Musings: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland

When I first saw the title The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, I wanted the book.  When I realized the author of this young adult novel is none other than Catherynne Valente, who wrote the excellent The Orphan's Tale:  In the Night Garden retelling of the Arabian Nights, I wanted it even more because believe me, the woman knows how to tell a fairy tale.

Luckily, I got my grubby hands on a copy of the book and read it immediately.  And, as expected, it was splendiferous.  Really, the more I read books set in Faerie/Fairyland, the more I want to go to there.  Well, kind of.  Fairies can be nasty beasties.  So I guess if I were to be perfectly honest, I'd have to say the more I read about Fairyland, the more I want to read even more about Fairyland.  It's just so fun and colorful and glorious, but also dark and sinister and creepy.  Great combination.

Musings: Tender Morsels

You are pure-hearted, and lovely and you have never done a moment's wrong.  But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart.

Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels is a book that left me with many conflicting feelings.  It's a book that makes you think.  And think a lot, about things from which your mind shudders away and doesn't want to acknowledge.  The writing was beautiful, yes.  The characters, I'm sure, would stand out to me on a second reading.  But honestly, when I closed this book, the main thought in my head was, "What is the message?"  There is a message, I know.  Multiple messages.  And while the writing and the characters and the dialect and the magic and all the rest were great, I know that they are not the aspects that will stay with me long-term.  Instead, I'll be struggling with what Lanagan wanted to say, about rape, forgiveness, vengeance and a lot of heavy words.

Tender Morsels is first the story of Liga, a teenager living in the forest with her father, who repeatedly rapes her for many years, and then goes into town seeking herbs to help her (unknowingly) abort their children.  When Da finally leaves her, Liga gives birth to her daughter Branza and is ready to begin fresh.  But then five village boys come to visit her isolated cottage and take turns having their way with her, leaving her broken and pregnant once more with her second daughter Urdda.  With help, Liga escapes her horror-filled existence to live in a perfect-dream world of her own making where people are kind, if vague and one-dimensional, where she can raise her two daughters in peace.  But the real world isn't ready to give this family up, and repeated visits from other people leave Urdda, at least, wanting more than her simple existence, eventually forcing the happy family to return to the real world and live their true lives.

Continuing after the jump will lead you into plot spoilers for this book because really, I just want to talk out my reactions to various plot points more than anything else.  If that bothers you, then be warned!

Musings: The American Heiress

Daisy Goodwin's The American Heiress is a book that I was both excited and nervous to read.  It is full of those ridiculous accolades books these days get- comparing it to the works of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton and probably any other author who writes about the English class system.  This generally sets off warning bells in my head because well, quite frankly, there aren't many people who can write like Jane Austen (or Edith Wharton, I presume, though I've never read her myself).  It's putting a lot of pressure on Goodwin to compare her to those two.

There were other blurbs, too, saying that The American Heiress was a "guilty pleasure" of a read, and that set off all sorts of warning bells.  Jane Austen and Edith Wharton aren't really guilty pleasures reads to me.  I think more of Phillippa Gregory and the bodice-rippers as guilty pleasures.

So it was with some trepidation that I started this book, especially upon learning the heroine's name was Cora Cash (I mean, really?) and that one of the opening scenes is her bullying her maid into teaching her how to kiss properly, complete with a practice run between the two girls.  (Pretty sure Jane Austen would never write that scene!) Cora is the richest heiress in America in the 1890s, and her mother is determined that her daughter will have an English title to go along with all that money.  So they travel to England where Cora has an unfortunate riding accident, is rescued by an attractive man who just happens to be a duke, and spends about a week recovering at his ancestral home, much to her mother's delight.  (Jane Austen definitely already wrote that scene.)  The duke eventually proposes, and Cora begins her life as the Duchess of Rakeham.  But she soon learns that money does not a duchess make, and must deal with the travails of English high society even while she realizes that she doesn't know her husband very well at all.  And her maid?  She's got problems of her own to deal with, too.

Musings: Mairelon the Magician

I loved Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles growing up, but I strangely never knew she had written anything else.  I certainly did not know that she wrote a duology set in a magical Regency England, way before setting fantasy books in historical time periods was cool. So when I heard about Mairelon the Magician about a month ago, I bought it (and its sequel) almost immediately.

Kim is a 17-year-old girl who dresses like a boy, making her independent way by stealing and spying in London.  She's done well so far, but she has some people she'd rather avoid, like Dan Laverham.  She's hired by a shady-looking gentleman for a ridiculous amount of money to find a silver bowl in Mairelon the Magician's wagon.  She looks for it, but is caught by Mairelon himself, who instead of turning her into the authorities, offers to take her in as an apprentice.  Kim agrees, wanting to put as many miles as possible between her and Dan Laverham, and they go off together along with Mairelon's faithful sidekick, Hunch.  But people are still after that silver bowl and Mairelon, she finds, is trying to solve a mystery of his own.

Musings: I Shall Wear Midnight

I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth book in Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching mini-series within the Discworld series.  I think it may rank as my favorite, though I do adore The Wee Free Men.  Sadly, it may also be the last of Tiffany's adventures as it wraps up in a happy-sigh-inducing way at the end (pretty much the same sigh I breathed at the end of The Thief of Time, when I saw what Pratchett had in store for Susan).

In this adventure, Tiffany is back at home tending her witch's steading of the Chalk, doing the things that need doing, as she says.  Helping relieve some of the old Baron's pain, delivering babies, cutting toenails and giving baths.  But then news comes that a violent crime has been done to a young girl, and though Tiffany saves the girl, she hears muttering from the people that Tiffany does more harm than good.  This muttering gets louder and louder and Tiffany must confront the evil that is seeping into people's minds, turning them to hate and fear instead of reason and good sense.  She also has to deal with a blond-haired, blue-eyed, beautiful new Baroness-to-be who cries a lot, an overbearing Duchess who hates her and a trip to Ankh-Morpork.  Luckily, she has her trusty friends the Nac Mac Feegles with her, plus a few other true winners we get introduced to through the course of this novel.

Musings: America's Women

America's Women by Gail Collins is one of the most fascinating books I've read all year.  It is really good, people.  I got it when there was all that positive talk about the author's new book, When Everything Changed, which is a sort of sequel to this book.  But I am one of those readers who likes to start at the beginning, so I read this one first, but now I can't wait to get my hands on When Everything Changed because I am sure it is just as fabulous as this one.

This book is about the history of women in the United States (mostly the history of white women, though there's more on African-Americans than she led me to expect in the introduction, and sadly very little on Native Americans due to lack of documentation).  That makes it sound either very dryly academic or feminazi-like, but it is neither, I promise you.  It's a collection of information on what it as like to be a woman at various points in time, and also a lot of short, tantalizing biographies of women who were awesome.  Seriously, I had no idea American history was chock full of amazing females, none of whom get the attention they deserve.  If this book did nothing else, it seriously piqued my interest in reading at least a dozen biographies of all sorts of women who stood up for their rights.  Instead of gushing about all of them and this book, I'll just share with you some thoughts I had in reading through this book:

Musings: Best Served Cold

Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold is a (very long) novel about, unsurprisingly, revenge.  It is a stand-alone book set in the same world as his First Law Trilogy that I read about a year ago.  One of my best friends gave me the book to borrow an unconscionably long time ago, and I never had the nerve to pick it up.  I wasn't ready for 600+ pages of massive hardcover in Joe Abercrombie's signature style, which is comprised of brutality, cynicism and a lot of regret.

I finally picked the book up and read through it almost without pause.  If you want to read this book, I would avoid this method because it is depressing.

Like pretty much every story about revenge, it starts with the Perceived Wrong.  Monza and her brother, Benna, are the generals of the largest mercenary force in the known world.  They're also very popular with the people- too popular for the grand duke's liking.  So one day, the king and six other people kill Monza's brother and attempt to kill Monza.  But she survives, with some severe physical scars (and a whole lotta Emotional Baggage), and vows revenge on all of them for doing such a dastardly, undeserved deed.

To accomplish this, she assembles a motley crew:  Shivers, a Northman who wants to turn over a new leaf and be a good man; Friendly, an obsessive-compulsive, highly efficient killer; Morveer and his assistant Day, two highly-skilled poisoners; and a few others, my favorite being the charismatic Nicomo Cosca, Monza's old boss.  Lured by promises of large payments, these people all agree to join Monza on her quest for vengeance.  And, as in most stories about revenge, things don't end quite as well as Monza hoped.

Musings: Children of God

Children of God, by Mary Doria Russell, is the sequel to her science fiction novel The Sparrow.  I loved The Sparrow and the way it made you really think about the unintended consequences actions can have.  This is even more true in Children of God, which explores, among many other things, the terrible consequences of miscommunication.

Children of God begins again with the fabulous character of Emilio Sandoz, one of the most fascinating people I will never have the pleasure of meeting.  He is being pressured to return to Rakhat, but he is certain he does not want to.  Not only does he have horrible memories of the place, but he also wants to leave the priesthood.  And marry a lovely woman.  But another fate awaits him, and he is taken back to Rakhat to confront his past and face the consequences of the actions he and his friends took on Rakhat..

Musings: Outlaw

Angus Donald's Outlaw is his first novel in a new series about Robin Hood.  I realized when reading this book that I don't actually know much about Robin Hood at all.  I remember some characters' names from the BBC series, but that's pretty much it.  I also had this vague and completely baseless notion that Robin Hood and his Merry Men were similar to King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, but that is (unsurprisingly) quite false.  But both Robin Hood and King Arthur are men steeped in legend- all sorts of stories abound about them and their deeds even as people have trouble proving that either of them actually existed.

In Angus Donald's mind, Robin Hood is the head of what seems to be a medieval Mafia.  He offers villagers protection from the sheriff and dangerous criminals. In return for a fee.  That's how Alan Dale ended up with Robin's men.  He stole from a pie vendor and his mother asked Robin Hood to protect her son.  Robin agreed and Alan never looked back.  The story is told in a pretty typical flashback- the now old and lonely Alan Dale is relating his younger exploits on paper for the world to see.