyone who she really is, because the reason Lily and Korsakov were exiled is their having protected Jo as a new-born.

In Eldritch City, Jo is made a squire of Dame Lily, and makes friends with the other squires, especially Ian (or possibly Iain?) and Norah (or maybe Nora?), finds out about the Order and the insane quests and undertakings of the knights, learns to fight on the ostriches the knights ride, discovers the obsession of everyone with the TV show The Teenage Ichthala (that spelling via Amazon), about the monstrous Ichthala, which is prophesied to return and destroy the city, and makes friends with Audrey, who plays the Teenage Ichthala. But this short (yes, really, it is short!) description gives only a smidgen of the flavour of the book, which is in turns whimsical, absurd, grotesque and just freakin ODD. A lot of the humour comes from the piling on of layer upon layer of absurdity, and it doesn't always work completely, I think. (I might re-visit this opinion after reading instead of listening, as some bits, especially the pursuits of the Order of the Odd-Fish, seemed to drag just a bit, going on and on, as frex the cataloguing of the world's most disgusting smells.) But when it does, I wasn't just laughing, but feeling amazed delight at how wonderfully off-centre it all is. One of my favourite parts was the description of Ken Kiang, whose aim is now to be the world's worst villain. He started as an ordinary businessman, got very wealthy, and went in for philanthropy first. Quickly growing bored with just donating to worthy causes, he started forming his own charities - including the foundation to give every underprivileged child in America post-modern haircuts. Or then there are the many, many rituals that have to be followed before a duel (illegal) can be fought in front of the crowds in the Dome of Doom. Poor Jo has so many worries by that point that being killed in the duel isn't even the worst, but luckily she has Ian/Iain and Nora/Norah to help her write the astonishing insults that have to be delivered during the series of increasingly goofy pre-duel encounters.

Along with the hilarity there are moments of seriousness, as Jo wistfully realises she's never felt as if she belonged anywhere before coming to Eldritch City, and then has to hide the knowledge of who she really is from the people she most cares about, terrified of how they'd react if they knew. And there's a nice treatment of a prophecy which maybe doesn't have to go the way it's been foretold.

Finally, you know the type of ending in which there's a misdirect, leading the reader to think that a friendship/romance has been broken in the ending of a book, when it hasn't? They're fun, but don't usually manage a 'gotcha'. At the end of this one? I was totally got!

I certainly wouldn't expect more in this book, but I'm very much hoping for more of all of them, and I'd definitely love to find out how this world and Eldritch City fit together. I'm as addicted as Hoagland Shanks to pie.

11:16 pm - Teeth-gnasher of the Day

A new review blog was recommended by a highly-respected advocate of children's lit, and I went over to check it out happily, especially as the subject matter was likely to be very useful to steepholm and me. Review is of a children's series set in ancient Rome. This sentence was the one that got both our teeth going:

During the course of seventeen novels and a number of short stories aimed at older children and young adults (her four main characters range in age from eight to eleven at the start of the series and are in their mid-teens by the end of it), she has succeeded where even a number of authors of historical fiction for adults fail by creating a fully realised and entirely believable ancient Rome.

The portrayal of Christianity is also very well done; in the earlier novels it is almost incidental as only one of the main characters (and his family) is Christian (and even then, Jewish Christian), while everyone else is unashamedly (not to mention realistically) Pagan.

10:58 pm - 120 Hour Challenge - Kinda cheating but finishing nonetheless

Give the day that's been in it (well, the latter part anyway, as the earlier one included a very nice meet-up with wyvernfriend), there was no way I'd have the coherence for whipping up a book talk from scratch, but I'm far too stubborn to give in on the last day. So, I'm copying, with minor edits, a short Goodreads write-up I did earlier, of Mary Pearson's The Adoration of Jenna Fox. I listened to the audiobook, but don't think this had a very significant effect on my response.

Also, to make up for the cheat, here's the link to a lovely piece by outgoing Children's Laureate Michael Rosen. Via Achockablog - watch out for the horrific 'quicks' and 'slows'!

No need to do a full review, as so many people will have heard all about the book and the set-up. One thing that surprises me though, is that I haven't seen anyone refer to Peter Dickinson's Eva, another YA book dealing with the same situation.

In general I really liked all the questions Pearson raised - how should science be regulated, how far is too far to go to save someone even if it's scientifically possible, and how much of the brain makes up the person's mind, let alone the spirit and soul? And then all the parental ones were chewy too! I wasn't sure about the answers given to some of the questions, and thought the whole Alyss plot was so neat it really weakened the ending. And what Alyss herself did towards the end made little sense to me except as a convenient plot-line. Finally, I thought it would have been stronger had the parents not been SO wildly OTT in their expectations and 'adoration' of Jenna. As one of the points made repeatedly throughout was that any parent might do things they'd never have believed they would to save their child, there was no need for them to be the classic over-consuming parents of YA realist novels. If they'd been a little less extreme the question of how Jenna and they had to find a way to come to terms with what they'd done could have been stronger. I liked Lily though - her characterization seemed very real, and it was good to have a balance to Jenna's parents.

08:39 pm - 120 Hour Challenge - Day 4

Not from the backlog of books read and still unreviewed, as I just finished this last night, so I'm kind of departing from my own challenge rules. It's an older book and has got a lot of praise (along with a bit of criticism) so it may be totally uninteresting book-talking for most, but I loved it and am going to do it anyway.

The book starts with Troy, the self-described 'fat kid' of the title, saved from jumping in front of a train by Curt, a 'skinny punk guitar genius' - who's mostly homeless and definitely messed up. Curt claims that Troy owes him lunch, and in the diner calls him 'Big T' - the nickname being almost enough in itself to win Troy over completely. Still, he's horrified when Curt plans to start a punk band with Troy as his drummer, because Troy - stretching the truth a bit - says 'his instrument' is drums. Not only does Troy have no friends, but his home life is awful too - his ex-Marine dad is rigidly authoritarian and can't understand how Troy hasn't managed to 'take charge of his life' and his skinny, athletic younger brother makes it clear at every opportunity he gets how much he despises Troy as a pathetic loser. All this is given in often very funny first-person narrative, rather than as the dirge it could easily be.

Okay, I won't be spoiling spoiling, but I will tell about the mood of the ending, because I have to to say anything about the fat-friendliness (or otherwise) of the book. Clearly there are three ways it could end: 1) tragic; 2) good for Troy after he learns from Curt's meeting a tragic end; or 3) with Troy and Curt helping each other. Also, vitally, any happiness for Troy could happen a) with weight loss or b) without weight loss. If you don't want to know which of those happens, don't read behind the cut.( No more spoilers than that. )

10:02 pm - 120 Hour Challenge

Just why did I think it was a good idea to commit to a book a day for the rest of this week? I've had brighter ideas in my day.



Is it just me, or does that whole image look a bit female reproductive organ-like?

Read Betwixt a few weeks ago, and am still in 2 - 3 - more - minds about it. At first I thought it was just settling-in unevenesses in the writing, which threw me out of the story a bit. Passages like this one, which comes in the middle of a section from the POV of Ondine, one of the three main characters, and then switches to her father's perspective.

How many times had Ralph Mason looked at her in just this way, trying to read what was behind her velvety eyes? He couldn't. Ondine was a normal young woman, a budding painter, a bratty sister (at times), a good daughter, a great friend to the people she chose to trust. And though he had been there at her birth - delivered her, in fact - there was something untouchable about the girl that even her own father could not get at.

08:16 pm - 120 Hour Challenge(let), Day 2

Okay, so this time there should really be a few words on Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix, as promised.  Though yesterday's words would probably have been much better, given tonight's headache and the fact that I've managed to lose the start of a post already...

I'm not putting a picture of the book, because I really disliked the cover - to the extent that I'd blipped over reviews as not my kind of book, until sartorias  gave it a great write-up.  The trailer she links to is much more aesthetically appealing to my taste than the lurid pink satin on the cover.  Anyway, before saying more about the book itself, I just wanted to pass on one comment on a new/upcoming book cover I saw on a comm a while ago, which I thought was decidedly odd. Very short blurblettes, and the top one said 'This one's set in *Ireland*'.  So Ireland is the new Exotic?

The connection, of course, is how much I, like sartorias , enjoyed all the beautiful, sumptuous details about clothes, decoration, hair-styles - and let's not forget the food! (The heroine's decided interest in food being one of the things I liked about her.) [Big break here, during which I checked email, booked a flight for my elderly next-door neighbour, printed out and delivered the confirmation email and upped the headache-brain-deadness factor several times.  Read on at your own risk.] 

All those rich details of life in this almost (but not quite, according to the author) historical ancient China were wonderful, and it was nice to read them without having the least worry about cultural appropriation of any sort.  The story was a little lighter in the 'The immortals have FATED Ai Ling' and 'Now Chen Long's FATE is intertwined with hers, inescapably' than the trailer suggests, which is a good thing.  There was enough humour to keep it from being too fatalistic for my taste.  That said, the part of Ai Ling's quest which led them to the otherworld to meet the odd Immortal face-to-face, were very well done and enjoyable, I thought, and the many supernatural beings she has to contend with pretty unique, and sometimes terrifying.

It did take a bit for me to get into the book - the narrative seemed a little less sure at first, and I found the transition from Ai Ling as dutiful, respectful daughter who is relegated to the women's quarters because that's how it is, to super-independent Ai Ling setting off all on her own to travel a great distance, with no companion and very little experience at taking care of herself, far too abrupt.  The first had been set up too well for the second to read very credibly, I thought. But once she was on the road and had met up with her companion, all went much more smoothly.  There were occasional jarring notes from time to time, as frex, when the generally quipping, light-hearted Li Rong says that reading someone's thoughts would be 'spiritual rape'.  But much good, so these were only minor distractions.  I'll definitely be looking forward to the sequel.

10:02 pm - 120 Hour Challenge(let)

Got my two comments made for the day, and was all set to crank through the backlog, when I got sidetracked by the wonderful Moomin icons seymaza has up.

Anyway, quite a bit later and even more headachey, but still determined not to fall on the first day... So, today, Sherwood Smith's Sasharia en Garde Book 2 (or Twice a Prince) and Cindy Pon's Silver Phoenix.

( Read more... )

09:33 am - 48 Hours Sum-up

-As I said in the last post, my total reading time was 29 hours and 25 minutes. My personal best !

-In that time I only read 6 book-equivalents*, which is one less than my personal best, and about a tenth of what the highest number read for the challenge (if collected) will be. Painfully slow.**

-Only wrote about 4 of the 6 books, but will be getting to the others soon, though the last, Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters, is an anthology of which I'd read many stories already, so won't have much to say on that one.

- Made my donation to Books for Africa, in an amount that will apparently buy 100 classroom books. Kind of staggering.

- The Challenge itself was obviously a huge success, with well over 100 participants - isn't that a wonderful thought? 116 people all gathered to a common reading cause by one smart-arsed - uh, by the wonderful MotherReader!

It was so big and successful that I ended up feeling at times a bit like the shy girl in the corner, who only knew a few people and was scared of all the groups of good buddies.*** So...

My own follow-up challenge includes a commitment to visit and comment on 2 participant blogs on which I don't normally comment every day this week. Less squidgy-personally, I'm going to get through my backlog of un-talked-about read books by doing one post a day, minimum, for the rest of the week. (Lack of family crises allowing, of course****.)


* I didn't finish the last story in Pretty Monsters, but got another hour's worth of listening to The Order of Odd-Fish audiobook, which would have been plenty of time to have read the story.

** I think I need to do a bit of serious thinking about my reading again - some of it is simply middle-aged-ness (and I'm due glasses for reading with contacts in, no doubt), but I might get out Tony Buzan's book and do some work on it - I really noticed how horribly wandery my path on the reading page got when I was tired and the light wasn't good.

*** Yes, I AM 50. And?

**** Yes, superstitious jinx-aversion IS silly, but the first year's challenge went horribly wrong due to my mother's coming down with a particularly virulent stomach bug which I caught after taking care of her. The kind of memory that stays with you...

08:34 pm - Finished!

Okay, my 48 hours finished at 20:05, but it took me a few minutes first to find the scraps of paper on which I logged the times, and then do my sums. Will just put down the numbers quickly and then talk to steepholm for a bit! (Final summary post with rest of book talk, link to finishing post etc, later.)

29 hours and 25 minutes total. (That's including writing up the books read, and with nothing like the full hour every 5 hours we could spend on networking.) Next year (fingers crossed for another year, another Challenge!) I'll be brighter about using the one audiobook allowance while doing necessary things like putting dogs out and the bits of cleaning up that are inevitable, no matter how much gets ignored. I only checked about that late this afternoon and used it (in the middle of James Kennedy's The Order of Odd-Fish) while washing dishes and walking down to get Thai take-away. I could totally have got another 20 minutes yesterday if I hadn't stupidly forgotten about that.

03:11 pm - Mortal Engines, Philip Reeve

Another not-very-lengthy write-up for this one, as a) everyone else has probably read it already and b) I've only got a few minutes on the computer as mine isn't working right atm.

It feels odd to have read Reeve's Here Lies Arthur, Larklight and Starcross but not this so far, but at least We were represented by Becca, who read the trilogy a long time ago. (Oh, sure, having one or other articulate daughter who's read a book is almost the same as having read it yourself!) Anyway, I both loved it and felt it had some weaknesses, which appear to be the opposite of the weaknesses other people found in it. The story, as in the set-up and detail of the future world, was brilliant, of course, and the lack of simple good guys vs bad guys shoot-em-up morality as expected. I loved Hester, but really thought the -- oh brother, put it down 10 minutes ago and have already forgotten the names. Shriker. Sticker. Iron man guy, anyway! That part was a bit clunky, I felt, and didn't add much, with the 'But they're not supposed to have feelings!' shocked reaction to him. I also felt that Kate was a bit too obviously paired with Hester, and being her inverse with an equally obsessively naive belief in Valentine went on too long to feel her ending quite worked. (Now, there's a lovely sentence. I have lost my ability to do anything other than flail.)

But those are not weaknesses that spoil the many, many good things in the book: I loved, and was surprised at how witty it all was, given the bleakness. Reading backwards (in Reeve's oeuvre) as I was, it seemed as if all the wit from the Larklight books was added to the bleak, grim view seen in Here Lies Arthur, of the many ways people with power can do appalling things without seeming to bother their consciences in the slightest. (Though they may have started with a germ of an idea of doing something neutral or even good.)

My computer time is up for now, so it's on to Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters!

10:10 am - The Game, Diana Wynne Jones

Finished Monster Blood Tattoo last night and will write it up -ish, in a bit, but just finished The Game and want to polish that off first.

Won't take long, unfortunately, as it seemed to be merely one very nifty idea (the mythosphere) wrapped up in some fun bits and then everything it had achieved ruined by one of the weakest endings of all her books. Push this star here and make all the stories - or all the stories relating to this set of characters, at least - suddenly turn eternally happy. Plink Plunk.

Can't say I was terribly disappointed, as I hadn't been expecting very much, but again, if I had the brain power atm it would be interesting to compare - contrast - the use of characters from myth in other books, including Eight Days of Luke, The Owl Service and steepholm's Death of a Ghost.

10:25 pm - Update of sorts...

So tired! Seem to be reading at a snail's pace and it's so dark here today my eyes are starting to bother me. I feel as if I've been reading Monster Blood Tattoo forever, and it's only the first book, which is - gulp - something less than half the length of the second? (No idea how much of that is appendices or Explicarium or whatever though.) Taken a 10 minute networking idea (very good idea!) and everyone else - okay, the two people I popped in to visit - seem to be flying through books.

I will finish MBT before I go to sleep nonetheless, and tomorrow have Mortal Engines to look forward to. *yawns*

04:26 pm - First Light, Rebecca Stead

Again, I manage to prove wrong about the tone of my Challenge books! I expected wise-cracking angsting in The Demon's Lexicon and didn't get the funny, and for some reason (having seen it described as a mix of adventure and science (fiction) taking place in the far reaches of Greenland, possibly?) thought First Light would be heavier, "worthy' and the chilly kind of bleak. In fact, it was the one that had me laughing often (though on the verge of tears from time to time) and it was anything but chilly. Plus the husky-like Chikchu? Wonderful.

Two point of view narratives, the first giving the story of Peter, son of a glaciologist father (and molecular biologist mother, no less) who gets to go on a six-week trip to Greenland with his parents and a graduate student of his father's. There were so many lovely little touches, like Peter's saying he only ever got to see his father as the university lecturer, never the adventurous Arctic explorer. 'It was a little like living with Clark Kent and never once getting to meet Superman.' Another was that the chapters set in New York city are fully drawn, rather than just setting up a bit so that the story can begin properly once they get to Greenland. His best friend Miles is great, with his inventing words (I especially liked 'countryball') and his sturdy friendship.

Then there's Thea, who lives in a world called Gracehope, established by her ancestors to escape persecution as witches, hundreds of years ago. It's a matriarchal society, with much importance being placed on the bloodlines of those original ancestors. Thea lives with her aunt, her mother being dead, and people not knowing who their fathers are. (This was a wee bit fuzzy, to me at least, but there doesn't seem to be the messing with sexual desire seen in The Giver, frex, but rather a control of childbearing which would be quite vital in such a small, totally enclosed community.) Although there's reason to believe that Grace, the woman who had the scientific ability which allowed her to see how Gracehope could be established below the surface of the ice-cap, never wanted her people to live there forever, over the years most have forgotten anything but the persecution and death they suffered in the 'wider world' and fear any risk of contact with it.

Thea tries to propose that there be funding at least for a research committee to investigate the possibility of going to the surface, in order to develop more land on the other side of the lake which provides them so much. Resources are shrinking and there's already rationing of food. But her grandmother, head of the Council, forbids it. This doesn't stop Thea from discovering the old tunnel to the surface and, with the somewhat reluctant help of her cousin Mattias, going through it, to see the sky and outside world for herself.

Peter, meanwhile, is quietly exploring both life in this tiny, temporary expedition site and his newly growing ability to see across great distances - an ability that brings him crashing headaches but is still something he feels he wants to understand and to use. His mother, who has suffered from 'headaches' (more a sort of depression, as Peter has come to realise) a few times a year for as long as he can remember, is drifting into one of her bad patches, but manages to explain to him something of the book she is writing, on mitochondrial DNA. Although much is understood about the mutations that cause diseases and disabilities, she is convinced that some mutations could cause greater functioning as well.

Okay, it doesn't take a genius to see how these two narratives might intersect, but there are still mysteries enough to keep the reader guessing, and so many delights along the way, that's no weakness. I did have a bit of a problem with the big, climactic scene in the Council - counterpoint to the first one, in which Thea fails dismally to get herself heard. That's not a big complaint though, when there's so much good stuff. Both of the kids were wonderful - smart, loving and responsible but ready to be stubborn when necessary - and the adults were nicely done too. The 'there was no need to protect the children THAT much' message was handled with a light touch rather than being hammered home.

I recommend reading this book with a dog in your lap, if at all possible! Even that hyper little freak-dog Dougie made a good companion. (Though my reading SO slowly might have something to do with that.)

10:14 am - The Demon's Lexicon, Sarah Rees Brennan

Well. THAT was intense. Like 'I can't stop reading this though I'm already wrecked and don't want to be too tired to enjoy the 48 hours' intense. More significantly, it was 'Oh my. Everything I thought was a quibble about the book up until this point turns out not to have been the book anyway'.

Phew, start more coherently. The protagonist is Nick, a 17-year old living with his older brother Alan and his mad mother. (No, seriously. Not funny mad. Not got-a-mental-illness-sympathetic mad. In.Sane.) It starts with them living in Exeter, but they're always on the run, because of the magician trying to get back a charm Nick's mother stole years ago, who doesn't just come calling to sort out the whole sticky situation nicely. In this very dark, fully-developed setting, magicians can call demons into our world in a win-win situation. For the magicians and the demon, but not so much for the human intermediary. Demons want more than anything to be in our world, and will offer power to the magicians in exchange for the brief time they can stay in some poor human's body. Possession? Very, very unfun. And then the human will die, as the body can't bear the inhabiting by the demon for long.

The thing is, Nick's my least favourite kind of protagonist, as he's angry, seriously, blazingly angry, with the kind of anger that can only be satisfied (some) by killing something. (Something evil. Mostly.) He's not great at understanding Alan's tenderness and concern - for their mother (yeah, but he's got reason!) or especially for the two 'tourists' who come to Alan looking for help for the boy, Jamie, who's got himself marked by a demon. Mae, Jamie's sister, he can almost respect, and also fancy, which is a bit of a problem, as he knows Alan likes her. But the narrative is very carefully balanced so that the reader goes bouncing back and forth between finding Nick's coldness repelling and feeling deeply sympathetic to him. Bounce, bounce. Even Alan, who is Nick's opposite in almost every way, occasionally shows signs of the willingness to kill that makes for a deep sense of moral ambivalence at times. Not an easy read!

I'd have given the book many, many points for the Goblin Market alone though - that is just made of awesome. Both in the vivid description of the sellers and the fruit and dancers, and in the shadowing darkness underpinning it too. And Mae and Jamie are great - both doing a parallel ride to the reader's - between aversion to Nick (who usually wants it that way), and attraction, however reluctant.

There are blurbs from Cassie Clare and Holly Black on the book cover, and not coincidentally, I thought of both as I was reading. I didn't find the book at first as sure-stepping as the Mortal Instruments trilogy, though that might have been my preferences only, and certainly didn't find the 'wit' Clare (and others) see in it. If I had the time, this would be a good place for a bit of a meander down that lane: why does the humour work so well (for me, this being intensely personal) in the Mortal Instruments and in Maggie Stiefvater's Lament, and why didn't I feel once like laughing at this?

Can't say anything more about the ending (many clues, got some, missed some!), but I found it very moving. And I was pleased to see that the sequel will be out next year and will centre on Mae. It may be every bit as intense, but at least the reader knows the whys and wherefores of this world and has sympathies accordingly aligned. Right? Or maybe not...

08:03 pm

Actually starting now -- The Devil's Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan is first up.

05:55 pm - Got my books, got my cause..

And it's more than just 'cause it's so cool to do MotherReader's 48 Hour Book Challenge this year! Okay, that's the reason I'm doing it still, but there's an extra wrinkle to the Challenge, in the form of charitable donation.  I'm going to donate a Euro per hour's reading to Books for Africa.

Just because once I hit Mr Linky nothing will be heard from me except the sound of turning pages - well, that plus the reviews (well, all right, those plus the odd comment on other challengees' blogs, maybe), a super-quick update on the matter of the elections.  I was extremely amused to see that a very late addition to the local elections was Trevor Patton, owner of the Patton Flyer. This is a coach service, going from Dalkey through Dun Laoghaire and on to the airport.  15 minutes' walk from me at this end, and usually takes less than an hour out to the airport, which is great.  But Patton is running on the burning issue of - erm, the Patton Flyer.  Posters read 'Save our Flights', 'Save our Service'.  Bec said the smaller print read 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  And then beat 'em.'  Dude, it's your business.  Are the good citizens of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown really supposed to elect you so you can take care of that? 

And Younger Daughter is finished her last exam (huzzah!), and the weather has just turned unpleasant, right on cue.