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Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Books

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson: A-

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From the back cover:
From her first moment at Merryweather High, MJSordino knows she’s an outcast. She busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops—a major infraction in high-school society—so her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t know glare at her. She retreats into her head, where the lies and hypocrisies of high school stand in stark relief to her own silence, making her all the more mute. But it’s not so comfortable in her head, either—there’s something banging around in there that she doesn’t want to think about. Try as she might to avoid it, it won’t go away, until there is a painful confrontation. Once that happens, she can’t be silent—she must speak the truth.

Review:
Speak does an excellent job capturing the voice of a clever, angsty ninth grader. A lot of the things she says (it’s first person, but whether it’s a journal isn’t clear) are overly melodramatic, and sound much like the sort of symbolic crap that I once wrote in my journal. This is occasionally a little annoying, but since the same could be said about most ninth graders, it worked for me. I listened to an unabridged audio version. The girl who read it, Mandy Siegfried, was awesome. Very authentic voice for a fourteen-year-old, and she (or someone) even made up tunes for the little snippets of the school cheers that are included, which was amusing.

It’s not a real surprise what’s happened to MJ, but even so—when the details are finally revealed, they still carry impact. Despite the blurb up there about the painful confrontation being the catalyst, I found her change to be a gradual one, which I liked, so there wasn’t exactly one single event I could point to that brought about an end to her silence. Although MJ’s muteness and mental retreating are frustrating, the wry analysis of high school and her other various experiences makes her a likable character. Now that it’s over, I find that I’ll actually miss hearing her. Kind of ironic, given the whole point of the thing.

Speak is a Printz Honor book. It’s good. Check it out.

Haunted by Jeff Mariotte: C-

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From the back cover:
Cordelia’s getting her first big break—as a contestant on yet another twist on “reality programming.” The catch? She has to spend five days and four nights in a so-called haunted house. Not a problem for a girl who lives with a ghost and works with a vampire (and even managed to graduate from Sunnydale High School in one piece). She’s a shoo-in.

But there may be more going on behind the scenes than Cordy anticipated. On her first night, she’s wracked with a vision—and it’s of one of the applicants who didn’t make the final cut. Through subtle on-air clue-dropping, she manages to communicate the scenario to Angel and Co., who are instantly on the case. But as Angel, Wesley, and Gunn seek the missing actress, paranormal activity in the house heats up. Once Wolfram & Hart is added to the mix, Cordelia has to wonder which she would rather hold onto—her ticket to certain stardom… or her life…

Review:
Haunted takes place during the second season of Angel, some time after the episode “The Thin Dead Line.” Y’know, the one with the zombie cops. That’s actually episode 14, so towards the end of that season, after all the Darla angst.

This book is pretty freakin’ lame and boring. It features Cordelia, and so I mistakenly thought it might be fun, and now I’m bummed that I’d saved this one for last. It only cements my decision to lay off the Angel books for a while. The B plot mystery, regarding the applicant who didn’t make the cut who Cordelia has a vision about, is completely dumb. By page 113, it’s abundantly clear what is going on. Sustaining interest in it for 200 more pages is not possible. Trudge would be an apt description of my progress through these segments. How plots A and B ultimately intertwine is the epitome of flimsy.

So, in addition to a lackluster story, the editing is pretty horrid, too! There’s one scene in particular, where six contestants are left in the haunted house. The book names them. There are clearly six. Then the host says, “There are five of you…” And then he reads the results of the eviction vote and they total seven! No sneaky ghost has cast a vote, either, because no one reacts to the incorrect tally. In another scene, when only three contestants are left, Cordelia’s lounging on a couch while ‘several of the other contestants’ are hanging around, too. Eh? Two does not constitute several, and it would still be weird if they’d said ‘a couple of the other’ because these two have been referred to by name many times before and are again in the next paragraph. It’s like saying ‘Harry encountered a three-headed-dog and a couple of other students were there, too.’

The writing’s not as good as the others by Mariotte, either. Some thoughts and dialogue don’t seem entirely in character, nothing actually amusing happens… I could go more in depth, but enduring ’til the end has sapped my strength. I’m eager to put this one behind me.

Solitary Man by Jeff Mariotte: B

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From the back cover:
Widow Mildred Finster is a life-long fan of “cozy” mystery novels. She decides at the tender age of seventy-one that she’d like to become a real private detective. She finds a card for Angel Investigations and thinks the name sounds very sweet. After all, she loves angels. What could be more perfect?

Angel and the gang are hip-deep in their own personal problems, so when Mildred offers her services, they don’t have much time for her. And when a truckload of antiquities from a local mission is stolen, they don’t get too worked up over what they think is a simple theft. But the arrival of some ruthless killers from overseas finally gets the gang’s attention.

Now they are being followed at every turn by a well-meaning old lady, fighting off attacks from poltergeists, and trying to set their personal differences aside to defeat a supernatural foe before a centuries-old mystery reaches its final chapter.

Review:
Yes, another Angel book! I checked out 4 at once, and now they’re all coming due, so I’m hastening to get them read. Solitary Man takes place early in season four, at least after episode six, “Spin the Bottle,” in which the team reverts to their high school personas and Cordelia regains her memories. I think there’s a timeline error, however. In that episode, Wesley’s got some spring-loaded blades up his sleeves, but in Solitary Man, he’s still waiting for them to be delivered. I don’t see why he’d need two sets of these things, so I am assuming they’re the same ones. It seems like an attempt of Mariotte’s to get in an esoteric reference to them in particular, but it doesn’t work with non-amnesiac-Cordelia.

In general, Mariotte writes the Angel crew well. I really liked his analysis about Wes and Lilah’s relationship. It’s never implicitly stated on the show, but I think that he got Wes’ motivations absolutely right. He also does well in showing what Fred and Gunn are each thinking after what happened with her former professor. This is a period in the show where people are keeping a lot to themselves, so it was neat to get some perspective on what they might’ve been thinking. Another thing he does well is describing the action in a scene so that it’s immediately easy to envision it playing out on screen. I find I really like being able to picture exactly how Angel got into the offices of the trucking company, for example.

My only complaint with the writing itself is that Mariotte seems to have a penchant for the lame simile. This also manifested itself in Sanctuary (review). The first example to catch my notice was this little gem: “…her footfall soft as the beat of a butterfly’s wing.” Another: “…with remnants of advertising posters clinging to them like bad memories that can’t be shaken.” I don’t know whether to snicker, groan, or make gagging sounds. Oh, and the spelling of magic with a K abounds. I definitely need to get my hands on some scripts and confirm that Whedon-tachi did not use this variant. I will be so depressed if they did. But Giles didn’t own the Magick Box, did he? No, he did not.

So, good characterization and dialogue aside, the plot of this one is kind of dull. Some artifacts didn’t make it to a mission renovation project, some weird old dude is involved, some comatose park ranger living in a house with a poltergeist is involved, some little old lady follows the crew and gives progress reports to her cat, Pookie. (I am not making this up.) The end was a little dumb, too. Mariotte provides another quick, easy read, enjoyable almost solely for the people populating it, and pretty bleh otherwise.

Sanctuary by Jeff Mariotte: B

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From the back cover:
Angel and Co. are enjoying a rare moment of relaxation at the karaoke bar Caritas when a loud explosion draws the gang—and the rest of the bar’s patrons—outside. A building across the way is on fire, but the conflagration is nothing more than a diversionary tactic to distract people from a drive-by shooting! And when the smoke clears, Fred is missing.

It’s obvious she’s been kidnapped, so Angel, Lorne, Cordy, Wes, and Gunn set about questioning everyone within the immediate radius. At least ten demons were direct eyewitnesses. One problem, though: Each tells a different story of what he, she, or it saw. It could have been gang warfare—monster style—or Fred could have wandered home without saying good-bye. One thing quickly becomes clear: Demons don’t make for the most reliable sources…

Review:
Sanctuary takes place in season three, before the episode “This Old Gang of Mine,” in which Gunn’s former vampire-hunting buddies wreak some havoc in Caritas. At the time the story is set, Lorne has just finished renovating the club after it was damaged by the gang returning through the portal from Pylea in Angel’s car. Fred is still in her skittish, writing-on-walls stage and no romantic turmoil has disrupted the camaraderie of the group.

I had a little trouble getting into this one, initially. Not that it has any problems with timeline or canon; it was just a little dull. However, once I got more interested in the world-building going on via Lorne’s interviews with potential witnesses, the pace picked up. I liked that some attention was paid to what Lorne actually sees when he reads those who have sung for him. And it was pretty cool how Mariotte was able to reference the events of some early episodes as explanation for why some patrons of Caritas might have grudges against Angel. Like, remember some demon called Griff who menaced Doyle for unpaid gambling debts? Me, neither. But sure enough, he’s a real character in the Angel episode “Rm w/a Vu,” and his brother happened to be in Caritas the evening in question.

There were a couple of clunky lines of writing (example: “… caused the pain to come roaring back like a hungry lion released from its cage”) but not too many. The writing was in-character and often very amusing. There were lots of lines and scenes that I ccould totally imagine happening on the show, which is exactly what one wants from a novel of this sort. Like Angel wistfully remembering his evil days when confronted with an irritating convenience store clerk, and a whole lot of giggle-worthy moments between Cordelia, Gunn, and Wes, including a particular gag involving some demon goo on Wes’ hands.

All was going well until the last chapter or so, when a tremendously huge plot hole left me staring at the book and going, “Um…?” Despite this, I quite enjoyed the book and recommend it as a fun, light read. I’ve been pretty impressed by the two Angel novels I have read so far, and the local library has quite a few, so I will be reading more of them.

The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg: A-

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From the back cover:
Why was Mrs. Olinski’s sixth grade academic bowl team so successful? And why had Mrs. Olinski chosen them in the first place?

Noah, Nadia, Ethan and Julian call themselves The Souls. Each has a story to tell, and within each of their stories is part of the answer. Listen to Noah’s tale of life in Century Village, Nadia’s story of turtle walks, Ethan’s account of high tea at the bed and breakfast inn, and Julian’s story about a dog that becomes a stage star. Taken together, their stories answer the first question, and when intertwined with the story of Mrs. Olinski and their astonishing academic bowl victories, they answer the second—and tell you much, much more.

Review:
I listened to The View from Saturday in unabridged audio format, and the makers of this one attempted something a little different than the norm. Instead of one narrator for the entire thing, there were five. One for the frame story, in which the kids are competing in the finals of an academic bowl competition, and then one for each of the kids, as they tell their respective first person stories. The only problem is—these narrators sound too old for sixth graders! Noah’s sounds about 16, and Nadia’s sounds like a throaty 35-year-old! If you’re going to make an effort to provide distinct narrators, as if they are really representing the characters, at least get ones that fit the part! Casting issues aside, however, I do think Nadia’s story benefited from the audio treatment, since the strange, Data-style contraction-free dialogue doesn’t come across as unnaturally as K encountered with the print version.

Now, the book itself. There’s not so much of a plot, necessarily, but more of a gradual introduction of the members of the team, and then finally showing how they interact together. The first story just features one member, the next features two and mentions a third, etc. The stories I enjoyed most were the third and fourth, those of Ethan and Julian, both because those characters are not annoying, and because the whole group has assembled by then. Incidentally, for some weird reason, I keep thinking Ethan’s name is Chris. It should be, dangit!

The connections between the four and their homeroom teacher and coach, Mrs. Olinski, are multi-layered, and though it’s a little bit much at times, reasonable explanations are supplied. I particularly liked that the young narrators often end up discovering some things about other people in their lives aside from their teammates. Nadia’s dad comes off pretty unfavorably in Noah’s tale, but in her own, he gets some depth and earns sympathy. Nadia at first thinks Ethan’s grandma is a meddler, but then is forced to revise her opinion. Each member of the team has his or her own quirks and flaws, and though I really wanted to smack Noah and Nadia at times, I concede that there are undoubtedly 12-year-olds in existence who are as irritating as they are.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and definitely intend to recommend it for kids I know in this age range. There aren’t many books that focus on smart kids, and the team is at least somewhat diverse, so the “all kinds of people can be smart” message is clear. So is the “mean people suck” message. And the “be courteous” message. Which ties into one of my two complaints: the lessons imparted are kind of heavily handled, but since they’re good lessons, it’s hard to be too bothered by it. The second is that some of the questions in the competition are awfully open-ended. I participated in these sorts of contests myself in 10th and 11th grade, and I never heard any that had more than one possible answer. “Name an accomplishment of ____,” for example.

Checkers by John Marsden: A-

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From the back cover:
Tonight before I started writing this, it was me confronting Jack. It was so real I could smell it.

Suddenly, according to my imagination, I’d be on my feet, screaming, “Why didn’t you leave us alone? Why did you have to drag us in? You’re scum, filth. I hate you. Go away. You deserve everything, everything, you understand? Everything that you get. It’s not my fault. IT’S NOT MY FAULT.”

She has everything going for her: good looks, a nice school, friends, and a silly dog to remind her not to take life too seriously. But suddenly her life spins out of control. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. It takes confinement in a hospital—and a lot of time to think—before she can once again get a handle on life.

Review:
If I had read that description (and seen the creepy goth girl staring at me from the cover) without any prior experience with John Marsden, I’d probably have gone, “Ooookay” and put it back on the shelf. Since I have, however, read the excellent Letters from the Inside, I knew that most likely, it would turn out to be good.

The main protagonist is a high-school-age girl from a well-to-do family, and is keeping a sort of journal while she’s in the Adolescent Unit of a psychiatric hospital. We never learn her name. The narration alternates between description of life in the hospital, the staff, and the other six teens in the unit (one of whom reminds me a lot of Luna Lovegood) and her life before, her easily stressed, perfection-seeking mom, workaholic dad, materialistic brother, and the family dog she adored, Checkers. She’s a voluntary patient at this place, and it seems is using it as a bit of a hideway, unable to face something mysterious and terrible that has happened.

It’s a short little book, but isn’t lacking for impact. In fact, I would say it is downright disturbing. The story is still a good one, and it’s definitely unforgettable, but once all the secrets are revealed of why this girl is where she is… Let’s just say that I think I’d probably be there, too, were I in her place.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King: C-

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From the back of the book:
What happens when Sherlock Holmes—a pompous, proper Victorian gentleman—takes an outspoken American woman as his apprentice? Edgar Award-winning author Laurie R. King reveals the answer in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, an absorbing novel steeped in exquisite understanding and charming intelligence.

In 1914, a bold young American named Mary Russell meets a retired beekeeper in the English countryside. His name is Sherlock Holmes. And although many years have passed since he astonished Watson by solving Scotland Yard’s most baffling crimes, the Great Detective is no fool. He instantly spots a fellow intellect in Mary. When his greatest enemy returns with a fiendishly resourceful plan for revenge, Holmes knows he faces the case of his lifetime—and that he needs Mary’s help to solve it.

Review:
I had serious trepidations going into this book. I expected Mary to be insufferable, revealing her oh-so-clever deductions to Holmes, who had of course failed to make them previously, leaving him mystified and relegated to Watson’s traditional role. I mean, look at that last sentence up there. That’s cringe-inducing stuff.

I found her quite irksome for the first couple of chapters as she described her mental capacities rather immodestly, though this is certainly something Sherlock’s guilty of himself. I started to maybe kind of like her an eensy bit when she attended university and went about in drag on a few occasions. When they actually started sleuthing together, it was clear that if anyone was relegated to a supporting role, it was Mary. Sherlock was still very much the star, and early on, King does a pretty good job of both maintaining his character as well as providing mysteries consistent in tone and style with those of Conan Doyle. Their first two cases are not bad, and I didn’t want to stab Mary.

That said, about two-thirds through, she does notice something he doesn’t, and goes on in amazement about how she’s rescued him from error and how this causes him angst. Beyond that, by this point it had started to get repetitive. I cannot tell you how many times Holmes attempted to leave her behind, only to be reminded that she did not need to be coddled, and that he had never shown any doubt in the awesomeness of her deductive powers.

Shortly after this, the plot is completely derailed by a pointless side trip to Palestine. Said trip gives Mary the opportunity to start quoting random Hebrew and singing psalms on inspirational hillsides. My head. At least Holmes doesn’t comment on her ‘voice of pure sweetness and light’ or something. Not that he escapes out-of-character behavior here. After he has just agreed that she’s his equal, he envelopes her in his arms and holds her until the lamp runs out of oil. Holmes did this? Eh?!?

Continuing on was not very enjoyable after this point, but I was too close to the end to abandon it. It improves somewhat once they’re back in London, but the revelation of the villain is pretty boring, and the “moving” letter Mary receives at the end had me rolling my eyes. I will not be reading any other books in this series. I’ll actually miss reading Holmes’ bits, but I’ve been spoiled on an event that occurs down the line, and I think I’m better off stopping here and avoiding the risk of aneurism.

Book of the Dead by Ashley McConnell: B+

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From the back cover:
Wes has been a compulsive reader since childhood. It’s an addiction like any other—he craves books, loves them, can’t live without them. So when his former colleague Adrian O’Flaherty comes to town and invites Wes along to a highly secret auction of rare occult books, Wes can’t say no.

What Wes doesn’t know is that Adrian is looking for more than dusty old tomes at the auction. He’s out for revenge. Before the Watchers Council was destroyed, a man named Rutherford Circe stole a number of rare books from the council’s libraries—and killed the librarian, Adrian’s father, in the process.

At the auction, Wes buys a box of old books that holds one of the most famous books of magic ever collected. The Red Compendium is known for totally absorbing its readers—and Wes, always a sucker for compelling literature, couldn’t put it down if he wanted to.

Note: One spelling of magic with a k was changed because it is lame.

Review:
I freely admit to being a Wes fangirl, and I couldn’t resist a book centered around him. This is my first original novel set in the Buffyverse, and I’m happy to report it’s far superior than the novelizations I’ve read previously. Characterization is very good for all characters, in inner thought as well as dialogue, and evoked no cringes whatsoever. I particularly liked Wes’ reminiscences back to his Watchers (Watchers’?) Academy days. I’m sure it’s like other English boarding schools, but to me it just seems Hogwartsian.

The plot is not the most stellar thing ever, but it’s pretty good. Some bits I could imagine in an episode, though not all of it. It takes place in the fourth season while Wes is still estranged from the others, but at the point where some reconciliation is slowly taking place. The timeline’s a little hard to pinpoint, though, because it’s definitely after Caleb blew up the Watchers Council, but seems to be before Angel turned into Angelus. And Lorne is still running Caritas, which I thought he’d given up by this point in time since Angel-tachi kept wrecking it.

One irksome thing is that the publisher can’t seem to decide which way it wants to spell the word magic. It uses the variant with a K on the back cover, which I dislike. At first, the text used the regular way, then it shifted to the K way, and then back again. I thought maybe it only used the K when it was black magic, but this theory was dashed. On page 118, both are used interchangeably: “death magick amulets” and, a few paragraphs later, “death magic amulets.” After the first appearance of magic with a K in the text, I started keeping a tally box. Here are the results:

Magick: 14
Magic: 12

Despite these little flaws, I still enjoyed the book, and would recommend it to anyone looking for some new stories featuring beloved characters.

The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner: A-

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From the front flap, edited for spoilers:
When Eugenides outwitted the Queen of Attolia, she lost face. To restore her reputation and reassert her power, the Queen of Attolia will go to any length and accept any help that is offered… she will risk her country to execute the perfect revenge.

Eugenides can steal anything. And he taunts the Queen of Attolia, moving through her strongholds seemingly at will. So Attolia waits, secure in the knowledge that the Thief will slip, that he will haunt her palace one too many times.

Review:
The Queen of Attolia is the sequel to The Thief, set in the same world but without the same narrator. Strenuously avoid reading the description of this book on Amazon, for there is a spoiler right there in the first sentence. I was its victim, but thankfully, the event it describes happens fairly early on so I didn’t have to spend the whole book wondering when it was going to occur. Suffice it to say, Gen does a lot of growing up in this book.

He’s still as likable as he was the first go around, but with this volume, I’ve also grown to like the Queen of Eddis quite a bit. A rational, competent, female leader in trousers who spurns offers of marriage and earns her court’s loyalty by ability rather than by scheming, Eddis (the monarchs go by the names of their countries) is an excellent character.

Although I enjoyed The Thief, The Queen of Attolia is much better, in my opinion. It’s become more of a game of political intrigue, and I prefer that sort of story much more than one with lots of traveling. Essentially, there’s a power struggle between three countries in one part of the world, and they need to get their acts together to avoid being overrun by an Imperial power from another coast. Although Gen’s is primarily the main point of view, there are passages in each of the countries allowing us to get a glimpse of the motivation and rationale of all parties.

The Queen of Attolia is fast-paced, clever, and entertaining. I especially found Chapter 16 to be amusing. I am really quite surprised that my local library is shelving it in the Juvenile section rather than YA, as I’m not sure very young kids could really grasp the importance of, say, buying up a whole bunch of surplus grain as a political maneuver.

The one downside I could give it is that sometimes the story jumps forward to show Gen doing something, having made a decision he was struggling with previously, but without showing how he finally came to make his choice in the matter. In most cases, the story manages to loop back around and give a bit of explanation, but it can leave one in a state of not understanding his motivations for a time.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold: A

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From the back of the book:
In the first chapter of this haunting novel, 14-year-old Susie Salmon looks down from heaven and describes the horrifying events of her murder. As time goes on, Susie continues her curious observations while her family struggles to cope with the pain of her death. Her younger sister grows tougher and more mature, her mother goes to desperate lengths to ease the suffering, and her father begins a perilous quest to bring the killer to justice.

Review:
This book starts out absolutely stunningly. Susie’s murder and the aftermath progress evenly and fascinatingly for about a year after her death. After that time, however, events speed up and soon whole years are glossed over within a sentence. It became a real “Drop in on X and see where they are now. Okay, next character!” cycle. And it isn’t that these little snapshots weren’t interesting; it just really felt rushed.

Thankfully, this doesn’t last too very long before the story wraps up in a more linear fashion. The ending may be a bit too tidy for some, I suppose, but I loved it. The author manages to be thoughtful and evoke imagery without being pretentious or writing so densely as to require strong effort to decode for meaning.

The Lovely Bones is unique, a trifle flawed, but wholly unforgettable. I’ll remember this story for a long time.

The Xander Years 2 by Jeff Mariotte: B

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From the back cover:
Most teens have trouble finding themselves now and then, but when you’re living on a hellmouth, “trouble” is an understatement—especially if you’re Xander Harris. He has never been very popular, and has never had much luck with women, but he is uniquely Xander.

After a Sunnydale High field trip to the zoo, Xander becomes obnoxious and aggressive. Giles thinks it’s typical adolescent male behavior, but Buffy knows better. And when he finally scores “cool” points by making the Sunnydale High swim team, he’s thrown into the middle of something, well… fishy.

Still, once Xander is excluded from the Slayer’s most recent anti-apocalyptic campaign, he finds himself battling his own private evil—and saving Sunnydale High from a fate it never imagined.

Review:
Continuing the alliterative trend from volume one, the three episodes picked for novelization in this book (“The Pack,” “Go Fish,” and “The Zeppo”) are billed as three tales of transition, transformation, and transcendence. Um, okay. I didn’t really think Xander was that affected by donning skimpy swimwear. It’s interesting to note that in all three of these episodes, the villainous baddie ends up getting devoured.

I am happy to say that Jeff Mariotte does a better job conveying the thought processes of the characters than his predecessor from volume one, though frankly, that wouldn’t be difficult. Sometimes they’re covered in a simple paragraph, and I didn’t have any specific problems with those, and sometimes, when it’s something the character would’ve said in their mental voice, they are italicized. It’s the italicized thoughts that are more prone to being irritating, and occasionally, downright jarring. A little setup for this snerk-inducing example from “The Pack:” Xander is prowling around with the other hyena-possessed kids, feeling all wild and hungry. They’ve just sampled the hot dogs of some students, spurned them, and have now caught a whiff of something more appetizing.

The scent grew stronger as they stalked the halls, headed directly toward their prey. Something weak, something that could be brought down by the pack.

Or rather, the Pack, Xander thought, suddenly realizing that it should be capitalized.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have an episode title!

Seriously, this is so stupid! There was just a scene where Xander was too affected to be able to comprehend geometry properly, but here he is contemplating the abstract significance of his little group and how it should thusly be conveyed in writing? How very primal a sentiment! *eyeroll*

Other than that, and noting that once, in “Go Fish,” the names of two swim team members were confused, I have nothing to complain about. Again, the major reason this is entertaining is because the original episodes were. Mariotte neither added much of value nor fouled them up.

The Xander Years 1 by Keith R. A. DeCandido: B-

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From the back cover:
Unfulfilled crushes. Awkward first conversations. A date who wants you… dead.

Having a Y-chromosome in Sunnydale is never easy. But Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s friend Xander Harris seems to find more than his share of trouble with the opposite sex.

At first Xander is happy being the teacher’s pet—until his schoolboy crush brings out her true animal instincts. Then his whirlwind romance with the exotic foreign exchange student falters when she demands the ultimate sacrifice.

Some members of the Slaying squad might say that dating Cordelia Chase could kill a guy. But Xander’s relationship with the high-maintenance Cordy actually seems to be working out—until she decides he’s seriously harming her social standing. His crafty plan to win her back may earn him more love than one guy can handle.

Now, collected for the first time, are three stories from the hit TV series chronicling Xander’s search for love on the Hellmouth.

Review:
This book includes novelizations of the teleplays for “Teacher’s Pet,” “Inca Mummy Girl,” and “Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered,” hailed on the front cover as three tales of danger, duplicity, and desire. Alliterative! Framing these is a little piece where Xander has been to The Bronze, had his clothes criticized by Cordelia, made out with her, and now has returned home to compare all his various romantic experiences. It doesn’t strike me as particularly Xander-like, but at least it’s brief.

I think it’s cute that the font for chapter headings and page numbers has little blood dribblies. I guess it’s cheesy, but for some reason it amuses me. Also amusing, but in a sad way, are the typos that made it through an evidently lackadaisical editing process. Examples: in “Teacher’s Pet,” the real Mrs. French wears a “cardigan sweather.” In “Inca Mummy Girl,” when Willow goes to dissuade the delinquent kid from mucking about the museum exhibit, she heads off to “soothe the savage breast.”

Some of the invented thoughts for the characters are entertaining, like Xander’s revelation that, when five, he once retaliated against Cordelia by dumping a bowl of ice cream on her head. Spike’s are pretty decent, but I think that’s because Spike doesn’t do a lot of self-filtering before he speaks, so his thoughts are most like something he’d actually say. Most of the rest are either:

1. Lame – Like the very generic desire to see the world ascribed to the real Ampata (foreign exchange student in “Inca Mummy Girl”) before he gets mummified. His supposed last thought? “Now I’ll never see Paris.” Groan.

2. Unnecessary – Xander, after loudly declaring Angel to be an attractive man in front of some jock types, thinks:

Bad enough Blayne’s dissing my studliness, the last thing I need is everyone hearing me talking about attractive men.

Way to overexplain the joke, dude.

3. Just plain wrong – (Dingoes Ate My Baby is unloading their equipment for a performance. Devon is slacking and talking to Cordelia.)

Of course, had Oz actually been upset, it probably would’ve been more due to the fact that Oz didn’t have a girlfriend of his own to be distracted by. It’s not like Devon ever carried the heavy stuff anyhow.

Does that sound even a little like Oz thoughts? Not to me.

Of slight canonical interest is that the photo of Xander, Willow, and Buffy in 10th grade that’s seen several times in the series is declared twice to have been taken by Willow’s mom. Except Willow’s mom canonically shows zero interest in her life until the episode “Gingerbread,” which aired January 1999. This book was published in February 1999, so probably couldn’t have been changed once Sheila’s general disinterest in her daughter had been established. It was also published before the whole “who exactly sired Spike” thing was cleared up, since Spike specifically mentions Angel siring both he and Drusilla.

By far, the best reason for reading these novelizations is the dialogue from the real episode that couldn’t be fudged with. Even though “Inca Mummy Girl” isn’t one of my favorite episodes, I’d forgotten that it has several great quotes in it. The best one (in my opinion) looks rather flat on the page, but when I hear Xander actually saying it, it still evokes a giggle: “What he lacks in smarts, he makes up in lack of smarts.”

Overall, it’s an okay book, but that’s entirely due to the original writers of these episodes. Without their actions and dialogue, I don’t know whether this author could portray these characters at all convincingly.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner: B+

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From the inside flap:
The king’s scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king’s prison. The magus is interested only in the thief’s abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone’s guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.

Review:
That description makes this tale sound dull and full of theological tales, but really, there are only 3 or 4 of those. The real story involves Gen being recruited by the magus to help steal a stone that supposedly imbues the owner with immortality and proclaims him or her the rightful ruler of a country called Eddis, a neighbor to the country Gen and his companions are from, Sounis.

Gen’s traveling companions are interesting, though not quite as fully fleshed out as they could be. The evolution of the relationships throughout the course of the book is subtle and well done, as Gen is simply viewed as a tool to start with. Gen himself is a very entertaining narrator, clever and trying to be as annoying as possible at first, which is amusing.

The author is good at evocative descriptions that aren’t too wordy, but I would have liked to have had a map so as to better visualize their travels, particularly in the last couple of chapters. Although this was shelved in the Juvenile section of the library, she doesn’t noticably oversimplify things for the benefit of a younger crowd. Overall, the traveling portions are less boring than I usually find and were enlivened by the interactions of the companions, but towards the end, do get a little repetitive. Thankfully, the end itself is not dull.

The Pearl of the Soul of the World by Meredith Ann Pierce: A

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From the back cover:
All the world’s wisdom and magic reside within the iridescent depths of a small white pearl. “All my sorcery,” the Ancient Ravenna had said to Aeriel. “It is left to you to save the world.” But is the pearl powerful enough to enable Aeriel to defeat the White Witch? Aeriel’s people have assembled an army and are soon to attack the Witch and her darkangel sons. But their cause is hopeless unless Aeriel can unravel the riddle of Ravenna and unlock the mysteries of the pearl—and of her own destiny.

Review:
Rather than starting precisely where the second book left off, this concluding volume of the trilogy picks up some time after, where some mysterious circumstances have befallen Aeriel. She’s quickly discovered by some duarough, a race that lives underground, and so there aren’t long, dull passages where she’s traveling around by herself, which were the bane of book two. Eventually, around page 60 or so, some of the blanks as to what have happened in the meantime start to get filled in, and we find that there was a bit of wandering, but it was summed up in a single sentence. That makes me wonder whether there was some criticism similar to mine after the second book was released, and the author took steps to avert a similar slow start. Whatever the case, I found it immediately easy to get into this volume and the momentum carries through to the end without lulls.

I like the depiction and development of Aeriel’s romantic situation very much. Her feelings seem to make more IC sense now than previously, and I like how there aren’t easy fixes to things.

There’s a little more annoying inconsistency in this one, like some lines of the prophetic rhyme in book two being changed when sung by a couple of different characters with no IC reaction from Aeriel as to this not being correct. And the witch was stealing water? I remember that a river wasn’t at its full glory back in book one, but not much was made about the witch’s big evilness being that she was stealing the water until this last book. Before it was just that she was responsible for creating the darkangels. Oh yeah, and there was hardly any Roshka! These things almost earned the book an A- instead.

The ending, however, is great. That’s all I’m going to say, there, but it’s what brought the score up to a full-fledged A. There’s really some scope there about seeing how far these characters have come since the beginning, although I do wish some of the secondary characters could’ve been fleshed out a lot more.

Ultimately, this trilogy is recommended, though I’m not sure whether I will be buying my own set (I’ve had them out from the library) as I don’t know whether there’s quite enough here to merit a reread. This author has another YA series about unicorns, but I am not really feeling the urge to go investigate it at this point.

A Gathering of Gargoyles by Meredith Ann Pierce: B+

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From the back of the book, with edits for spoilers:
Aeriel may’ve done something interesting in book one, but the Witch is far from defeated! Her evil vampyre sons continue to blight the lands, defeating even the warders created by the Old Ones to protect them. There is but a single hope for the Witch’s defeat—solving an ancient, mysterious riddle.

So, Aeriel sets off to solve the riddle, sailing across a sea of dust and straight into the worst of the Witch’s terrors. But if Aeriel is to save the world, she will have to overcome the Witch’s darkangel sons and ultimately confront their terrifying mother face-to-face.

Review:
My enjoyment of this book was stymied by a few annoying things right off the bat. First, in the first book in this series, there wasn’t any mention of people with weird-colored skin. I’d swear, although I don’t have the first book to consult, that Aeriel was described as having a tan/rose complexion before the sun bleached her more fair. Now, they say she’s white, but it’s clear she was once mauve. And there’s all these blue and green skinned people and stuff.

Secondly, there’s the revisiting of scenes from book one and suddenly including some conversation that we never saw before, or a tidbit like, “Oh yeah, she gave those things names.” It makes it seem like the author wasn’t planning ahead. I would’ve preferred to have seen those conversations within the context of the scenes as they were taking place, then one could reflect back later and go ‘Ahh, I see’. I know this is YA, but c’mon. J. K. Rowling does it just fine!

Thirdly, after a bit of an angsty beginning, Aeriel goes off alone. This part is so dull, just a description of the landscape she’s passing through. At least the concept of time was more clearly portrayed this time.

It took me ages just to get to page 100. After this point, however, she gets some companions and the story picks up and its enjoyment value greatly improves. The annoying elements were primarily confined to the beginning of the book, and I eventually managed to stop being irked about the skin color thing. I read from page 100 to the end (333) in a day.

The overall plot is pretty predictable. I mean, obviously, she’s gathering gargoyles from the title, but their significance is incredibly obvious. It’s a little much to believe that while Aeriel acquires them she is ignorant of this. Still, I look forward to seeing more of certain characters in book three, and now that I’m two-thirds through the series it’d just be dumb to drop it now.