I've seen other people posting round ups of what they did this month - I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon!
At the end of December I said one of my New Year's resolutions was to blog consistently - which for me meant 3 times a week. It's the one resolution I've been able to keep so far, actually. This is my 28th post of the month, which means I averaged a post a day! I know in reality I took some days off, and I probably won't keep up this pace all year, but it's a little exciting.
That pace was helped along by the Bloggiesta at the beginning of the month. All that work in one weekend has certainly helped my blog. I was able to focus on setting goals for my blogging, standardizing things like my tags, and of course a bunch of people found the blog and have stuck around since then! I also added a ton of new blogs to my reading list over the course of the month, and seeing all of those other bloggers and their regular posts inspires me to keep going with my own blogging and reviewing, and can inspire me to make my thoughts on one of their posts into a whole new post over here.
January also brought a flurry of controversy over the Magic Under Glass cover. While Bloomsbury is changing the jacket on that particular book, it's clear the fight is far from over. Huffington Post ran an article that totally missed the point of our anger over whitewashing.
Of the 28 posts this month, less than half were actually reviews. The review with the most comments was for The Devil's Kiss. My favorite of all the books I reviewed was King of the Screwups, with The Rock and the River in a close second.
Well, I have two bags worth of library books I need to tackle, plus two reviews for books I finished this weekend to set up for later this week. Seriously, the ability to schedule posts is the only reason I've been able to blog as regularly as I have!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Review: King of the Screwups by K.L. Going
Found via: Kirkus Best of '09
I think all of us book nerds are happiest when we find a book that is truly engaging - not only can't we put it down, but we aren't even aware time has passed. Here in New York, the general consensus seems to be that a book is truly great if it makes you miss your subway stop. King of the Screw Ups didn't actually make me miss my stop - but that's only because I looked up after thinking I'd only been on the train for 5 minutes and instead found myself 6 stops from home (there are 17 stops between work and home). After that I made myself look at what stop we were at constantly, because while it's a high compliment for a book, it's still really annoying to miss your stop!
Liam is the son of a high powered CEO and a former supermodel - and much to his father's chagrin, he's taken more after his mother than his father. Liam brings home average grades (his father thinks anything less than an A is worthless), designer clothes, and far too many girls to fool around with. After one screw up too many, his dad is kicking him out of the house, sending him off to live with grandparents who hate him.
Luckily for Liam, his mom intervenes, and arranges for him to go live with his "Aunt Pete" behind his father's back. Pete is Liam's gay, cross-dressing, glam-rocking, trailer-living uncle who's been estranged from Liam's father and grandparents for years. And while he wants a relationship of some kind with Liam, he's really not sure he's the man to be trusted with straightening out whatever problems Liam is having.
Liam goes from living in an opulent home with a manicured lawn and massive closet space, to sharing a trailer with a dusty yard and absolutely zero closets, not even an iron to help keep his wardrobe pristine. After a shaky start at school, Liam determines that he should aim to be the geekiest, least popular kid in the school, totally devoted to his studies and geeky pursuits like the AV club. He's also on a mission to befriend Darleen, Pete's next door neighbor, the cousin of one of Pete's best friends, and also the most unpopular girl in school. Darleen, however, sees right through Liam's attempts and is convinced he wants to be popular and is trying to befriend her in an attempt to humiliate her.
But it seems that even when he's trying to screw up, Liam keeps screwing up even more. Every attempt at being unpopular blows up in face. He and Pete butt heads constantly in their small shared space, over everything from school to fashion. Liam isn't sure that he can be all his father wants him to be - but what other options does he have?
There was so much I loved about this book I'm not entirely sure where to begin! I loved how there was almost no conflict about Pete's sexual orientation - the only hate comes from Liam's dad (who has lots of issues with Pete; his sexual orientation is only one of them) and a bigoted bus driver who kicks Liam off the bus mostly because he has a gay uncle. None of the teenagers Liam hangs out with cares about Pete, and nothing is mentioned about Orlando, who appears to be openly dating Pete, being a high school English teacher. I found it very refreshing that Pete's orientation was only one part of his personality. He doesn't even cross-dress that often - more often he's in outrageous gender-bending outfits (not totally female, but not traditionally masculine, either, and with crazy makeup) as part of his glam rock band (which I loved).
I also thought this was a great representation of class outside of the very poor and the very rich. Liam's family is certainly very, very rich - but he's living with his uncle who works overnight at a radio station and lives in the trailer park. Liam asks Pete point blank at one point why he lives in the trailer when he's clearly smart enough to get a real job and live some place better. Pete's response is he's happy with who he is and where he lives - why should he try to live up to someone else's standards?
The theme of being yourself runs rampant through the novel, and occasionally gets a little heavy handed, but it's also clear that it's a message Liam needs to hear repeatedly since he has an overwhelming desire to gain his father's approval.
And speaking of his father: this is easily the worst dad since Say the Word. My reaction wasn't quite as visceral against Liam's dad as it was against Shawna's, but I think that's because we're a little more removed from some of the vileness of Liam's dad. We see him briefly at the beginning of the book before he ships Liam off, and then we only see him in Liam's flashbacks, so it's a little harder to judge him through the rosy lens of Liam's perspective.
This is easily going to be on my list of the best books I read in 2010. Highly recommend everyone pick it up!
I think all of us book nerds are happiest when we find a book that is truly engaging - not only can't we put it down, but we aren't even aware time has passed. Here in New York, the general consensus seems to be that a book is truly great if it makes you miss your subway stop. King of the Screw Ups didn't actually make me miss my stop - but that's only because I looked up after thinking I'd only been on the train for 5 minutes and instead found myself 6 stops from home (there are 17 stops between work and home). After that I made myself look at what stop we were at constantly, because while it's a high compliment for a book, it's still really annoying to miss your stop!
Liam is the son of a high powered CEO and a former supermodel - and much to his father's chagrin, he's taken more after his mother than his father. Liam brings home average grades (his father thinks anything less than an A is worthless), designer clothes, and far too many girls to fool around with. After one screw up too many, his dad is kicking him out of the house, sending him off to live with grandparents who hate him.
Luckily for Liam, his mom intervenes, and arranges for him to go live with his "Aunt Pete" behind his father's back. Pete is Liam's gay, cross-dressing, glam-rocking, trailer-living uncle who's been estranged from Liam's father and grandparents for years. And while he wants a relationship of some kind with Liam, he's really not sure he's the man to be trusted with straightening out whatever problems Liam is having.
Liam goes from living in an opulent home with a manicured lawn and massive closet space, to sharing a trailer with a dusty yard and absolutely zero closets, not even an iron to help keep his wardrobe pristine. After a shaky start at school, Liam determines that he should aim to be the geekiest, least popular kid in the school, totally devoted to his studies and geeky pursuits like the AV club. He's also on a mission to befriend Darleen, Pete's next door neighbor, the cousin of one of Pete's best friends, and also the most unpopular girl in school. Darleen, however, sees right through Liam's attempts and is convinced he wants to be popular and is trying to befriend her in an attempt to humiliate her.
But it seems that even when he's trying to screw up, Liam keeps screwing up even more. Every attempt at being unpopular blows up in face. He and Pete butt heads constantly in their small shared space, over everything from school to fashion. Liam isn't sure that he can be all his father wants him to be - but what other options does he have?
There was so much I loved about this book I'm not entirely sure where to begin! I loved how there was almost no conflict about Pete's sexual orientation - the only hate comes from Liam's dad (who has lots of issues with Pete; his sexual orientation is only one of them) and a bigoted bus driver who kicks Liam off the bus mostly because he has a gay uncle. None of the teenagers Liam hangs out with cares about Pete, and nothing is mentioned about Orlando, who appears to be openly dating Pete, being a high school English teacher. I found it very refreshing that Pete's orientation was only one part of his personality. He doesn't even cross-dress that often - more often he's in outrageous gender-bending outfits (not totally female, but not traditionally masculine, either, and with crazy makeup) as part of his glam rock band (which I loved).
I also thought this was a great representation of class outside of the very poor and the very rich. Liam's family is certainly very, very rich - but he's living with his uncle who works overnight at a radio station and lives in the trailer park. Liam asks Pete point blank at one point why he lives in the trailer when he's clearly smart enough to get a real job and live some place better. Pete's response is he's happy with who he is and where he lives - why should he try to live up to someone else's standards?
The theme of being yourself runs rampant through the novel, and occasionally gets a little heavy handed, but it's also clear that it's a message Liam needs to hear repeatedly since he has an overwhelming desire to gain his father's approval.
And speaking of his father: this is easily the worst dad since Say the Word. My reaction wasn't quite as visceral against Liam's dad as it was against Shawna's, but I think that's because we're a little more removed from some of the vileness of Liam's dad. We see him briefly at the beginning of the book before he ships Liam off, and then we only see him in Liam's flashbacks, so it's a little harder to judge him through the rosy lens of Liam's perspective.
This is easily going to be on my list of the best books I read in 2010. Highly recommend everyone pick it up!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Book Links: Huffington Post get whitewashing all wrong
Leonce Gaiter is a novelist and essayist who has written an article for the Huffington Post: Controversies in Black Literature Prove Book Sales Aren't Color-Blind
As I wrote to a friend on Twitter, the article is rather full of fail. 1. The Liar controversy was about 7 months ago, so not really "recent" (especially not in blog years). 2. Justine didn't complain "loudly and publicly," she was incredibly restrained and professional about the whole thing (in public at least. For all I know poor Scott Westerfeld was treated to months and months of curse-filled tirades about Bloomsbury) 3. His cover didn't relate at all to his book, yet he's placing the blame for poor sales on the presence of a black model on the cover (and threatens to "do violence" before he allows a solo black model to appear on another cover of his). As my good friend Rachel says, this makes him sound like he's saying "my publishers are morons, which is why they're out of business." 4. While I think all of us would be happiest if we saw more people of color on the covers of books, I think the minimum we're asking for is to stop the practice of white washing - the UK Cover of Magic Under Glass features people in silhouette - so you can't tell the race of either of them, and everyone seems to agree it's a great cover!
So...read the article and go join me in the comments (here or there).
As I wrote to a friend on Twitter, the article is rather full of fail. 1. The Liar controversy was about 7 months ago, so not really "recent" (especially not in blog years). 2. Justine didn't complain "loudly and publicly," she was incredibly restrained and professional about the whole thing (in public at least. For all I know poor Scott Westerfeld was treated to months and months of curse-filled tirades about Bloomsbury) 3. His cover didn't relate at all to his book, yet he's placing the blame for poor sales on the presence of a black model on the cover (and threatens to "do violence" before he allows a solo black model to appear on another cover of his). As my good friend Rachel says, this makes him sound like he's saying "my publishers are morons, which is why they're out of business." 4. While I think all of us would be happiest if we saw more people of color on the covers of books, I think the minimum we're asking for is to stop the practice of white washing - the UK Cover of Magic Under Glass features people in silhouette - so you can't tell the race of either of them, and everyone seems to agree it's a great cover!
So...read the article and go join me in the comments (here or there).
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Review: Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes
Found via: BBYA 2010 nominations
Winner: Printz Honor 2010
This book is 532 pages long and it covers one week in 1973. Harry Potter books that are almost twice that length cover an entire school year. Of course, the Harry Potter books skip over vast periods of time in the course of the school year, whereas almost every minute of every day is accounted for here.
In other words, this is a rather detailed book.
Tales of the Madman Underground starts on September 5, 1973, the first day of Karl Shoemaker's senior year of high school and the start of Operation Be Fucking Normal. A tall order for someone who's been in therapy since middle school thanks to his dad's death from cancer and his mom's reputation as a drunken slut.
But Karl has a plan for senior year: if he can be normal one day at a time (a lesson learned from his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings), he can last long enough into the semester to make sure none of his teachers recommend he return to therapy.
But being normal is harder than it looks. After all, if you've never been normal, how do you know what you're supposed to do? Should he continue to hang out with all of his old friends, his fellow therapy members that make up the so-called Madman Underground? Or should he turn his back on all of them, including his best friend since forever? Matters are complicated by the appearance of Marti, a new girl with frizzy hair and no boobs - definitely not the sort of girl a "normal" guy would be hanging out with.
Plus there are some parts of Karl's life that are decidedly not normal, like working five jobs in order to ensure he and his mom can continue to eat. And having to hide that money in various stashes around the house so his mom can't find it and use it to go on a booze and pot bender while looking for her next hook up.
Karl has to balance home and friends, pushy and obnoxious teachers, small town and internal prejudices. All in his quest to be fucking normal.
This book was a little tough to get into, because I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing major ever does, so if you're looking for a mind-bending thriller, look elsewhere. This is very much a week-in-the-life book - it doesn't even appear to be an out of the ordinary week, aside from Karl's attempts to be "normal" and the introduction of new-girl Marti to the small town school. Less than half way through however I began to enjoy the ride for what it was, liking this glimpse into the past.
Barnes deals deftly with a lot of the social inequity of the time. Casual racism and homophobia run rampant in this small Ohio town, even among friends. This isn't the wild and crazy and totally open 70s we often think about, but small town 70s where people looked upon the changes going on in the wider world with suspicion. Karl's mother is a total hippie in some ways, calling Karl a "special child of the universe" and saying that the age of Aquarius truly is coming upon them, but it's also clear most of the town thinks she's a nut.
I would imagine it might be hard for younger readers to comprehend the large amount of casual abuse in this story - lots of kids are regularly beaten by their parents or sexually abused by family members or locked out of their houses, and "everyone" knows about these incidents but no one really tries to stop them. They just throw the victims in therapy and call it good. The only reason I could buy it is Lightsburg, Ohio doesn't sound too different from the town my parents grew up in and Mom used to tell me some sad stories about kids showing up in school with black eyes and broken arms and everyone would know it was the mom or dad hitting the kid, but it was considered a private family issue. So kudos to Barnes for capturing a lot of the small but major tragedies of the time.
I couldn't tell you exactly why this was a Printz honor book. It's certainly very good, but I don't think I'm the best judge of what makes a Printz-worthy book. I tried reading Jellicoe Road after it won last year, and couldn't even get a third of the way through it. I can definitely, however, see this appealing to adult readers of YA, as the style feels very much like adult literary fiction. At least the little adult literary fiction I've read - have to admit, my reading tastes are definitely stalled at where they were when I was 16.
On the jacket copy: I have no idea why the jacket is designed with big old censor bars. It kind of implies the book is going to be about censorship in some way. There's a brief point about a teacher refusing to censor his teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (so long as you're quoting the book he sees no problem with the racial slurs - it's when you call another person that outside of a literary context that it becomes a problem). So the gratuitous and obvious censoring of the jacket copy comes a little bit out of nowhere.
Winner: Printz Honor 2010
This book is 532 pages long and it covers one week in 1973. Harry Potter books that are almost twice that length cover an entire school year. Of course, the Harry Potter books skip over vast periods of time in the course of the school year, whereas almost every minute of every day is accounted for here.
In other words, this is a rather detailed book.
Tales of the Madman Underground starts on September 5, 1973, the first day of Karl Shoemaker's senior year of high school and the start of Operation Be Fucking Normal. A tall order for someone who's been in therapy since middle school thanks to his dad's death from cancer and his mom's reputation as a drunken slut.
But Karl has a plan for senior year: if he can be normal one day at a time (a lesson learned from his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings), he can last long enough into the semester to make sure none of his teachers recommend he return to therapy.
But being normal is harder than it looks. After all, if you've never been normal, how do you know what you're supposed to do? Should he continue to hang out with all of his old friends, his fellow therapy members that make up the so-called Madman Underground? Or should he turn his back on all of them, including his best friend since forever? Matters are complicated by the appearance of Marti, a new girl with frizzy hair and no boobs - definitely not the sort of girl a "normal" guy would be hanging out with.
Plus there are some parts of Karl's life that are decidedly not normal, like working five jobs in order to ensure he and his mom can continue to eat. And having to hide that money in various stashes around the house so his mom can't find it and use it to go on a booze and pot bender while looking for her next hook up.
Karl has to balance home and friends, pushy and obnoxious teachers, small town and internal prejudices. All in his quest to be fucking normal.
This book was a little tough to get into, because I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing major ever does, so if you're looking for a mind-bending thriller, look elsewhere. This is very much a week-in-the-life book - it doesn't even appear to be an out of the ordinary week, aside from Karl's attempts to be "normal" and the introduction of new-girl Marti to the small town school. Less than half way through however I began to enjoy the ride for what it was, liking this glimpse into the past.
Barnes deals deftly with a lot of the social inequity of the time. Casual racism and homophobia run rampant in this small Ohio town, even among friends. This isn't the wild and crazy and totally open 70s we often think about, but small town 70s where people looked upon the changes going on in the wider world with suspicion. Karl's mother is a total hippie in some ways, calling Karl a "special child of the universe" and saying that the age of Aquarius truly is coming upon them, but it's also clear most of the town thinks she's a nut.
I would imagine it might be hard for younger readers to comprehend the large amount of casual abuse in this story - lots of kids are regularly beaten by their parents or sexually abused by family members or locked out of their houses, and "everyone" knows about these incidents but no one really tries to stop them. They just throw the victims in therapy and call it good. The only reason I could buy it is Lightsburg, Ohio doesn't sound too different from the town my parents grew up in and Mom used to tell me some sad stories about kids showing up in school with black eyes and broken arms and everyone would know it was the mom or dad hitting the kid, but it was considered a private family issue. So kudos to Barnes for capturing a lot of the small but major tragedies of the time.
I couldn't tell you exactly why this was a Printz honor book. It's certainly very good, but I don't think I'm the best judge of what makes a Printz-worthy book. I tried reading Jellicoe Road after it won last year, and couldn't even get a third of the way through it. I can definitely, however, see this appealing to adult readers of YA, as the style feels very much like adult literary fiction. At least the little adult literary fiction I've read - have to admit, my reading tastes are definitely stalled at where they were when I was 16.
On the jacket copy: I have no idea why the jacket is designed with big old censor bars. It kind of implies the book is going to be about censorship in some way. There's a brief point about a teacher refusing to censor his teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (so long as you're quoting the book he sees no problem with the racial slurs - it's when you call another person that outside of a literary context that it becomes a problem). So the gratuitous and obvious censoring of the jacket copy comes a little bit out of nowhere.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Book Thoughts: Private Act of Reading
This weekend there was an article in the New York Times about how reading seems to have changed from being "among the last remaining private activities" to a "relentlessly social pursuit" in the age of Facebook and blogs.
I have to admit, I never found reading to be an inherently private activity - not in th sense the article means, anyway. The article quotes Rebecca Stead, author of this year's Newberry-winning When You Reach Me: “For me, as a kid, a book was a very private world,” she said. “I didn’t like talking about books with other people very much because it almost felt like I didn’t want other people to be in that world with me.”
For me, reading was and still is a solitary activity - but the idea of wanting to keep a wonderful, beautiful book to myself is totally foreign. One book, Empress of the World, changed my life in an incredibly private way - yet I excitedly told every single person I knew about it for years. Admittedly, I didn't always discuss why I was so touched by the book - though I'm sure some people figured it out pretty quickly - but I wanted to share it with people and eventually discuss it.
I find it interesting that Laura Miller, a staff writer at Salon and an author herself, speculates that it is the more casual reader who is drawn to the more social aspects of reading, while it is the truly bookish who are more private about their books. I fail to see how it is casual readers who are pouring over the minutiae of Harry Potter or Twilight. Some of these fans may not be the heaviest readers, by which I mean that they may read little outside of these blockbuster series, but clearly they have hunkered down with these massive books and applied some serious brainpower to them.
I know that most of my followers here are fellow bloggers, which the NYT hypothesizes means you're all like me and think this notion of reading as "private" is bunk, but I'd still like to know what your experiences are!
I have to admit, I never found reading to be an inherently private activity - not in th sense the article means, anyway. The article quotes Rebecca Stead, author of this year's Newberry-winning When You Reach Me: “For me, as a kid, a book was a very private world,” she said. “I didn’t like talking about books with other people very much because it almost felt like I didn’t want other people to be in that world with me.”
For me, reading was and still is a solitary activity - but the idea of wanting to keep a wonderful, beautiful book to myself is totally foreign. One book, Empress of the World, changed my life in an incredibly private way - yet I excitedly told every single person I knew about it for years. Admittedly, I didn't always discuss why I was so touched by the book - though I'm sure some people figured it out pretty quickly - but I wanted to share it with people and eventually discuss it.
I find it interesting that Laura Miller, a staff writer at Salon and an author herself, speculates that it is the more casual reader who is drawn to the more social aspects of reading, while it is the truly bookish who are more private about their books. I fail to see how it is casual readers who are pouring over the minutiae of Harry Potter or Twilight. Some of these fans may not be the heaviest readers, by which I mean that they may read little outside of these blockbuster series, but clearly they have hunkered down with these massive books and applied some serious brainpower to them.
I know that most of my followers here are fellow bloggers, which the NYT hypothesizes means you're all like me and think this notion of reading as "private" is bunk, but I'd still like to know what your experiences are!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Review: Calamity Jack by Shannon and Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale
Found via: Maw Books
On the last day of 2008 I posted my review of Rapunzel's Revenge and noted at the end that a sequel was in the works...a sequel which I totally forgot about until I saw Natasha's post at Maw Books about the launch party for Calamity Jack!
Luckily for me, my library shipped this to me right away...as opposed to the two months in transit another book took.
Not that I'm impatient or anything.
Calamity Jack opens with some brief bits of biography of Jack's early life as a budding criminal mastermind, before picking up the story where Rapunzel's Revenge left off. In the first book, Jack was the one who was off balance, as the West was Rapunzel's turf. Now the dynamic duo have returned to Jack's hometown, where he hopes to settle a score with the giants in charge and repair the damage his beanstalk did to his neighborhood and his mother's bakery.
When Jack left, the local giant Blunderboar was a gangster bully who had his hands in several cookie jars. When Jack returns, he finds out that Blunderboar has been busy, gaining city contracts to use his personal giants as a supplementary police force in the face of intermittent attacks from giant Ant People that keep invading the city. He's also holding Jack's mother prisoner as his personal baker (he always requires she use special flour...that's probably made of human bones) and has placed a bounty on Jack's head.
Jack is more determined than ever to make good on his promises to his mother, but it's clear he's going to need more help than just Rapunzel. Jack teams back up with a former colleague, Prudence the pixie (who has a love affair with hats like I have with shoes), and Frederick Sparksmith the Third, a slightly naive newspaper man who ran the last press that dared to oppose Blunderboar until the presses were destroyed in an attack by the Ant People. Everyone has their own skills that will have to be at their sharpest in order to save the day.
I think I enjoyed Rapunzel's Revenge more than Calamity Jack. The first story was much more of a straight-up adventure/quest story - while Calamity Jack has lots of introspection and angst. Also I got a little annoyed with how overprotective Jack was of Rapunzel - sure, she's never been to "the big city" before, but do you really think this woman is incapable of taking care of herself? And I did appreciate how at the first chance she got she was out of the clumsy dress and into sensible pants.
I think I just really wanted another Rapunzel story!
Cover thoughts:
Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack both take place in an Old West-style fantasy world, and as part of that world there are Native American peoples. Jack is clearly intended to be read as a Native American (even if in this world the term 'Native American' doesn't exist - it hasn't ever been said this is America we're in!) and is shown as such on the cover! Interestingly enough - the infamous Bloomsbury is the publisher on this one. I'm sure part of the reason everyone is portrayed accurately on the cover is because the illustrator throughout the text also drew the cover.
On the last day of 2008 I posted my review of Rapunzel's Revenge and noted at the end that a sequel was in the works...a sequel which I totally forgot about until I saw Natasha's post at Maw Books about the launch party for Calamity Jack!
Luckily for me, my library shipped this to me right away...as opposed to the two months in transit another book took.
Not that I'm impatient or anything.
Calamity Jack opens with some brief bits of biography of Jack's early life as a budding criminal mastermind, before picking up the story where Rapunzel's Revenge left off. In the first book, Jack was the one who was off balance, as the West was Rapunzel's turf. Now the dynamic duo have returned to Jack's hometown, where he hopes to settle a score with the giants in charge and repair the damage his beanstalk did to his neighborhood and his mother's bakery.
When Jack left, the local giant Blunderboar was a gangster bully who had his hands in several cookie jars. When Jack returns, he finds out that Blunderboar has been busy, gaining city contracts to use his personal giants as a supplementary police force in the face of intermittent attacks from giant Ant People that keep invading the city. He's also holding Jack's mother prisoner as his personal baker (he always requires she use special flour...that's probably made of human bones) and has placed a bounty on Jack's head.
Jack is more determined than ever to make good on his promises to his mother, but it's clear he's going to need more help than just Rapunzel. Jack teams back up with a former colleague, Prudence the pixie (who has a love affair with hats like I have with shoes), and Frederick Sparksmith the Third, a slightly naive newspaper man who ran the last press that dared to oppose Blunderboar until the presses were destroyed in an attack by the Ant People. Everyone has their own skills that will have to be at their sharpest in order to save the day.
I think I enjoyed Rapunzel's Revenge more than Calamity Jack. The first story was much more of a straight-up adventure/quest story - while Calamity Jack has lots of introspection and angst. Also I got a little annoyed with how overprotective Jack was of Rapunzel - sure, she's never been to "the big city" before, but do you really think this woman is incapable of taking care of herself? And I did appreciate how at the first chance she got she was out of the clumsy dress and into sensible pants.
I think I just really wanted another Rapunzel story!
Cover thoughts:
Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack both take place in an Old West-style fantasy world, and as part of that world there are Native American peoples. Jack is clearly intended to be read as a Native American (even if in this world the term 'Native American' doesn't exist - it hasn't ever been said this is America we're in!) and is shown as such on the cover! Interestingly enough - the infamous Bloomsbury is the publisher on this one. I'm sure part of the reason everyone is portrayed accurately on the cover is because the illustrator throughout the text also drew the cover.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Show Me 5 Saturday
Each Saturday You will post the answer to these questions. The number indicates the number of answers you will provide.
1 Book you read and/or reviewed this week Once Dead Twice Shy
2 Words that describe the book Undead Punk
3 Settings where it took place or characters you met 1. Madison, she of the purple hair and un-dead-ness (though she's not alive, either. 2. Nakita, a badass dark reaper - just like the grim reaper, except stylish and is killing people as a preemptive strike against future misdeeds. 3. Grace, a sparkling guardian angel, who speaks in limericks.
4 Things you liked and/or disliked about it 1. Disliked Madison's cutesy curses - I understand that not everyone curses like a truck driver, but what's so wrong with shoot or crap in place of shit? 2. I think Nakita was intended to be a relatively minor foil, but she's the character I remember most! Well, after Madison. 3. Protagonists with purple hair = love 4. Really interesting spin on why angels might be jealous of humans.
5 Stars or less for your rating? 4 stars!
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