Book Review: Dream Weaver, Jane Yolen

Dream Weaver by Jane Yolen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book changed me. Huddled low in a library, trying to avoid the helpful gaze of a librarian and bored beyond all hope of salvation while my dad was busy talking to someone else, I plucked this slim volume off the shelf and decided to go ahead and read it. Don't misconstrue me and suppose that I didn't enjoy reading, I did. However, reading hadn't yet blossomed into a full-fledged hobby for me. I was pretty young and still reading mid-grade chapter books, at best, and teachers were still telling us that a lack of pictures and book length were some of the most important characteristics of any given text. This felt naughty. Some ten full page illustrations ornamented it's meager eighty pages of transporting storytelling.
I remember the first time I looked at the copyright page and saw that Dream Weaver was published in 1979. It was like Jane Yolen had written it just for me because she knew I'd been born. I know she didn't, but it felt that way, nonetheless.
The Tree's Wife particularly resonated with me at the time, and since then dryads have come to hold the foremost place in my heart with regards to mythic creatures. I keep a copy of this book near my bed, beside Faery Flag, just in case I need a good short bedtime story for one of my kids.
I love this book.

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Book Review: Endless by Amanda Gray

Endless by Amanda Gray
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Juxtaposing recurring fire and ice, warmth and cold throughout her accessible prose, Amanda Gray mesmerizes the reader in her tale of reincarnation, dreams, friendship, loss, and yet another round at the Ouija board gone queer. From her gloves that hide a secret to the photo of her long dead mother, Jenny is a parfait of mystery. When a deeper mystery paints itself into her picture, she and her friends pull together to unravel it before it unravels everything that matters to her.

Endless was a pleasant bedtime read, with solid characters and a plot that keeps going right through the last page. With just enough closure for a stand alone, but even more to recommend future visits into Jenny's future, I'd be shocked if a second book isn't on it's way soon, and I look forward to finding out how the story continues.

Although the cast is a pretty homogeneous group of white folk, they all come alive as independent strings on the same violin- each resonating with a different tension. I would have liked to have a little more insight into Jenny's dad and her best friend Tiffany's characters, but the story isn't over just yet.

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Timepiece, by Myra McEntire: a Review

Timepiece by Myra McEntire

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I feel like Ms McEntire underestimates her readers. I don't believe that reducing 90% of her main character's interactions to hormones and sexuality helps keep the reader's attention, but rather paints the main character as disturbingly immature.
I'm sure this is just personal, but I liked each and every one of the characters better when viewed from Emerson's perspective in Hourglass, and I don't think the choice to write Hourglass from Kaleb's was a good one. While it opened the door for a whole new budding romance without having to go the overdone route of girl meets boy and falls in love in book one, and in book two gets drawn away by someone else, only to reunite with Mr. Right in book three, I don't think picking the budding alcoholic and outward chauvinist to be the center of the tale was a great idea.
Sorry, it just didn't do it for me.

Hopefully the third installment in the series will redeem it. Yes, you read that correctly, I do intend to finish what I started and see the whole series through to the end. If nothing else, the premise is just too interesting to not keep giving it another try.
Fingers crossed and allons-y.

Hourglass, by Myra McEntire: a Review

Hourglass by Myra McEntire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An interesting and fun time travel novel, but I do have to say, what's with the cryptic overprotective men?  I'm getting so tired of reading about them.

It's hard to properly review a novel that raises a lot of questions but resolves next to nothing. While the premise is both strong and intriguing, and the characters seem to have a lot of fertile soil in which McEntire has planted the seeds of interest and and deep backstory, I'm concerned that they haven't been properly watered. Here's to hoping.

The Waste Lands, by Stephen King: a Review

The Waste Lands by Stephen King

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Deus ex Machina, only more like Demon ex Machina in this case, is a plot device of which I'm quite weary. The items which make it difficult for me to say "I liked it," are the gratuitous rape scene, the puppet-like quality to all characters encountered by our ka-tet, and the utter lack of originality in terms of the nomenclature of rudeness. I still think Mid-World is some extremely distant future version of our own world, but that doesn't mean that cultures can't be far enough removed from the here and now, on occasion, that maybe a vulgar cretin addressing a woman rudely might not immediately fall back on slurs regarding her reproductive organs or the use thereof. When the same characters are talking to men in a similar tone, they're not referred to as, now I must stop myself, is there a word quite as vulgar and offensive as the "C Word" for describing the male anatomy. I suppose there isn't, and if the men in this book were addressed by it, I'd obviously have learned it. Similarly, the men aren't insulted by labels of sexual appetite, and I felt that even if the characters in this otherwhenly world are sexist jerks, King could have at least been more creative with it.
This book also stirred up some cognitive dissonance with the issue of equating mental illness with danger. That's an overdone theme, and an inaccurate one. Most mentally ill individuals are not dangerous. Yes, specific mental illnesses carry greater propensity toward actions which endanger others, King's series seems to be going quite overboard with this theme.
I want to know if Roland makes it to the Dark Tower. I really do. There were parts of this book that I found deeply compelling, but King is making it hard for me to like the journey.
One final criticism- Eddie's character, after they begin meeting other MidWorld inhabitants, seems hasty and sloppy. He seems to be falling apart, slipping from full bodied character down into illogically driven occasional plot device.

Ingo, by Helen Dunmore: a Review

Ingo by Helen Dunmore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of my favorite stories.
Athough the pace of the writing is somewhat slow, the tale itself wove together like a net ready to catch the reader and hold the reader transfixed.
Dunmore's elegant and eloquent use of vivid description throughout the tale creates an atmosphere which encourages the reader to forget that ze is breathing air while reading about swimming in the deep.
Told with remarkable emotional acuity and dealing with deep yet pervasive issues like abandonment and split families, Dunmore does an excellent job of rendering lifelike and deeply believable characters, the believability of whom is magnified, rather than reduced, through juxtaposition with the otherwordly undersea folk.
I highly recommend this book to anyone over the age of 8, and particularly to anyone staring wistfully or woefully out to sea.

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern: a Review

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A bedtime story of the best kind, The Night Circus transport the reader into myriad points in time and space connected by the thread of a dream made real through the efforts of the characters.

I wondered, in the beginning, if I could grow to love a story written in the present tense, but I did. The Night Circus was beautiful, detailed, and filled with not only sights and sounds, but weight, density, and scents.

A highly enjoyable and mesmerizing tapestry of lives, read this if you need a good dose of the transcendent injected into the mundane motions of your daily life.

The Floating Islands, by Rachel Neumeir: A Review

The Floating Islands by Rachel Neumeier

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Familiar but resonant themes coupled with a detailed and fantastic world filled with magery, adventure, war, and characters who are, at their core, all too human, make for an enjoyable read.
Neumeier's treatment of issues like loyalty, duty, orphanhood, the challenges of trying to fit in when one is of two places yet fully of neither, racial and gender roles, and the struggle for individuality make for a well rounded tale that though unearthly, rings true.
At times the plot seemed too neatly contrived, and at others the action seemed sudden and weight of detail awkward, but overall it was a smooth read and the characters were nearly all quite likeable.  I enoyed the fact that even adversaries are, for the most part, written as people with different interests and different values, rather than as entirely evil.
Far too often the good guys are too good, and the bad guys too bad, leaving tales bereft of nuance.  Neumeier manages to create characters who behave predominantly as individuals without taking on the weighty cowl of classic archetypes.  This isn't to say that the archetypes don't make their appearances, but rather, that the characters are not defined solely by them.
More than the complexity of the story, for truly, the story was at times quite predictable, I enjoyed reading it knowing it was the sort of book I could comfortably set in front of a child who enjoyed fantasy stories of adventure and magic, without any concern for exposing ze to foul language or anything sordid.
If you're looking for a good wholesome adventure, it's definitely worth putting on your "Want to Read" list.

C

Clockwork Princess, by Cassandra Clare

Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I am erring on the generous side with four stars. My better judgment says three stars, or somewhere in between. However, math says that if it's three and a half, you round up because it will result in an even number. Therefore, I went with four.

I stayed up far too late to finish this book. It was fast paced, engaging, somewhat (quite?) predictable, with glimmers of gratification that push you toward the next. The details were substantial and even occasionally included how things smelled. I always like it when a writer remembers that there are more senses than sight and hearing.  However, there were a good many times when it felt like Clare was on a fan-girl binge, lifting text from other novels, rearranging the particulars in a way that reminded me of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, so it would fit the narrative. A sentence here or there of para-quoting makes me smile. Lengthy paragraphs invokes groaning, and also meters my esteem for this work.

Another problem with this particular text is that too often, I feel, characters behave in accordance with the needs of the plot rather than the idiosyncrasies of their characters established in the two previous books. The Clockwork Prince raised my expectations, and these moments didn't meet those expectations. These moments are not horribly glaring, but at times, words and actions and character didn't meld as well as I had expected. Any of my other grouses would be spoilers, but suffice it to say that while I wanted the ending and the fan girl in me was overjoyed, the literary critic in me was disappointed.

Don't mistake my reservations for condemnation. I enjoyed Clockwork Princess, and if you read and liked Clockwork Prince, as I recommended, you'll enjoy this too. Just read it for what it is and have fun with it.