fantasy

Jul 13 2010

Corydon & The Island of Monsters by Tobias Druitt

Corydon and the Island of Monsters (Corydon Trilogy) is another young adult book I picked up in the discount section of Half-Price Books. It too deals with mythology and offers a non-traditional take (are you noticing a pattern?).

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.

By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Jun 25 2010

The Inside Story (The Sisters Grimm, #8) by Michael Buckley

I am a big fan of this series but Book Eight: The Inside Story struck me as a little thin in places. It has sort of postmodern – or Jasper Fforde-ish – perspective as the characters are stuck in The Book of Everafter chasing Pinocchio and the Mirror through classic fairy tales while at the same time dealing with The Editor and his voracious revisors – hungry monsters who eat text and anything else that gets in their way.

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.

By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Oct 26 2009

The Sorceress by Michael Scott

Cover of "The Sorceress (The Secrets of t...

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.

By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Oct 23 2009

Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate by Adrienne Kress

Timothy and the Dragon's GateTimothy and the Dragon’s Gate is an interesting take on a sequel.  One that I confess I can’t recall reading before.  It isn’t until nearly half-way into the book that the central character from Alex and the Ironic Gentleman enters the story.

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.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Oct 21 2009

Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress

Alex and the Ironic GentlemanOne of the drawbacks of the chaos of my life lately, is that I haven’t been able to participate in as many conversations about books and reading as I would like.  I read far too few book/literary blogs and only catch a small sliver of Twitter discussions, etc.

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.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , ,

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