Book Review: Brine and Bone, by Kate Stradling

Well, it’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it. But I’m here again, with a book review! Try to contain your excitement, please.

Today’s book: Brine and Bone, by Kate Stradling

TL;DR: This is the Little Mermaid retelling that I never knew I always wanted. The book is short (I believe it’s novella length), sweet, and completely not what I expected. The author’s preface begins with “Stop. If you’re expecting a clone of a certain redhead underwater songstress... prepare for disappointment.” But if you’re interested in a Little Mermaid retelling that actually addresses the foot-knives, the seafoam, and the rather unsatisfying ending—read it.

Rating: 4.5

What I liked:

The outstanding part of the story is how the perspective switch makes everything just work so well. It seems like such a little change, but it just made me love it. Stradling’s writing is also lovely and spare and really fits the fairy tale tone.

I enjoyed getting to know the main character, Magdalena, and learning about her backstory and her future. I liked the prince. I liked the magic involved—just enough to add excitement and some pretty severe problems without feeling like it was also going to be a deus ex machina.

Also, let’s just admire that pretty pretty cover for a minute. It fulfills one of my reading bucket list items for the year (a book with a typographical cover), and it’s fancy, so I give it extra imaginary points.

What didn’t work for me:

Two minor things come to mind.

I wish I understood a bit more about the characters’ backgrounds. They come with some pretty frustrating baggage attached, and while we get to see bits and pieces of how it all happened, I just wanted more.

The POV switch from first to third to first. I’m not sure if this was done to stay in keeping with other books in this series (it was my first Kate Stradling, but it won’t be my last), or if there was some other reason that is unclear to me as a reader. But... well, it was unclear to me as a reader, and I found it distracting. Still, it was only the bookends, so my brain will just pretend that it didn’t exist at all, and that works for me.

Clean rating: PG. There’s some pain and stabby-stabby feelings, but there’s no gore, no sex, nada. It’s a light read. I’m subtly trying to convince my 15yo to read it.

Last thoughts: Enjoyed it, LOVED the perspective switch, bought another one.

 

 

 

Book Review: Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

(Caveat: I read this a couple months back, so some of the details are going to be woefully wrong—like I can’t remember for sure if the rulers are tsars, but I think they are.)

Rating: 4.5 stars, maybe 5

Clean rating: 

PG-13, largely for thematic elements (it’s a harsh sort of life, there are demons and other evil beings, there’s a forced marriage in which the woman worries quite a bit over where the sex life is going to go, etc.). I didn’t find it unreasonable or gratuitous.

Overview: 

This book is an awesome, complex tale loosely based on Rumpelstiltskin, with nods to a number of other fairy tales (I caught Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, a couple others that seemed like maybes). It’s set in an Eastern European feeling world.

The story follows three women in very different situations, starting first with Miryem, the daughter of a Jewish moneylender, dealing with a lot of the real prejudices a Jewish moneylender would have faced in this kind of a world. Next is Wanda, a poor daughter of an abusive and drunken father. Finally is Irina, a rich noble who, despite her better economic situation, has very little control over her life, just like the others. Their stories start separate but interweave until they all work together.

What I liked:

This story was exactly my cup of tea. The characters are highly flawed in a lot of ways, including being sometimes downright unlikable—but they’re all in untenable situations and doing the best they can. I loved the writing. I loved the nods to fairy tales but how much richness was added to the narrative beyond the basics of a fairy tale. I liked the worldbuilding with strange fae-like characters (called the Staryk) whose motivations seem incomprehensible but maybe aren’t really, once you get down to the details. 

Plus, no spoiler here, but I thought the very ending (we're talking about the last couple paragraphs) was spot-on perfect. Love love loved it. I think the story may have earned an extra half a star from me for that alone. It’s certainly what left me smiling goofily and telling my husband all about it after I finished.

What I didn’t like:

I’m sure there was something here, but it fades. I don’t really think the story was perfect, but I enjoyed so much and felt like it all came together—even the things I didn’t like about it as I was reading it came together in a way that I felt satisfied with. I will say that as I was going, I was not convinced the author would resolve the romantic storylines in ways I felt good about, given that so many of the characters were selfish, incomprehensible, or sometimes downright evil. And I’m sure that those resolutions didn’t work for many readers—but for me, they did.

Other notes: 

In looking at other people’s reviews of the book, I began to consider the POV issue. This book is written from three main POV characters, but then there are another 2-4 minor POV characters thrown in as well. I didn’t have a difficult time figuring out who was speaking, though some readers complained about that. But I do think some of the POVs seemed unnecessary, and I didn’t love having them jump in just when I’d gotten used to how many POV characters we had. So if you have difficulties with multiple narrators, this is likely to be distracting and unpleasant to you. 

Final thoughts:

I enjoyed it. I know not everyone did, but I thought it was a wonderful book and if the POV thing and some sometimes-unlikable characters don’t throw you off, and if you love fairy tale retellings, you should read it. The end.

Book Review: Blackthorn and Grim series, by Juliet Marillier

Note: This review is about book 1 (Dreamer’s Pool) and book 2 (Tower of Thorns), sort of combined. I haven’t read book 3 (Den of Wolves) yet, but I’m looking forward to it. While I think you could probably read book 2 on its own if you really wanted to, I don’t think it works well as a stand-alone.

TL;DR: Read the clean rating section. If that doesn’t stop you from wanting to read these books, read them. If you’ve read and liked Marillier before, read them. If you like complicated characters with horrific backstories who are nevertheless doing their best to live reasonably decent lives, read them. They’re great.

Rating: 4.5

Clean rating: PG-13 definitely. Largely for thematic elements (there’s some pretty majorly violent/awful backstory for both our main characters, including rape, torture, injustice, and various other horrible events). The backstory is neither glorified nor described in depth, but it’s pervasive in how these characters experience life. The books are not light, fluffy reads, though I also didn’t find them dark and depressing.

Book 1 also has some sexual content that I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I don’t like reading the sexual elements (though there was not a lot of detail, and it was all told in a very repressive tone by a character who clearly didn’t approve of his own behavior). On the other hand, whereas some sex scenes are just thrown in for fun, the couple of incidents in this book are absolutely integral to the storyline.

So while I can’t recommend the books to various of my friends and family who I know share similar values, I have loved them and will continue to read them.

Short summary: Blackthorn is a healer who is too angry to want to heal anyone anymore. When she’s given a chance to escape a terrible situation or die, she takes the deal that lets her escape, even with some conditions on her freedom that tend to ... chafe. Grim is big, strong, and loyal to Blackthorn. He’s got his own ugly past to deal with. Together they get drawn into complicated challenges to help people who may or may not deserve help.

Blackthorn and Grim’s characters and growth create the series arc, along with some mysteries from their pasts. The individual challenges create the individual book arcs.

What I liked: Oh, Marillier. It’s probably easier for me to just skip to what I didn’t like. But I’ll hit the highlights here.

Blackthorn. Grim. Although I think I like Grim a little better. He is not my usual kind of character; I tend to like witty, funny, clever—though not obnoxiously charming. But Grim is wonderful. He’s strong, determined, steady, kind, loyal. The revelations of his backstory throughout book 2 didn’t surprise me overmuch, but they gave such lovely depth to him as a person. I kind of want to hug him—except that would be super weird, because he’s also kind of this huge ogre sort of a fellow. It would be kind of like hugging a slightly friendly rock.

Blackthorn, for all her thorniness, is a lovely character too. Not the sort of person you want to sit and chat with (she would hate that anyway), but reliable and stronger than she thinks. I like how we see both of them slowing growing and changing and softening. Plus, without giving spoilers, I love what happens with the characters in the end of book 2. It made me happy and sad and yelling-at-the-characters-for-their-idiocy all at the same time.

As with the other Marillier I’ve read, the writing is exquisite. The storytelling is excellent. The twists worked—though I figured out what was likely to happen with large parts of the plot, there were plenty of surprises along the way. And the stuff that wasn’t surprising was still an enjoyable journey.

What didn’t work for me: Ummm... I’m thinking... Okay, I do admit I would have preferred some sort of workaround for the sexual content in Dreamer’s Pool (although I giggled just a little bit every time the character mentioned his “manhood”).

I was about to go on a bit about how I had no idea how to pronounce stuff. But then I saw that book 2 had a pronunciation guide that I just missed. Oops. I listened to the first one, so I got pronunciation of names like Flidais (Fliddiss) and Emer (eh-ver!) and Laois (leesh!) from that. But in Tower of Thorns, I spent the entire book wondering how I was supposed to pronounce Geilèis (ge-lace, apparently). So I guess I can’t complain about that now.

Last words: I recently had a friend do a critique for me on some stuff I’m working on, and she compared the writing to Marillier, and I kind of wanted to reach through the computer and hug my friend and then do a little happy dance. If my stories could one day be classed even remotely close to Juliet Marillier, I would feel like I had won at all the things.

Book Review: A Bit of Magic, a fairy tale collection

Overall rating: 3.5­­ stars

In case you missed it, fairy tales are my thing, so I was already sold on the idea of another fairy tale collection. Because I’m not really sure there can ever be too many. Most of these stories were based on fairly well-known tales, but there were a few lesser-known as well. On the whole I really enjoyed this collection. There were a few stories that didn’t speak to me, as is always the case in a collection, and there were a few that I really loved.

The highlights, for me:

“Reed Girl, Fire Girl, Cloud Girl,” by Lynden Wade. Nothing truly unexpected happens here, but I just kind of loved watching these characters travel together and discover love. It had me from the get-go. This one had a really strong traditional fairy tale feeling too, which I loved.

“Bluebeard’s Wives,” by Mae Baum. Kind of the grittiest story, but that’s to be expected from a story that involves Bluebeard, am I right?* I loved setting this tale in the modern world and with a different explanation of the Bluebeard mythos. But really, it was the ending that sold me—it was so deeply satisfying to me. I just kind of cheered internally. “Take that!” However, this isn’t a story that I think most of my family and friends would appreciate quite so much. There was just something about it that made me happy.

“The Thief and the Spy,” by Katelyn Barbee. For me, absolutely the highlight of the collection. The rich setting of the piece, the main characters and their personal quandaries and struggles, the magic woven into the story so seamlessly that it just feels like a part of their world rather than an additional afterthought. I also loved the variations from and similarities to the various versions of “Cinderella.” Like the slight change in the arrangement of Asha’s family (there’s only one evil stepsister; the other is on her side), the explanation for why Asha’s dresses keep getting prettier, why she sticks around, etc. Just a delightful romantic read with a lot of other stuff going on in it.

Clean rating: PG mostly, but some PG-13 stories, largely for fairy tale-ish violence or for thematic elements (you just can’t get away from Bluebeard, remember). “Bluebeard’s Wives” and “Goodbye, Gigi” had the most, as I recall.

I received an ARC from the publisher, but my opinions were not influenced in any way.

* Please note my utter inability to use slang, even in writing. Because I just couldn’t imagine myself typing “amirite?” without laughing at how I sounded so very not like me.

Book Review: My Fairly Dangerous Godmother, by Janette Rallison

Rating: 3.5/5 stars (I reserve 4 and 5 stars for books that really struck me on a personal level or stuck with me in some deep way. This book was lots of fun but not, for me, super deep. I almost feel bad rating it only 3 stars, though, because it makes my feelings sound lukewarm. I wholeheartedly recommend Rallison as good solid fun, just not generally as particularly life-changing.)

Clean rating: G, totally G. Rallison tends to be that way. Super squeaky clean, which is something I love about her. I rarely have to worry that there’s anything offensive in her works.

Short summary: This is book 3 in a young adult series (but they are all stand-alone, just united by the same really lousy fairy godmother). Sadie has a horrifically embarrassing experience on a reality talent show, which earns her a pity fairy godmother and three wishes. Chrissy, her godmother, interprets her wishes in a predictably dreadful manner and sends Sadie to live in a fairy tale. It just gets worse from there.

Recommend it? Are you looking for something light and fluffy and fun? Also, can you tolerate painful embarrassment—as in, situations so dreadfully embarrassing, you cringe for the characters who are living through them? Do you think it would be fun living in a famous fairy tale? (You’re wrong, by the way.) Then this is good series for you to try.

Janette Rallison novels in general: In fact, especially if you enjoy the painfully embarrassing teenage scenes, I would recommend most of Janette Rallison’s novels. My favorite was Fame, Glory, and Other Things on My To-Do List, mostly because it had an absolutely fantastic, completely ruined staging of West Side Story. I would totally pay to see that performance. Just One Wish was also hilarious and one of my other favorites, while touching on more serious stuff than most of the others (the main character’s little brother has cancer). Mostly when I read Rallison, I think, “Wow, I’m glad my teenage years were not that horrendous.” But in a funny-painful way, not in a drama-angsty way.

What I liked: I enjoy the utter absurdity of Chrissy’s interactions with her charges and also how she interprets their wishes. I know I’ve already said the word “painful” several times, but that’s how it feels—painful the way that lots of people love America’s Funniest Home Videos (which I actually can’t stand; I prefer fictional emotional embarrassment to real physical pain). I also enjoy how Rallison addresses the inherent plot holes in our famous fairy tales—which I like to do as well—but in a very humorous way.

What didn’t work for me: I’m happy that Rallison has enough of a fan base that she makes money now independently publishing a lot of her books, but in this case I think she needed one more person to copyedit. There are just some minor things, and mostly they’re not distracting (well, except for one spot which was clearly marked as a sort of “to fix” item that didn’t get fixed). But to me they’re distracting, even though minor. Otherwise, I’m sure I could nitpick, but because it’s just a fun, fluffy novel, I’m not going to.

Last words: I really hope I never get Chrysanthemum Everstar as a fairy godmother. And if I do, I’m going to choose the wording of my wishes very, very carefully. I advise you to do the same.

Book Review: Silver in the Blood, by Jessica Day George

Rating: 4/5 stars

Clean rating: PG(ish), I guess maybe a bit more for violence—but it’s not gore and it’s totally appropriate to the story.

Short summary: Cousins Dacia (wild, flirtatious, big personality) and Lou (much quieter) are socialites in 1897 New York. They are on their way, separately, to Romania for the first time, to meet their extended family, the formidable Florescus. But, you know, Romania—watch out for vampires and gypsies and such. The Florescus just happen to be longstanding friends with the mysterious descendants of Vlad the Impaler (AKA Dracula), and it appears that Dacia and Lou are part of some nefarious plans, whether they like it or not.

Recommend it?: (Mild spoiler alert, concerning the topic of vampires.) Do you enjoy magic, paranormal beings, the idea of an old Romanian setting? Did you like George’s princess novels (Princess of the Midnight Ball, etc.)? Do you think Dracula-related lore is interesting, especially when it’s not the same-old neck biting? (Spoiler here: You don’t have to like vampires at all; there is no vampire action. Which is actually a great relief to some of us—like the ones who wanted to slap silly every single character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.) Then you should read it.

My 7yo daughter has recently been reading (and loving) some other Jessica Day George (Tuesdays at the Castle, which we’re listening to together, and Dragon Flight), as well as Gail Carson Levine (Stolen Magic) and Shannon Hale (Princess Academy novels), so I had to give some thought to whether I would let her read this one as well. Content-wise, I don’t have any problem with it. There is some scary stuff, and there is some blood and violence, but that’s not what stops me from recommending it to her. I don’t think I will just yet largely because thematically it’s a bit above her head. There’s romantic tension that she just doesn’t care about (yes, some of the others she’s read recently also contain romance, but not quite so integrally). There’s also family tensions and difficulties that I don’t think really get. So it’s not a matter of not letting her, it’s just that I don’t think it will draw her in yet. I’ll suggest it a few years down the road.

What I liked:

Format. The story alternates between Dacia and Lou’s perspectives, as well as including letters, journal entries, and a couple of telegrams and notes. I think this format works wonderfully for this type of story. Reading a letter from Dacia to Lou, knowing Lou wouldn’t get it until it was too late, heightened the tension and the frustration for the characters.

The Dracula tie-in. I am always a big fan of taking elements of a story that has reached pop culture saturation (like, say, Dracula) and devising alternate explanations, or adding to the story and backstory, or just messing with it. I enjoyed the way George messed with it.

What didn’t work for me:

Dacia’s reaction. I can’t be too specific about this without being a major spoiler. So I’ll try to talk around it a bit. Something vastly important happens to Dacia, and it really messes with her head. But the way she reacts didn’t ring very true to me. It seemed too big of a response, for reasons that I didn’t find wholly convincing. What was so frustrating here was that I felt like it could have been so easily corrected, just by emphasizing a few elements of the event a little more. It’s a minor quibble, though, and I just pretended that it had been written the way I wanted (hooray for the imagination!), so it worked out fine.

In short: It was not a perfect, luminous novel (see my Daughter of the Forest review), but it was highly readable, highly enjoyable if you like the genre. It left me happy I read it and still hearing the haunting words in my head, “I am the Claw. I am the Wing. I am the Smoke.”

Author Crush: Kiersten White

I have three qualifications for an author crush:

1. The author must have written something inconceivably awesome that makes me wildly jealous that I didn’t write it and may never write something that awesome.

2. The author must have some other quality that makes him/her shiny-spiffy aside from said inconceivably awesome book(s).

3. In most cases, the author’s awesome books must be books I can recommend to other people (therefore, generally fairly clean of swearing, sex, gore,* and general ickiness**).

I don’t have a lot of author crushes, but Kiersten White has made that list.

It started with Paranormalcy, which was an awesome title. This was a fun book—not mind-blowingly awesome to me, but a fun, clean, fantasy read. Plus it involved a girl who is so sparkly pink you kind of want to barf on her—in a happy, loving way. Because she has things like a sparkly pink Taser, and really, who doesn’t want one of those?*** The other two books in the series were fun too, though Paranormalcy was my favorite.

So I kind of loved Kiersten White a little bit already.

Partially it was silly things—like the way her character said “bleeping” instead of swearing (and she had a backstory for this, so it fit the character). Partially it was that in a realm of YA fantasy/paranormal wherein sex and sexual tension always kind of made me gag, roll my eyes, or want to throw the book in the trash, here was a paranormal that felt like good clean fun.

But if it had just been the Paranormalcy series, I probably wouldn’t have loved Kiersten White enough to gush about her here. What really did it for me was Mind Games. I bought it on a whim, on a Kindle deal, because I knew the author’s name and suspected I could trust it to be not trashy. It turned out to be so much more.

I thought Mind Games was unequivocally amazing. It’s a psychological thriller with a bit of scifi/magic (it depends on how you look at the powers involved—reading people’s thoughts and such; there’s theoretically science behind it, but that doesn’t matter to the story—so it’s essentially magic).

Why was it amazing? The essential brokenness of the main character was, I thought, well-written and believable. The plot, the complexities the characters had to deal with, and the eventual resolution of the difficulties—awesomesauce. When you’re sitting there looking at the characters and screaming with them at what they are dealing with, that’s good stuff. Also, the switching between timelines kept me on my toes, heightened suspense, and made me want to see what happened next (my dishes and laundry did not thank White, but oh well).

If Mind Games wasn’t enough, its sequel, Perfect Lies, was equally gripping. Everything just got worse and worse for the main characters (and I was happy to see Annie, who I didn’t really like in the first book, get super-cool by the end of this one). And then it got resolved! Hoorah! But there were still scars, still problems that the characters would have to deal with—probably for the rest of their lives. Which I think is fair and fitting and, for me, deeply satisfying. To have suffered so much and come out unscathed would have felt fake.

Speaking of the suffering, I will add this caveat: I have recommended Mind Games to some others, and I know that for one, the story and the psychological trauma and violence was too much. So it’s not exactly gentle. But I thought it was incredible.

Okay, so now I’m hooked on Kiersten White’s writing, but who is she as a person? When I like someone’s writing this much, I sometimes like to know a bit about what they’re like in the real world. It turns out that, judging from her tweets and blogging, she is funny, delightful, supportive, and kind of sparkly. So she’s awesome. Check. I will now read pretty much anything she writes.

Which brings us to the next book, In the Shadows. This was quite interesting, simply because of its format. In the Shadows is part regular novel and part graphic novel (that part is written by Jim DiBartolo). It alternates between two stories that are clearly linked, but the linkage is not explained until very near the end. I spent a great deal of the book having no clue how the two stories matched up (this is partially due to the fact that I was hung up on “Maple Leaf Rag,” which was not even remotely written when I thought it was—but that’s beside the point). It took me longer to get into this book, probably mostly because I’m not very visual (it was about a third of the way through the book before I realized that the character in the graphic novel section was all the same guy—even though he clearly had a scar through his eye that I just never noticed—because I’m observant like that). I enjoyed it and was happy to see White do something very different and have fun with it.

Also note: All her covers
are so pretty you could pretty
much crush on them too.

Since then I have also read The Chaos of Stars, a lovely story about complicated family relationships, a dreamy boy, and also Egyptian gods. Here’s another event that shows my love of Kiersten White: I wanted to read it without ever having read the book flap. If you know my reading habits, you know how unusual this is. I read cover copy obsessively; I read front matter—heck, I even read the copyright page!**** I never choose books without knowing what they’re about. Ever.

So far, even though I have not loved all her books equally, I have enjoyed each of them. I also love that she has tried out some different ways of telling stories (most notably in In the Shadows). And not once have I felt icky from reading them, which is a big deal to me. It’s lovely to have an author you love and who feels morally good. It’s hard to describe what I mean here, but it’s something I appreciate. So go buy her books—lots of them! Or at least go read them and talk about them and make other people buy them too.

Kiersten White has at least one new book coming in the fall (Illusions of Fate), and I’m super excited to read it. I may even buy it early (which is a huge compliment because even though I love books I’m also pretty cheap, especially if I haven’t read the book yet). I will also continue to internet stalk her in a friendly, nonpsychotic way, because I think she’s shiny. And someday, should I get the chance to meet her, I will probably say something incredibly stupid like I did that time I literally walked into Shannon Hale.***** Because that’s just how cool I am.

* Violence is okay; gore is not so much.

** Don’t ask me to define this. It’s totally subjective.

*** Okay, I don’t want one of those. But I appreciate the contrast so much that I kind of love it even when I don’t.

**** I’m not kidding.

***** Here’s what I said: “You’re Shannon Hale.” Here’s what she said: “Yes, I am.”