Jul 21 2022

Across The Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children #6) by Seanan McGuire

with Rovina Cai’s amazing illustrations.

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuireOne thing I love about the books in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series is how they’re all so readable. Even if I don’t like her protagonists or think characters are being daft or soapboxy, her pacing is usually so well done that I’m never bored with what’s happening, and keep turning the pages to see what comes next. Across The Green Grass Fields is no different.

In an overarching setting where doorways suddenly open to allow troubled children to escape from our mundane world to a different reality, this installment of the series finds an 11 year-old girl named Regan walking through a portal to a realm where all the hoofed creatures of mythology are real. In the Hooflands, our heroine falls in with a family of centaurs who intend to present her to the Queen, eventually. You see, whenever a human appears in their kingdom, it’s the harbinger of turmoil. Whether that turns out to be for good or evil is another question entirely. Some humans make their way directly to the royal castle. Regan chooses to stay with her foster family and hang out for a while, which turns into years, until a trip to the Fair puts their entire group in danger.

Fleeing to the Northlands, Regan and her family make a new life for themselves, but Regan knows she’s living on borrowed time. When traders venture far enough north that rumors of the human living there begin spreading, she gathers up her courage in her hands and sets off to the castle to confront her “destiny.” Only nothing is as it seems, as she quickly discovers even before reaching her destination and uncovering its awful secret.

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Jul 19 2022

Gail Gibbons’ From Seed To Plant Workbook and Monarch Butterfly Workbook by Gail Gibbons

Oh, summertime, when the kids are in my hair 24/7. At least my eldest child has neighborhood friends to play with: my two youngest, being shyer and on the autism spectrum, have a harder time finding safe things they want to do. Fortunately, Gail Gibbons has a wonderful solution to help parents entertain their kids while reinforcing scientific concepts and allowing kids and parents alike to explore the great outdoors.

Going over much of the same basic information that kids (at least in my home state of Maryland) learn in their elementary education, both the Monarch Butterfly and From Seed To Plant workbooks serve to discuss insect and plant life cycles in an engaging manner that appeals to the artist in every kid. They also sneakily include exercises to work on skills that may need strengthening, whether in handwriting or in math. The books are written in a lively manner that doesn’t talk down to the reader, with every page or two-page spread having some new activity that, while targeted at children, are also interesting for anyone older with a lay interest in science.

Joseph having a slightly more pronounced green thumb than Theo, I gave him the From Seed To Plant Workbook, while handing the Monarch Butterfly book to his brother. Both children immediately enjoyed going through the books, which are brightly illustrated but leave plenty of room for coloring. Theo and I actually quite liked the feel of colored pencils on the not-too-smooth texture of his workbook’s paper. In fact, much of the simple coloring blends in smoothly with the art throughout, done in Ms Gibbons’ trademark style.

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Jul 18 2022

A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables #1) by Alix E. Harrow

Alix E Harrow can definitely be hit or miss for me. This, fortunately, was such a hit that I actually exclaimed “yes!” when I realized it was the first of a series.

A Spindle Splintered by Alix M. HarrowZinnia Gray is no traditional princess. But she has been cursed, more or less, with a genetic disease known as Generalized Roseville Malady, after an unscrupulous corporation neglected to test the allegedly safe chemicals they put into the atmosphere of Roseville on anyone except healthy adult males. As a result, she and several others were born with an illness that no one has survived past their twenty-first year. Despite having lived the best life possible — including finishing high school early and earning a degree in folklore — Zinnia finds herself running out the clock as her milestone birthday approaches.

When her best friend Charmaine throws her a birthday extravaganza at the tallest tower in their Ohio town, Zinnia is grateful for the distraction. She even jokingly puts her finger to the spindle of the spinning wheel Charm has somehow acquired, the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty having been her favorite since she was a child moving in and out of hospital beds. Even so, it comes as a total shock when she is suddenly whisked away through time, space and reality, landing smack in the middle of an actual fairy tale kingdom with a princess who is definitely in need of saving.

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Jul 16 2022

No Time Like the Past by Jodi Taylor

After tangling things forwards and backwards in A Trail Through Time, Jodi Taylor offers more straightforward adventures for the historians of St Mary’s in No Time Like the Past. Which is to say, there are calamities, dangers expected and otherwise, narrow escapes, and scuffles with university bureaucracy. I would say that Dr Madeleine Maxwell, first-person narrator of the series, handles it all with aplomb, but the truth is that she is the cause of several of the calamities, she gets badly wounded in the middle of the book, and she nearly derails Western civilization towards the end by thonking the wrong person at Thermopylae.

No Time Like the Past by Jodi Taylor

Along the way, they try to rescue the budget by salvaging items from St Paul’s during the Great Fire of London and nearly burn up several historians for their trouble. That’s to say nothing of the summer festival of St Mary’s, where their boat is to race against the one from Thirsk University, competing by hook and by crook. Uninvited guests arrive, and several things blow up, only few of which were planned that way.

The visit to Botticelli makes up for a lot.

There is a wonderfully reflective moment between Max and Dr Bairstow, the director of St Mary’s: “I still remember your first day here. The day we met. You stumped into my office with, as I believe I remarked to Mrs Partridge afterwards, an armful of qualifications and a bucketful of attitude and nothing has ever been quite the same since.” (p. 365)

No Time Like the Past feels like a bit of a breather in the overall St Mary’s series. While there is at least one major development among the continuing characters, most of the book relates episodic adventures of the historians going back in time to observe something, getting tangled in contemporary events, and trying to sort things before History does the sorting for them — something that is generally fatal to historians outside their usual time. Some of the continuing villains do show up to cause trouble, but for most of this book the historians are quite capable of causing it for themselves. When I picked this up, I wanted to take a break from heavier reading, and it was just the thing.

The fifth book in a slightly convoluted series about time travel is probably not the best place to start, and the first four are plenty of fun, too.

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Jul 15 2022

Count Zero by William Gibson

How does Count Zero, William Gibson‘s second novel, hold up more than 35 years after its publication? That’s what I was thinking about, re-reading the book for the first time in at least a decade.

At the end of Neuromancer, Gibson’s first, genre-defining novel, something happened to the AIs and the entirety of cyberspace, something ineffable, something more gestured at than defined, but something that is implied to be transcendent. Count Zero begins seven or eight years after Neuromancer, according to oblique references about halfway through the book. Most of what Gibson is up to in Count Zero is oblique, an early trademark that continues into his current work.

Count Zero by William Gibson, Ace paperback from 1987

Count Zero tells three stories, only weaving them together very late in the novel. First up is Turner, a hypercompetent mercenary of ruthless corporate espionage and warfare. He starts the novel getting put back together after being blown nearly to bits in the first paragraph, a typically dense Gibson alloy of tech, geography, neologism and action:

They set a slamhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came screaming for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT. (p. 1)

Turner is close to Case in Neuromancer, a classic noir protagonist, a driven operator out to do his job and in search of the edge.

Marly’s manipulative ex-boyfriend got her into an art-world scandalette, hoodwinking her into trying to pass a forgery along to a more prominent gallerist. She’s putting her life back together as she enters Count Zero, sleeping on a female friend’s couch, wondering where any money will come from. A job interview with Herr Virek, a renowned collector, turns out to be much, much more than she bargained for. Virek is looking for the artist behind some unusual found-object sculpture collages. He has wealth beyond Marly’s comprehension, and he is prepared to pay handsomely for her intuition. One problem is that the path to the artist runs through her ex.

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Jul 14 2022

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

I’m at the point in my reading life with Aliette de Bodard where I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not her, it’s me.

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de BodardMs de Bodard is widely acclaimed, and I just don’t get it. Yes, I have loved every single one of the premises of the stories I’ve read of hers, with possibly my favorite being The Tea Master And The Detective, a futuristic Asian female riff on Sherlock Holmes. The premise of Fireheart Tiger is just as compelling: a Southern princess is sent as a child hostage to far Northern courts, only to return an adult disappointment to her Empress mother. Add in a fire elemental and a politically sticky (and sapphic!) love triangle and you have all the ingredients for wonder.

But from the very start, the characterizations make no sense. Thanh, our main character, feels that she’s derided for being “thoughtful” unlike her glamorous, take-charge sisters, and thus “fobbed off” with the task of diplomatic negotiations, and all I’m reading from this is that Thanh is whiny and has no appreciation of the importance of her job. I also feel that she confuses “thoughtfulness” with “introversion” as Thanh is nowhere near as smart as she believes. She is, in fact, deeply childish and shortsighted, as you can tell from the pitiful attempts she makes at diplomacy, all the while deriding her mother’s input (and she has the nerve to complain that the foreigners have no concept of filial piety, like oooookay.)

Actual spoilers abound for the rest of this review, so stop here if you’d rather skip them.

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Jul 13 2022

It’s A Sign by Jarrett Pumphrey and Jerome Pumphrey

Mo Willems is a staple in our household, so when I (belatedly) discovered that he had an imprint called Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! I knew I had to check it out. More importantly, I had to check it out with my kids. Jms grew up on Knuffle Bunny, while Joseph had always seemed more partial to Elephant and Piggie (tho that latter might have been because he wanted to read more about trumpet players like Jms, who took the instrument up for a year in fourth grade.)

It’s A Sign begins and ends with short (and hilarious!) vignettes featuring Elephant and Piggie, with a cameo from Pigeon at the end. The book itself is about four friends who decide to start a club but run into various sorts of trouble naming it. Each of the friends has a strength, however, that they can all combine to this purpose. Perhaps they can even… find a sign as to what they ought to do next?

I read this first with Jms, and he and I fell about with laughter at the lighthearted antics depicted here, even if Jms did precede his appreciation with a “Dad jokes!” proclamation. To which I said, “Excuse me, Mom jokes, too!” Joseph was insistent on reading the book himself out loud, but I had to read the book to Theo in order to engage him with it. Not the fault of this very entertaining book, which even Theo admitted was “okay good” when I asked him whether the story was okay or good. He’s a fairly reluctant reader to begin with, alas.

But Jms, Joseph and I really enjoyed it. The jokes were funny for all of us, with adorable, tho fairly minimalist, illustrations perfectly underscoring the script and emotions. The sixty or so pages are also a perfect length for young readers, and the E&P bookends are a terrific way to get Willems’ fans into something new. As a grown-up (who is, coincidentally, baby stepping her way through learning a foreign language,) I really appreciated the sneaky way in which beginner-to-intermediate language skills were introduced, as well as the brief, humorous biography of the Pumphrey brothers who wrote and illustrated this.

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Jul 12 2022

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

So I requested this novel ahead of reviewing Sarah Pearse’s upcoming follow up to it, The Retreat. Interestingly, the publicist seemed a little reluctant to send it over — not a problem I’ve usually had with books from larger publishing houses, who don’t have to watch their margins as closely as smaller presses do. I put it down to maybe them not wanting to give away a Reese’s Book Club selection for free, but after reading the book, I’ve come to an even more practical conclusion: this book just isn’t that good. Worse, it’s been poorly reviewed, even by my most generous friends (who seem to prefer the sequel anyway!)

The Sanatorium is the first in the Detective Elin Warner series. Elin is a British police detective on extended leave from her job after a murderer she was apprehending attempted to kill her, too. Now she’s accepted an invitation from her estranged brother Isaac to come to an isolated Swiss hotel to celebrate his engagement. Her boyfriend Will is along for moral support, tho she hasn’t really told him much about her troubled relationship with Isaac beyond the fact that he pretty much left her to care for their dying mother on her own, not even coming back for the funeral.

When Isaac’s fiancee, who happens to work at the hotel, goes missing, Elin reaches for a reasonable explanation despite Isaac’s belief that something terrible must have happened to Laure. But as a snowstorm descends on the sanatorium-turned-hotel perched precariously in the Swiss Alps, Elin’s concern grows. The simultaneous announcement of an avalanche cutting off the roads with the discovery of a body floating in one of the heated pools spreads fear throughout the staff and guests trapped on the premises. With the Swiss police unable to make it through the snow, Elin takes charge, securing the scene and collecting as much evidence as she can. But a cunning killer is ready to strike again and again, and Elin soon finds herself overwhelmed as she strives to secure her loved ones from the threat looming over them all.

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Jul 11 2022

Discovering The Underground With Snow White by Tom Velcovsky & Jakub Cenkl

I had a blast spending time at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference 2022 recently, and one of the highlights was definitely coming across the Albatros Media booth. They’re a small Czech press and this was their first time exhibiting at ALAAC, and I was so pleased to be able to chat with the publisher of some of the most beautiful educational books I’ve had the pleasure of reading this past year.

At the end of our conversation, the lovely people of Albatros pressed on me this volume to go with the postcards and stickers I’d already picked up from their booth. Now that I’ve had time to sort through most (but not yet all: it was a lot!) of my haul from ALAAC, I’m pleased to present this as my very first selection for review!

And it’s not just because I dearly love fairy tale adaptations, which this is, or cleverly constructed papercraft, which this also is. It’s because this beautiful and thoughtfully created volume pleases so much the polymath in me. My only regret is that childhood me never got a chance to enjoy a book quite like this, because she would have adored it even more than I do.

For Discovering The Underground With Snow White, the traditional fairy tale is adapted ever so slightly to more prominently feature its subterranean elements. The mining occupation of the dwarves is an obvious hook, but from the very start the Evil Queen summons a prisoner from underground caverns, instead of the traditional huntsman, to dispatch Snow White in exchange for his freedom.

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Jul 10 2022

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

“Sleeping Beauty is pretty much the worst fairy tale, an way you slice it” says Zinnia Gray, first-person narrator of A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow. She adds, “Only dying girls like Sleeping Beauty.” (p. 2) And there’s the first catch, because Zinnia Gray is dying, victim of a rare genetic defect, most of whose carriers die in their teens and none of whom has made it to age twenty-two. The novella opens on her twenty-first birthday.

A Spindle Splintered by Alix M. Harrow

Zinnia grins and bears it through a family birthday party that everyone pretends to believe isn’t a pre-wake. Her “best/only friend” (p. 2) Charm — Charmaine Baldwin — rescues the mood with a text that’s a request, a promise, and an omen: “meet me at the tower, princess.” (p. 4) The tower is a leftover guard tower from an abandoned state penitentiary. Charm has done up the highest room in the tower with “strings of pearled lights crisscrossing the ceiling and long swaths of blushing fabric draped over the windows; a dozen or so people wearing the kind of gauzy fairy wings that come from the year-round Halloween store at the mall; roses absolutely everywhere, bursting from buckets and mason jars and Carlo Rossi jugs. An in the very center of the room, looking dusty and rickety and somehow grand, a spinning wheel.” (p. 6) Twelve fairy godmothers, but they all drift off and eventually it’s just Zinnia and Charm. Near midnight, Zinnia dares Charm to prick her finger on the spindle. “You’re the princess, hon,” answers Charm. Zinnia tries to divert her with facts about the original version of Sleeping Beauty — she has a degree in folklore and “alcohol transforms me into a chatty Wikipedia page.” (p. 6) Zinnia takes the dare, though, pressing her finger onto the spindle. “And then something happens, after all.” (p. 8)

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