Summary: When their parents leave them with their paternal grandparents for a few weeks Kendra and Seth can do nothing but complain. What will they do all that time in the middle of nowhere? Not to mention their grandfather didn’t seem much pleased to have them either.

Little do the kids know that they are about to embark in the adventure of a lifetime. “Drink the milk”, a book that Kendra has discovered says. They drank and, under their amazed eyes, all the wonderful butterflies roaming the grandfather’s estate turned to fairies. ‘Cause this was no ordinary estate but Fablehaven, one of the few magical creatures preserves in the world.

General impression
I know that after reading The Iron King a few days ago I concluded I had to take a break from YA, and yet here I am, just having read yet another YA book. Unfortunately the result is the exact same: I found it boring to tears, despite it being very appreciated by the rest of the word (4.10 on Goodreads, about 4 sequels to date). A major sign that I really really really have to give YA up for at least a while.

This being said, I may be considered extra picky, but just look at the first few sentences: “Kendra stared out the side window of the SUV, watching foliage blur past. When the flurry of motion became too much, she looked up ahead and fixed her gaze on a particular tree, following it as it slowly approached, streaked past, and then gradually receded behind her.” How can trees blur past and yet slowly approach at the same time?? Is this a promising beginning for a book?

Characters
This is my major problem with the book actually, the characters. Their lack of interesting traits for one thing. The fact that every time I read the name Kendra the only other Kendra I ever read about came to my mind didn’t much help. The fact that Seth seemed to have a profound inability to follow the rules didn’t much help either (on the contrary, he must be the single most annoying character I “met” in recent years; I get the idea that boys like adventures and breaking the rules, but this Seth guy managed to push the limit farther than far, including in life and death situations when he, fascinatingly enough, firmly believed he knew better than anyone else, and acted accordingly; not only that but he never learns from his mistakes, despite his grandfather’s always explaining him things in no uncertain terms). Looking at the bright side, Kendra was almost his very opposite, always thinking before she leaped, and so on. Which means that she didn’t annoy me as her brother did, although unfortunately I didn’t find her particularly interesting either. Overall I was way too annoyed at Seth’s behaviour to care about what happens to him or anyone else, a thing that naturally enough brought my enjoyment of the book to 0.

A character I did like was Lena, the naiad-turned-human. She was quite interesting, not in the least because of her abilities (but does anyone actually believe in the possibility of her sketching a paint-by-numbers with more than ninety colors? And then an amateur, like the children were, being able to mix the paints to match all the ninety samples?)

Also, can I say I loved Viola the huge cow? I know that she hardly does anything throughout the book, but still, it is a huge cow, I simply had to like her :)

Relationships
Although one of the kids mostly annoyed me, while the other was interesting but not interesting enough, I have much enjoyed reading about the relationship between them. They always banter with one another, and it’s the very kind of banter that I love seeing in books and that I think very few writers can actually write (Yasmine Galenorn will probably always come to my mind when it comes to this kind of banter done wrong). The relationship between siblings at that age I think is wonderfully drawn, and it’s definitely one of the fortes of the book.

Plot
The plot seemed to me to be rather thin, since very few things actually happen (or so it seemed to me). It’s kinda hard to care about the plot when you don’t care whether the characters live or die, so… meh. The plot was probably there, I couldn’t care less, that’s about all I have to say about it.

Although now that I think about it there was sort of a detail that has somewhat bothered me: all the praise the grandfather heaps on the children for being able to solve his puzzle and discover his fairies. Also, it felt rather weird for the grandfather to change his version of events almost daily — “don’t go to the woods ’cause there are ticks”, “well, I lied, don’t go to the woods ’cause there are dangerous animals there”, “no, I lied, don’t go to the woods ’cause there are all sorts of magical creatures”. Not a very good example, is he? And the puzzle, really? Was that even a puzzle, having to find three keyholes and a book??

Speaking of the puzzle, and “drinking the milk”, am I the only one who found it a bit strange when Kendra, told that the milk was essentially “a bacterial stew” and not daring to drink it herself, convinced her brother to take a sip? At that moment in time, with the knowledge she had then, it felt almost like making him drink poison to see whether he’ll feel sick afterwards. And to think I earlier commented on the great relationship between the two.

Setting
Well, at least Fablehaven is a great place to be in. I must say I would have enjoyed visiting there for a few days (while, of course, keeping away from the woods, and the ponds, and every other dangerous place) :P

Thoughts on the title
I love it :) I love both the word and the idea it depicts. I don’t imagine a better one could have been found.

Thoughts on the ending
I don’t quite know what to think of it. First of all because by then I was almost skimming the pages, just to see the book over with, already. I do admit it was quite nicely done though, probably the best one in the circumstances (although I very much disliked the part with getting blood from my precious Viola), and I would probably have enjoyed it had I actually cared about the characters :|

show spoiler

What I liked most
I loved to imagine the fairies :)
The author has chosen to make almost all fairies look different from one another (one with wings patterned like a ladybug was my favorite, and another with the wings looking like stained glass), and imagining how each of them might look like was definitely the thing I enjoyed most.

What I liked least
Since I have already listed all sorts of details I did not like, there’s nothing much that remains to be said here. I will just mention the cover — the reason why I started reading this book is that the cover depicts a friendly old lady, a green one, with playful eyes and a knowing smile, daring the reader to enter her world. A green lady whom I was looking forward to discover and get to know, so you probably imagine my disappointment when I realized there was no such friendly, mysterious lady in the book (quite the opposite actually).

Recommend it to?
As usual, given the fact that lots of people love this book, I recommend to everyone who loves YA to at least give it a try, despite my huge list of “meh” elements found in it.

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Summary: The princess that will remain in fairytale history as the Sleeping Beauty has just been born, and has just been cursed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so her distraught parents order the destruction of all the spinning wheels in the kingdom.

A thing that brings Talia’s hopes for a better future to an end. Without her spinning wheel there is no way for her to earn her bread, much less to gather a dowry. Without a dowry, she cannot marry her betrothed. Her only consolation is her plan to have a child by him, a little girl to chase away solitude, a little girl whose name’s already been picked. But after a while it becomes obvious that Thalia cannot have children, so she tries to quench her thirst for love into the arms of a string of men, all having something or other in common with the one she has, ages ago, been in love with.

General impression
A cute take on a fairytale we all know and love. A bit more sex than I expected, but a lot less than it could have been (there are sex scenes but there are not very many details about any of them). A fast read, with a bit of darkness added in for good measure (after all, we can never properly appreciate true happiness unless we’ve seen sorrow, right?).

Characters
The main character, Talia, is an interesting one: she is rather on the ugly side, complete with warts on her face, and yet men find her sexually attractive, which means she must have something about her. Despite the hardships she endures (and the fact that she seeks consolation, without finding it, in the arms of many men), she is essentially a good person, and one is sorry to see her being so miserable and alone. Luckily this is a fairytale so it must end well, right? :)

Relationships
I happen to very much like the love stories where ordinary-looking people fall for each other, and as such I loved reading about Talia’s meeting Willard, and their marriage plans. Sure, at first they didn’t seem to care that much about one another (their decision to be married being based on both of them’s certainty that no one else will ever want them), and I wasn’t that interested in them either, however after a while, when their feelings developed and crystallized, I … well, I wasn’t able to root for them, since by then Willard was already at a monastery, but I kept thinking fondly of what might have been. An interesting thing, to become invested in a relationship after it has already run its course; but Talia kept thinking about him fondly, and, as I was right beside her, so did I.

Plot
There’s relatively little plot, since this is a novella and all. Interestingly enough though, most of it was unexpected for me, going into a whole other direction than I thought it would have. A pleasant surprise, of course :)

Setting
I am not entirely sure how believable the setting is. Don’t get me wrong, the medieval rural life is okay enough done, but the thing that puzzled me a bit is the fact that royal heads seemed to be walking among ordinary people a bit more often than I thought they would be. A thing that detracts a tiny bit from the credibility of it all (but then again, we’re talking about a fairytale here so no one expects 100% credibility, right?).

Thoughts on the title
I don’t remember there being any sevenfold spell in the original fairytale (nor was I certain what the idea of a sevenfold spell actually entails), everything becomes clearer in the last third of the book. So yes, it’s an okay title I guess.

Thoughts on the ending
The ending was, of course, worthy of a fairytale. “And they lived happily ever after”. I loved it, of course, especially as it was a tiny bit unexpected :)

What I liked most
The very reason why I picked this book up, and the thing that I enjoyed most, was the whole idea behind the book, about what happens to the ordinary girls in the kingdom when someone sets a curse on the princess. A novel perspective if there ever was one, I think.

What I liked least
There’s nothing that has actually bothered me (although to be honest I didn’t quite get why the mother’s words became a spell, but since it was a rather cute addition to the story I will not protest that much).

Recommend it to?
Anyone in the mood for a quick light read. Fairies, spinning wheels, and a happy ending await you :)

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Summary:Vida Winter is a successful author and very famous, and yet, in the age of information, her past is a mystery to everyone but herself. This is why, when Margaret Lea receives a request from Miss Winter to become her official biographer, she doesn’t exactly know what to believe. Miss Lea has not published a book in her life, nor has she ever read a book of Miss Winter’s, so naturally enough she wonders if she is up to the task. But curiosity gets the better of her so, at the appointed day and time, Miss Lea ends up under the penetrating gaze of Miss Winter’s, ready to embark on the literary adventure of a lifetime.

General impression I loved this book, and I loved the feeling I had, while reading, that I was reading a classic (so much so that I was quite surprised to notice the book was published in 2006, I thought it older than that). In my defence there are many classical Gothic elements here (I think I’m getting a penchant for Gothic literature, sigh), bringing to mind all the classics I love (there’s a madwoman locked away, a destroying fire, like in Jane Eyre; an overpowering love, reminding me of Wuthering Heights; The Woman in White is also somewhat represented, ditto the Turning of the Screw and more).

Characters
In a word, the characters are fascinating. Some of them strange, some of them with all sorts of mental issues, but still fascinating. Beginning with Isabelle’s father, the man who lost his wife in childbirth, and whose only reason to live became his infant daughter, completely neglecting his son. His sadistic son, Charlie, who in time developed an unhealthy obsession with the same precious Isabelle. And this is where the story actually begins, with Isabelle herself giving birth to two twin girls. Adeline and Emmeline grew up in their own strange world, surrounded by very few people and left to their own devices.

I was in a way surprised at how real all those characters felt. Even the mad ones, or especially the mad ones. I could see the Missus in front of my eyes the whole while, even as she grew older and older and the household grew more and more in disrepair. I esteemed John-the-dig more and more, seeing the way he tried to make things as comfortable as possible to his (unofficial) charges. Both Missus and John were simple people, but so kind, each in their own way, I couldn’t not care for them. I also liked the governess, Hester, a lot, for quite the opposite reason: she may not care that much about the girls, or people in general, but she was well-read, very smart, and never shied away from work when work needed to be done.

I should also talk about the main characters a bit, about Miss Winter, and Miss Lea, but to tell the truth all the characters seem so vivid to me, even now after closing the book, I simply had to mention more of then than just the two main ones. About Miss Lea, her trait that I enjoyed most is, predictably enough, her love of reading. I am sure that every passionate reader recognizes in him/her the feelings that Miss Lea recounts, and I did too, of course. As for Miss Winter… she is quite hard to pinpoint, especially since, in her current form (old and ill), she is nothing but the vehicle for her story, a means to let the said story out into the world.

Relationships
After rambling on and on about how real the characters felt, it should by now be obvious that the relationships were just as believable (else they would have taken a toll on the characters’ believability too). And yet the way the people in the book related to one another was at times hard for me to understand (or let’s call it less than obvious), especially where Emmeline was concerned. Why did Miss Winter love Emmeline so much, for example? Anything related to the twins’ relationship with one another was somewhat of a mystery to me — natural enough, I suppose, since it was a mystery for the rest of the characters too. A quote I found interesting related to that:

“Twins, always together, always two. If it was normal in their world to be two, what would other people, who came not in twos but ones, seem like to them? We must seem like halves, the Missus mused. And she remembered a word, a strange word it had seemed at the time, that meant people who had lost parts of themselves. Amputees. That’s what we are to them. Amputees.”

Plot
The one word to describe the plot is “layered”. The reader never knows what he/she’s getting in to. It all starts out blandly enough, the life story of an old lady. Yawn. But then some of the characters are introduced (Charlie, and Isabelle) and the reader gets interested in them. Then some more things are revealed, and suddenly we have a minor mystery on our hands. Another layer comes off, and there’s another mystery. And then another, more important one, keeping the reader guessing. I couldn’t but like the way the story became more and more engrossing as the pages flew by — especially as right now no other book with such structure comes to mind.

Setting
Just like the characters, the setting, the old, dilapidated mansion the twins grew up in comes to life under the skilful pen of the writer. The topiary became, for me, a place of wonder, as I loved to imagine the shapes John-the-dig gave to the yew trees. The same goes for the burnt, ruined Angelfield (reminding me of Thornfield, of course), and the contemporary mansion Vida Winter spends her time secluded from the world.

Thoughts on the title
The title is a reference to the first book Vida ever wrote, called Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, although the number of the stories in the book was twelve. In time, the mythical thirteenth tale’s importance grew, everyone becoming curious about it, and what it might have been about. A parallel, in a way, with Miss Winter’s very life, another thing people knew nothing about and so were free to speculate upon. In the end, the two mysteries intermingle, as the thirteenth tale does surface, and it contains a experience of the author’s… but I am getting ahead of myself. Yup, I love the title, and I think it very appropriate. :)

Thoughts on the ending
The ending is one of my favorite things in the book, since Miss Lea, like the passionate reader that she is, remembered all the cases when she put a book down, then wondered about the lives of the secondary characters, about what happened to them next (because, of course, we all know what happens to the leads, but how about the others?), so the last few pages contain a detailed account of the whereabouts of everyone ever mentioned in the book, including Miss Winter’s cat (who got one of the happiest endings in itself :) ). I love this kind of endings, this particular take on “they lived happily ever after”, and the one in this book leaves nothing to be desired.

What I liked most
Why, the fact that the characters in the book are book lovers themselves. I always enjoy finding likely-minded individuals between the pages of a book, and both Miss Lea and Miss Winter value literary masterpieces above almost everything else.

For example, here is what Margaret Lea thinks about her favorite kind of books, the biographies of people long ago:

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

How can one not agree?

Also, another quote, this time of Miss Winter’s, and this time one I am not quite sure whether to agree with or not, but whose original point of view I admire nevertheless:

Politeness. Now, there’s a poor man’s virtue if ever there was one. What’s so admirable about inoffensiveness, I should like to know. After all, it’s easily achieved. One needs no particular talent to be polite. On the contrary, being nice is what’s left when you’ve failed at everything else. People with ambition don’t give a damn what other people think about them. I hardly suppose Wagner lost sleep worrying whether he’d hurt someone’s feelings. But then he was a genius.

What I liked least
I didn’t quite get Miss Lea’s aching for her lost twin. While I do understand why the author chose to have Miss Lea herself part of a twin duo (because who better to understand the story of twins than another twin), I could not relate to Margaret’s longing to see the sister she never knew, to be with her — and this was the one aspect of the story I didn’t much care for.

Recommend it to?
Everyone, especially people who enjoy reading the classics and/or Gothic literature.

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Summary: On Meghan Chase’s 16th birthday she came home to find her little brother vastly changed, for the worse. “He is a changeling”, Robbie, her best friend told her, and from then on the world around her started to make sense less and less. Turned out her real brother was kidnapped by faeries, her real father was Oberon, the king of faeries himself, and Robbie’s name was actually Robin Goodfellow, the Puck mentioned in Shakespeare’s A Midnight Summer’s Dream.

General impression
It seems to me that now would be a good time for me to stop reading Young Adult books, because it seems like none of the hyped books of the genre appeals to me. This happened with Shiver (everyone loved it, I didn’t much like it), with Graceling (everyone loved it, I didn’t much like it), and now it’s almost happening with this book too (everyone loves it, I plodded through it). Bummer.

Characters
This is one of the reasons it took me quite a while to finish this book: most of the time I didn’t much care for Meghan. OK, she did care for her younger brother, I’ll give her that (and loyalty may well be her major flaw, as another character said of her). Other than that though she simply wasn’t that interesting to me, she didn’t stand out at all (sure, she does have quite a brave moment somewhere near the end, but most of the time everything interesting happens to the people around her, and she’s more being led from one place to another rather than actively doing things). Luckily the rest of the cast were a bit more interesting, starting with Puck, whom I found rather annoyingly and irresponsible at times (but who also had a very interesting strategy when it came to fighting — he could turn various bits of nature into copies of himself). My favorites were Grimalkin the cat sidhe, (mostly because he was a cat, but also because he knew what he was doing, without being annoying like Puck was) and, quite predictably, Ash, the Winter prince himself, because he was the only character with a hint of complexity. Not to mention he looked pretty cool too :)

Oh, and let’s not forget the little junk collecting creatures, the chittering gnomes collecting all sorts of stuff on their backs — I found them to be amusing and quite a nice touch.

Relationships
For the most part I think the relationships between the characters were believable and well described. The relationship between Oberon and Meghan seemed to be a particularly well drawn one, as she is initially upset to discover she has such an unusual dad (while the man that she called father was nothing to her), and he does care for her, but in a rather distant way (a natural way to act towards a daughter you know nothing about, I suppose). The love story was rather cute, especially as it was sort of a late arrival, happening only in the last third of the book (not that it wasn’t rather predictable, mind you; I liked it nevertheless, it’s one of my favorite parts of the book).

At the other end of the believability spectrum we have show spoiler

Plot
This is a plot-based novel, but if you asked me the plot didn’t amount to much: girl, looking for her brother, gets caught into various skirmishes, the end. A thing that could have had lots of potential to keep me on the edge of my seat, if only I cared about the main character. Since I didn’t, it all became boring rather quickly. “Oh, another fight, there goes the prince swinging his ice sword again, yawn”. Sure, to give credit where credit is due, the author has imagined various situations, various enemies, and various reasons to fight, but unfortunately my not caring who lived and who died ruined them all.

Setting
The setting, I would say, is the forte of the book. There are three parts of Nevernever, each with its own decor, and the author has done a great job imagining and describing them. I almost saw the colors of Summer, shivered in the Winter, and felt the desolation of Machina’s kingdom. The world came to life, and naturally enough, I liked it :)

A quote, one of my favorite descriptions in the book, about Queen Mab:

“She wasn’t tall, like Oberon, or willowy-thin, like Titania, but her presence drew every eye in the courtyard. Her hair was so black it appeared blue in places, and it spilled down her back like a waterfall of ink. Her eyes were of the void, of a night without stars, a sharp contrast to her marble skin and her pale mulberry lips. She wore a dress that writhed around her like shadow incarnate. And, like Oberon and Titania, she radiated power.”

On the other hand, something I didn’t much like, quite the opposite, was the fact that the magic system was not clearly defined, a thing that really affected the believability of the world in my eyes. We are never told what faeries can or cannot do and, although many brag of power throughout the book, most of the time the matters are settled in the old fashioned, sword-in-hand way — something that seemed to me rather pointless, since using magic would have been a way more expedient way to finish off one’s enemies. The most annoying example of this is at a banquet where the most powerful faeries participated (including Titania who earlier has turned Meghan into a sort of deer, so she did have magic powers). A monster makes a surprise entrance and starts killing off whoever’s in his path — now, the logical thing to be done would have been for someone able to use magic to at least trap it somewhat, right? But no, everyone sends a small army to defeat the monster the ordinary way, and then they even complain that some of their people died in battle! So why didn’t they put a stop to it first? At least if there would have been an explanation, something like, I don’t know, faerie magic only works on faeries, anything, it might have made more sense, but the way things were handled it just didn’t.

Thoughts on the title
I like the title, particularly the sound and the strength of it. Although I would have liked it a lot better if the word iron would have been replaced with metal in the book; this way I wasted too much time trying to discover whether an iPod really has iron inside it or not — it sure has metal, of course, but iron? Most knives I don’t think have iron in them either. Are bullets made of iron?
… and so on and so forth. Everything would have been easier for me had the author just said metal, and leave it at that (though I agree that iron sounds a lot better, ha).

Thoughts on the ending
I think it made me discover a new pet peeve: I really really don’t like books that end with a forced cliffhanger. Various hints have been left throughout the book (some of them quite interesting, as what has really happened to Meghan’s father? I’m quite curious about that), and it was obvious that there was going to be a sequel, did it really need to close in that particular way? I really don’t like it when author do things like that, closing a book just as the reader is getting involved in a particular matter, as it seems to me a strategy that screams “I want to make money so bad I don’t care about your experiences as a reader, so I will frustrate you enough to buy my next book”. Blech.

What I liked most
The whole theory surrounding the existence of the Iron King, and the Iron Fey:

“[...] the fey were born from the dreams of mortals [...]. Well, what if these things [...] are born of different dreams? Dreams of technology, and progress? Dreams of science? What if the pursuit of ideas that once seemed impossible — flight, steam engines, the Worldwide Web — gave birth to a whole different species of faery?”

All the more so since it seems like new characters appeared with the technological advancements: at first the ruler was Ferrum, iron itself, and then, as technology progressed, others like Virus, Glitch, and the bugs were born. I so like the idea of an iron horse (it looks very cool the way I imagine it), as it probably has something to do with horsepower, and engines. An interesting idea if you ask me :)

But. Much as I love the idea behind the iron fey I sense somewhat of a plot hole here: show spoiler

What I liked least
Some of the names. Nevernever for one. Like Neverland but not quite it. I’m not fond of the idea, not only because of its lack of originality but also because I don’t see a reason why faeries would name their land like that, “never” being a misnomer since they do exist right there and then.

There’s also a twig-like creature named Twiggy (very distinguished, right?) and an iron horse named Ironhorse (a bummer, since he was majestic enough to be given any warrior-ish name).

On an unrelated note, why did one of Machina’s Knights look like a doppelganger of Ash’s?

Recommend it to?
Sigh. The book has a rating of 4.13 on Goodreads, which means I should encourage anyone who enjoys YA books and faerie stories to give it a try.

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Summary: Meet Dr. Sandra Foster, a scientist hired to study the source of fads. A misdelivered package leads her to meeting one of her colleagues, a chaos theorist whose chaos-related project has lost its funding and is currently studying information diffusion. He was waiting to be delivered some monkeys, so he could study their behaviour, but some mix-up with the paperwork led to him losing funds for this second project too.

Sandra, seeing a possibility to come to his rescue, did not hesitate: the result was a joint project that had the two of them studying… a flock of borrowed sheep. The next best thing to monkeys, right?

General impression
I love Connie Willis. So far I liked everything I read of hers, and this book is no exception. Short, enjoyable, and filled with interesting details.

In the words of the author herself, “[this book] let me go after everything that bugs me: meetings, Barbie, trendy coffeehouses, those incompetent clerks who refuse to get off the phone to talk to you, and bread pudding.“. It couldn’t have been anything but fun :)

Speaking of which, I have no idea why the book is marketed as science fiction, as there are no advance science elements involved. Sure, there is some science and everything is fiction, but other than that the events in the book could very well be contemporary (or so I think, but the book is already over a decade old so our present is its future; the things that are fairly normal to us — coughcomputersimulationscough — might well have been advanced technology back then).

Characters
Sandra Foster, the main character, is very much like me in many ways. She lives in a world that’s slightly absurd (the latest trend in clothing is duct tape), but nevertheless she keeps trying to do her bit to make the world a better place. For example, when she finds out that the library removes from the shelves the books that haven’t been checked out in the last year, she starts checking out all sorts of classics for the sole reason of keeping them from being removed. She likes Robert Browning, tries to be a Pippa of her day, she’s always polite and doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. Bennett is like a teddy bear in a way (big and huggable, or at least that’s how I imagined him). He and fashion have absolutely nothing in common (which is the reason why Sandra noticed him in the first place: he seemed totally immune to fads), but he’s an overall good guy, and I liked him.

Plot
The charm of the book is in the details and the tidbits of information that the author offers (both on fads and accidental discoveries), and the plot comes only second or third. Sure, one cannot help being curious about the actual source of bobbed hair in the ’20s, but other than that there’s not much plot going on. Don’t let that deter you, though :)

Setting
Since our main characters are all scientists, the main setting is a research facility, one that is almost a character on its own. The Management doesn’t seem particularly bright but is quite fond of acronyms and bureaucracy (the simplified form for requesting funding has over 30 pages and no one knows exactly how to fill it; “the new simplified supply procurement form. For ordering paper clips” has twenty-two). The fun part is that even if some parts are clearly a bit exaggerated, I can see most parts of everything management-related actually happening (including the sensitivity exercises and whatnot).

Thoughts on the title
Can you believe that I had no idea what a bellwether was? However, now that I know I think it the best possible title for this book :)

Speaking of which, I have very much liked the way the description of a bellwether sheep also matches the people who start fads:

“I think a bellwether’s the same as any other sheep, only more so. A little hungrier, a little faster, a little greedier. It wants to get to the feed first, to shelter, to a mate, so it’s always out there in front.[...] Not a lot. If it was a long way in front, the flock’d have to strike out on their own to follow, and that’d mean thinking for themselves. Just a little bit, so they don’t even know they’re being led. And the bellwether doesn’t know it’s leading.”

Thoughts on the ending
Very nicely written :)
It reminded me of the one of Passage, because it consisted in the discovering of something that probably has nothing to do with science, while also sounding somewhat plausible and cool. And let’s not forget the moral of the story (or one of them), the fact that being nice to people can have unexpected rewards :)

What I liked most
The sheep (especially when it comes to their inability to think for themselves).
Not to mention all the musings on fads and the actions/events/people that may or may not start them.

Quote:

“And therein lay the secret to all fads: the herd instinct. People wanted to look like everyone else. That was why they bought white bucks and pedal pushers and bikinis. But someone had to be the first one to wear platform shoes, to bob their hair, and that took the opposite of herd instinct.”

What I liked least
Well, I have found Flip to be the epitome of annoyance. She could be very, very annoying at times.
show spoiler

Recommend it to?
Everyone in the mood for some light, fun reading.

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Written by the same author:
To Say Nothing of the Dog | The Doomsday Book | Passage

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Summary: With Tarmon Gai’don looming closer and closer, Rand is doing his best to prepare for it, by gathering around him as many men who can be taught to channel as he can find. Wanting to get rid of the responsibility he has for both Cairhien and Andor, as he is now the ruler of both, he sends Mat to track down Elayne, the rightful heir. However, she has other plans, ending up in Ebou Dar, together with her usual companions (Nynaeve, Birgitte, Thom and Juilin), plus Aviendha.

The Aes Sedai in Salidar also make plans for the future, electing a new Amyrlin and getting ready to attack Tar Valon. They also send an embassy to get the Dragon on their side, an embassy that reached Andor and Rand about the same time the one from Tar Valon, come with the very same purpose, did.

General impression
“Boy, that is one long book”, was my dominant thought while reading, followed closely by “Another character? How am I expected to keep track of them all??”.

So this was book six, the one where all but the most valiant fans of the series are said to abandon the quest. Well, I cannot quite blame them, especially as for me each of the books has been a little less captivating than the one before (yes, the first one is still my absolute favorite of them all). If only there weren’t that many characters… at times I simply lose track of who’s who and my interest in the story plummets. I have this problem with almost every large group of people (I can’t tell the Aiel from one another, with few exceptions, which makes me very uninterested in almost everything regarding them; I can’t tell the nobles from one another, with few exceptions, which makes me very uninterested in almost everything regarding them; I can’t tell about half of the Salidar Aes Sedai from one another… etc).

Characters
Did I mention there’s plenty of them?

One character I find promising is Mazrim Taim: always in control, never afraid. Speaking of which, I am also fairly curious about the way Logain will develop from now on. Gawyn too is beginning to show some promise, if only he weren’t a Whitecloak (those Whitecloaks being the bunch of characters I couldn’t bring myself to care about almost from the very beginning)
As far as the female characters are concerned, I tend to agree with the people who say that they all act as one, and they are all spending too much time acting superior, or offended, or both. I don’t remember any of them smiling for a while now, a thing that’s particularly disappointing when it comes to Elayne, whom I initially thought had a good sense of humor. Luckily there is one exception to the rule, and that’s Min (my current favorite character). show spoiler

Plot
In a perhaps funny turn of events, the book dragged on for so long that by the time I was nearing the end I couldn’t be actually certain what events have happened in this book and which of them in the previous one (I had to go check out the Wikipedia article in order to write the summary). There wasn’t much plot as I see it, a thing that probably is tightly connected to the way the book seemed to be dragging on endlessly at times. At least this “detail” is corrected sometimes near the end, when Rand (previously too strong to be even threatened, much less defeated) falls into a trap. From that point on I actually started getting interested in what I was reading, making the remaining pages (about 20% of them) fly by. So yeah, there is a plot, but one has to be really patient to get to it :)

Setting
I love the world that Mr. Jordan has created. I love the way magic is done here, with the flows of different elements, that have to be woven in different ways and so on. I love the way every land has its different customs and clothing styles. Sure, I am getting a bit confused by the geography of it at times, but other that that I am quite fond of it :)

Thoughts on the title
I love it. I find it a perfect metaphor for what Rand is: someone who polarizes people either with or against him. The battle at the end (where Aes Sedai fight against Aes Sedai and Aiel against Aiel) is the perfect illustration of the idea.

Thoughts on the ending
I liked the ending so much I even had a surge of enthusiasm, wanting for a short moment to pick the next book right up to see what happens next. Did I mention I like Mazrim Taim?

What I liked most
Mazrim Taim and his Asha’man at the end. Such flawless control (“Asha’man, do this! Asha’man, do that!”, and they all acted as one), wow.
Also, the fact that Loial may well have found his chosen one, I’m looking forward to see how this part develops :) (oh, and Mat is getting closer and closer to his Daughter of the Nine Moons too, ha! I’m so very looking forward to that too :) ).

What I liked least
(something that goes for the series so far on the whole)
show spoiler

Also, is it me or the vast majority of the words in the Old Tongue contain apostrophes? At first I loved seeing an apostrophe now and then, making a particular word look more exotic, but these days I think the Old Tongue is suffering for a sort of apostrophe overload :(

Recommend it to?
Anyone who has a great deal of patience and is curious what happens next. Take heart, there’s only a few more books left :)

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This book is a sequel to:
The Eye of the World | The Great Hunt | The Dragon Reborn | The Shadow Rising | The Fires of Heaven

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Summary: At nineteen, Mayella Ewell had a very hard life, surrounded by people who only expected her to work for their welfare. The only friendly face in the neighborhood was Tom, a black guy who used to pass by the house on his way home, and sometimes stopped to give Mayella a hand with her chores. This Tom was young too, and so it was only a matter of time until Mayella started to get interested in him more than she should have.

Well, suffice it to say that it all ends with a trial, where Tom is judged for beating and raping young Mayella. It is thus that the paths of Tom and Atticus Finch meet, for an experience that neither Atticus nor his family will soon forget.

General impression
There is a bit of a contradiction here: I liked this book a lot, and yet when I put it down I couldn’t help being disappointed. Everything is in the right place, and yet … I expected it to be a lot more intense. I couldn’t get drawn in, and I felt like I was watching Maycomb and its characters through a window, instead of feeling in their midst. I have no idea how that happened, except perhaps my expectations were way too high: having heard so many good things about it throughout the years, I was expecting something deep, profound, Earth-shattering, and I only got a few events’ worth of story instead.

It is of course obvious that I haven’t tapped in all its hidden wealth of themes and symbolism (themes such as that of hidden talents, such as Calpurnia’s knowing how to read, or Atticus being such a great shot; symbols as Atticus’ shooting the rabid dog, having only one shot to rescue his neighbors, while being blinded by the lack of glasses being a foreshadowing of his one shot at saving Tom, through the legal system who is said to be also blind — although we know it’s not, as their decision is not taken on objective reasons); but still I feel I would have liked something more intense to go by (I think that this is an effect of the age we live in, of the contemporary books and movies that we’re currently exposed to perpetually trying to shock out hearts out, so much so that we have grown jaded, and as such is rather hard for some of us, some of the younger generations at least, not to feel like there’s something missing in a nice & tame old-fashioned novel like TKAM is) (although, in my defense, I don’t remember feeling this kind of disappointment when reading Jane Austen, whom I love, or Jane Eyre for example, so my theory is definitely not set in stone — yet I am sure I would have loved this book a lot more had I read it say twenty years ago).

Characters
I loved the characters, how could I not. While there are some who call all of them stereotypical (Atticus = the white guy who could do no wrong; Calpurnia = the black maid who knows her place and takes care of the children; Scout = the precocious tomboy; Boo = the town eccentric; Bob Ewell = the illiterate redneck; and so on), I will also say that I enjoyed meeting most of them.

My favorite character was (oh how predictable) Atticus Finch, for all his maturity, his principles, the way he struggled to be a role model for his children, no matter how hard it was, or whether the battle he embarked upon had an already decided outcome or not (remember what he told his children on the night Mrs. Dubose died? “Courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what“). However, most of all I liked him for the fact that he literally could do no wrong (or at least he does not do it within the pages of the book). Sure, that might sound boring and one dimensional, but to me it was a welcome break from the quotidian :)

The most complex character of them all I thought was Mayella, so she’s almost a second favorite of mine, because of the sorry life she was condemned to. Illiterate and lonely, at the hands of a violent father — I don’t think life could get much worse. Not to mention that the poor thing is not very bright, so the chances that one day she’ll be able to build a better existence for herself are virtually nil. This is why, although she is closer to being a negative character rather than a positive, I couldn’t help caring for her, rather than the opposite.

Other than that, the rest of the cast are also likable (of course, almost everybody in this book is), but nothing out of the ordinary. I liked the way Scout was shaping up her vision of the world, following her father’s example; the way Jem kept caring for his little sister; the manners Calpurnia taught; the fact that Atticus’ brother, Jack, had life principles very similar to Atticus’ own; Miss Maudie and her azaleas; and so on. All sorts of little warm and fuzzy moments, I like to call them :)

Plot
There is not much of a plot to speak of (and I imagine that some of my disappointment with the book stems from here), as everything revolves around Tom’s trial and its effects on the life of the small town where Tom and the rest lived.

Setting
This is where the genius of Ms. Lee shines through: when it comes to the setting. The author has been influenced heavily by her own childhood, spent in a small Southern town, when she created Maycomb, and it shows. You can feel the said setting living and breathing, and the interactions between people are very believable (even for someone such as myself, who’s never seen a small American town in her life). In a way, Maycomb is a character just like Atticus is, among other things because of the collective prejudice towards black people that almost everybody shared.

Maycomb is also shown to be a paradise for children, such as Scout and Jem, a place to spend the days in childish adventures of one sort or another — it even has its very own boogeyman, aptly nicknamed Boo, a source of wonder and fear for our small heros to fight and eventually overcome.

Thoughts on the title
The title represents the most obvious symbol/theme of the book (one that even I have managed to discern, ha!): the death of innocence. The wording is taken from something that Calpurnia once said, “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.“. There are two such “mockingbirds” in the novel, Tom Robinson and Arthur Radley. Unfortunately one of them ends up being killed, and only a handful of characters realize how much of a sin that was — at least the other’s fate is set in fairer hands, and he is free to go.

Thoughts on the ending
Predictable.
show spoiler

What I liked most
Although Atticus discouraged them, I was enchanted by the children’s attempts to get Boo Radley to join them for an ice cream. To me it was the perfect manifestation of their innocence and kindness, the way they saw a lonely person (which they imagined to be miserable because of that) and tried their best to “cure” his loneliness the best way they knew how.

What I liked least
There’s nothing that I have actually disliked. It was a nice book overall :)

Recommend it to?
Everyone, since it’s one of the classics :)

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Summary: Meggy’s father, a dedicated alchemist, one day figured that he shouldn’t pay an assistant since he has a son of his own, of about the right age. He sent the child’s mother a letter, summoning him to London, and then waited. To his surprise, the son turned out to be a girl instead of a boy, and one with cripple legs to boot. Thus Meggy Swann (’cause she is the son-turned-daughter) suddenly finds herself in a strange and frightening city, with a father that could not care less about her, and separated from her only friend, a goose named Louise. Her simple life is shaken one day by her overhearing her father plotting to kill a certain baron — she felt she should intervene, but how, since she is just a poor girl with crooked legs?

First of all, here’s what the author has to say about the way the book was born (from the book’s Amazon page):

“Alchemy and Meggy Swann started, as all my books do, with a “what if?” What if there was a man who was a poisoner in Queen Elizabeth’s court? Why did he do it? How did he feel about what he did? The idea of making the man an alchemist came later. What great cover, I thought, for a poisoner. So I immersed myself in the arcana of alchemy and the alchemist’s search for transformation.

And then, as in all my books, the focus changed to a girl–his daughter–how she felt and what she did. Transformation? Did Meggy seek to be transformed? How and why, I wondered. And so her wabbling was born.”

A wonderful idea, but unfortunately I wasn’t particularly fond of the execution. Sure, the book starts out great, and Meggy is an interesting and colorful character, but the good things kinda stop here. Imagine that Meggy spends the best part of the first 100 pages simply walking around London, going from place to place. This made the pacing feel quite slow, and I was a bit sad about it, since it all started out rather promising, becoming almost a chore later on.

Since a lot of space it taken by Meggy’s travels, there are fewer pages left for characterisation than I would have liked. Meggy’s father for example is quite one-sided, he only cares about his experiments and would do anything to continue them, and that’s about it. Sure, he does show a bit of consideration for Meggy now and then, but his efforts are too tiny to be actually worth considering and/or making the reader feel the guy actually had feelings. Roger, on the other hand, is a nice enough guy, but his friendship with Meggy felt a bit out of the blue to me, and only there for the plot’s sake as at first there was nothing those two had in common (plus Meggy had quite a temper, not exactly the kind that encourages people to get close).

Alas, at least Meggy’s character is the most fleshed of them all. At thirteen, she’s had quite a rough life, in a time when most people believed that physical deformities are the ways the devil marks his own people, and with practically no parents to speak of (she hadn’t even known she had a father until very recently). Somewhat aggressive on the outside, she has her heart in the right place and she’s particularly good with children. A bit of a poet and not afraid to work hard, she never lets herself be discouraged by the difficulties surrounding her, and I admired her for that. Interestingly enough, her best friend, the goose, is very similar to her, as they share both the physical problems (there is something wrong with Louise’s wings), and the façade they offer to the outside world (a mighty temper).

A thing that the author does very well is bringing that time and place to life. One can almost smell the smells and see the sights that London presents to her unwary visitor. Also, I have found quite interesting the fact that Ms. Cushman has tried to preserve the language of those times, giving the book a special flavor. I liked that quite a bit. I also doubt it’s that good an idea since this is supposedly a book for grades 5-8, and the younger children may be put off by the sheer amount of unknown words, but overall I still liked the idea nevertheless :)

Thoughts on the title: A bit confusing, since I didn’t find that alchemy and Meggy Swann had that much in common. Basically, Meggy finds out what alchemy is, that’s most of their connection. Would have preferred a title that represented the book a wee bit better.
(There was a hint somewhere that the alchemy in the title was not to be taken literally, since it refers to the way Meggy’s relationship with her father transformed throughout the book, but all I can say to this is “Really??”, that’s how far-fetched it seems to me.)

Thoughts on the ending: Quite predictable and also somewhat disappointing, because for me it seemed that all the plot threads came together too easy, skirting plausibility for the sake of everyone ending up happy. show spoiler

What I liked most: Hats off to the author and her research. I have really enjoyed reading about what alchemy is and what alchemists of the time thought (especially as the idea is explained a bit more in depth in the after-word).

In the alchemist’s own words, here’s what he was trying to discover:

“[...] I seek to break apart by art things combined by nature, to transform and purify them until I have a substance so pure, it can purify other matter. This substance [...] when cast upon the imperfect will perfect it. [...] Making gold is but a step in the process of transformation [...]. Base metal is an imperfect or diseased state of gold, the perfect metal. When I discover the means of transforming base metal into gold, I can apply that method to other substances, even living things, and perfect them in their nature.”

And more:

“All substances are composed of the same matter. [...] Their differences are due to the presence of different qualities imposed upon them, such as redness or hardness or coldness. By taking away those qualities, I hope to isolate the prime material of a substance, and then, by adding other qualities, to transform its very essence.”

I find this fascinating, as I have never thought about things that way :)

What I liked least: show spoiler

Recommend it to? Fans of Karen Cushman or of 16th century London.

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Summary: The son of a deaf woman, Moses was born in a belfry, near bells. Not only his tiny hearing was not affected by them (his ears were formed around their sounds, it’s his explanation), it was also enhanced. He could hear sounds that most people couldn’t, and he delighted in them, storing them in his memory for later on, taking particular joy in the ringing of the great bells. “For every sound ever made was trapped in the metal of those bells, and the instant my mother struck them, she released their beauty to the world.”

The story begins in a small Swiss village, where the people wanted to build bells for the glory of God. Unfortunately they could find no experienced bell-maker, so they cast them themselves. In their enthusiasm, the three resulting bells were so big that they actually deafened people who happened to be nearby when they rung. And so it is that the bells would not have been rung ever again after the first try, if it wasn’t for a “dumb idiot girl” who, feeling the vibrations, thought them so wonderful she wanted to experience them again and again. She got up into the belfry and, using the mallets the villagers had created for that purpose, she struck the bells again, and again, in order to enjoy the way they made her feel.

Years later, the girl, now a woman and still ringing the bells every day, gave birth to a baby boy. A boy whom she cared for as well as she could, and who was thought by the villagers to be deaf and dumb too. He was perfectly fine though, and, when his secret was discovered, his own father threw him into the river to get rid of him, afraid the boy will reveal the identity of the father and shame him. Luckily for the boy, he was fished out by a monk called Nicolai, who named him Moses (after the baby boy who was once born by the river to the pharaoh’s palace) and vowed to take care of him as best he could.

Thus little Moses was taken to the St. Gall Abbey, where a new cathedral was just being built. It is there where he discovered the joy of music, and where others discovered his beautiful voice. It is also the place where his body will be changed forever, and his heart too, as he will fall in love.

The book is promoted as being like Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, only with sounds. Well, I loved Perfume just as much as the next one, but I think the comparison does not make justice to the book. There is indeed a similarity, that where Perfume takes place in a world comprised almost entirely of smells, Moses’s world comprises almost entirely of sounds. Only, Perfume is nothing more than a quest of a madman to find the perfect smell — and I found this book so much more than that. Moses’ life is not an easy one, but riddled with challenges, taking the reader on a ride in his quest to find his one and only perfect love.

Speaking of perfect love, I liked the fact that Amalia, Moses’ love interest, has a pronounced limp (due to an accident in her childhood), because it separated her from the cliche beautiful-rich-girl type, and it also allowed her to show character (as she never let her deformity be in the way of the things she wanted to do). Speaking of which, no one in the book is actually flawless: Nicolai has a great heart, and he “never lost sight of the beauty of the world, no matter how obscured was God’s great puzzle.“, but he was also consumed by the pleasures of the flesh (a thing that will lead him to his death later on); Remus also has a good heart, and he is very learned, but he is “wolfish”, very aloof, bordering on aggressive to those who do not keep their distance; even Guadagni has his heart in the right place, only he lets his fierce pride blind him now and then.

A quote I liked:

“I’ve got a lot to lose. I love so many things. Too many, the abbot would say. Too much. Shed a little love, he’d suggest. Cure yourself of that sin. But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of, don’t you see? That’s exactly my biggest fear, what keeps me awake every night. What I fear is this: I’ll wake up the next morning and everything is just the same, the world is the world, but all the love I feel for it has vanished, and I realize that all along my love was only a disease — like small pox of the soul.”

Thoughts on the title: Perfect. Because all the important moments of Moses’ life have been marked by the sounds of bells: his mother’s bells, even before he was born; the bells of the abbey, saving him from self-harm; the huge bell of Stephansdom twice, once showing him the way, once being an ally to his plans. Not to mention that to Moses everyone is a bell, ringing with the sounds around him/her.

Thoughts on the ending: Also close to perfect. Believable, which is what matters most.

What I liked most: The writing, the writing, and the writing one more time. The writing was beautiful (despite the author’s tendency to compare things to bells hung up from the sky a bit too often; not that I didn’t love this metaphor, on the contrary, the first time I saw it — when Moses, hitting the high notes, felt like he was lifted off the ground, his whole being vibrating like a bell hanging from the sky — I was charmed.)

What I liked least: Not a fault of the book’s (which is close to faultless in my eyes), but I would have wanted to find out a bit more about the relationship between Remus and Nicolai.

Recommend it to? Everyone who likes intense love stories, historical fiction, and/or beautiful writing :)

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Summary: A total eclipse of the sun is approaching and the police in Santa Mondega has the situation only partly under control. A savage serial killer is on the prowl, and the situation sounds so complicated that a new detective from the division dealing with the supernatural is brought in on the case (although no one actually takes him or his division seriously). It is he who makes the most important discovery of all: one thing the victims all had in common was that they borrowed from the library the same book, a book with no name and no known author.

Add to that the fact that a mysterious blue stone, the Eye of the Moon, has been stolen from its rightful owners and is somewhere in town. Almost every character in the book wants to get his or her hands on it (the rest wanting to stay as far away from it as possible), because, in the hands of the wrong person, it can alter Santa Mondega forever, and definitely not in a good way.

There are a lot of strange and colorful characters in the book, and, while we don’t get to actually know them all, their trajectory within the pages is bound to keep the reader interested. To name a random one, we have the King, a hitman who always dresses like Elvis and takes pleasure in torturing his victims. We have Jessica, a mysterious woman with quite a temper, that always, unexpectedly, manages to dodge death. There are also Kyle and Peto (two innocent monks from far away, very skilled when it comes to fighting), Carlitos and Miguel, the two inseparable minions of the most powerful guy in town (who both chose Lone Ranger costumes in a particular, dress-up day), Bourbon Kid (a guy who goes crazy, killing everyone in sight whenever his lips touch bourbon), and many more.

It is actually hard to tell who the good guys are, because in a rotten town like Santa Mondega no one is remotely good. Everyone has flaws, no one shies away from a bit of killing or stealing, and so on. And yet different people at different times show that there is more to them than their money-oriented nature (Sanchez for example has feelings that can be almost categorized as tender for Jessica), so the reader always has someone to root for (and, interestingly enough, that someone may change from time to time according to the latest revelations presented in the book).

The book belongs to no set genre, being rather hard to categorize. A thing I have found very funny was that parts of it seem straight out of a cowboy movie (although the setting is contemporary): there are bars filled with people hostile to strangers, no one hesitates to draw their guns at the least hint of a conflict, some people do get shot, and so on. While I am aware there is a whole Western genre out there, I have never read one such book, so I was excited to discover this side of the book for its sheer novelty.

Thoughts on the title: I am somewhat amused at the idea of marketing this book as the one mentioned inside it :) (sure, there are no actual similarities between the two, as that book is old, and is handwritten, and has pictures and this one doesn’t, but still :) )

Thoughts on the ending: I am actually left with a lot of questions: show spoiler

What I liked most: The writing style is similar to Robert Rankin’s, Tom Holt’s, or perhaps Lemony Snicket’s, sprinkled with witty phrases, playing with the absurd. I enjoyed it, of course, and I also enjoy the mystery around the author, who is yet unknown despite having written a sequel to the book since.
(a detail that I have found amusing is that somewhere in town there’s a Cafe Ole Au Lait :) )

What I liked least: Perhaps the fact that one of the main mysteries of the book is revealed out of the blue, with no hint leading up to it, so it felt more like “yeah right, as if” than anything else.
show spoiler

Recommend it to? I have no idea who to recommend this to. At times it is interesting and fun, at times less so. It seems to be one of those books that polarize opinions, some people being thrilled with it while other hate its guts. By all means give it a try if you’re interested in a bit of mystery with a bit of paranormal and lots of blood mixed in.

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