books Archives - Page 42 of 64

Yzabel / October 23, 2014

Review: The Secrets of Life and Death

The Secrets of Life and Death by Rebecca Alexander

My rating: 3

Summary:

In modern day England, Professor Felix Guichard is called in to identify occult symbols found on the corpse of a young girl. His investigation brings him in contact with a mysterious woman, Jackdaw Hammond, who guards a monumental secret–She’s Dead. Or she would be, were it not for magic which has artificially extended her life. But someone else knows her secret. Someone very old and very powerful, who won’t rest until they’ve taken the magic that keeps her alive….
In Krakow in 1585, Dr John Dee, the Elizabethan Alchemist and Occultist, and his assistant Edward Kelley have been summoned by the King of Poland to save the life of his niece, the infamous Countess Elisabeth Bathory. But they soon realize that the only thing worse than the Countess’ malady, is the magic that might be able to save her…
As Jackdaw and Felix race to uncover the truth about the person hunting her, it becomes clear that the answers they seek can only be found in the ancient diary of John Dee’s assistant, Edward Kelley. Together they must solve a mystery centuries in the making, or die trying.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.)

I should have read and reviewed this book sooner, but as things go, more and more book piled up. As usual, you might say.

The Secrets of Life and Death was an entertaining story, loosely based in part on the half-history, half-legend surrounding the infamous Elisabeth Bathory. It weaves two different narratives, the first one set in modern England, the second one focused on John Dee, told in first person by his assistant Edward Kelley. People who read my reviews should know by now that I’m usually partial to time/space shifts; I enjoyed those here, for they provided enough information while gradually bringing everything together, even though I’d have a few qualms regarding the last installments of Dee & Kelley’s adventure (in the end, I thought they tended to drag a little).

I also quite liked the modern part, two of its characters being “revenants” of sorts: people who should’ve died, but whose death could be foretold. As such, a witch managed to get to them just in time to place them within protective sigils, making them dependent on that magic to keep “surviving”, yet still providing them with what they call “borrowed time.” It’s probably not the most original concept ever, but it’s definitely not a rehashed take on “people coming back from the dead” either. Also, the magic described throughout the novel was intriguing and interesting: the revenants are weak in more than one way, unable to go far from their sigils, and the reasons to create them are both humane and rather selfish. That’s a greay enough area to my liking.

Two things I found fault with, though. The first was the romance, which felt stilted and forced. The attraction between Jack and Felix came too fast (which is why I won’t consider this a major spoiler), and developed in awkward ways. Understandable? Perhaps. However, in my typical way of perceiving things (in other word, “guys, there are more pressing matters of life and death to tackle here”), it didn’t register as absolutely necessary to the story. As for the second point, it’s more minor: I’d just would’ve liked more explanations about how Saraquel managed to speak to Edward (and here I’m not saying more, because that would be a spoiler).

3.5 stars nonetheless, and a story I’d easily recommend: not the best ever, but still worth reading to spend a good afternoon/evening.

Yzabel / October 19, 2014

Review: The Schwarzschild Radius

The Schwarzschild Radius by Gustavo Florentin

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

Rachel, an 18-year-old Columbia University student, descends into the netherworld of runaways and predators to find her sister, Olivia, who has suddenly disappeared.

After getting a job in a strip joint where Olivia worked, then doing private shows in the homes of rich clients, Rachel discovers that Olivia has been abducted by a killer who auctions the deaths of young girls in an eBay of agony.

When she finds Olivia, Rachel becomes the killer’s next target.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 stars, veering towards a 4.

Very graphic in parts, and not shying away from dealing with the darkest recesses of the human soul. This might turn off some people, so if depictions of child pornography rings, sex slaves and peep-show practices are something a reader doesn’t want to read about, then better not pick up this novel. Personally, I found it fascinating in a trainwreck way: you can’t help but watch, even though it’s disgusting, and it makes you think about all those people, about depravity, about how low a human being can fall.

Rachel struck me as a resourceful young woman with guts, and overall smart enough to discover a lot on her own quickly enough to avoid falling down as well—because things seemed to move fast, and I have no doubt that once caught in such a spiral, every day spent in it would’ve made it harder and harder for her to go back, as well as to keep the peep show sessions and private parties to a “manageable” level. She was determined to find her sister at all costs; also, she cared about Achara, which was very humane. The one qualm I have with her is that the mistake that made everything speed up was, frankly, a pretty basic one, and I’m still wondering if she shouldn’t have been able to avoid it, considering how savvy she was overall. But I’m not sure either (even though, when the first tell-tale sign occurred, I immediately thought “something’s wrong here”), and I wouldn’t consider that as “too stupid to live” syndrome in any case.

The main female characters in general did what they could with what they had. It may not have been much, but when they had an opportunity to do something (try to escape, help each other, try to hurt the culprit…), they seized it. That it worked or not didn’t matter: they still tried, even though their trials were a very dire ones and they could’ve given up a long time ago. Each of them turned out strong in her own way, fighting until the end.

The plot itself moved at a fast enough pace, with a lot of suspense. Some events that appeared as strange actually made a lot of sense a couple of chapters later, and I liked how the author managed to “trap” me here the same way he did the characters. It was an interesting process to go through.

On the downside, I found the narrative a bit disjointed at times, as if it was trying to get faster to the next part, with the seams somewhat forgotten along the way. The writing style felt the same in a few places. Nothing terribly annoying, but still enough that I noticed it. I also wished it dealt more with Olivia’s actions: what exactly happened to make her go from volunteering to the underworld? (Obviously she was in for the money for a reason I won’t spoil, obviously she didn’t choose to be picked by the Webmaster, and was no doubt abducted, but while we’re given clear reasons about Rachel’s behaviour leading her exactly in the same situation—she was investigating and looking for her sister, after all—Olivia’s were more muddled. As if there was another, hiden reason that was never revealed. It may be a false impression on my part, only considering all the trouble Rachel went through, I definitely would’ve wanted to learn more.)

Yzabel / October 17, 2014

Review: Rebellion

Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution by Peter Ackroyd

My rating [rating=5]

Summary:

Peter Ackroyd has been praised as one of the greatest living chroniclers of Britain and its people. In Rebellion, he continues his dazzling account of the history of England, beginning the progress south of the Scottish king, James VI, who on the death of Elizabeth I became the first Stuart king of England, and ending with the deposition and flight into exile of his grandson, James II.

The Stuart monarchy brought together the two nations of England and Scotland into one realm, albeit a realm still marked by political divisions that echo to this day. More importantly, perhaps, the Stuart era was marked by the cruel depredations of civil war, and the killing of a king. Shrewd and opinionated, James I was eloquent on matters as diverse as theology, witchcraft, and the abuses of tobacco, but his attitude to the English parliament sowed the seeds of the division that would split the country during the reign of his hapless heir, Charles I. Ackroyd offers a brilliant, warts-and-all portrayal of Charles’s nemesis, Oliver Cromwell, Parliament’s great military leader and England’s only dictator, who began his career as a political liberator but ended it as much of a despot as “that man of blood,” the king he executed.

England’s turbulent seventeenth century is vividly laid out before us, but so too is the cultural and social life of the period, notable for its extraordinarily rich literature, including Shakespeare’s late masterpieces, Jacobean tragedy, the poetry of John Donne and Milton and Thomas Hobbes’s great philosophical treatise, Leviathan. In addition to its account of England’s royalty, Rebellion also gives us a very real sense of the lives of ordinary English men and women, lived out against a backdrop of constant disruption and uncertainty.

Review:

(I got an ARC of this book courtesy of the publisher through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I like to say that you can’t really go wrong with Peter Ackroyd, and it seems to be once again the case. Even though what I read of him years ago feels pretty far by now, I still stand by this opinion. The man has a knack to present historical elements in such a way that one just can’t help but come back to his books no matter what—at least, I can’t. I stopped counting how many times I put my tablet in Sleep mode, thinking “I should do something else/read all the other books that I should have reviewed long before this one”, yet kept opening the file again after half an hour or so.

Of course, I’ll also confess to a complete lack of impartiality when a book deals with the Civil Wars, since it’s one of my favourite periods of British history (the other one being the Victorian era, but let’s not go there for now).

What you won’t find here, obviously, is a very detailed account of every little event of the 17th century: there’s just not enough room for that, and I’m well aware of it. Rebellion is the third volume of “The History of England”, and as such, it deals with the period as a whole. (If I wanted to know how exactly the battle of Naseby went, I… Actually, I would open another book I own, detailing precisely that, down to the bullets found years later on the battlefield.)

What you’ll get here, however, is a solid account that can be read even if you’re not a History major. In a compelling style, the author manages to convey causes and consequences with definite clarity, and even some humour. Because, let’s be honest, this is a gem:

“At the end of the discussion Cromwell, in one of those fits of boisterousness or hysteria that punctuated his career, threw a cushion at one of the protagonists, Edmund Ludlow, before running downstairs; Ludlow pursued him, and in turn pummelled him with a cushion.”

Also:

“Cromwell now always carried a gun. In a riding accident, later in the year, the pistol fired in his pocket and the wound kept him in bed for three weeks.”

It gets to show that the historical figures we take for granted in terms of seriousness aren’t always so. But then, there’s no way now to forget about those assassination plots, right, since they pushed Cromwell to carry that gun?

The narrative (it reads like a narrative, not like something arid, for sure) is interspersed with such little anecdotes, as well as chapters about literature (Hobbes’ Leviathan, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress…), science (Isaac Newton…), and other daily life happenings, reflecting how people lived in the period.

In short, heartily recommended by yours truly.

Yzabel / October 15, 2014

Review: Upgraded

Upgraded by Neil Clarke

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

An anthology of original cyborg stories edited by a cyborg. Stronger. Better. Faster. We will rebuild you.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

As usual with anthologies, always a tricky read to rate. Some of the stories I really enjoyed, others I found average, others yet were too far from my own tastes to hit home. Nothing unexpected here. All in all, there was only one story I really skipped/skimmed over, and a few that I struggled with at first, but ended up reading all the same, thinking “in the end it was somewhat worth it.”

Perhaps the theme of “cybernetics” is making things a little hard in that regard: either it works or it doesn’t, you won’t really find many other different themes to check for if it ends up not being your cup of tea. But that’s kind of a given, considering the anthology’s title and blurb.

A lot of the stories also toy with concepts questioning whether cybernetic enhancement would be a good or a bad thing: hopes crumbling, cyberntics leading to madness or violence, and so on. Those definitely open a path for deeper reflection here.

Stories I really liked:

* Seventh Sight: Part of my enjoyment probably stemmed of a personal fascination with tetrachromats, colours, and whatever is related to how we perceive the latter.

* Always the Harvest: This short story opens the anthology, and provides an interesting view on what defines “humans”, and on how a non-human conscience may interpret the image we project of ourselves.

* Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant: A bit hard to grasp at first, but definitely interesting if one’s looking for reflections about transhumanism.

* The Regular: A more “typical” story, on the model of detective shows, which probably makes it easier to grasp.

A word of warning: a few stories made use of a second person point of view, which unfortunately is a serious break-it for me (frankly, apart of Choose Your Own Adventure books, it never works—and even in such cases, it has always tended to grate on my nerves). It doesn’t mean they’re rubbish, just that I can’t stand that point of view. Too bad, because Musée de l’Âme Seule has really touching moments (granted, it’s not 100% second person POV; but it felt like it too much to make me forget the constant “you”…).

Yzabel / October 13, 2014

Review: Soulless

Soulless by Amber Garr

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

When it comes to death and love…only one is guaranteed.

Four decades ago Nora died. A tragic event for someone so young; however, four decades ago Nora was also given a second chance to walk among the living.

A Death Warden with a mysterious past, her job is to escort the newly expired towards the light, battling with the Soul Hunters who want the freshly dead to help with their own evil purposes buried in the dark.

When Nora’s charges suddenly become targets, she realizes that the hunters are after far more than just souls. A shift in power between good and evil threatens to change everything, risking the lives of the only family Nora has ever known.

Devastated and angry, she’s forced to face the man she once loved – a man who chose darkness over her – in order to find the answers she needs to stop the horror from escalating. Yet, while a lost relationship still haunts her broken heart, a new Warden with secrets of his own will enter the mix and quickly alter everything Nora believed to be true.

Death is unavoidable…but sometimes, so is love.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Interesting premise and world (Death Wardens vs. Soul Hunters), but characters that turned out too difficult to stand, at least for me.

The story reads fast, and getting into it was quite easy. We’re quickly introduced to what being a Warden entails, and to what Soul Hunters do. Granted, their names kind of make it obvious; still, it’s good to see such things explained through active scenes, and not just in passing. Even though this could have become an info-dump, it didn’t (or if it did, not in a way that felt like I was having tons of information dumped on me).

However, I had the constant, nagging feeling that something was off. I suspected that the “something” was the characters. Some two thirds in, it just didn’t work anymore at all.

Nora is almost sixty: she died at eighteen, then spent fourty years as a Warden. Despite her long experience, though, she behaves like a teenager in more than one way, from moping about her mysterious death (understandable if it’s just happened, less interesting if it was ages ago) to letting her “hormones” lead the ball (she’s dead, by the way, so why would she still have hormones anyway?). That’s a specific pet peeve of mine, but I think it’s a justified one: when using characters that are older than they look, they must also act older, otherwise we might as well be shown a regular 18-year-old heroine.

While it seems that she’s going to be a leading character, the one with experience, compared to the younger one she has to teach, she actually becomes rather passive. Sure, she trains to fight. Sure, she’s given a charge of her own. Then she turns into the girl who has to be protected. You’d think that fourty years later, she wouldn’t need that so much. I wanted to see her actually teaching things to Jason; I got Jason jumping in front of her to save her.

Jason: nice character at first sight, a soldier who actually enlisted because he wanted to become a medic and thought he’d learn useful things in that regard in the army. Yet also a cliché (cowboy, ranch, manly man of manliness).

Then came the testosterone and jealousy contests. Apart from a couple of Elders, the few other female characters are, of course, girls who intend on seducing Jason:

A pretty, young girl with bright red hair and matching lips jumped forward. Her eagerness irritated me even though it shouldn’t. She stepped into the circle, eyeing Jason like a piece of chocolate cake with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Biting her bottom lip seductively, I rolled my eyes.

Ensue staring, dark glares, fighting in as revealing clothing as possible to grab the guy’s attention, and bodies getting too close to each other during training. Slut shaming wasn’t 100% in the open, but it definitely kept swimming under the surface. (Also dangling participles here and there, as you can see from the quote.)

This is one of those instances in which the romance clearly ruined the game for me. I’m not fond of love triangles in general, but that’s because they’re usually cliché, and tend to take over the actual plot. While the stakes could have been alluring here, after a while, it was very difficult for me to go past the typical “bad guy in black vs. manly soldier ex-cowboy”—complete with jealous, passive-aggressive domineering attitude:

He paused, something else balancing on the tip of his tongue. “Did you say Sani and Theron saved you?”
I shivered with the memory, and Jason held me tighter. His heavy arm felt like an iron clamp, gluing me to his side forever.

Guys, there’s a bigger problem looming on the horizon, and actually the horizon is getting very, very close because the book’s ending soon. Can we focus?

Add a bit of ain’t-telling-you-nothing (as in, some characters definitely know a lot more, yet refuse to spit the information out until, obviously, it’s much too late for that). I just don’t like that, since it creates an artificial delay in readers getting said information, while we all know we won’t get it anyway due to the character-rendered-unable-to-speak trope. (I swear, I can feel that one coming from miles away.)

In short: a good idea for a story, with themes that usually grab my interest (death, reapers), yet characters that grated on my nerves too much for me to enjoy it, and probably also a plot dealt with too quickly (there would have been more room for it without the girls competing over the guy, for sure). 1.5 stars.

Yzabel / October 11, 2014

Review: The Red Magician

The Red Magician by Lisa Goldstein

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

The Red Magician is the tale of Kicsi, a young girl in a backwoods Eastern European village in the early 1940’s, a hamlet so isolated that the villagers know nothing of the brewing war – have no hint of the future save for ominous dreams. Into this village comes Voros, a redheaded wanderer, a juggler and magician, to disrupt their lives and antagonize the local rabbi…with whom he must fight a cabbalistic duel to which Kicsi is a secret witness. Then the Nazis arrive, and the world changes. Kicsi is first imprisoned, then must journey with Voros back to what remains of her village, for a climactic battle between the old world and the new. The Red Magician is a notable work of Holocaust literature, a distinguished work of fiction, and a marvelously entertaining fantasy – as Philip K. Dick remarked upon its first publication, “nourishment for the mind and the soul.”

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of OpenRoad Media through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

An interesting short story, though I must admit it wasn’t exactly what I expected, and I ended up not liking it as much as I hoped.

On the one hand, I could easily feel the magic permeating the atmosphere, the strange aura surrounding Vörös. Moreover, there’s a golem in the middle, and I’m often very, very partial towards golems (everybody has their favourite mythological/magical creature; well, this is mine).

I liked the theme of revenge and misdirected anger woven through the story. Though not original in itself, it hit home, and the book managed to show how sterile and blind revenge may be, yet also how born from genuine feelings: when your fear and grief for your loved ones are so strong, and when you can’t actually strike at the real culprits, what else can you do? Wouldn’t you turn to the next designated villain in your line of sight—even though he’s not a villain, even though he’s not responsible?

On the other hand, I found that the characters in general lacked substance. I didn’t really get to “feel” the presence of Kicsi’s family, for instance, nor of her potential fiancé, and so their fates seemed almost as secondary. I kept wondering why Vörös didn’t fill a more active role: he could probably have done a lot more (alright, at some point he was missing some of his tools… but there might have been a way to retrieve them), and instead kept going away. This didn’t really fit with his claims of having wanted to warn people, to the point where his worry and eagerness actually achieved the contrary.

The Holocaust part, too, felt rushed, and not exploited in a way that could have made the novel really striking. I sensed that more could’ve been done to it, because the author definitely seemed to have a knack to describe both the camps and the life before them in a peaceful community.

Conclusion: a likeable story, with powerful elements that may not have been exploited to their fullest potential.

Yzabel / October 10, 2014

Review: Jackaby

Jackaby by William Ritter

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

Miss Rook, I am not an occultist,” Jackaby said. “I have a gift that allows me to see truth where others see the illusion–and there are many illusions. All the world’s a stage, as they say, and I seem to have the only seat in the house with a view behind the curtain.”

Newly arrived in New Fiddleham, New England, 1892, and in need of a job, Abigail Rook meets R. F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with a keen eye for the extraordinary–including the ability to see supernatural beings. Abigail has a gift for noticing ordinary but important details, which makes her perfect for the position of Jackaby’s assistant. On her first day, Abigail finds herself in the midst of a thrilling case: A serial killer is on the loose. The police are convinced it’s an ordinary villain, but Jackaby is certain it’s a nonhuman creature, whose existence the police–with the exception of a handsome young detective named Charlie Cane–deny.

Review:

(I received a copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I must say something, first, about those “X meets Y” comparisons: publishers, don’t do that. Please. Just don’t. Because while it makes you feel that it’s attracting more readers, the truth is that at least half the time, your people get it wrong, and it doesn’t do good to the book in the long run. Please let books rest on their own merits. Because this one has merits nonetheless, in spite of the misguided attempt to market it as something it isn’t really.

I found myself enjoying this novel for its humour:

“There’s a jar in my office marked ‘Bail.’ If you don’t hear from me by tonight, just bring it down to the Mason street Station, would you? I’m usually in the first or second cell.”

And how it wove supernatural elements (notably fairies) into its narrative. Although some of those occurrences were somewhat predictable, it was the kind of predictable that I wanted to see, that I expected, and that made me smile, not roll my eyes.

Abigail was an enjoyable narrator, somewhat passive at times, but more in a way that involved her getting used to her new situation—and then getting her voice and own wishes heard, rather than accept to remain in the background like a prim and proper lady. While she was a klutz at times, she also acknowledged it with humour, and struck me as a character with room to grow into a strong protagonist. She started off traveling after committing what one might deem a silly youthful mistake, but it’s a mistake I couldn’t really blame her for, because she made it wishing to take her life into her own hands, not remaining hidden behind petticoats.

Jackaby is a very quirky character, one that has a lot of strengths, especially when it comes to perceiving the unseen, the hidden world behind our world, and to act upon such knowledge… with a bit of wit he’s not aware of:

“I assure you, I am a consummate professional. I do not cast spells!”

Yet he isn’t perfect, and can definitely do with an assistant who’ll pay attention to more mundane things. I thought he and Abigail completed each other quite nicely in that regard—and, just as important to me, they weren’t thrown into some immediate romance subplot (I hope they’ll never be). Granted, there is a bit of a romantic interest in the novel, only directed towards another character, and without obfuscating the plot. In such a novel, it would just have damaged everything; I really appreciate that the romance trope wasn’t given more sway in here.

The mystery wasn’t too difficult to solve—I started suspecting who the culprit was early enough—but the dialogue lines, Abigail’s narrative and the secondary characters were interesting and pleasant to read about.

Yzabel / October 9, 2014

Review: Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror

Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror by Mike Tucker

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

“Well, I doubt you’ll ever see a bigger insect.”

Gabby Nichols is putting her son to bed when she hears her daughter cry out. ‘Mummy there’s a daddy longlegs in my room!’ Then the screaming starts. Kevin Alperton is on his way to school when he is attacked by a mosquito. A big one. Then things get dangerous.

But it isn’t the dead man cocooned inside a huge mass of web that worries the Doctor. It isn’t the swarming, mutated insects that make him nervous.

With the village cut off from the outside world, and the insects becoming more and more dangerous, the Doctor knows that unless he can decode the strange symbols engraved on an ancient stone circle, and unravel a mystery dating back to the Second World War, no one is safe.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Second Twelfth Doctor novel I read, and one I liked better than Silhouette. I’d say it’s typical-enough Doctor Who, perhaps closer to some of the older adventures than to the most recent ones, in its theme and some of its elements? Namely giant insects and technology snagged from the Nazis—there’s always something both eyeroll-worthy yet deliciously “old-fashioned” to find in such aspects, as far as I’m concerned. (“Old-fashioned”, in that it always reminds of older stories I was reading back when I was a kid and WWII/the Cold War were still present in our minds. Nowadays, these themes feel like they’re going further and further away from us.)

The Doctor and Clara investigate mysterious cobwebs and mutant insects in a small village known for its ring of ancient stones, as well as a few other curious things (either in the present or in the past). At first, they don’t seem to be really linked together, but the author makes all those lines converge together in a timely fashion.

Not having seen many episodes with Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, I’m not completely sure if the character in this book is really close to the one portrayed in the series. He felt close enough, at least, and clearly different from Eleven, at any rate. Clara isn’t always present, and depending on whether you like her character or not, this will be a good or a bad thing. I wasn’t too convinced, but that may be because I thought she didn’t have too much of an important role (and she should have—this is the novel where we learn Jenny taught her to pick locks, after all).

A few editing mistakes/typos, that I hope aren’t in the final printed version. The writing style’s alright: not too complicated, not too simple (with a couple of redundancies now and then, but nothing too bad from what I could see). Dialogues sound similar to the ones in the show. Overall, it indeed reads like a DW episode, and I liked that.

3.5/5 stars.

Yzabel / October 3, 2014

Review: The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm

The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition by Jacob Grimm

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their “Children’s and Household Tales” in 1812, followed by a second volume in 1815, they had no idea that such stories as “Rapunzel,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “Cinderella” would become the most celebrated in the world. Yet few people today are familiar with the majority of tales from the two early volumes, since in the next four decades the Grimms would publish six other editions, each extensively revised in content and style. For the very first time, ” The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm” makes available in English all 156 stories from the 1812 and 1815 editions. These narrative gems, newly translated and brought together in one beautiful book, are accompanied by sumptuous new illustrations from award-winning artist Andrea Dezso.

From “The Frog King” to “The Golden Key,” wondrous worlds unfold–heroes and heroines are rewarded, weaker animals triumph over the strong, and simple bumpkins prove themselves not so simple after all. Esteemed fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes offers accessible translations that retain the spare description and engaging storytelling style of the originals. Indeed, this is what makes the tales from the 1812 and 1815 editions unique–they reflect diverse voices, rooted in oral traditions, that are absent from the Grimms’ later, more embellished collections of tales. Zipes’s introduction gives important historical context, and the book includes the Grimms’ prefaces and notes.

Review:

(I got an ARC courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Though it took me quite some time to finish this book, it wasn’t for want of interest.

It contains both volumes of the tales gathered by the brothers Grimm, published around 1812-1815. I applied for the ARC out of curiosity, and was surprised at some of those stories, at the way the ones I remembered from my childhood was really edulcorated versions: both because of the editing performed by recent publishers, and because of their “authors” themselves, since the brothers reworked many of them years later to make them fit more within Christian morality.

Indeed, while these stories looked familiar, they were also different in how their characters were portrayed, and their actions were carried out. For instance, in the original tales, the “wicked stepmother” is more often than not the actual mother. Parents don’t hesitate to throw children out of their home, to have them killed at the slightest mishap, and the kind of “traditional moral” to the stories isn’t always the one modern readers would have expected. More than the lessons I got used to when I was younger, the tales are examples of how sometimes, cunning or even violence gets the job done faster.

Reading those versions was definitely an intriguing experience, perhaps more from an anthropological point of view than from a leisurely one: somehow, I enjoyed the book’s material more for its comparative value than as a collection of actual tales read for pleasure only. (I guess this may be one of the shortcomings here: I don’t recommend reading everything at once, for a lot of stories become redundant after a while, pôssibly because they’re based off similar traditions. However, if one goes through them at a slower pace, interest remains sparkled. At least, this is what happened to me—and the reason why it took me over a full month to read everything.) The introduction itself is a fairly interesting piece, too, one that gives more information and details about how the Grimm brothers went about collecting the tales.

This book also made me question tales in general. Overall, I mostly read/heard them when I was a child, and later on went to read modern retellings. I had forgotten—or maybe I just didn’t have enough hindsight, nor background at the time to realis this—what kind of place the tales may have had in society, and the way they’re so different from what I’d be looking for today. The place of women, among other things: the greedy wife who always wants more; the jealous mother; the one who wants her own daughter to have it all, while providing minimum effort; the princess shirking responsibility after a hastily-made promise; etc. (Men aren’t spared from this, but I think it just struck me more when it was about women.)

I found the first volume more interesting in general; this may have had to do with how the second one felt more “Christianity-laden”, with characters regularly happening upon “the Lord” or “the Devil”. Those already felt like they bore the traces of what would become their future, more well-known versions.

Overall, it wasn’t such an easy read, but it clearly holds academic value. 3.5/4 stars.

View all my reviews

Yzabel / September 30, 2014

Review: A Call to Duty

A Call to Duty by David Weber and Timothy Zahn

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life . . . the two things his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately.

But life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction.

The Star Kingdom is a minor nation among the worlds of the Diaspora, its closest neighbors weeks or months away, with little in the way of resources. With only modest interstellar trade, no foreign contacts to speak of, a plague-ravaged economy to rebuild, and no enemies looming at the hyper limit, there are factions in Parliament who want nothing more than to scrap the Navy and shift its resources and manpower elsewhere.

But those factions are mistaken. The universe is not a safe place.

Travis Long is about to find that out.

Review:

(I got an ARC courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Let’s not dwell for too long on the cover, which is definitely a reminder of older SF books design, but didn’t do much for me. (To be faire, I got my share of gorgeous covers hiding stupid novels, though. So I assumed that the contrary might be true as well.)

I must also say that I never read any of the Honor Harrington novels; as a result, I can’t say if it’s true to the Honorverse or not, and can’t compare it to other similar works by those authors. I went into this one not even knowing what I was going into, except that “it seems to be military sci-fi, and I kind of feel like reading this genre at the moment.” Especially since the blurb depicted a somewhat decadent Navy, and that such settings are always ripe for a lot of themes I tend to appreciate.

Travis Long is a young man, even a teenager, whose family doesn’t pay much attention to: his half-brother Gavin is a Lord, and his mother is busy with her work. On a whim, he decides to join the Royal Manticoran Navy, both craving for a discipline he was never subjected to and for a place to be after a stunt that almost went wrong for him. To be honest, I’m still not sure about his motivations: I would’ve liked to see his family problems depicted a little more deeply, perhaps, or to be given more details, because as it is, it seemed just a little “woe is me”. Fortunately, this doesn’t last for long, and Travis doesn’t dwell on it for the whole novel; we only get a little reminder a couple of times. The character tends to be a rule-stickler, which fits as an echo of what he craved. On the other hand, it holds good potential for inner conflict: he sticks to rules, but has a natural tendency to think outside the box, and while the latter helps in tense situations, at some point, I can envision both aspects of his personality getting pitched against each other. Although Travis isn’t a terribly likeable young man in the beginning, there’s definitely room for development here. He didn’t strike me as a character who would forever remain the same.

The novel focuses on two major themes: Travis’s life in the Navy (as well as the problems that it has to face later—not going to spoil), and the game of politics that runs behind the scenes. The Manticore system is an interesting enough setting: a kingdom actually born from what used to be a corporation, Manticore Ltd. (I have no idea how the Board ever came to decide going monarchical was a good idea, but why not. This is also one of those aspects I would’ve want to learn more about. However, as I said, I don’t know the Honorverse, and perhaps this is explained in another book. I still wish there had been more of an explanation here, for readers like me.) In a way, it reminded me a little of parliamentarian monarchies like the UK’s, with a king—and even a former ruler named “Queen Elizabeth”—who holds decisional power… but not so much that he can afford to disregard Parliament’s pressures.

In the novel, the political intrigue runs mostly around the conundrum of “what to do with a Navy that has never known a war, and whose last round of battles was against some pirates, one century ago?” Gavin Winterfall, Travis’s half-brother, plays a minor role in this, but one that might expand in the next novel, perhaps, because he turned out to be more intrigue-savvy than his own allies thought at first. As for the RMN itself, its own people sometimes question their place, wondering if what they do is so useful, and if they’ll be ready the day a real war looms.

The story itself was quite entertaining, though a little heavy-handed on technical and military terms; I could adapt to those, and I enjoyed the atmosphere they created, but they might be a problem for readers who’re not keen on them. The dialogues made me feel like I was really on a spaceship, with operations going on following a given protocol. I also enjoyed how Travis manages to play an important part, thanks to his ideas, yet isn’t the one who completely saves the day all the time (he’s only enlisted, not a captain or another officer, and his being THE saviour who does everything wouldn’t have fit in my opinion). Even the way he gets rewarded reflects how Navy personnel has to traipse around potential political mishaps.

I’m not exactly fond of the ending, though. It seemed kind of… predictable to me.

The novel has its flaws, and I wouldn’t consider it as excellent, but as a beginning to a series, I think it sets the stage for a lot of potentially interesting developments, and I certainly wouldn’t mind reading the next installment. 3.5 stars.