Wow, could this series get any better? I have been a firm believer that as a series goes on it declines a little with each book. This book jumps right back to the beginning of the series, with new characters, new problems, but also with the old characters that you have grown to love. When the Black Dagger Brotherhood has a crisis all the vampires get involved, be in a trouble with lesser (slayers), meddlesome mothers, drugs, or affairs of the heart. So it is no surprise when a Mary and Rhage decide to adopt an abused girl and all the brothers fall in love with her. Sigh!
Review by Leslie B.
Fantasy
Book Review: Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
Wyrd Sisters is the first book in the Discworld series to involve the witches of Lancre, a small kingdom whose king has just been killed (or clumsily fell down the stairs to his death, depending on who is telling the story). This means that you can easily read this book without having read any other Discworld book. Granny Weatherwax is a formidable witch who doesn’t trust what she can’t see with her eyes and, frankly, doesn’t trust many people either. Nanny Ogg is a mother and grandmother of so many I doubt even she can keep count. But you can always count on her for a dirty joke or two, at which Granny will scoff. Magrat Garlick is a new-age witch, who likes her crystals and candles, but still has a lot to learn as far as the other two (more traditional) witches are concerned. What’s concerning them right now is the baby that’s been left at their feet, a royal baby who father is now dead. They do the proper thing and hide the child and the crown and settle back into normal life in Lancre. Except Lancre itself is no longer normal. What does one do when the very country itself (more than just the people within it) rejects the usurper to the throne? What does the usurper do to rewrite history? Should the witches even involve themselves in the matter?
As with all Pratchett novels, this one is very funny. The footnotes are often the best part, explaining, for instance just why the Thieves have a Guild and why guild members must therefore give receipts to those they rob. The story involves many references to Shakepeare’s plays, including Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and others. The characters are by turns endearing, intriguing, and in some cases horrifying. Death makes his usual cameo appearance and steals the show, literally.
This is my favorite series, and I’m eagerly rereading the whole set. It just happened that I was ready to read this one in time for the SPOOKY TALES meeting of the Page Turners Book Club on October 13th at 6PM. (Too bad I won’t get to Hogfather in time for our December meeting on the 8th: Winter Holidays.)
Review by Jessica A.
Book Review: Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder
Coming home after you have been away for 15 years can be a hard road to travel. But, it can even be harder if; the reason you left was because you were kidnapped, then you were physically and mentally abused, taken to be a slave in the country your home is at war with, and forced to be a food taster for the government. So, what happened when you finally got home; your brother hates you, your parents smother you, the government thinks you’re a spy, you are older that the rest of the students at the school you are sent away to, and someone is trying to kill you. Phew!! Wow what a great ride.
Review by Leslie B.
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne
I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible.
This story takes place 19 years after the events of the Battle of Hogwarts at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione are seeing their children off at Platform 9 3/4. It’s clear that Harry struggles to get along with his son Albus. Fast-forward a few years, and things have only worsened on that front. Albus is in Slytherin and best friends with Draco Malfoy’s son Scorpius. Albus struggles with being the son of the Boy Who Lived and wishes to do something heroic of his own, to make a name for himself. So he and Scorpius steal a Time-Turner and attempt to prevent the death of Cedric Diggory (whom Voldemort killed at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, saying, “kill the spare”). They are prompted to do so by Delphi, who is Cedric’s cousin. Clearly, these three would have benefited from seeing the Muggle classic Back to the Future, and therefore learning that changing anything in the past can have terrible and unforeseen consequences in the future. Can they undo their mistakes and prevent the rise of Voldemort? Can they mend their relationships with their fathers? Can any of them be redeemed? Should they?
The play redeems Draco considerably. He has clearly grown from the bully and prat he had been as a teen, though still holds a great deal of resentment toward Harry (and we would expect nothing less). His son, Scorpius, is hands-down my favorite character. I’m a sucker for a person who loves bad puns. Delphi felt a little flat to me. Albus was annoying, but as a teenage boy who hates his dad, he’s kind of supposed to be, I think.
Look, I love the world of Harry Potter, and I love time-travel stories, so this story was right up my alley. The format may be a little tough to get used to for anyone not accustomed to reading scripts, for that is all this is. That can make characterizations a bit weak since there’s no room for exposition, as a friend of mine complained. This can be especially true for the new characters who can’t benefit from our previous knowledge of them from earlier in the series. I didn’t really have a problem with this, but I can see how others would.
Any Harry Potter fan is likely already going to read the book, so I’ll not preach to the choir here. If you haven’t seen the films or read the books, this is not the place to start, but it’s definitely a good place to end up.
Review by Jessica A.
Book Review: Sourcery by Terry Pratchett
On the Discworld, the eighth son of an eighth son is a wizard. But what of the eighth son of a wizard? As wizards insist that celibacy is necessary for magic, this question remained unanswered for over two thousand years. The answer is: a sourcerer. This sourcerer has come to the stronghold of Discworld wizardry, the Unseen University, and insisted that wizards are the rightful rulers of the world. Sounds great, but magical rule upsets the balance of things. Sourcery produces too much raw magic and kick-starts the Apocralypse (a portmanteau of apocryphal and apocolypse). Rincewind, the most cowardly wizard on the Disc has already run away by this point, leaving the Librarian (who is an orangutan–long story) to protect the magical books all by himself. Along with the help of a hero who wishes to be a hairdresser, a hick who thinks he’s a hero, and a homicidal Luggage case, Rincewind must defeat the sourcerer and restore the natural balance of magic to Discworld. Can he do it, or will he just run away again?This laugh-out-loud funny book is the fifth in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, but you don’t really need to have read the whole series in order to read this book (though I might recommend at least reading the first two Rincewind books: The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic). This is the second time I’ve read it and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time. This series is one of my all-time favorites and I’m really enjoying rereading it.
Review by Jessica A.
Book Review: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain
Considering that I am a fan of Mark Twain and that I have a deep and abiding love of all things Arthurian, it’s a bit surprising that it took me so long to read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The story is bookended by Mark Twain himself describing his encounter with Hank Morgan, the titular Yankee, who gives Twain a manuscript of his experience in 6th-century England–King Arthur’s England. Hank is a 19th-century man just like Twain but one day finds himself in the 6th Century and promptly captured by Sir Kay. He is thrown in prison and sentenced to death, but by learning the date, he knows that a solar eclipse will occur the following day and uses this knowledge to position himself as a great wizard. Merlin is naturally miffed, and the two are rivals from that time forward.
Through his wisdom and influence upon King Arthur and the nation, he earns the title of The Boss. He cares nothing for the Temporal Prime Directive and sets about creating his own pocket of the 19th century within the 6th. He establishes a newspaper, a telephone service, gun factories, a standing army, a navy, sandwich board advertising, and many more innovations. All throughout The Boss displays a mixture of disdain and amusement toward the people and customs around him. I had hoped that he might be brought down a peg or two for his hubris, but apparently this wasn’t that sort of story. His commentary is often funny though, making this a bit like RiffTrax: King Arthur edition. As some of the jokes are about the way that the people of Arthur’s England talk (based on the way that medieval writers wrote), it’s probably funnier if you’re already familiar with the medieval style of narration in these sort of tales of chivalry. Twain even lifts whole sections of description directly from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.
The Boss is a hard character to like, in that he enjoys humiliating people and is rarely forgiving of how the people of the 6th century think and believe, given their education, or lack thereof. That said, I still enjoyed the book. Near the end, when it came to describing the events that led to King Arthur’s death (despite the fact that it took a mere two pages to do so and it generally takes several chapters in most Arthurian tales), I couldn’t help but be caught up in the emotion of it all. That part of Arthur’s story always gets to me though, perhaps because my first introduction to Arthurian literature was part of a packet handed out by my Brit Lit teacher in high school: the final chapter of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, in which the old King thinks back on his life, his achievements and failures, and all that has led up to this final battle, which he knows he will not survive. It breaks my heart every time. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court can be a little dense at times, but I definitely recommend it to anyone wishing to read a book that pokes fun at the oft-times serious genre of medieval romance.
Review by Jessica A.
