retellings Archives - Page 2 of 3

Yzabel / December 30, 2015

Review: Mad About the Hatter

Mad About the Hatter by Dakota Chase

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

This isn’t his sister’s Wonderland….

Henry never believed his older sister, Alice’s, fantastic tales about the world down the rabbit hole. When he’s whisked away to the bizarre land, his best chance for escape is to ally himself with the person called the Mad Hatter. Hatter—an odd but strangely attractive fellow—just wants to avoid execution. If that means delivering “Boy Alice” to the Queen of Hearts at her Red Castle, Hatter will do what he has to do to stay alive. It doesn’t matter if Henry and Hatter find each other intolerable. They’re stuck with each other.

Along their journey, Henry and Hatter must confront what they’ve always accepted as truth. As dislike grows into tolerance and something like friendship, the young men see the chance for a closer relationship. But Wonderland is a dangerous place, and first they have to get away with their lives.

Review:

[I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A slightly different take on Wonderland, with a highschooler character instead of a little girl, and with Alice (and her brother) as contemporary young people. Not the usual Wonderland, but why not? The world had that delicious, in a nonsensical, atmosphere, with its inner “logics” that appears silly at first, yet also holds its own explanation when you think about it. That’s something I had liked in Carroll’s story: how much “wonder” is in fact governed by its own rules, if you care to dig deeper and have a look at them.

However, this novel didn’t accomplish much in the end. It was more light-hearted than I had expected, and the dangers the characters had to face never felt really prominent. The Red Queen and her guards could’ve been much more of a threat, but never were. The action ended up being mostly Henry and Hatter wandering around (in dangerous areas that didn’t feel as wonderful and at the same time dangerous as they did in the original novel), with a thin enough plot, all things considered. A bit of a twist after the second third, sure… and that was all.

I didn’t care much for Henry either, who didn’t seem to have much of a personality, and looked more the pouting teenager on the verge of throwing tantrums (at least the Red Queen’s were to be expected). The mutual attraction between him and Hatter was cute, but… nothing more. Barely any character development here, and not the kind of relationship I thought I’d find here. It also hovered too much between actual romance and barely-touched-upon romance, which in turn made it a weird mix: either too much or not enough. As if, past some point, the novel couldn’t decide whether to take things further or not.

A few brain farts as well when it came to the writing style: at times emulating the original tale’s, at others much too close to spoken modern style. The clash between both wasn’t very pleasant.

Conclusion: cute, fluffy, and a nice read if you don’t want to think too much. While readable, it was nothing exceptional.

Yzabel / October 28, 2015

Review: Alice Takes Back Wonderland

Alice Takes Back Wonderland by David D. Hammons

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

After ten years of being told she can’t tell the difference between real life and a fairy tale, Alice finally stops believing in Wonderland. So when the White Rabbit shows up at her house, Alice thinks she’s going crazy. Only when the White Rabbit kicks her down the rabbit hole does Alice realize that the magical land she visited as a child is real. But all is not well in Wonderland.

The Ace of Spades has taken over Wonderland and is systematically dismantling all that makes it wonderful. Plain is replacing wondrous, logical is replacing magical, and reason is destroying madness. Alice decides she must help the Mad Hatter and all those fighting to keep Wonderland wonderful. But how can she face such danger when she is just a girl?

Alice must journey across the stars to unite an army. She discovers that fairy tales are real in the magical world beyond the rabbit hole. But they are not the fairy tales she knows. Fairy tales have dangers and adventures of their own, and Alice must overcome the trials of these old stories if she wants to unite the lands against Ace.

With the help of Peter Pan, Pinocchio, Snow White and heroes old and new, Alice may have the strength to take back Wonderland.

Review:

[I received a copy of this novel from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.]

Both funny and leading one to think about darker themes, though a bit confusing at times.

I pretty much enjoyed this this novel. Its cover, for starters. Its grim version of a Wonderland not turned into gothic-like darkness or anything, but into an even more dreadful thing: grey, boring normalcy. Its mash-up of fairy tales, different from the ones known in our world, their echoes reaching us and being turned into stories, while our world has in turn their own echoes in those places—transcending time and space, too: Alice is actually from our contemporary United States, but Peter Pan knows her through her story as a girl from 19th century Britain, a story he himself was told before going to Neverland. Good ideas aplenty, in how the “true” characters were different: Pinocchio as a boy who doesn’t know whether he’s real or not (and with a darker backstory to his being a “puppet”), what’s truly going on with Captain Hook, Robin Hood’s real identity, Queen Charming who lost everything and has turned into a tyrant of her own kind because she couldn’t cope with all the sadness… There’s even a bit of a wink to Lovecraft, one that seemed odd at first yet ended up being not so odd, all things considered, with everything going on around it.

It may have been a bit too much at some point, making it difficult sometimes to remain focused on the story—possibly because of the large cast of characters and their nonsensical dialogue and ways of thinking: totally fitting the Wonderland setting (and thus good, too), but depending on your frame of mind and/or degree of tiredness, not necessarily the easiest to go through. I would advise not treating this novel as a “light read for when you don’t need to focus”, because you do, and you should, else some of its (interesting) elements may get lost along the way. (I’d dare say it’s the same with Carroll’s Wonderland, after all: to fully enjoy it, you definitely need to pay attention.)

I admit I would have liked to see just a bit more of Alice’s “madness” in the normal world, to better grasp how exactly she gave up on Wonderland at first: to me, it seemed she never gave up, picked up fairly quickly, and seeing her struggle more (or differently?) would have been nice. Not that I didn’t want her to accept Wonderland again—just differently, since Ace’s dominion there, his desire to turn it into a normal (boring) place, prompts her to take action and “retake” Wonderland. In the beginning, she didn’t *want* to believe, then the switch happened a bit too fast. Same with Alice’s parents: will they force her back into normalcy, or not? Can she stand up to them in that regard? Such answers aren’t given.

Otherwise it was a funny adventure, with good twists and turns and renewed takes on well-known fairy tales characters (the mysterious Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the dwarves dealing in moonshine…). 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / September 25, 2015

Review: The Gap of Time

The Gap of Time: A Novel by Jeanette Winterson

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited.

In Jeanette Winterson’s retelling of The Winter’s Tale we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.

Review:

[I received an advanced copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

I’m not too familiar with Winterson’s writing—except for a puny page from Sexing the Cherry that I had to translate at uni a some 10 years ago—so I can’t comment on how this adaptation exercise affected her usual writing, or if there’s anything really noteworthy here, in one way or another.

As a retelling of a play I incidentally also had to study, and quite enjoyed, I found it interesting: close enough to Shakespeare’s work in its themes (and names), but different enough as well, in that the modern setting allowed for other ways of dealing with those themes.

I liked this new interpretation of the characters. Hermione’s death, for instance, carried through isolation from the media as well as from her family. What happened to Milo/Mamilius. How exactly Perdita was “lost”. The absent Oracle, replaced by a DNA test. The kingdoms being a corporation and a colony. The Sheperd as a poor musician, Autolycus as a wily car dealer. And, last but not least, the twist on Antigonus’s fate, in a surprising interpretation of the famous “exit, pursued by a bear” stage direction. The Winter’s Tale is not an easy play; retelling it is certainly not easy either; in any case, for me, it worked.

As with the play, I preferred the first part to the second—darker, edgier, also with a more hateful Leo/Leontes, through his vulgarity and the way he treated MiMi/Hermione, so blinded by his jealousy that he kept refusing the means to actually prove whether he was right or wrong. Mostly the characters evolved in a bleak setting of money and fake smiles, in lieu of a Court, where finding happiness was just impossible as long as Perdita wasn’t fully accepted among them. I can’t exactly explain why such a setting was more interesting to me than the “happy” one of Shep’s and Clo’s life, raising Perdita on the other side of the ocean… it just was. This doesn’t make the novel less good, though—it’s probably more a matter of personal preference.

I liked what became of Leo in the third part, too: repentant yet still himself, amending his ways yet not all of them, which made him… believable? As for the video game… not sure what to make of it, however I found it lending a strange, eerie, haunted quality to the story, a sort of gloomy backdrop to Leo’s and Xeno’s broken relationship, with MiMi as the single unattainable beacon of light in the darkness. Quite powerful imagery.

Although it’s not absolutely necessary to have read the original play, since a summary is provided, I would recommend doing so, if only to be able to properly draw the parallels between both.

Conclusion: with other authors such as Margaret Atwood and Gillian Flynn being involved in this project, on top of that, I think it is definitely worth another check later. Here’s to hope I’ll be able to get copies of these books as well!

Yzabel / August 30, 2015

Review: Mechanica

Mechanica by Betsy Cornwell

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Nicolette’s awful stepsisters call her “Mechanica” to demean her, but the nickname fits: she learned to be an inventor at her mother’s knee. Her mom is gone now, though, and the Steps have turned her into a servant in her own home.

But on her sixteenth birthday, Nicolette discovers a secret workshop in the cellar and begins to dare to imagine a new life for herself. Could the mysterious books and tools hidden there—and the mechanical menagerie, led by a tiny metal horse named Jules—be the key to escaping her dreary existence? With a technological exposition and royal ball on the horizon, the timing might just be perfect for Nicolette to earn her freedom at last.

Gorgeous prose and themes of social justice and family shine in this richly imagined Cinderella retelling about an indomitable inventor who finds her prince . . . but realizes she doesn’t want a fairy tale happy ending after all.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley and Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

An interesting retelling of “Cinderella”, in that it veers away from the traditional Happy Ever After being brough by Finding True Love. Not that love isn’t nice, but I’ve always found it a bit… lackluster, in that it feels like a deus ex machina—why would there be any need for resourceful, smart, brave characters, right, since Love is meant to care of everything in the end! So this novel was a definite good change of pace, with Nick/Nicolette/Mechanica basically doing things herself, laying down her own plans and acting on them to get her own workshop. She was determined to reclaim her own life, without waiting on Prince Charming to come to the rescue, and I particularly liked that she realised this and chose her own path when other characters tried to force her into that particular mould.

Last but not least, the story focuses on friendship as a possible form of “love”, which isn’t something that I’ve seen that often in YA books, which too often only consider the couple aspect. Yet love has so many variations, offers so many possibilities…

The world itself was also intriguing, with its mix of steampunk-ish science and faerie wares, with the Fae getting the short end of the stick after having seen their lands conquered by the humans. It was a shame these two civilisations couldn’t coexist peacefully, and it raises the question of whether this could’ve been possible or not, or maybe if one of the sides (or both?) deliberately tried to sabotage relationships. Nick’s recollection of her childhood, of the family’s housekeeper, of her mother’s works—mixing technology and possibly a bit of magic—gave quite a few insights into how things degraded.

However, while the ideas carried through this retelling are excellent, I couldn’t help but be bored at times, as the story progressed rather slowly without exactly more than the basic original plot. Nicolette’s thoughts were not always the most interesting, and even though a Cinderella is supposed to be a solitary creature, so to speak, isolated from the world because of her step family, this resulted in maybe just a little too much beating around the bush. I think more interactions with Caro and Fin would have spiced up things a little, especially considering the relationship that developed between these three characters. Genuine female friendship, and none of the insta-dislike of the other girl because here’s a rival? Hell yeah. On the other hand, the lack of interactions in general made a certain love story border more on insta-love than anything else (not to mention that it developed in Nick’s fantasies more than “in real life”).

The other major “negative” point for me was how so many threads were left dangling. I’m not sure at all if this book is supposed to be a standalone or not. If it isn’t, it wasn’t made clear enough. If it is, then these plot points should’ve been resolved. The Ashes, more specifically, remain a mystery. What about the king’s latest decision regarding Faerie? And while the latter was a good element to include, somehow more details about the Fey themselves would’ve been a nice addition (and nice opportunities for twists and turns): revolution, trying to break the embargo, whatever… Only it didn’t happen. Here’s to hope it will happen in a next volume…

3 stars for the empowering message delivered throughout (make your own life, love yourself, don’t wait on a man to save you), and because I like machines and trinkets. Nevertheless, as it was rather uneventful, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would’ve otherwise.

Yzabel / August 23, 2015

Review: The Gospel of Loki

The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

With his notorious reputation for trickery and deception, and an ability to cause as many problems as he solves, Loki is a Norse god like no other. Demon-born, he is viewed with deepest suspicion by his fellow gods who will never accept him as one of their own and for this he vows to take his revenge.

But while Loki is planning the downfall of Asgard and the humiliation of his tormentors, greater powers are conspiring against the gods and a battle is brewing that will change the fate of the Worlds.

From his recruitment by Odin from the realm of Chaos, through his years as the go-to man of Asgard, to his fall from grace in the build-up to Ragnarok, this is the unofficial history of the world’s ultimate trickster.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I was quite keen on reading this one, but now that I’m done, I can’t help but feel that something was sorely lacking, and that the portrayal of several of the gods and goddesses wasn’t what I wanted to read.

Don’t get me wrong: different portrayals aren’t bad per se. They allow to shed another light on a character, to see a specific element in another way, to cast a whole other meaning and play with what is the “officially accepted” meaning, and so on. However, even though I’m fare from being a specialist in Norse mythology, I didn’t really understand some of the choices made here. For starters, what was wrong with Loki as a Jötunn (I’m not a proponento f Christian interpretations, so having here as a “demon” was definitely weird)? I especially couldn’t agree with the portrayal of Sigyn done here. I’ve always felt there should be more to her than what we know of, but seeing her reduced to a soupy housewife made half-crazed and happy to finally control his husband in the cave didn’t sit well with me. Granted, Loki made fun of all the gods and goddesses, only the way it happened with this one didn’t seem like an appropriate idea.

The tone of the story was somewhat light and funny in spite of the end of the Worlds it was bound to lead to, and highlighted Loki as a Trickster. The two episodes with Sleipnir and Thor disguised as a bride were particularly fun to read—I can never get tired of the latter, I guess. The gods and goddesses in general weren’t shown under their best colours, which here too fits with Loki’s point of view (being able to see the defects in people, himself included, and using them to his own advantage).

The “trickster tricked”, though, is another peeve I couldn’t shake off. Loki has always been a very ambiguous figure for me, not an evil one, so while his portrayal as being rejected because he’s a “demon” fits with his growing resentment (wouldn’t things have been different he had been accepted as Odin promised he’d be?), the end result looked more like a child being constantly thwarted and then whining about his fate, than a God bent on revenge for having been wronged once too often. This is not the kind of Loki I wanted to read about. He deserves more than that; his being tricked does happen (Útgarða-Loki being a good example), yet it quickly felt as if he always got the end of the shaft without never learning anything, and it doesn’t seem believable that a character like this one could be tricked from beginning to end.

I was probably also a bit annoyed by the omniscient view cast over the story, as it is told from Loki’s point of view after Ragnarök: I tend to grow quickly tired of structures of the “but the worst was still to come” kind. It didn’t help me to stay immersed in the narrative.

Overall it was a strange reading experience: when I was in it, it was alright, but every time I stopped, I had trouble picking the book again. It *is* pretty close to the Edda stories in some ways if you except the demon/Pandaemonium one, and probably this is both a strong and a weak point, as in the end, apart from being narrated by Loki, it doesn’t bring that much novelty or development to the already known myths. The Gods remain fairly one-dimensional, and while it was somewhat fun to read, I don’t feel like I’ll be opening this book again one day.

Yzabel / June 21, 2015

Review: The Ugly Stepsister

The Ugly Stepsister by Aya Ling

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

A Cinderella retelling with a twist.

When Kat accidentally rips apart an old childhood picturebook, she’s magically transported into the world of Cinderella–as Katriona, one of the ugly stepsisters! To get back, she’ll have to complete the story, right to the end of happily ever after. But the odds are huge: the other stepsister is movie-star gorgeous, the fairy godmother is nowhere to be found, and the prince isn’t interested in marrying any time soon. Can she ever return to the real world?

Review:

(I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5/4 stars. At first, the opening chapter made me think “is this a joke?” Cliché high school with shy, clumsy, average-looking girl who’s actually probably beautiful enough, gorgeous new student in front of whom she ends up tripping, beautiful rival with a queen bee attitude…

But then, it became fairly obvious that this was completely in jest, a wink to the usual stereotypical introductions of the kind, and it set the tone for the rest of the story. Sure, Kat/Katriona remained “clumsy”, due to having to suddenly walk around in long dresses and shoes she wasn’t used to, not to mention curtsying and waltzing… However, that was normal in the circumstances.

In general, I liked her character, first of all because she was a good person: acting for selfish motives (going back home), yet not ready to resort to the more drastic methods. When she realised that making Cinderella and the prince of Atheria fall in love may not be such a good idea, she felt guilty about it, and started questioning the whole point: is a “happy ever after” worth it, if it means forcing two people into a mold? She was presented with difficult choices to make, and had to find the strength to quash her own feelings in the process.

The author played with a lot of tropes, sometimes coming close to leaning on the fourth wall. The elements of Cinderella’s story were often subverted: Elle = Cinderella, but how could she be the neglected sister, when she already had a family in town? The prince who appeared as an aloof, brooding guy had his own goals and didn’t want to be seen exactly as a pretty wallflowers… much like Kat didn’t want to be told “go home and be a lady instead of using your brains.” Kat even went as far as to remark that she wasn’t a “special snowflake”: the prince and other people noticed her and found her remarkable only because she had been bringing contemporary values into a Victorian-like society, values and ideas that were just normal to her—in her eyes, this didn’t make her special in any way. This was a nice change from all those “I’m different” girls in a lot of YA stories (if only because she *was* different… and wasn’t at the same time).

I also liked that the romance wasn’t of the insta-love variety. Kat remained focused on her mission, as well as on the “subplots” she developed on her own (humanitarian ones, such as reducing children labour time and bettering their work conditions, for want of being able to completely reform Atherian society). She was too busy working on those, on finding the truth about Elle and figuring out how to help her (the fairy godmother was nowhere in sight at all, after all), that there wouldn’t have been time for her to gush and swoon over a prince, and that was definitely believable.

The goblins were funny, with their constant betting on the outcome of Kat’s efforts. I wish we had nown more about them and about the enchanted books.

The writing style sometimes grated on my nerves, as its “childish” flavour clashed with the more adult themes (child labour, servants being treated like dirt…). There were also a few parts where the story jumped from one place to the other, making me think “wait, when did Kat go back home?” I’m not sure if this was a problem of editing, though, or of formatting.

Conclusion: Thoroughly enjoyable, if somewhat predictable when it came to a few events. But fairy tales are predictable anyway, and for a retelling, this one managed to veer off the usual Cinderella story enough to be a very satisfying one.

Yzabel / February 1, 2015

Review: Gears of Brass

Gears of Brass: A Steampunk Anthology by Jordan Elizabeth

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

A world like ours, but filled with gears of brass, where the beating heart is fueled by steam and the simplest creation is a complex clockwork device.

Within this tome, you’ll find steampunk fairy tale re-tellings, as well as original stories that will send your gears turning.

Welcome to the steampunk realm, with eleven authors guiding your path.

GEARS OF BRASS is a steampunk anthology published through Curiosity Quills. Within the pages, you’ll come across clockwork inventions and steampunk-ified fairy tale retellings. Eleven authors will guide you through worlds filled with airships, top hats, and corsets.

Review:

(I got a copy from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.)

2.5 stars, as on average the stories ranged from “it’s OK” to “I like it” for me, but not more—which is too bad, because, well, steampunk? How come I didn’t like this more!

My problems with this anthology were some cases of bad editing (spelling mistakes), but mainly the fact that most stories left me with a strong feeling of unfulfilled expectations. As soon as I’d get into a plot, and get excited about it and how it might pan out, the story ended, somewhat unresolved. As if the authors had so much more to say, but were constricted by imposed length, and had had to find in a hurry a “witty” punchline to give to their tales.

(Speaking of tales, quite a few stories were retellings of fairy tales, so if you like those, you’re going to be happy. Same if you like plots where human nature is denounced as dark, twisted, and not so close to redemption.)

On the bright side, the authors featured here all seem to have a vivid imagination, and plenty of good ideas in store for novellas or even novels. I could easily see half these short stories expanded, especially Zeus’ Fire, Time Spun Souls and The Key Girl (the latter had excellent bases, but went much too quickly to my liking).

My favourite ones:
* A Clockwork Dollhouse – in my opinion, the best wrapped and fulfilling of all.
* Zeus’ Fire – Greek mythology and steampunk (although it didn’t feel “British”, owing to the language).
* Clockwork Wolf – Little Red Riding Hood revisited.
* Lana’s End – selfish protagonists are selfish!

In other words, I was disappointed in the anthology itself, but I definitely wouldn’t mind checking some of the authors’ longer works, as I believe they can do good things when given longer formats to develop their ideas, worlds and characters.

Yzabel / August 6, 2014

Review: Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer

Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer Complete Edition by Van Jensen

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

This puppet may not be a real boy… but he just might be a real hero! When bloodthirsty monsters invade Pinocchio’s hometown and kill his father, Geppetto, Pinocchio discovers a new benefit to his magical nose: telling lies produces a never-ending supply of wooden stakes to combat the vampire hordes! Will Pinocchio be able to defeat these horrors, avenge his father, and save his friends? Now, for the first time, the complete trilogy is collected together in a single deluxe softcover edition. Jensen (Green Lantern Corps) and Higgins (Knights of the Living Dead) present a captivating blend of comedy, horror, romance, and adventure, rooted in the original Italian novel, but brought – as if by magic – to new life.

Review:

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

As honest a review as possible, since it was a preview that contained about half the graphic novel, and I have no idea how it’s supposed to end.

I quite liked it. Its premise felt somewhat weird, but all things considered, it was actually fairly logical: killing vampires with wooden stakes… Well, here’s a puppet with an endless supply, for as long as he can tell lies, and lies are easy to come by. So why not?

The drawing style isn’t a favourite of mine, but it was dark, sharp and raw, and in my opinion, this fit with the mood of the comics. The plot’s rooted in the original tale, with characters out of it and somewhat changed (the cricket’s a ghost, the fairy’s kind of dying, Master Cherry creates weird weapons…) and events that clearly aren’t the nice ones a lot of us got used to when reading more childish retellings (or watching the Disney version). Pinocchio became a vampire hunter after Geppetto was killed by such a monster, and while this places the story’s theme in the traditional revenge-type category, it worked for me. It also deals with related themes such as the matters of letting go, of trying to find a balance, a new life, and how those things aren’t so easy to achieve. Also, being human might not be such a boon after all.

The story had several twists and turns, and possibly some more in the part I didn’t get to read. I won’t place buying the complete volume on my priority list, but I’ll possibly do that at some point or other, if only to see where the characters will go from there (the excerpt ends on quite a cliffhanger).

Yzabel / July 24, 2014

Review: William Shakespeare’s Star Wars : Verily, A New Hope

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

Inspired by one of the greatest creative minds in the English language—and William Shakespeare—here is an officially licensed retelling of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. ’Tis a tale told by fretful droids, full of faithful Wookiees and fearsome Stormtroopers, signifying…pretty much everything.

Reimagined in glorious iambic pentameter—and complete with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations—William Shakespeare’s Star Wars will astound and edify Rebels and Imperials alike. Zounds! This is the book you’re looking for.

Review:

(I’ve had my sights on this book for quite a while. When I saw it up on Edelweiss, I promptly requested a digital copy, and was pretty glad I was approved quickly. All this in exchange for an honest review, of course.)

I must confess I’m a long-time Shakespeare addict. I sure don’t find all his works wonderful, I have my favourites and my not-so-favourites, and sometimes I take it more in jest than in earnest, but we’re nevertheless speaking here of someone who recognises her iambic pentameters when she sees them, and who can still quote most of Edmund’s speeches even five years after studying King Lear. I am, simply put, totally biased, and not ashamed of it the least bit.

I’m also an old Star Wars nerd. Seriously. I stopped counting a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away) how many times I watched the original triolgy—both the first version and the remastered one. Also, know that I drive to the tune of Darth Vader’s voice giving me directions whenever I turn my GPS on.

Simply put, as I was reading this play, I kept thinking: “My, actually staging it would be great, and I’d probably be ready to do it, even though I have no experience whatsoever in theatrics”.

I also couldn’t help but find traces of Joseph Campbell in there, which the afterword confirmed, and which isn’t surprising at all. Shakespeare’s plays rest on a lot of classical archetypes, and George Lucas’s do as well, considering his own contacts with Campbell’s works. (Have I ever said I deeply admire the latter?)

This book contains a lot of things I loved:
* Hints at scenes from Shakespeare’s plays, including Luke delivering a “poor Yorick” soliloquy while contemplating the helmet of the Stormtrooper whose armour he stole.
* Proper use of “wherefore” (honestly, you have no idea how good it is to find an author who doesn’t mistake it for “where”).
* Hilarious asides from R2D2, whose bleeping and various other noises are only a cover for real thoughts. Pretty much like the typical Fool, in fact.
* Tongue-in-cheek quips at the movies:

HAN: Aye, true, I’ll warrant thou hast wish’d this day.
[They shoot, Greedo dies.
[To innkeeper:] Pray, goodly Sir, forgive me for the mess.
[Aside:] And whether I shot first, I’ll ne’er confess!

* Leaning on, or even breaking the fourth wall, and addressing the audience, much like in the original plays.
* Strong attempts at respecting the movie’s lines:

VADER I find thy lack of faith disturbing

LEIA Thou truly art in jest. Art thou not small
Of stature, if thou art a stormtrooper?

* Actual stage directions—probably one of the reasons why I felt this could very well be staged.
* Iambic pentameters. I checked. I counted. They’re not so easy to pull.
* Illustrations in the shape of etchings featuring Star Wars characters with their normal looks combined to some late Elizabethan fashion elements.

I was less at ease with the fifth act, though, and I think it was mainly because the Star Wars scene is a space battle, yet trying to conform to stage directions led to a lot of talking and describing actions. The attempt didn’t work so well as it did in other parts of the book. I also questioned how the book may be perceived if read by someone who doesn’t appreciate both SW and Shakespeare: I’m not convinced it would make a good introduction to either of those. One definitely needs to be acquainted with both to start appreciating it.

Overall: a few things I didn’t like, but that never hampered my enjoyment of the book. I found it cleverly executed, as well as both a fun read and one that made me try and match scenes/quotes from the movies with their potential parallels in Shakespeare’s plays. 4.5 stars.

Yzabel / July 20, 2014

Review: The Girl From The Well

The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night.

A dead girl walks the streets.

She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.

And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.

Because the boy has a terrifying secret – one that would just kill to get out.

The Girl from the Well is A YA Horror novel pitched as “Dexter” meets “The Grudge”, based on a well-loved Japanese ghost story.

Review:

(I got an ARC of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.)

Not so much “terribly scary” for me in the end, in that I don’t scare easily, yet fascinating nonetheless for its depiction of ghosts, the appearance they have after death, and the imagery it conjured. I could fairly easily picture Okiku, the murderers she targeted and got revenge on in place of the dead children, said children literally latched onto those men’s necks and linked to their limbs by spirituals cords… And the woman in black… well, all right, that one I’d definitely attempt to draw someday, although I’m not sure I could do her justice. I think the way the story was told, too, contributed to this: somewhat cold and detached, and special, because it’s a strange mix of omniscient and first person point of view (the story’s told by Okiku herself, who’s able to observe other characters and their reactions, and sense their thoughts and feelings). In any other story, it probably wouldn’t have worked for me; here, it did, because it seemed to fit with the ghost’s paradigm. I don’t know if other readers in general would like it, but as far as I’m concerned, it partook the fascination I had for this novel, through descriptions that were just the right length and just suggestive enough (all the more for the intended YA audience), without falling into the realm of “too much”.

The Girl From The Well is loosely based on a well-known Japanese legend, that of a servant girl who worked for a lord, and was tasked with keeping ten precious plates; she was tricked into believing she had lost one of them, and was put to death for her “carelessness”. As a result, she became a vengeful spirit who drove her former lord to death—and the number 9 sends her spirit into a frenzy. This was nicely reflected in the book, in that Okiku tends to count whatever she sees (people, items…), and the accursed number indeed makes her react violently. Forever detached from both human world and and elusive afterlife, she can only watch, in between enacting revenge throughout the world on people who’ve killed children, but were never punished for their bad deeds. The Smiling Man, especially, was of quite a scary persuasion—I find smiles way more frightening than other expressions whenever such characters are concerned.

However, this isn’t exactly Okiku’s story. Hers was already written, already told, and this is more a “what would happen some three hundred years later, how would such a vengeful spirit evolve with time.” Partly to her own surprise, she finds herself drawn to Tarquin, a boy with strange tattoos, and whose fate is doomed to be a dark one if what plagues him isn’t destroyed in time. (Note: there’s no romance involved—a very welcome element in my opinion. It would just’ve been weird and misplaced in such a story.) Odd things happen around Tark, his own mother has been locked in an institution and has tried to kill him several times, and he just doesn’t understand much to what’s happening. But other people slowly start to notice the presence that haunts him, those people being mostly Okiku and his cousin Callie, and it’s up to them to try and understand what his problem his, and how to solve it, which involves going back to his roots.

On the downside, I wasn’t too convinced by the characters in general, in that they seemed more driven by the plot than people with their own lives. Okiku’s involvement was also somewhat problematic, since she was mostly a watcher and didn’t act as much as I expected her to. I think I would’ve liked her nature as a vengeful spirit to show through more than it did; for instance, one of the vengeance scenes made me feel like it had been put there as some kind of reminder, and not really as part of the plot. There was also one huge blunder that could’ve been easily avoided if only one of the characters had spoken out loud about a specific event, yet didn’t for… no reason? I don’t mind characters making honest mistakes, but not when the latter are the product of unexplained reasoning.

Overall, I had a hard time putting this book down, and remained fascinated, though with hindsight, those aspects I mentioned prevented me from rating it higher. (3.5 stars)