Middle School Book Reports just got a whole lot more awesome because I have successfully connived Steven Wiggins into helping me!!! I’m sure he wouldn’t have agreed if the book series in question wasn’t all about different Greco-Roman gods and goddesses in middle school! It’s called Goddess Girls by Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams! Clearly Steven wanted to be the first classics major to really make a close study of this groundbreaking new text in the field.

You can tell he's secretly enjoying himself

Props to Caitlin for convincing me to read all of these!! Well, she mainly just posted a link to it on my facebook wall, clearly well aware that I require almost no convincing to read ridiculous tween book series based somehow on really violent and sexually explicit ancient source material! Of course I immediately checked out as many as the library had available. Therefore I’m not reading them in any order–this one is actually book 3–but they each seem to be a separate story so Steven and I were not completely bewildered. Well, Steven was, but that was mostly about the term “godboy”.

I can't be the only one weirded out by her gigantic insect eyes, right?

Summary of Amazingness
By Patricia
Aphrodite decides to give her frumpy friend Athena a makeover!! But then gets super jealous when school hottie Ares, her secret crush, starts paying more attention to her friend! Plus, Hephaestus, a sweet but ugly boy keeps sending her flowers and gifts to woo her and making everyone gossip about how they’re an item when everyone knows Aphrodite has got STANDARDS, you guys. Everyone learns a lesson about true love and being honest by helping Hippomenes trick his way into Atalanta’s arms, and Athena reveals that sleazy Ares just wanted her advice on how to get a city named after him. Then Aphrodite sets Hephaestus up with some other nerdy chick and everyone lives happily ever after.

Thetis is all like "Make me some armor for my son or I'll stuff you into a locker, NERD"

Faithfulness to Original Mythos
By Steven
Okay, so firstly let’s ignore the whole middle school metaphor thing. Or that in this continuity the instructors (Principal Zeus, Mr. Cyclops, et al.) are supposed to be >= 1 generation in age and stature above the students (Athena, Atlas, Pandora, etc.). The characters mentioned are all more or less representative of their Greek originals–with the juicy bits left out–and there were a few standouts outside the normal range of the Pantheon. Props to the author for including not just Medusa, but also her sisters Euryale and Stheno, and double props for providing Ares the posse of Kydoimos (confusion in battle) and Makhai (spirits of battle), even though none of the above are really provided any back story. Small mistake in making Makhai singular (it refers to the brethren of spirits associated with battle, including Kydoimos) but otherwise pretty accurate. The Atalanta story is pretty spot on and Hephaestus’ loss of Aphrodite to Ares and subsequent matchup with Agleia is quasi-accurate as well, if missing the whole sex-in-a-net thing. Small demerit (or prop? I can’t decide) for “Arachne’s Sewing Supplies” in the Immortal Market, where Athena goes for yarn and needles; isn’t that sort of bad taste on Athena’s part? Four out of five stars for accuracy, the fifth being that I can’t get over this middle school metaphor! And the term “godboy”, of course.

Tween Girl Life Lessons
By Patricia
1) Every girl is super hot if you just restyle her hair and slather on enough makeup!
2) If you don’t like the way your friends look, just change them!
3) Beauty-ology is a completely serious class that you need to study; Athena, as a nerd, is completely failing!
4) If someone’s not hot enough to be your BF (and it’s totally okay to judge them on their looks or disabilities, btws) just string them along for awhile until you can set them up with someone more their scene

Patricia’s Favorites!!!
Character: Medusa! Her snake hair is fab and she’s fatally dangerous to all mortal students at the school, but no one seems worried about that? Plus, she thinks “Bubbles” is an appropriately mean-spirited nickname for the Goddess of Love.
Part: Anytime anyone says a spell. Example: “Blow wind, blow. Off you go. Deliver this message, and don’t be slow.” Even Ron Weasley wouldn’t have trouble with that one!
Thing I Learned: I didn’t know that Hephaestus got married after his divorce from Aphrodite (in the book represented by him going over to talk to some other girl in the cafeteria)! Which is cool because I always felt bad for him before.

Her hair's so big because it's full of SECRETS. And snakes.

Steven’s Favorites
Character: The sentient makeup brush, hands down. Goodbye Pantheon, hello Beauty and the Beast! Pheme (goddess of Fame but also vicious rumor) gets a mention, too, if only for being written closest to her original form.
Part: The Immortal Marketplace: Arachne’s Sewing Supplies and Cleo’s (Cleopatra?) Cosmetics for the girls and Arts of Warfare for the boys.
Thing I Learned: I learned that adding “-ology” to any term immediately makes it an Immortal class subject. I’m now shooting for “Mortal-ology,” hopefully this series’ answer to HP’s “Muggle Studies.”

Goddess Girls Glossary of Ridiculous Terms
textscroll–like a textbook, but a scroll! Comes in colors
scrollizine–a magazine! Useful for getting makeover inspiration
godboy–the boy equivalent of a “goddessgirl”
lyrebell–how you tell when to change classes!
hero-ology
beauty-ology
craft-ology
beast-ology
metal-ology

Next Time: Artemis the Brave!!

Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden

The rest of these won’t be in any order, but I really think this is the ugliest cover I’ve had to stare at this year. It’s a 1982 novel about two high school girls discovering their feelings for each other, and is actually really sweet. I could see it still being enjoyed by readers today, if this cover doesn’t completely turn them off. Hello, lumberjack vests!

Elixir "by" Hilary Duff

Obvs you don’t want the cover art taking away from the real selling point, Hilary Duff’s name, but I feel like I could have made a better one for this book in MSPaint. It’s just a clipart picture of a flower, copied and slightly rotated. Step it up, Hilary Duff’s publicist.

Speaking of covers influenced by Twilight, here are three more:

Sleepless by Cyn Balog

Flowers have something to do with sandmen right?

Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner

If you’re going to go with one thing on black, at least make it a fairy skeleton!

The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti

This was a pretty great non-fiction book by an author who, I’m pretty sure, would completely hate Bella Swan and her representation of femininity. The cover is actually fine on its own, but it earns a place on this list for reminding me of Twilight every time I have to look at it, something you know I can never forgive.

Stork by Wendy Delsol

BLARGHARGHBLARGHRAWR STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT, YOU FREAK

The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey

I’m usually against any book cover where the author name is larger than the title, but this one has other problems too. That font? The attack sparkles? I can’t take it.

Black Hole by Charles Burns

Oh, teeth.

One Butt Cheek at a Time by Amber Kizer

So, I could be wrong, but I think this is the book I read this year that was kind of put together from lots of different suggestions from the author’s blog. I know I read something like that, and hated it, and this cover kind of looks like it was haphazardly designed by the same committee, so I’m going to say it was this one.

The Wedding by Danielle Steel

With the full panoply of Microsoft Office 95 wedding clipart available to you, you chose that?

Hot Gimmick vol. 1 by Miki Aihara

Are your lips deformed? Is your mouth oddly open? I can’t decide which is weirder, but either way it’s ugly.

Lush by Natasha Friend

It’s a book about alcoholism; you had so many options! And you chose random cookie cut out on Carolina Blue. Ugh.

Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce

Y’all know I love a good Tamora Pierce, but these new covers they got at the library are graspin. What’s wrong with your face, Alanna? Are you a vampire?

Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce

Daine, you’re having horse-fever hallucinations again.

The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce

Either her creepy all-seeing eyes fill the jaundiced sky or she has a huge and really embarrassingly shaped pimple on her nose.

The DUFF by Kody Keplinger

I actually think this cover is kind of appropriate for this book, but that still doesn’t mean I want to look at it.

Hayate the Combat Butler by Kenjiro Hata

You can’t give me a title like that and then just slap a picture of some annoying girl on there. I need to see some combat butlering!

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore

You know I love Rosemary Clement-Moore, but this cover really bothered me (luckily I read the book so fast, it wasn’t for long!). Amy! Close your mouth! Fix your hair! How are you supposed to fight the forces of darkness when you can’t even see straight and you’re choking on bugs??

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

I didn’t like this book, and I think one of the big reasons is that the cover deceived me. This book is not a creepy-child horror story. This book is about time travel and a considerably more lame version of the X-men.

Already started my list for 2012!!!

The Wedding by Danielle Steel
Can two people who are vaguely different make it? Yes, because they have so much boring in common! I read this for class because it was a bestseller (I think in the 90s?). The main character is a Mary Sue named Allegra, and I can’t remember anything else about it besides that I hated her and wanted her to get attacked by flesh-eating bees. Sadly, she got married instead. ONE STAR.

The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom
A creepy ghost whose only power is surprise pregnancy. Terrifying, yes, but not what I want out of my ghost stories. ONE STAR.

Stork by Wendy DelSol
I did a more detailed hate-writeup of this here, but it’s basically Twilight, but with surprise pregnancy instead of vampires. ONE STAR.

Callie’s Rules by Naomi Zucker
I really don’t remember anything about this book or why I hated it. I think it had something to do with the town banning Halloween. Unless that debate involves wild accusations of cannibalism and someone counterattacking with how pagan all Christmas traditions are, I don’t care. ONE STAR.

Twenty Times a Lady by Karyn Bosnak
This book made me sad for women everywhere. Clearly revisiting all your ex-boyfriends because of the arbitrary advice from Cosmo is the best life plan after getting fired. Sure, they were jerks before, but I’m sure they’ve all changed since then. NEGATIVE ONE THOUSAND STARS.

Bones of Faerie by Janni Lee Simner
All I can remember is everyone talking about a way cool fairy/human war that would have made a much better book than this. ONE STAR.

Narcissus in Chains by Lauren K. Hamilton
For some reason, having sex in public is the answer to most of the heroines problems. Also a vampire and a werewolf are vying for her affections. I think my brain has blocked out everything but that. ONE STAR.

Pornified by Pamela Paul
I took off a lot of points for misleading summaries of research and really unscientific research methods. Also I think I was suspicious of a lot of her sources, since I read all of the citations after becoming increasingly skeptical of her findings. (A Billion Wicked Thoughts, which I also read this year, covers porn in much more interesting and scientific way. ONE STAR.

The Alpha Bet by Stephanie Hale
college has only two sororities! One is pure evil and the other is perfect and amazing and fun and everyone is so nice!!! ONE STAR.

One Butt Cheek at a Time by Amber Kizer
I honestly don’t remember anything about this book or why I didn’t like this. But I know I did. I’m going to guess I found the main character irritating.

The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance or Candle Man by Glenn Dakin
I still can’t tell which is the series title and which is the book title. This book annoyed me so much that I actually wrote a review on GoodReads! Here is what it said:

I really wanted to like this book. The title definitely hooked me, and I was interested to see why the main character, Theo, was being imprisoned by the clearly evil Dr. Saint. Unfortunately, the plot quickly slowed to a series of random events which did not mesh seamlessly (or really at all) into a whole plot. Theo himself is completely unlikeable, spending most of the book scared, unsure of himself, and not understanding what is going on around him, making his a very poor narrative point of view. His sidekick, Chloe, is mainly used as a deus ex machina. Each time the author writes himself into a corner–SURPRISE! Chloe is a double agent with secret connections, Chloe has memorized the secret system of tunnels, Chloe has been fighting the evil Society of Good Works since she was six! I can tell the author wants me to find Chloe funny, exciting, and awesome–mostly because Theo spends the whole book telling me she is–but I never found a good enough reason to care about her. I also spent most of the novel confused about the time period. The narrative had a very steampunk feel, but at one point someone hands Theo a laptop. Dakin’s attempt at world-building seems haphazard at best. At the end, a very minor character dies, and we’re told by a tearful Chloe that this character “was the real hero of the story”. Unfortunately, this is true, as this character–appearing in probably two scenes at most and doing nothing in either–was by far my favorite, since she hadn’t appeared often enough to be annoying. What was she like? I have no idea, but almost anything would be better than the “heroes” we have. Hopefully some of these issues are cleared up in the sequel, but I can’t see myself attempting to slog through more of Dakin’s uninspired prose to read.

Vanish by Sophie Jordan
This is the sequel to Firelight, which James convinced me to read. Jacinda spends most of it whining about everything that happens, even when she gets her way. Also, I don’t understand why people who can turn into dragons are so scared of normal humans. YOU CAN TURN INTO A DRAGON. One star.

Continue on to The Ugly

"YA" is my most popular category!

I thought I would show you The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of what I’ve read this year, based on the amount of stars I gave them! Starting with The Good first! These books all got 5 stars from me:

The Alanna Series by Tamora Pierce
I reread these this year and gave them 5 stars mostly for nostalgia purposes. Alanna used to be my favorite book character ever, complete middle school role model. This year I’ve decided I actually like Kel better, but Alanna and her magical lady knight ways will always have a place in my heart.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
Intrepid girl detective/chemist solves two grisly murders! Also there’s pie!

Into the Wild Nerd Yonder by Julie Halpern
Sewing, LARP, D&D, and audio books! I’m pretty sure this book was written specifically for me!

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King
Vera solves a few crimes, sees ghosts, and is a badass!

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
90s nostalgia! A book written in emails! Secret IT love! I’m there.

What the World Eats and other books by Faith D’Alussio and Peter Menzel
This series was amazing! It’s pictures of either a single person or a whole family with the food that they eat for an entire week or day! With explanations about their food choices, living situation, country, where their food comes from etc. I learned so much about other countries from these books!

Hereville by Barry Deutsch
An orthodox Jewish girl fights monsters!!! The best!!!

King George: What was his Problem? by Steve Sheinkin
The American Revolution made hilarious! I read this with the girl I tutor and I learned so much!

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
The concept of this book was intriguing, and the writing sucked me in immediately. The main character is forced to continually relive the day she died over and over, changing things each time. Kind of like Groundhog Day, I found the different choices she made and how they effected everyone around her completely engrossing.

Meanwhile by Jason Shiga
A choose your own adventure graphic novel!!!! Hours of fun!

Wrapped by Jennifer Bradbury
Mummies! Napoleon! A coming out ball! Spies! The British Museum! This book was amazing!!

Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson
Scarlett’s family owns a whimsical hotel in NYC and she ends up as the assistant for one of their eccentric, wealthy guests! I loved her older brother, who spends a lot of time on a unicycle, and was surprised when her love life didn’t follow the typical YA novel course. Maybe because it’s a series!

Maggie Quinn, Girl vs. Evil series by Rosemary Clement-Moore
I’ve never read anything I didn’t like by Rosemary Clement-Moore, but the series (a trilogy so far) about Maggie Quinn is awesome! It has a kind of Buffy-esque fighting-demons-while-snarking quality to it, and I even really like all of the supporting characters too, which is sort of a shocker! I can’t even decide what my favorite of the three would be!

Haunting Violet by Alyxandra Harvey
Violet’s mother is terrible but sort of good at pretending to be a ghost-whisperer in a Victorian London that is obsessed with that kind of thing. Unfortunately, Violet really can see ghosts, and is forced to solve a murder. Plus, a cute boy!!

Cakepops by Angie Dudley
I haven’t tried any of the super-elaborate cake pops in this book yet, but I can’t wait to!

Fly Trap by Frances Hardinge
This is a sequel to Fly by Night which I LOVED, so I was super excited to see that she wrote a sequel!!! I love her system of little saints that look after everything (Mosca’s patron is Palpitattle, he who keeps flies out of the cream. They play a much bigger role in this book, a Mosca and Clent become trapped in a city that divides everyone according to the goodness or badness of their patron beloved. I love who scrappy Mosca is, and smart. “If all damsels had claws they would spend a lot less time in distress”. This book made me so happy!!

Continue to: The Bad or The Ugly

You could maybe tell from the title of this book that it’s about Daja, who has metal and smith powers! I’ve never had anything against Daja, except her moping through two Circle of Magic books before realizing that the Circleteers were really her friends. But that all got cleared up in Daja’s Book when she stopped a forest fire. This book is also about Daja stopping fires, perhaps because Tamora Pierce has a hard time thinking of ways for her to save the day with metal? Once again, Daja has to use her powers to try to save lives when fire gets out of control, only this time she’s up against an arsonist instead of the forces of nature! And you know I love when there’s a bad guy!

Daja and her teacher Frostpine are staying the winter in a medieval-fantasy version of Denmark? Maybe? It’s really cold and everyone gets around by ice-skating the frozen canals. As in the first two books in the series, Daja notices that the twin daughters of the family they’re staying with have special, previously-undetected magic with cooking and carpentry. Unlike the other two books, the city is apparently full of cooking-mages and carpentry-mages, so Daja is able to pawn the girls off onto better-suited teachers fairly quickly, leaving most of the story devoted to catching the arsonist who is hiding in their midst! Not-even-a-spoiler alert: it’s the guy in charge of fire brigades. This would be a huge shocker if we didn’t get whole passages from his point of view plotting to set things on fire fairly early on, making all the “No… IT CAN’T BE!” moments at the end kind of tiring.

Awards

Best New Character Award: It’s a tie between Heluda Salt, Police Mage, and Olennika Potcracker, Kitchen Mage. But I like them both for the same reason: being tough kickass women! Olennika doesn’t attend mage banquets because she’s “referred publicly to the richer of our members as parasites”(203). Heluda responds that she’s probably being too generous since at least real parasites feed other creatures so they can be good for something. Rock on, Lady Mages!

Returning Character Honorable Mention: Frostpine!
I’ve never really noticed Daja’s teacher before, except once when some other adult hints that he was (is?) a total, total player, but he is actually pretty funny. I like how he acts casually protective around Daja at times (like when BOYS are involved), but also casually gives her a lot of freedom to experiment and screw up. Plus, he sits naked in the kitchen fire.

Daja’s Improvement Score: +10% =85/100
Previously Daja has been a C-student for me. She’s not bad by any means, and I sometimes really like her stoic nature. She was about average as a main character in the first series, and luckily she has improved somewhat in this one! Congrats, Daja, you’re a B-student now! Without her friends to help her, Daja has to do more talking and standing up for herself, which she does pretty well! I don’t know if she’ll ever be my fave, but I wouldn’t mind hanging out with her.

Thing I Most Wish Was Real: Cooking magic! I think I’ve finally found the Circleeter-world magic that is for me! Now I guess I just have to wait for one of these wandering teen-mages to discover me and be forced to become my teacher!

The Play-by-Play

Chapter one
Daja and Frostpine are staying with Frostpine’s friends in the Frozen North! He has a bunch of daughters, but only two important ones, twins named Nia and Jory. Daja sees Jory put some magic into something she’s mixing in the kitchen. FIRE! Everyone runs outside and forms efficient bucket chains to put out the fire. Ben, a local merchant/expert in fire prevention, taught everyone how to handle fires because the whole city is made of wood. Daja is mad impressed that he can do all that without any magic, and he is mad impressed that Daja can command fire.

Chapter two
Frostpine bitches about being cold, as he will for the entire book. He explains that Daja has to help the twins with their magic, and that if one twin has magic, the other will too. It’s the first law of twins. Daja talks to Nia and Jory’s parents, who are happy their daughters have magic, but also annoyed that it will apparently ruin marriage negotiations. No one wants a headstrong mage wife!

Chapter three
Their mom writes up a list of carpentry and cooking mages for Daja to visit to see who would be the best teachers. Daja grumbles about it, even though this seems way easier than being stuck with the kid for good like Sandry and Briar. On her way back she sees a fire! She runs inside to help a blind girl get out! Then we get Ben’s point of view later, revealing that he started the fire because he thought his fire brigades were getting too complacent. Also that he thinks Daja is some kind of goddess. Yay, a crazy supervillain!

Chapter four
Ben lost his wife and children in a fire, which is what inspired him to go off and study fire and then come back and help others! Ben’s mom is a complete bitch to both him and Daja! I assume it’s because she knows her son is a crazy person. Also, Ben keeps creepy mementos from fires? One of them is a skeleton hand?? DAJA WHY ARE YOU NOT MAD SUSPICIOUS!?

Chapter five
Jory and Nia find teachers, but Daja still has to teach them how to meditate. Also, Jory’s teacher works in a hospital kitchen in a bad part of town which is a SCANDAL.

Chapter six
Jory is terrible at meditation because she can’t sit still. So Daja decides to teach the girls some kind of fighting/meditation hybrid with staffs. Of course, Nia is bad at that. Frostpine really wants to get warm, so he sits naked in the kitchen fire place. Surprise, kitchen maids!

Chapter seven
Daja works with some smiths around town, some of whom seem to be suspicious of Ben and why he would want to be all about fire after it killed his family. Then they talk about what a bitch his mom is and how she beats her servants. Daja still thinks Ben is a hero and decides to make magical fire-proof gauntlets for him to use.

Chapter eight
Daja finally realizes that, though twins, Nia and Jory are not the same, and need different teaching. She uses quiet normal meditation with Nia and movement meditation with Jory. The second law of twins is that they always know where each other is! Daja fails at Magical Fire Gauntlets and is pissed. For some reason she blames Frostpine for not “warning her about pride”. Luckily Frostpine is having none of that, because he is awesome.

Chapter nine
Ben’s mom: still a bitch! Daja is mad that his mom is so mean about Ben, and I hope soon the truth will be revealed and the mom will be proved right that he is terrible. Ben starts a fire, then runs home gleefully to wait for them to summon him. But they don’t! Finally they come get him, saying they thought they could handle it without him, but some people die of smoke inhalation. He visits them in the hospital, and is so happy about his power over life and death that he starts crying.

Chapter ten
Daja and Frostpine head to one of the city’s mage banquets. Most of them are rich and fancy. Daja tries to talk to the apprentice carpenter-mage who’s been helping Nia, but his friends make fun of her for being 14. She shows them her mage qualification medallion and they freak out. On their way home, they see a huge fire at a fancy house! Ben is there, and for some reason seems annoyed to see them.

Chapter eleven
Both Frostpine and Daja run inside the burning building to help! Daja ends up hurrying children and servants out of the nursery, but some of them die anyway. She and Frostpine use up all their magic. Heluda comes by and says it’s a weird coincidence that the burning house belonged to a councillman’s mistress, the same councillman that recently refused Ben more fire-fighting-funding! But what could that mean? Daja has NO idea!

Chapter twelve
Ben comes to visit Daja and they have a weird conversation about whether or not they’re friends, and Ben begs Daja not to give up on him for being weird. Daja thinks the person that’s starting fires on purpose is evil and Ben disagrees. DAJA YOU ARE LIKE THE LEAST OBSERVANT PERSON EVER.

Chapter thirteen
Ben is so happy with the gloves Daja finished for him! He leaves her alone in his parlor while he tries them in the kitchen fire. She notices there are more creepy fire mementos on his shelf! Suspicious? NAH IT’S FINE. Later Ben comes over to her place so she can measure him for a full suit made of magical fire-proof metal. Teen girl measuring older man’s body? Awkward? Yes. Frostpine comes in to meet Ben and later tells Daja Ben’s mom started a rumor that Daja is a gold digger trying to marry Ben and his money.

Chapter fourteen
Ben is going away for two weeks, so now is the perfect time to start a huge fire on his way out of town. Using the magical gloves, he’s able to put some exploding powder (“boom dust”) into the furnace of a big bathhouse. It explodes later on and he is gleeful. Lots of people die! Later, Heluda comes and hands Daja this iron bar that was touched with her magic! What? How can that be???? Daja asks the iron bar to tell its story and she sees Ben doing his crazy thing. Heluda has had her suspicions, and she blames his mom for being such a bitch. Poor Ben’s Mom, I don’t think she’s going to get her redemption at the end. Heluda will arrest him when he comes back to town.

Chapter fifteen
Ben’s trip gets cut short because of weather. He notices some of his creepy fire mementos have been moved and he has a note from Heluda asking to see him. He gets suspicious and decides to cut and run. Later Nia tells Daja she thinks Ben’s house is on fire! They break in to try to rescue Ben’s mom, but find Ben has already gruesomely murdered her. They put the fire out, but Nia knows that Jory is in trouble!! Third law of twins!! Daja races towards the hospital, which is, of course, on fire.

Chapter sixteen
Ben is at the hospital helping get people out, but then he maybe dies when the roof falls? Daja has to go in and get the people in the insane ward out, by tying them together and leading them like horses. Daja doesn’t believe Ben is dead. It was all part of his plan to fake his death and go on starting fires elsewhere. She follows him and traps him for justice!

Previously: The Circle Opens Book 2: Street Magic
Next: The Circle Opens Book 4: Shatterglass

This book had lots of things going for it! One, it’s about Briar! He is my second favorite Circleteer! I realized last night that I pretty much like them in order of bitchiness because it seems more realistic to me. Like the first book in this new, more badass Circleteer series, it also has actual bad guys! A lot of them! And, like Sandry, Briar finds a young kid with strange magic and is forced by the “He who smelt it dealt it” law of mage-finding to be her teacher! Also, Briar gets back to his street rat roots with some gang warfare! Exciting!

The cover on the left makes Briar really look like a creeper

Briar and his teacher Rosethorn are traveling to the far off land of Yanjing, which seems to be fantasy-medieval Japan if their penchant for Bonsai trees is any indication. On the way they stop in the dusty, ancient city of Chammur, somewhere in fantasy-medieval Arabia. I would be cool with this change of scene, except that there is absolutely NOTHING good about fantasy-medieval Arabia! Everyone is a jerk or some kind of criminal, the land is constantly described as “tired” and too old to function, and Briar and Rosethorn pretty much can’t wait to get away. Chammur has, literally, no redeeming qualities. Briar meets no nice people besides foriegners who are equally attempting to escape, discovers no natural beauty, interesting customs, or anything to be happy about at all. The moral of the story apparently is that Islamic countries suck, and you should do everything within your power to escape them before you are trapped forever in this scorching, corrupt cesspit with no redeeming features.
So… kind of an interesting stance for a children’s book.

Awards

Best New Character: Lady Zenadia doa Atteneh
Okay, there weren’t a lot of likable new characters to choose from because, as I’ve said, Chammur is the worst place ever, and Lady Z is kind of annoying and not really developed. BUT she’s a fancy rich lady who decides to sponsor a street gang because she’s bored. And then dispenses swift, languid murder when they don’t do as she says. Way to commit to your hobby, Lady Z.

Returning Character Honorable Mention: Briar
Briar and Rosethorn are the only two returning characters, and Rosethorn spends most of the book on some kind of farm field trip despite the fact that Briar and Evvy are almost murdered by street children like every day.

Briar’s Improvement Score: -7%= 89/100
What happened to you, Briar, you used to be cool! Unfortunately, Briar has left his past as a wise-talking street urchin behind him, so much so that he forgets to protect his valuables in public and glamorizes gang life. He keeps pressuring Evvy to join a gang, even though gangs have caused pretty much all this book’s problems. He’s still my second fave, but I was sad to see that he’s grown more responsible and less funny.

Thing I Most Wish Was Real: Magical Bonsai Trees
Bonsai trees are already amazing in the normal world, so I can only assume adding magic would make them even better!

The Play-by-Play

Chapter one
Being back in the big city makes Briar think back to his street rat days a lot. As he’s wandering the market he sees a girl polishing some stones at a gem merchant’s stall. He notices that she’s putting magic into them or something and asks her about it. She freaks out and runs away. Some kids his age with fancy nose ring bling try to rough him up for being on Viper territory! Briar insists he’s not in a gang. The Vipers are apparently funded by fancy Lady Z, who is now interested in Evvy! Since apparently stone mages are really useful? I must assume so, since this is basically the plot of the rest of the book.

Chapter two
Rosethorn explains the rules of finding mages to Briar, who grumbles, realizing he’ll have to find Evvy again. This leads to a chase across the rooftops because we are apparently in the movie Aladdin.

Chapter three
Briar bribes Evvy to come over to his rooftop by leaving food for her like a stray cat. He tries to talk to her about learning to control her magic, but she just steals the food and runs. Briar decides to go talk to the one other stone mage in the city, but on the way he feels Evvy freaking out and using magic! Some Vipers tried to kidnap her and she hurls burning stones at them! Briar finds her and demands she meet him tomorrow, and also that she take a bath.

Chapter four
The Camelguts are another local gang, and they ask Briar to help their wounded leader, but he is too hurt and ends up dying. More Camelguts come in injured, claiming Vipers jumped them. The Viper in charge of grabbing Evvy reports back to Lady Z, who punishes failure with murder! Evvy shows up as promised at the same time as the Camelguts come asking for more medical help, since now they are pretty much all wounded.

Chapter five
Briar spends all day caring for them, and Evvy helps by making stones light up and making stones warm. Another of the Camelguts dies, and the rest have a conference about what to do, since the Vipers have offered to let them join their gang. They decide to do it, and Briar thinks they are cowardly wimps.

Chapter six
Evvy is suspicious about why Briar is helping her, but he assures her by telling him “I like them prettier, fatter, and older.” Evvy talks about how her parents sold her into slavery when they were stopped here on their journey from Yanjing, her original home, and how she escaped.

Chapter seven
Briar goes to meet the stone mage who lives in the palace, but he’s a jerk.

Chapter eight
Briar teaches Evvy to meditate, but still insists that the stone mage will eventually be her real teacher when Rosethorn verbally beats him up. Lady Z kills another gang member for getting cheeky.

Chapter nine
Briar is selling his tiny Bonsai trees in the market! Lady Z decides to get Evvy by sucking up to Briar, so she buys one of his trees and offers Evvy a chance to come and live with her, but Evvy says no.

Chapter ten
Bitchy stone mage arrives, having been harassed by Rosethorn into meeting Evvy. He tests her, and harrumphs a lot because she’s more powerful than him. He grudgingly agrees to teach her, but Evvy refuses to go with him because he’s mean, and Briar is secretly glad. Rosethorn is cool with Evvy moving in with them.

Chapter eleven
Briar and Evvy go to get Evvy’s cats. She lives in a small cave inside a cliff that is made entirely of tunnels and secret passages where all the city’s poor live. She doesn’t mind because the stone protects her from things. She has seven cats, and I’m really grossed out, even though I think I’m supposed to think they’re cute. Briar goes to install his tiny bonsai at Lady Z’s house. Her gardens seem really nice… too nice. Once again Lady Z tries to get him to give her Evvy, but he refuses.

Chapter twelve
On his way home some policemen who are watching the house question him about it since they are suspicious of Lady Z and think she has been killing policemen. Briar tells them her gardens are suspiciously nice. Just when I think we’ve met some okay characters, the police start being jerks and want Briar to give Evvy to Lady Z to be a spy. Briar tells them to shut it off and leaves.

Chapter thirteen
Rosethorn is going on a farm-inspecting field trip for a few days, leaving Briar and Evvy without adult supervision which seems really smart. Briar starts teaching Evvy how to read, using rocks as motivation. One of the former Camelguts comes begging Briar to help her friend who was badly beaten in a fight. She acts really sorry that she ever joined the Vipers. Briar puts wards on all the doors and windows and then leaves to help the friend. She is super beat up, and something is keeping her from talking! Also, the original girl has disappeared! Briar breaks the spell on her tongue and the girl tells him it was really the Vipers that beat her up!!! Oh noes!!!! Plus, he forgot to ward the roof trap door so Evvy totes gets kidnapped.

Chapter fourteen
Briar can sense where Evvy is, so he follows her across the city, remeeting a series of people who remain jerks, including the police. Oh well, he’ll just have to get the job done himself. He gets into Lady Z’s gardens and sees a bunch of human bones and a dead body!!! OMG!!! That’s what she’s been feeding the plants!! Her murder victims!! Gross gross gross.

Chapter fifteen
With the help of his plant friends, Briar defeats all of Lady Z’s guards. Meanwhile, Evvy has tried to escape by calling on her stone powers to wreck up the place. The policemen whom Briar reported this to on the way have apparently decided to do something for once and are trying to get in the house. At first Lady Z is like “Whatevs, no one will care that I murdered a bunch of street children” but Briar points out the policemen will care about their missing spies. Then she poisons herself. When Rosethorn gets back she finds Briar and Evvy have been kicked out of the city. They all are super grateful to leave!

Previously: The Circle Opens Book 1: Magic Steps
Next: The Circle Opens Book 3: Cold Fire

You thought I’d forgotten my goal to read every Tamora Pierce Book ever!! Ha! It’s like you don’t even know me and my implacability when it comes to books aimed at middle schoolers. Today I read the first book in the second series about the Circleteers, following the Circle of Magic series. While the books in the first series were about the four Circleteers learning to use their magic and inevitably working together to fend off some natural disaster (and one memorable magical pirate attack), in this series the Circleteers are separated and have to work as individuals! So much so that I’m not even sure I can call them Circleteers anymore! You know, since their powers don’t combine and all. It’s something I’m pretty bummed about.

BUT this series seems to be vastly superior to the first in almost every other way! It’s almost like Tamora Pierce heard my complaints about there being no villains and every character being insufferably good, their only faults being things like “working too hard”. This book definitely has bad guys! And a series of grisly murders! Plus, Sandry is less insufferable than before! She’s 14 now, and has to deal with her own apprentice who seems to annoy her a lot for some reason, so she actually ends up complaining sometimes! Like a real person! I was thrilled. The basic premise for this series seems to be that each Circleteer is out seeing the world, runs across some slightly younger kid with weird magic that no one has ever seen before, and then becomes that kid’s teacher. Apparently the rule in Circleteer land is that if you find an untrained magical kid, you HAVE to become their teacher. So Sandry now has an apprentice who has dancing magic. Which seems a little weird, but, you know, after thread magic, I feel like I’m just going to go with it. I do hope these “strange and unknown magics” become ever more ridic as the series progresses until Book 4 is about Daja finding some boy with magical spit or something.

Here are the two covers! I like the one on the left better, even if he is clearly doing jazz hands

Awards

Best New Character: Wulfric Snaptrap
No matter Wulfric Snaptrap’s personality, he would have won this award based on his name alone. BUT he’s also a police mage, hardened by everything he’s seen. It seemed for a while like he and Sandry were going to turn into a great mentor/novice buddy cop duo, but alas.

Returning Character Honorable Mention: Duke Vedris!
We get to see a lot more of Sandry’s uncle including his steely resolve to both do what’s right and flirt with dancing girls. You go, Duke Vedris!

Sandry’s Improvement Score: +50%=50/100
Although Sandry is vastly less annoying in this book, I still can’t forget that I hate her.

Thing I Most Wish Was Real: Dragonsalt.
Not that I want to become addicted to magical drugs, I just wish drugs had cooler names/backstories like they apparently do here. I imagine drug dealers stealing into dragon caves and using a cheese grater to capture some of this sought-after narcotic right from the sleeping dragon’s scales.

The Play-by-Play

Chapter one
Sandry is living with her uncle, Duke Vedris, since he had a heart attack and no one else can nag him into not having another one like her. She does a lot of random making pieces of fabric move so we get that she has thread magic. Pasco’s friend’s family pays him money to do a good luck dance before they take their fishing boats out. Sandry sees him!

Chapter two
Sandry tells Pasco he has dancing magic, but Pasco thinks that’s stupid. Sandry makes a bet with Pasco about whether or not the fishing boats will do better today or not because of his dancing. Rokat, a rich merchant no one likes has been murdered! Apparently he was a jerk, so no one is sad.

Chapter three
Sandry and the Duke head to the crime scene, where the cops are mean to her and make fun of her thread magic. She thinks it’s weird that none of Rokat’s protection spells seem to be disturbed, even though he is in all kinds of pieces. Almost like the killers were invisible! To magic! Pasco has to learn police hand to hand combat with his cousins, because his whole family is apparently required by law to be cops. His cousin makes fun of him for liking to dance, but doesn’t question his sexuality because this book is shelved in the children’s section. Sandry wins the bet when the ships come back full!

Chapter four
Sandry goes back to the temple to see her teacher, Dedicate Lark, and they reminisce about the absent Circleteers. I realize we probably won’t see anyone besides Sandry for this whole book and get really sad. Lark tells Sandry that she’s never heard of dance magic and that Sandry is required by plot device magical law to become Pasco’s teacher.

Chapter five
Pasco is practicing cop fighting with his cousins again when his guy cousin starts trying to beat him up for being a dancer. He does a dance, and all of his cousins are trapped in the air! Surprisingly, this doesn’t really change anyone’s opinion about dance magic’s existence/usefulness! Sandry comes and helps him bring them down. Then we flash to the murderer’s point of view! There are three of them! A husband/wife team and their crippled, drug addict mage! The drug he’s addicted to is called “dragonsalt”.

Chapter six
Rokat’s brother is super scared that the murderers are after him next! He tells the Duke it’s a rival trading family whose patriarch his brother killed! Now they are murdering everyone in his extended family! Duke Vedris is clearly not a fan of blood feuds, but sends some of his guards to protect Brother Rokat. On his way back to his house, Brother Rokat is killed in the street by completely invisible assassins!

Chapter seven
Sandry meets the police-mage investigating the murder case, who has the great name Wulfric Snaptrap. I start to wish this was a gritty crime drama starring him. Together they discover a weird shadow on the injured guards that seems to be sucking up surrounding magic! Lark brings in a world famous dancer who just happens to have a school in town to teach Pasco. Her name is Yazmin, and she and the Duke flirt it up. Rather than being sketched out, Sandry is excited to maybe shuffle off her responsibilities with him on someone else. Wulfric discovers that weird shadow is “unmagic”, which is just what it sounds like. The bad guys kill another member of the Rokat family, plus all his kids.

Chapter eight
Sandry happens to be just wandering by the crime scene and decides to Nancy Drew her way in to investigate because she knows that as a 14-year-old thread mage she is way more competant than the police. The police actually point this out, proving that they clearly DON’T EVEN KNOW and that we should hate them. Sandry notices pools of unmagic in a trail, and she decides to cover them up with silk sheets and her underwear so that Wulfric can get them when he arrives.

Chapter nine
The Duke orders all the other Rokats to hide in the magically protected part of his own citadel for safety. Pasco is super motivated to try harder when he hears he will get dance lessons! Then complains when dance lessons are hard. The Duke comes by for more hot reitred dancer flirting action, and Wulfric politely tells Sandry to step off because, again, she is 14 and not a police mage.

Chapter ten
Sandry says “cat dirt” a lot, and it takes me awhile to figure out that’s her version of cursing. Sandry, I hate you. She and Wulfric decide to go to the scene of the original murder, which has been sealed off, to clean up any unmagic that might be lying around. OH NO that is where the killers have been hiding! They immediately kill Wulfric, and start fighting Sandry and her guards before jumping into an unmagic portal.

Chapter eleven
I still can’t believe a good guy DIED in this series! Especially someone who had a purpose in the plot besides dying to make us feel bad or who later didn’t get magically pulled out of death (I’m looking at you, everyone in Briar’s Book). Sandry forms a plan to trap the killers! She’ll weave a net made out of unmagic and then Pasco will do his fish-calling dance around it to bring them in! Everyone argues that this is too dangerous, she is only 14, Pasco is worthless etc. until one of the invisible killers is discovered inside the citadel.

Chapter twelve
Pasco is super happy to be doing magic that his police-cult family would deem useful! Sandry weaves the unmagic net in a special magical quarantine tent. She angsts some more about how her friends aren’t here, proving that even Sandry hates being trapped alone in a book with the boringness that is her.

Chapter thirteen
The killers have pretty much lost all motivation besides sitting around, since apparently unmagic leaches at your will to live. Then they all become addicted to dragonsalt because at least that gives you energy. One of the Rokat’s agrees to act as bait for the trap, and a bunch of guards, Sandry, and Pasco hide in his house. Sandry sets up the net and Pasco dances his dance, and then is ordered to go home. Of course, he disobeys.

Chapter fourteen
The killers and their mage follow the bait into the house. They get sort of caught in the net, but have also managed to take Pasco hostage because he is an idiot. Sandry pretends like she is going to let them go, but then lets them fall into unmagic and get exploded! Also, their mage was just a little kid!!! Shocking plot twist!!! But he dies, and Sandry is wracked by guilt that she had to kill them. For some reason she doesn’t get mad at Pasco at all.

Epilogue
Pasco has finally won his family’s respect! For being kind of an idiot? Sandry goes to visit Lark at the temple and finds she has a shy new apprentice. Sandry realizes she is growing up and should live with her uncle permenantly! She is super sad to be leaving her childhood behind, and keeps being all broody about poor dead mage kid. She vows to write to her fellow Circleteers to look out for mage kids so they can’t fall into the hands of evil, and the set up for the other three books is born!

Previously: Circle of Magic Book 4: Briar’s Book
Next: The Circle Opens Book 2: Street Magic

Poplorica: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore that Shaped Modern America by Martin J. Smith
My favorite non-fiction books are often ones that follow the history of something really random, like marriage customs or friendship or hats. This book was my favorite of this month because each chapter was a little mini-historical expose on something small but interesting! There were chapters on diapers, front lawns, dieting, product placement, and, my personal favorite, TV dinners. Did you know the first grocery store to buy TV dinners from the manufacturer did so, not because he was sure about this newfangled convenience food thing, but because he knew women would like to use the empty trays for storing buttons? This book was full of random, fun facts like that, and because each chapter had a different subject there was no time to get bored. A really great book to just read little snippets of when you have time, which was perfect for me this month!

The Worst Book I Read This Month

Okay, this one is a total tie. On the one hand, I think one is actually a lot worse, but at least it was bad in a way I enjoyed reading. That would be:

Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop
You probably don’t remember like a million years ago when I noted here that Anna Baron had tipped me one trashy romance novel for doing some last minute revisions to the one act I wrote that year. What I didn’t mention is that it is in fact THREE terrible erotic fantasy novels in one book. That’s 1200 pages of multiple attempted rapes and ridiculous genital jewelry. I have as yet failed in any attempts to read it until James Fox basically forced me to this month. I’m done with the first book and I’ve got to say: it’s so bad it’s pretty hilarious. I’m not even talking about the ridiculous plotting or the way the author claims it’s a matriarchal society but the men still seem to have all the power. I’m talking about the writing and how these people are described, because it is ridic. Every other character has “a voice filled with deep caverns and soft thunder” or “eyes filled with the summer breeze and lightning”. Plus, all of the supposedly attractive love interests have “glittering golden eyes” which can turn to “a hard yellow” when they’re angry. Gold or yellow, doesn’t matter, Anne Bishop: both are creepy and weird. In this first book the main character Mary Sue heroine is 12, which makes absolutely everyone being attracted to her that much creepier. Luckily the main love scene takes place in some kind of mental dreamscape where she is not only an adult, but also a feral unicorn maiden. So, you know, totally not sketchy.

So that book is terrible. But terrible in a way that’s hilarious and I actually enjoy, like Titanic II. This book however:

Twenty Times a Lady by Karyn Bosnak
The main character reads a magazine article about how the average woman has slept with 10 guys, and freaks out because she has slept with 20! Oh no, she’s a total ho! The only thing to do, to avoid going over the limit, is to make it work with one of those 20. So, since she’s just been laid off anyway, she goes on a ridiculous road trip across the country to “casually bump into them”. Of course, her OTL is really her cute Irish next door neighbor who totally helps her out even though she is clearly neurotic (who buys a DOG on a road trip?). If this plot sounds familiar, it’s because they’re turning it into a movie called What’s Your Number?. As bad as that trailer looks, I assure you the movie will still be 34 times better than this book. The book’s main character is stupid, bigoted, and selfish, haphazardly careening through her own life and totally unable to understand those around her. Not that I do either since most of them are ALL ABOUT her, despite her having no redeeming qualities whatsoever. This book actually made me feel insulted pretty much every minute I was reading it. Why do they think this character will appeal to women? “Oh, yes, instead of looking for a new job, I too have blown all of my severance pay to go on an unplanned roadtrip across the country just to check that all the jerks I used to date are still jerks because I’ve set some arbitrary limit for myself. After reading Cosmo.” That’s TOTALLY how women are, you guys. All the while her mother is pressuring her to find a man “because otherwise it means you’re a lesbian”–don’t even get me started on that–with the time limit of her younger sister’s wedding. A younger sister getting married before the older one? Horrors! Here is what I learned about my gender from this book:
1) Men are the single most important things in the entire universe to us. If we lack their approval, we are nothing.
2) Cosmo is the most respected source of information. Not our family and friends, not our own common sense. Cosmo.
3) Who cares about practical concerns? All we care about are our feelings! Our tumultuous, impossible to verbalize feelings!
4) When we tell other women that we’re not jealous or angry, what we really mean is that we are seething with subconscious rage.
5) So a guy cheats on you and makes you unhappy? So what! At least you have a man, without which you will never be complete as a person. So you’d better just stick with him anyway
6) A cool mom is a mom who’s okay with a interracial dating. But not homosexuality?
7) Being mistaken for a lesbian is the gravest insult society can throw at you. And it will happen if you’re not attached to a man at all times, so watch out.
So, yeah, this book, though more main stream than Planet Magic Jewel Dragon Girl, really pissed me off.

Also Reads

The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To by D.C. Pierson
This YA novel kind of had a slow plot, about a boy who can’t sleep and never has to, but I enjoyed it because the narrator, the boy’s friend, felt really realistic and practically self-interested.

Cinderella Ate my Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein
I will talk about what Disney Princess Culture is doing to our ideas about gender any day of the week, Peggy!

Circle of Magic: Books 2-4 by Tamora Pierce
You know you love it.

Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton
This was 10th in a series about Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, and I read it for book club. It was mostly descriptions of people’s leather outfits.

Trickster’s Choice by Tamora Pierce
The first in the series about Alanna’s daughter! Can’t put my review up yet because (like every middle school project) the rest of my group is SO SLOW with doing their part.

Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages by Eugen Weber
The thing I most enjoyed learning from this book are the different ways people have (or haven’t) kept time throughout history.

But maybe there IS a kind of first sentence that really draws me in, at least subconsciously, so I decided to look at the first sentences of every book I’ve ever considered my favorite. It turns out, a lot of them started in medias res, or at least just jumping right on into some action without any annoying framing or scene setting. Let me hit you with some examples:

“This time there would be no witnesses.”
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams

I know, if one of your favorite books is by Douglas Adams, it almost has to be Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and believe me, I am ALL ABOUT manic depressive robots having conversations with sentient mattresses, but Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency has always been closer to my heart. I used to think it was because it combined my love of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, time travel, and vindictive horoscope writers, but now I’m thinking maybe it’s all in the first sentence. Hitchhiker’s, after all, begins with some scene setting. Some massively general scene setting:

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I’m not saying it’s bad, but it doesn’t draw me in as immediately. With the former I immediately want to know 1) what are you doing that you don’t want anyone to see? and 2) what happened LAST time? With the latter I just kind of nod and say “Yep”. Here’s an even more dramatic example:

“So this was how it ended.”
Devilish by Maureen Johnson

How WHAT ended? I thought this book was about teen girls and cupcakes! Although, in retrospect, the title should have clued me in that this book is more serious business. Still:

The Face of the Devil

“There was no doubt about it: there was a fox behind the climbing frame.”
Un Lun Dun by China Mieville

This sentence kind of makes me feel like I’ve just come in at the tail end of an argument that goes “That’s totally a fox, you guys!!!” “No, it can’t be!” “It SO is! Look! Look!” Also, I’m not sure what a climbing frame is, so, again, SUSPENSE until I figure it out. I even used this tactic in my own book, although granted not as dramatically as Adams or Johnson:

“Etheos grumbled something inaudible to himself, but ate the muffin anyway.”
The Knight, the Wizard, and the Lady Pig by Patricia Ladd

I mean, what could possibly be so wrong with a muffin, Etheos? Unless it’s gross or something, and then why are you eating it? Is someone forcing you? Why is your name Etheos? How do you say that, anyway? SO MANY QUESTIONS. Or maybe I just have an affinity for baked goods, whatever.

Then there are sentences that try to TRICK me into thinking they’re in medias res, but are really just using cleverly disguised scene setting! You’d think I’d be mad about a narrator jerking me around like that, but I’m fooled every time:

“Later, while I was facing the Potter Moth, or fleeing for my life from the First Ones, or helping man a cannon aboard Jack Havock’s brig Sophronia, I would often think back to the way my life used to be, and to that last afternoon at Larklight, before all our misfortunes began.”
Larklight by Philip Reeve

So the sentences after this are all scene-setting about Larklight (which, granted, is a way cool steampunk Victorian space mansion beyond the moon so not boring), but I am totes willing to sit through it because I really want to know what a Potter Moth is and how Art gets from fighting with his sister in their drawing room to cannons. Space cannons.

If an author’s got to use scene-setting, they apparently need to at least make it funny in some way to hold my interest and earn a place on Patricia’s Favorite Books List. Observe:

“Linderwall was a large kingdom, just east of the Mountains of Morning, where philosophers were highly respected and the number five was fashionable.”
Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

Starts off like it’s going to be all normal, and then BAM the number five was fashionable. Totally not where you thought that sentence was going and I am all for that. I immediately start imaging what a society with a fashionable number would be like. Would you want to show up in a group of five everywhere you went? Would you put five straws in your drink? Five ludicrously tiny dogs in your purse? Hats shaped like the number five? All of these are excellent ideas. I remember the Enchanted Forest Chronicles as being my favorite for a long time, but I always assumed it was a combination of fiesty Princess Cimorene and the author also being named Patricia. Now I know: fashionable numbers in the first sentence.

“What began it all was the bright bone of a dream I could hardly hold on to.”
Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje

This is by far the most serious book on this list, and even it is pretty funny in a quiet, sometimes sad kind of way. I like how we don’t know what “it” is, and I can’t get over the phrase “the bright bone of a dream”. Even after reading this book about 37 times, I’m not really positive what it means, but, like much of his phrasing, I feel like I can recognize it without really knowing what it is. Running in the Family is the most beautiful book I have ever read, and I like how it begins vaguely, but with a clear image of trying to hold on to a dream, something I also have trouble with.

“These events transpired just after the time when the most powerful soft-drinks company in the world pulled off the greatest feat of advertising in modern history.”
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernieres

Of course the obvious question is, what did they do? The answer is relayed in the next sentence: they painted the moon red with their logo. The rest of the chapter is about how this caused some polar bears to evolve red fur, and how everyone was all worried about how it would affect “primitive Amazonian tribes”, but it’s cool because they’ve all known about Coke for years. Even though I’m pretty sure the moon being painted with a Coke logo never comes up again after the first page (which potentially makes this beginning even BETTER), it’s an interesting enough image to really set the stage for the half-realistic, half-fanciful, ALL magical realism story that follows. And then, of course, there’s Terry Pratchett, with probably one of my favorite scene-setting first sentences ever:

“Some things start before other things.”
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Some might call it laziness, I call it GENIUS.

I’m a little disappointed that my current favorite book, The True Meaning of Smekday, has probably the most boring sentence in this survey. Like Running in the Family, I can read Smekday over and over and over again and never get tired of it, but unlike Running in the Family it’s first sentence doesn’t really impress me.

“Assignment: Write an essay titled The True Meaning of Smekday.”
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

Clearly a framing technique for the story is that it is ostensibly part of a school assignment, which, after reading the book, I agree is important for Tip’s hilarious though slightly annoyed voice, like she’s going to tell you what happened because she has to, not because she’s all that jazzed about sharing. Still, the only thing this sentence makes me wonder is “What the heck is Smekday?”, which, luckily, was a good enough reason to keep reading the book, since I really enjoyed it!

So, there you go. If you want to sell your book to me, it’d be a good idea to start it in the middle of the action and save any tiresome scene setting or description for later. I need to be caught off guard or your book will bore me. I’ll still finish it, but I might make fun of you on my blog.

The problem with these books is that all the characters love each other so much it’s impossible to tell if there’s supposed to be subtext or just “EVERYONE IS BFF WITH EVERYONE ELSE.” That is, except Dedicate Crane, Rosethorn’s chief rival and the guy in charge of finding a cure. He’s totally devoted to his work, but also totally grumpy and annoyed with every other character. Much like Tris, towards whom he is relatively cordial. Needless to say, Crane is my new second favorite character, and I secretly hope he and Tris get together later, leaving Winding Circle and its insufferably self-righteous spirit forever.

The other funny part of this book is how much of the plot is furthered by the simple truth that the Water Temple and its dedicates are apparently way stupid. Other books have included people remarking in passing about how everyone in Water Temple is an airhead and causes extra work, but in this book pretty much everything that goes wrong does so because someone at the Water Temple screwed up. There’s only one Water Temple dedicate portrayed as competent, but then she uses too much of her healing power and dies.

Briar’s Book by Tamora Pierce

The Play-by-Play

Chapter one
Briar and Rosethorn are going to the slums! Rosethorn is going to give medicines to the free clinic and Briar is going to hang with his streetrat friends! Alleypup leads Briar into the sewers where his friend Flick is totally sick with blue spots.

Chapter two
Sandry’s appraisal of Tris: still fat and a bitch, but at least now she’s wearing nice clothes. Rosethorn, Briar, and Flick all go into quarantine because blue spots are an unknown illness! Usually during an epidemic, Rosethorn and her chief rival Crane work together to find a cure, but now she’s in quarantine!

Chapter three
Of course the stupid Water Temple is low on metal sample boxes so Daja and Frostpine go into box-making frenzy. Also, they’re low on magical gauze masks and gloves, so Lark and Sandry weave up a storm.

Chapter four
A few more people are brought to quarantine! Plus, Henna, the one competent person from the Water Temple, comes to help Rosethorn and Briar nurse. Lots more sick people are being found, mostly in the slums. Henna explains to Briar that if he’s not a healer he can’t use his powers to heal. All of the free clinic is now in quarantine since there are so many sick people!

Chapter five
Niko asks Tris to make the rain stop, because apparently WATER is spreading the disease! Tris points out that he has spent the last three books telling her not to mess with nature, but he pretends that this time is totally, totally different. She uses her Dopler 90000 powers to tell him that there is a 100% chance of rain for the rest of the book and there’s nothing she can do. Also, the Blue Pox has spread outside the slums!

Chapter six
Apparently someone who used to work at the free clinic sold all the useful medicine, so Rosethorn and Briar have to use their plant magic to make the remaining medicine not-expired! The whole city is contaminated, but Briar still can’t go home because there’s no sickness in the temple complex yet.

Chapter seven
Frostpine and Daja find time to help Frostpine’s apprentice find love. Rosethorn puts a thumbprint on Briar’s forehead that stays red, which means that he isn’t carrying the disease, and they can go home! Flick has conveniently died during the night, so he doesn’t even feel guilty. Everyone is super happy to see them and acts like everything is going to be fine even though the book is only half over.

Chapter eight
I swear Tris and Dedicate Crane are flirting in a improbable romantic comedy hate-turns-to-love kind of way! Crane has come to ask Rosethorn to get her butt into his greenhouse workshop to help him find a cure. He has to tell her how awesome she is before she will agree, which I totally get since I make people go through the same thing before I do them favors. Briar gets to work in the greenhouse too! All the assistants make bets about how long each other will last since Crane tells people to leave for reasons like “dropped something” and “don’t like his face”. Crane is my favorite character, hands down.

Chapter nine
Some Water Temple lady is supposed to be taking notes for Crane, but of course they are all out of order and terrible. Briar thinks he’s sees a glimmer of magic in the samples of the pure disease, but isn’t sure. Apparently no one else can see magic except him, Tris, and Niko, so when Crane finally gets fed up with his secretary’s inability to spell, Briar suggests Tris as replacement. Tris is the best secretary ever because she actually thinks about what Crane is telling her, and reminds him when he’s trying something he already tried before etc. Tris, of course, sees the magic just like Briar, but unlike Briar does not mind telling Crane the sitch because she is awesome.

Chapter ten
Niko wants Tris to come into the city with them so they can do their “past seeing” spell and figure out how the magical disease got started. Crane refuses to let her go because Tris is the best secretary ever. Tris is super nonchalant about how older men are vying for her attentions. Finally, Niko wins, which sucks because it means a gross field trip into the sewers. They end up in an apartment with a mage corpse. They look into the past and see the mage doing failed experiments with bacon, then throwing them into the sewer instead of disposing of them the right way! Also, some Water Temple dope spills some Blue Pox serum on Rosethorn! But her magical thumbprint is still red so it’s okay?

Chapter eleven
Apparently that mage was trying to invent a weight loss potion! Then it morphed in the sewers and created the blue pox! Oh noes Rosethorn’s thumbprint turns white!!! Sickness!!!!! Lark takes her back to the cottage to nurse her.

Chapter twelve
Everyone works extra hard because Rosethorn is sick! They are on their way to success, but Rosethorn makes Daja promise to look after Briar when she’s gone. This quote is kind of great:

Daja was a Trader: they held it was mad to argue when the sick thought that Death approached. Denials only told Death here was someone who would be missed, Death’s favorite kind of victim

Crane finally finds a cure and gives it to Rosethorn!!!

Chapter thirteen
There’s still work to do since the cure doesn’t work for all ages. Rosethorn’s cough hasn’t gone away! Lark goes to find a healer that isn’t totally tired to deal with Rosethorn’s pneumonia, telling the Circleteers that if Rosethorn goes, they shouldn’t try to use magic to save her since it is completely impossible. Of course, that is exactly what happens. Everyone is freaking out that they brought Rosethorn back from the dead, and then decide never to speak of it again. The end!!

Book 1: Sandry’s Book
Book 2: Tris’s Book
Book 3: Daja’s Book

Next up: going back to Tortall with my SUPER GROUP PROJECT review of Trickster’s Choice