Alan Jacobs is great blogger. He may not want to embrace that label but his Tumblr blog is full of interesting links, thought-provoking analysis and great quotes.  A great example is his post in response to Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker piece on high fantasy for young adults.

What really struck me was his conclusion on Tolkien and modern liberalism:

Modern liberalism likes to think that all our problems are epistemological: we are afflicted by never knowing with sufficient clarity what we ought to do. Our fictions tend to reflect that assumption. Tolkien, not being a modern liberal, thought it more interesting to explore situations when people know what they need to know but may lack the strength of will to act on that knowledge. He might say, and with some justification, that contemporary literary fiction is not simplistic in regard to such problems but oblivious to them.

What say you? True? Fair?

Related articles

• Does Mr. Gopnik Really Not Recognize What That Loss Is?: (brothersjuddblog.com)
• Adam Gopnik: “The Lord of the Rings,” “Twilight,” and young-adult fantasy books. (newyorker.com)

Cover of Incarceron (Incarceron, Book 1)

I have been reading some more serious non-fiction so, as is my habit, I like to turn to young adult fantasy fiction as a sort of palate cleanser or break. I love books you can get lost in anyways and often these very creative YA title offer that.

Which is why I have been wanting to read Incarceron by Catherine Fisher for some time.  I enjoyed The  Oracle Prophecies series and had heard good things about this new dystopian series.

Here is the publishers synopsis:

Incarceron is a prison so vast that it contains not only cells, but also metal forests, dilapidated cities, and vast wilderness. Finn, a seventeen-year-old prisoner, has no memory of his childhood and is sure that he came from Outside Incarceron. Very few prisoners believe that there is an Outside, however, which makes escape seems impossible.

And then Finn finds a crystal key that allows him to communicate with a girl named Claudia. She claims to live Outside- she is the daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, and doomed to an arranged marriage. Finn is determined to escape the prison, and Claudia believes she can help him. But they don’t realize that there is more to Incarceron than meets the eye. Escape will take their greatest courage and cost more than they know.

The plot hook for this two book series is just so imaginative that it felt like a must read. The background to the worlds is rather pedestrian: continuous evolving of advanced technology eventually leads to devastating war which forces the world to begin anew. The jump off from here, however, is unique to say the least.

Inside: Incarceron, a prison made to be a utopia but that morphs into the opposite. The Outside: a world that is not what it seems; frozen in a protocol that requires time be stopped in the 17th century. Power struggles outside and the never ending search for escape from the inside will result in the collision of the two worlds.

Both sides of this dystopian coin are just so fascinating and captivating. The raw violent world of the prison with its mysteries and nightmares. The power struggles and intrigues of the outside world that, while cloaked in luxury and protocol, can be just as deadly. Inside Incarceron the violence is out in the open and so is the despair and rage. Outside in The Realm the violence is hidden and the despair is pushed away – only the peasants far from the minds of the court feel the despair. But even those inside the court feel the tyranny and stagnation of a culture trapped in time.  Both are places where freedom is an illusion.

“Steampunk” or dystopian fiction is not usually my thing but any fan of epic fantasy or world building will enjoy this one. Dark, complex and mysterious with intrigue and plot twists to keep you guessing Incarceron always leaves you wanting to know more; to dig deeper into these worlds.

The critics ate this one up:

Kirkus:

Elegant prose and precisely chosen details deftly construct two very different worlds, hinting at layers beneath the glimpses the tale permits; attentive readers will hear echoes of classic tales, resonant with implications about the meaning of stories, of faith and of freedom. Like the finest chocolate, a rich confection of darkness, subtlety and depth, bittersweet and absolutely satisfying.

Booklist:

This gripping futuristic fantasy has breathless pacing, an intelligent story line, and superb detail in rendering both of the stagnating environments. Fisher’s characters are emotionally resonant, flawed, determined, and plagued by metaphysical questions. With some well-timed shocking twists and a killer ending, this is a must-have.

Yoya:

This novel will no doubt appeal to steampunk fans, a genre that is growing within the teen community. A simultaneously romanticized and fractured version of the past alongside a precarious technology-driven future is a recipe for tension and anxiety, the kind that nourishes strong dystopian science fiction. Fisher’s strength is in her respect for teen readers to enter this world where nothing is as it seems only to discover that solutions are not always what they want them to be. This tome is complicated and the resolution is fraught, but in ways that make the story work.

It could be that the style or genre isn’t quite a perfect fit for me, or it could be that I am not in the intended teen audience, but for whatever reason there was something about it that kept it from being a home run for me.

If I had to guess I would say it is the language and the description. All of the elements were there for a great book but it didn’t quite come together. Great hook, solid characters, nice plot twists, etc. but I felt the length as I was reading.  In other long series once you get sucked in you are racing to the end devouring every page. You can’t wait to get home so you can read it.

I just didn’t have that feeling. I enjoyed reading it and found the various elements imaginative and fascinating but the whole was somehow less than the sum of its parts. I felt like at times the prose didn’t match the set-up – the expectation was high and the descriptions didn’t quite live up to those expectations.

Fisher balances information with a sense of mystery. You really never get to know too much about what happened in the lead up to the building of Incarceron and the establishment of protocol in the realm – it apparently involved a war that damaged the moon. Details are revealed slowly if at all. In many ways this keeps a tension and sense of mystery.

But it also removes some depth that would otherwise be there. And with nearly 450 pages that means a lot of prose without a lot of details.  N. D. Wilson‘s beautiful way with language and description are what makes it possible for his large books to move with a quicker pace – at least for me.

But this could be taste – as I said, I am not a fan of steampunk or a big reader of these type of stories. Either way, Fisher is still a talent and her books are unique and engaging. If you are looking for something different I would  recommend them.

This came up again while reading The Charlatan’s Boy by Jonathan Rogers.

Here is the publisher’s description:

As far back as he can remember, the orphan Grady has tramped from village to village in the company of a huckster named Floyd. With his adolescent accomplice, Floyd perpetrates a variety of hoaxes and flimflams on the good citizens of the Corenwald frontier, such as the Ugliest Boy in the World act.

It’s a hard way to make a living, made harder by the memory of fatter times when audiences thronged to see young Grady perform as “The Wild Man of the Feechiefen Swamp.” But what can they do? Nobody believes in feechies anymore.

When Floyd stages an elaborate plot to revive Corenwalders’ belief in the mythical swamp-dwellers known as the feechiefolk, he overshoots the mark. Floyd’s Great Feechie Scare becomes widespread panic. Eager audiences become angry mobs, and in the ensuing chaos, the Charlatan’s Boy discovers the truth that has evaded him all his life—and will change his path forever.

My first mistake was not really thinking of this as a young adult book. I guess I vaguely knew that but when I picked up the book I didn’t have that clearly in my mind and it affected my reaction.

But then knowing that it is YA what expectations should I have?

I love the setting and the personality and voice of the main character, Grady, but found the story dragged and held little suspense. But this might be due to “adult” expectations so your mileage may vary.

The premise of the story is far from unique: orphan boy seeks his real heritage; wants to connect with people and “home” in a way he has been unable to do since being given up by his real parents.

But the setting for this is more creative. The story takes place in Corenwald a sort of pre-industrial revolution old world type place with wagons and cow rustlers (which I believe is also the setting of his previous The Wilderking Trilogy). And of course the central plot revolves around the Feechie – a mythical swamp people that Grady and his mentor/guardian Floyd use as a money making ruse.

Rogers does a good job of introducing the characters and pulling the reader into the story. The dialog and character interaction evoke the author’s beloved South and give the story a unique tone and feel. He does a good job of situating the characters in this place in a way that is natural and feels authentic – it is smooth read.

But after the set-up the story just spins its wheels. Floyd and Grady travel around preparing the Feechie scare and I kept wondering when something significant was going to happen. Instead there were almost anecdotal chapters with Grady and Floyd in different towns. These chapters felt like filler rather than consequential action.

By the time the story picked up the pace again it was over – with a promise of more to come in 2011.

Now it could be that the author kept the story simple because it is for young people. But in the age of Harry Potter and other long and complex fantasy series is this really necessary? Or it could be taste. Maybe some like a story that is simple and ambles along without rushing.

For me the interesting setting, characters, and initial story line were not enough to overcome the lack of tension or pace. In the middle of the book I wasn’t sure what the point was exactly.  And not to be condescending, but I saw the ending coming from very early on.

And while I should know better than to be taken in by back cover blurbs, Andrew Peterson set me up to be disappointed. The fellow author claimed the story was “C.S. Lewis and Mark Twain rolled into one.”

Let’s just say the book didn’t quite approach that level for me. I can appreciate a literary novel that is more about language and the art of prose than it is about plot and action but Rogers often skillful use of Southern idiom and style just wasn’t enough to overcome the lack of more traditional “genre” ingredients. Besides, since when is YA fantasy fiction supposed to be approached like a literary novel? Will ten-year-olds appreciate the prose?

(For the record, it could be my innate Midwestern-ness prevents my enjoyment of the Southern nature and style of this story.)

In the end, I found The Charlatan’s Boy to be a cute and quirky story but one that held little suspense and failed to hold my interest for more than a few chapters.

- Read the first chapter

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

A Tale Dark and Grimm is a book right in my wheelhouse, as they say.  After reading a review in the NYTBR, I quickly added this to the TBR pile.  Young adult fantasy fiction, fairy tales and folklore, quirky sense of humor, etc. What’s not to like, right? I soon grabbed it for my Kindle and started reading.

It turned out to be a sort of Lemony Snicket take on the Brothers Grimm. Gidwitz reworks a variety of Grimm Fairy Tales with Hansel and Gretal as the lead characters while adding his own sarcastic and ironic commentary along the way.

As is so often the case, I was a bit torn about the end result.
On the one hand, the reworking of these tales brings back the dark macabre nature of these fairy tales and the wry commentary is often entertaining. On the other hand, the commentary seems a bit over-the-top – the literary equivalent of stretching a joke until it breaks.

Over all this is a quirky and lively take on something I am fascinated with (fairy tales, the Brothers Grimm, etc.) but either my age (the target audience is YA), my familiarity with the subject, or my high expectations (built by the review mentioned above) led to a bit of a let down.

It could be that the post-modern or meta-fictional aspect of it didn’t appeal to me. There is a sense where the narrator is creating his own story from the bits and pieces of the past and he expects the reader to play along as he winks and makes inside jokes knowing you can see behind the curtain.

Fans of creative young adult fiction and those interested in modern takes on classic fairy tales will enjoy this unique book. But as always, you mileage may vary.

Description

Here is the synopsis courtesy of the publisher:

A young shepherd, Corydon, is driven out of his village because of his unusual appearance and then captured and put on display as a monster. Alongside him in the traveling freak show are Medusa, the Minotaur, the Sphinx, and other classical beasts. When Corydon helps these monsters to escape their cages, they scatter to seek peace and solitude away from prying eyes. But then an army of “heroes” arrives hoping to win glory by killing the monsters, and Corydon must unite these unloved and unlikely allies to fight for their survival and for their island home.

It caught my attention for the above reasons, but also because Tobias Druitt is the pen name of a mother and son team – the mother Oxford Don and her still in school son.  It turned out to be an interesting twist on the Greek Myths – the monsters are the good guys. It pits the Olympian gods against the Chthonic gods.

The story is a little uneven in parts – mostly because it seems unsure of what type of story it is – a serious or semi-comic reworking of Greek mythology in a YA fantasy. But what saves it is the character of Corydon and his interaction with the monsters.

Corydon is the type of character you root for: sincere, loyal, generous, and brave despite his rough life and seeming inability to fit into normal society. There is a certain amount of cheesiness in the “all the misfits unite to defend themselves” story but for the most part it works.

While it isn’t deep literature the characters are interesting. The monsters become more than just symbols but characters with personalities and feelings. And the twist on the normal portrayal of the heros and Olympians proved interesting.

All in all an uneven but imaginative and entertaining first book in this trilogy. It will be interesting to see how the series develops.

Readers from the last book will recall that the sisters have to rescue their brother from the schemeing mirror who took him into the book – and chasing him Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck fell in as well.

The larger focus is mostly on Sabrina as she comes to grip with being a leader for her family and friends and her developing relationship with Puck.

In all the chaos and jokes about Fairy Tales there begins to emerge a backstory about Snow White and the history of the Everafters that seems promising but it nearly gets lost in the jump from from one Fairy Tale to the next.  The last third of the story picked up  the pace and there is still some funny lines and interactions but the story as a whole lacks the rhythm and pace of earlier stories.

I could be the simplified story – that is after all for young readers – just didn’t grab me this time, but for whatever reason I just didn’t enjoy the plot or the adventure nearly as much this time.

Still a great series and I will the read the next one I am sure – and I am looking forward to the conclusion of the series.

Cover via Amazon

I will fully admit that I can be far too derivative in my reviews. I think that I can write some thoughtful and detailed reviews when I have the time and energy.  But I also post a number of “here is the publishers blurb and here is my reaction” type posts.

This doesn’t bother me too much because one function of this blog is simply to track what I read; and not every review is, or has to be, a thoughtful masterpiece.

I bring this up, because I would be hard pressed to add much to Heidi Broadhead’s Amazon.com review of The Sorceress by Michael Scott:

The third book in Michael Scott’s “Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel” series, The Sorceress, kicks the action up to a whole new level. Adding to the series’ menagerie of immortal humans (“humani”) and mythological beasts, the book picks up where The Magician left off: the immortal Nicholas Flamel (of The Alchemyst) and the twins, Sophie and Josh, have just arrived at St. Pancras international train station in London. Almost immediately, they’re confronted with a demonic bounty hunter that immortal magician John Dee has sent their way. At the same time, Dee’s occasional cohort, Niccolo Machiavelli, decides to focus his energy on Perenelle Flamel, the Alchemyst’s wife, who has been imprisoned at Alcatraz since the beginning of the series. In this book, Perenelle gets a chance to show off her sorcery and resourcefulness, fighting and forging alliances with ghosts, beasts, and the occasional Elder to try and find a way out of her predicament and back to Flamel.

Scott is as playful as ever, introducing new immortals–famous figures from history who (surprise!) are still alive. He also adds to the roster of fantastical beasts, which already includes such intriguing foes as Bastet, the Egyptian cat goddess, and the Morrigan, or Crow Goddess. Raising the stakes with each installment, Scott deftly manages multiple story lines and keeps everything moving pretty quickly, making this third book a real page-turner. More than just another piece in the puzzle of the whole series, The Sorceress is an adventure in its own right, and will certainly leave series fans wanting more.

I wasn’t blown away by The Alchemyst but each book since has ratcheted up the intensity.  The Amazon review matches my reaction perfectly.  The action is kicked up a notch, the pacing is great, and the characters – both old and new – are fun and well done.

If you have been living in a cave and haven’t stumbled on this series yet, and you like fantasy adventure, I highly recommend it.

This is one of those great series where each book seems to get better and each wait for the next one to come up seems more intolerable.

Instead the first half, as you might expect, focuses on the titular Timothy.  From the publisher’s blurb:

Timothy Freshwater’s father can’t control him, his mother is always out of town, and now the boy too smart for his own good has been expelled from the last school in the city. After he meets Mr. Shen, a mysterious Chinese mailroom clerk at his father’s office, Timothy winds up in more trouble than he has ever gotten himself into.

It turns out the diminutive Mr. Shen is a dragon. Forced to take human shape for a thousand years, Mr. Shen cannot resume his true form until he scales an ancient Dragon’s Gate during a festival for the 125th year of the dragon. Now Timothy finds himself Mr. Shen’s latest keeper: stalked by a ninja, and chased by a menacing trio of black taxicabs.

And therin lies the rub, as they say (do they really say that?).  Allow me to cowardly pass of my own critism on to someone else by quoting Kirkus:

Sporting a chip on his shoulder the size of a sequoia while being prone to both snotty behavior and fits of rage, Timothy makes an annoying protagonist.

Yes, I too found Timothy to be an annoying protagonist but Kirkus said it better in one sentence.

The truth is I just liked Alex as a character better.  I frequently find central characters of this age and disposition annoying.  I get tired of the whining and the self-pity and constant attempt to appear both disinterested and cool at the same time.  Kress does a good job of capturing the agonistas involved but I didn’t enjoy the ride as much.

But, the story is still clever and the humor is still there as Kirkus notes:

Though at least as wordy as its predecessor, the tale’s snarky dialogue, sudden twists, authorial asides and daffy characters will keep readers turning the pages.

Timothy’s attitude may have put me off a bit in the first half, but the action, and the introduction of Alex and the gang from book 1, pick up the page in the second half and lead to an exciting conclusion.  Kress throws in a few plot twists in to keep the reader guessing as well.  Not surprisingly a key plot point turns on a rather ironic development centered on Timothy’s mother.

Overall, Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate turned out to be a well done follow up to the enjoyable Alex and the Ironic Gentleman.  She gives Timothy enough space to become his own character before introducing Alex and the plot hook is different enough to avoid a mere copy cat style follow up.  But when the characters do come together the interaction works and improves the story.

Kress is clearly an author to watch.  She balances the action and the humor well; with just the right dose of snark and asides to go with the “straight” storytelling. I look forward to reading what character and adventure she has dreamed up next; and to see what role Alex and Timothy might play.

But I benefit from the little I am able to catch; often finding new authors and interesting books along the way.  Once such example is LitChat – “a fun, fast, and friendly way for booklovers to talk about books on Twitter.”

I try to catch their chats when I can and earlier this year I participated in a chat on young adult fiction (I think) and won an autographed copy of Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate by Adrienne Kress.  It seemed a good idea to read the first book in this series so I grabbed Alex and the Ironic Gentleman for my Kindle.  But I only got around to reading both books recently.

I clearly should have read them earlier as they are fun, imaginative and entertaining reads full of wit and adventure.

Alex and the Ironic Gentleman “tells the story of Alex Morningside, an inquisitive ten-and-a-half-year-old girl who lives with her uncle above a doorknob shop.”  Her life seems to be taking a turn for the better when a new teacher, Mr. Underwood, comes to school and soon becomes her favorite teacher and a family friend.

But as you would expect things are not so simple. It turns out Mr. Underwood has a complicated past and some secrets that place him in danger; and by extension Alex and her uncle. When Mr. Underwood is kidnapped Alex sets off on an incredible cross-country adventure to rescue him and, hopefully, find the infamous Wigpowder treasure while she is at it.

Two things stand out about this story: it has a nice mix of humor and seriousness.  The narrator is witty and whimsical but the story has its darker sides and even some thoughtful life lessons.  But the humor never gets over-the-top and the heavier issues don’t drag the story down.  It has a great pace and Kress has a way of throwing in hilarious and abusrd plot twists while still keeping the story moving.

And second, the characters are great.  The Daughters of the Founding Fathers’ Preservation Society have to be one of my favorite young adult literary creations.  These old ladies are hilarious and yet vicious; and a real threat to Alex’s success.  The Extremely Ginormous Octopus is a hoot as well.

Adrienne Kress is clearly an author I will keep an eye on because she brings a great voice, a sparkling sense of humor, and interesting characters to young adult fiction.  So if you haven’t yet read this series pick up Alex and he Ironic Gentleman and get started. Like me, you will be glad you did.