Book Discussion Group Schedule

I forgot to mention this earlier, then decided it merited a separate post! I've finalised the reading schedule - more or less (I'm still not sure about the Charles Butler book), so here's the list in calendar order:

April 3, 2007: Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full of Sky (This is the second in the Tiffany Aching series, so you may want to read The Wee Free Men first.)

May 1, 2007: Garth Nix - Lady Friday

June 5, 2007 Philip Pullman - The Ruby in the Smoke

July 3, 2007: Louis Sachar - The Boy Who Lost His Face

August 7 (through September as well), 2007: J K Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

October 2, 2007: John Gordon - The Giant Under the Snow

November 6, 2007: Alan Garner - The Owl Service

December 4 (through January 2008 as well): Charles Butler - The Fetch of Mardy Watt

The House In Norham Gardens: Book Discussion

Welcome to the second Scholar's Blog Book Discussion Group.

I confess that I instantly fell in love with Penelope Lively's The House in Norham Gardens when I read first read it last August, from the moment that I read the first three verses of Thomas Hardy's poem, "Old Furniture" (below) quoted on the dedication page.

The edition I have (Jane Nissen, 2005) has an interesting introduction by Philip Pullman, which I wish I could quote in full for those who don't have it. He talks about there being an invisible character who haunts much of Penelope Lively's work - that character or presence is Time. He describes Lively as "the laureate of time" and notes that "there's more awareness of the presence of the past in her work, both for children and for adults, than in that of almost any other novelist." Pullman also discusses the extraordinary atmosphere of the novel, and it was that atmosphere as much as anything else that attracted me to this tale.

Old Furniture

I know not how it may be with others
Who sit amid relics of householdry
That date from the days of their mothers' mothers,
But well I know how it is with me
Continually.

I see the hands of the generations
That owned each shiny familiar thing
In play on its knobs and indentations,
And with its ancient fashioning
Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,
As in a mirror a candle-flame
Shows images of itself, each frailer
As it recedes, though the eye may frame
Its shape the same.

(The full poem is here.)

From the first page of the story, I was gripped - here are some of the things I loved about it:

1 - The houses there are quite normal. They are ordinary sizes and have ordinary chimneys and roofs and gardens with laburnum and flowering cherry. Park Town. As you go south they are growing. Getting higher and odder. By the time you get to Norham Gardens they have tottered over the edge into madness: these are not houses but flights of fancy. (p. 1)

2 - The lines The front door was not locked. Old ladies lose front door keys. (p. 2) - so practical and so typical of Clare's attitude to her elderly aunts.

3 - Clare's imaginary conversation with a person from outer space (also p. 2), which serves to explain to readers who aren't familiar with the style of British homes of earlier centuries, with their quaintly named rooms.

4 - Clare's meditation on whether or not houses should be razed once they are no longer useful, and the reference to the passing of the people who've lived in them. (p. 5)

5 - The exchange between Clare and her aunts in which they award each other grades such as "B double plus" and "Gamma plus" (p. 9). This exchange is full of their shared affection for each other, but it also demonstrates that the two old ladies are not witless.

6 - I like Lively's use of the diary entries (in chapter 6) and the way in which each chapter opens with an account of the lives of the tribe to whom the tamburan belonged.

7 - I thought it interesting that Lively used dreams to show the way in which the tamburan, and its link to the past, affects Clare.

For those of you without the Jane Nissen edition of Lively's book, the tamburan is illustrated on the cover photo (see above), behind the book title (below):


So what did you think of this book? What did you like? What did you feel didn't work? And would it encourage you to read more of Lively's children's fiction?

Lewis: Whom the Gods Would Destroy

Someone kindly loaned me a copy of the first episode of the new Lewis series "Whom The Gods Would Destroy", written by Morse regular Daniel Boyle. Starring Kevin Whately as the eponymous Lewis, and Laurence Fox as his sergeant, Hathaway, this episode focuses on a middle-aged Oxford graduate, an artist, who was found murdered near his houseboat. Lewis and Hathaway find themselves investigating a murder case that risks implicating some of Oxford's most esteemed social and academic figures, such as the potential candidate for the Vice Chancellor's job at the University of Oxford. Both the victim and the potential Vice Chancellor belonged to a small group of men known as "The Sons of the Twice Born", who are named after an epithet of Dionysus - relating to his birth. The group's activities are shrouded in Greek codes, quotes from Nietzsche and a Dionysian fondness for drugs. The title is part of a quotation from Euripides: "Those whom the gods would destroy, they first send mad."

This was a good episode - the writers have clearly developed Lewis from the man who was always a steadying influence on Morse into a man with a darker side and I was impressed with then writers and with Whately himself. Lewis is no longer Morse's moral centre, following his wife's death as a result of a hit and run accident three years earlier. Instead he gets angry - and I mean scarily angry - I actually thought he was going to punch Hathaway at one point when he was raging about a character who had been involved in a car accident when he was high on drugs; the character got himself a good lawyer and got off, and whilst he was left in a wheelchair, the other driver was killed outright. The character shows great contempt for Lewis and Hathaway when they visit to talk to him about the murder and it's after this that Lewis gets really angry. But his anger is understandable and I sympathised with him, which is very important. I think the series wouldn't work if they had made Lewis into an unsympathetic character. You might not condone his anger, but you understand it.

I must say I'm puzzled by accounts of negative reviews of this episode in the media - apparently one reviewer commented that "Lewis" aspired to mundanity, which made me wonder if they'd watched a different episode to this one !

King Of Shadows: Book Group Discussion

Welcome to the Scholar's Blog Book Discussion Group

And to its first discussion. This month, we're discussion Susan Cooper's timeslip tale, King of Shadows. The title refers to these lines of Shakespeare's:

"This is thy negligence. Still thou mistak'st,
Or else commit'st thy knaveries wilfully."
"Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook."
- Oberon and Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act III Scene 3

And as you will know, if you've already read the book, the tale centres on two performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream, that are performed 400 years apart.

Here are some of the things I love about this book:

1 - The opening: "Tag." - just one word and yet my attention was snagged and I found myself rushing into the tale...

2 - Nat's introduction to Will Shakespeare:

"'Greet Master Shakespeare, boy.'
It was as if he'd said, 'Say hello to God.'"

If you're a big fan of Shakespeare (or any other author), you know exactly what Nat means by this comment.

3 - The way the time-travel element is handled, with Nat asleep, so the mystery of how it happens is preserved. You don't have to worry about the science, you can just enjoy the magic of the story.

4 - The use that Cooper makes of Shakespeare's own words, with the quotations both from the plays and the Sonnets. I've long known and loved

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

and

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

the last two lines of the latter are ones that Nat mentions after Arby gives him a copy of the Complete Sonnets (chapter 19).

5 - The way the tale invites you to see or read A Midsummer Night's Dream for yourself. I hadn't seen it before reading this book, but I rented a DVD of Michael Hoffman's movie (with Stanley Tucci playing "Puck"). And I'm quite sure I got more out of the story, having read Cooper's book first.

So what do you like about this book ? What don't you like or what do you feel doesn't work ?

Oh and if anyone is interested, the carol that the Guy's Hospital nurse sings to 16th century Nathan Field in chapter 9, is the Coventry Carol, and you can find the words here and the music here.

Book Discussion Group Book List

These are the books I've chosen for us to discuss this year. I haven't created a specific schedule, although I will tell you that the March discussion book will be Penelope Lively's The House in Norham Gardens (and discussions will start on March 6).

The rest of the list is in purely alphabetical order:

John Gordon - The Giant Under the Snow

Garth Nix - Lady Friday (which is out in March, so it will be the book of the month in either April or May !)

Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full of Sky

Philip Pullman - The Ruby in the Smoke

J K Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I'll probably schedule this a month after its publication - I'll let you know once the publication date is announced !)

Louis Sachar - The Boy Who Lost His Face

I shall also pick an Alan Garner novel - but I'm currently trying to decide which one (probably The Owl Service) and I'm thinking of including Charles Butler's The Fetch of Mardy Watt, but I haven't yet checked it's available in the US and I don't want to select a book that everyone is then forced to buy from the UK (much as I love this book !). Allowing for the fact that we are starting in February and that we will probably take a break during the summer since I know a lot of other people go away/are busy during the summer months, this is enough books for the whole of 2007.

Of course, this "project" may fail after a couple of months !

Welcome to the Book Discussion Group

As mentioned on my main Blog, I'm going to be hosting a monthly book discussion here. The first book will be Susan Cooper's King of Shadows. King of Shadows is also available from Amazon.com.

If you're interested in participating and haven't already told me so via comments on Scholar's Blog, please let me know here. Comments are moderated on my Blogs (owing to Spammers), so you won't see your comments appearing immediately, but I check my email regularly for notification of comments being posted. Do bear in mind that I'm in the UK, so in a different time zone to most of you (but I don't sleep much so I'm here early in the morning my time, when it's still late evening in the US !)

Please note also that everyone is welcome to participate and that neither an English degree or a specialist knowledge in children's literature is necessary - just a love of children's books and of good conversations. Discussion of King Of Shadows will begin here on February 6.

Oh and if you're curious, I will be initiating a discussion of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in due course - I'll probably schedule it for the month after publication !

Here, There Be Dragons - James A Owen

James A Owen's Here, There Be Dragons, subtitled The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, has an interesting idea at its heart - that there exists an Atlas of all the Imaginary Lands ever created by authors. Unfortunately, the book didn't live up to its promise for this reader.

The story opens with three Oxford men who are brought in for questioning as the result of a Professor's death in London in March 1917. As a result they become companions on a voyage through the Archipelago of Dreams, after one of the men is named as the Caretaker Principia for the Imaginarium Geographica. During their journey they defeat the usurper to the Silver Throne, and restore the rightful king. The three men are Jack, John and Charles. Their exact identities aren't revealed until the end of the book (although I'd already found it out by accident), along with the premise that their journey later became the germ of their subsequent fiction. The men are C S Lewis (Jack), Charles Williams and J R R Tolkien. And right there is where I hit a problem with this book. I am a huge fan of Tolkien's works and I know a good deal about his life as well as his books, and he was never, ever called "John". As a boy he was known as "Ronald" (his second name) and as a man he was known as "Tolkien" (or "Tollers" to his friends). There is the fact that Tolkien, Lewis and Williams never met until after the First World War - and the fact that Owen's "Jack" talks of considering joining up, but by March 1917, Lewis was already a member of the Malvern Contingent of the Oxford University OTC, with the intention of doing his "bit" in the War.

One of the other things that I found massively irritating was that "John", who was being trained up for his role as a Caretaker by Professor Sigurdsson, claimed that he hadn't been getting on with his studies, because it didn't seem important: "Ancient languages that no one else could read..." (p. 70) - that is just so antithetical to the real life Tolkien, who adored languages, old and new, and invented so many of his own as well. He spent hours learning ancient languages (such as Gothic) when he should have been getting on with his assigned studies, that his assigned studies suffered. It was at this point that I almost abandoned this book.

I think this book might have worked better if Owen had created three entirely fictional characters for his main protagonists, rather than using three real life authors, two of whom are very well known indeed. I was puzzled by the fact that whilst "John" is the Caretaker Principia, his character is never very well developed, and certainly not as well developed as that of "Jack". And I found Owen's remarks about J M Barrie (who was supposedly an earlier Caretaker Principia) distasteful. All in all, I found this to be a reasonably good idea that was disappointingly executed. Here, There Be Dragons is also available from Amazon.com.

Septimus Heap: Flyte - Angie Sage

I had hoped that Angie Sage's Flyte, the second book in the Septimus Heap series (and a Cybils nomination), would be a bit better than the first. Less of a Harry Potter-clone and more 3-D characters. Unfortunately this wasn't the case.

It's been a year since Septimus Heap discovered his real family and his true destiny to be a Wizard. As Apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Marcia Overstrand, he is learning the fine arts of Magyk, whilst his adopted sister, Jenna, is adapting to life as the Princess and enjoying the freedom of the Castle. But before they can get really settled into their new lives, the evil Necromancer DomDaniel, whom they had thought had been disposed of, is still affecting their lives and something Darke is stirring. A Shadow pursues the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, following her every move and affecting her concentration as it grows stronger every day. Then Jenna is snatched taken by a rather unlikely kidnapper, his eldest brother Simon. And when I say, unlikely, I do mean unlikely. Simon is little more than a cipher - he's a very one dimensional version of Percy Weasley, who goes over to the Darke side, not because he's ambitious, but because he's jealous of Septimus' place in his family and he's been thwarted in his supposed love affair with a most unsuitable young woman named Lucy Gringe (who, by the way, has a brother named Rupert Gringe, whom I kept thinking of as "Rupert Grint" thanks the intense Harry Potterism of this book !)

This book was as big a disappointment as the first one. The set up is really good and I really liked some of the characters: Jenna is a no-nonsense girl and both Aunt Zelda and Marcia Overstrand are strong females, but the business of Simon's kidnapping of Jenna was unconvincing - and Jenna's escape from Simon Heap was equally unconvincing and relied far too heavily on coincidence, as did just about everything else in this book. I kept hoping the book would get better, but it just didn't happen. I hate writing negative reviews, but I can't, in all honesty, find much that's positive to say about this book or its predecessor.

Septimus Heap: Magyk - Angie Sage

Angie Sage's Magyk is the first book of a series about a young wizard called Septimus Heap, who is born the seventh son of a seventh son and apparently died shortly after birth. The very fact that the series is named after a supposedly dead character gives away the "secret" that he's not dead, only stolen away. And it feels as if the book went downhill from there onwards. Septimus is born to a family of Wizards and there was no telling what he might have become, since his lineage as a seventh son would have made him unbelievably Magykal. On the winter night when Septimus apparently died, his father, Silas, found another newborn child in the forest. He and his wife named her Jenna, and she grew up thinking that she was the daughter of Silas and Sarah Heap, and the sister of six older brothers - Simon, Sam, Edd and Erik the twins, Nicko, and Jo-Jo. It doesn't take Sarah Heap long to realise that Jenna is really the daughter of the murdered Queen.

Over the next ten years, Darknesse comes to the Castle and the Ramblings, the area where the Heaps live. The Supreme Custodian, along with his willing servants, ban Magyk and end the happiness the Queen's people knew before her death. As the Heap family attempts to ride out this time of Darknesse, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Marcia Overstrand, learns of a plot to kill the Princess as she is the only Major Obstacle preventing DomDaniel, a terrible Necromancer, from returning to the Castle. Jenna, Nicko, Silas, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Maxie (the Heaps' wolfhound) and a Young Army recruit known only as Boy 412 escape to the Marram Marshes, where they hope the Heaps' Aunt Zelda, a White Witch, will be able to keep them from harm. As DomDaniel does everything within his power to track down the girl standing between him and a ruling Darknesse, the Heap family have to do everything within their means to stop him - and at the same time stay alive.

So much for the plot. What really bothered me about the book was the number of similarities between this and the Harry Potter series. The Heaps are clearly poor relations to the Weasleys (Jenna even sounds a bit like Ginny, there are seven children in the family, including twin boys). It was quite obvious at a very early stage after his introduction that Boy 412 was really Septimus Heap, despite the red herring of DomDaniel's Apprentice claiming to be Septimus. Septimus discovers that he is Magykal (he also discovers a magical ring in a dark tunnel - shades of The Hobbit !), but cannot believe or accept it initially, and he even has green eyes. I won't bore you with a complete list of the similarities, but I can't help feeling there are too many for comfort.

The premise of this book is good - Sage has an interesting set up with the Magyk and the opposing Darknesse, and some of the characters are intriguing, although others are so one dimensional as to be mere ciphers.

Midnighters: Blue Noon - Scott Westerfeld

I read and reviewed the first two books in the Midnighters trilogy, Midnighters: The Secret Hour and Midnighters: Touching Darkness back in August after Touching Darkness came out. The third book, Blue Noon came out this week from Atom and I couldn't wait to read it immediately.

This review is over here because those who haven't read Touching Darkness yet, won't know what happened to Rex in that book, and that event is pivotal to events in this book. In Touching Darkness Rex the Seer of the Midnighters group was kidnapped by a group who support the Darklings who want to control Bixby, Oklahoma and he was transformed into a half human/half Darkling being. As the third book opens, he's still learning to live with the consequences of this transformation and although he looks human, he senses have been magnified and at times his Darkling self takes over from the human self.

The secret hour still arrives every midnight but something new has begun happening: the blue time is appearing randomly during the day. Rex and his four friends know that this is a dangerous situation as "regular" humans make become trapped in the midnight hour. Whilst they try to figure out what might be causing this aberration, they must deal with personal issues and relationships. Jessica (the Flame Bringer) and Jonathan (Flyboy), Melissa (the mindreader), and the brilliant Dess, who works on the numerical calculations and weapons used against the Darklings, find themselves thrown into a frantic race against time. According to Dess' calculations, it will be only a matter of a few weeks before the world as they all know it will end as the "Rip" that has developed, allowing the blue time to arrive during the day, begins to expand. Once the Rip expands far enough, the Darklings will take over Bixby and the blue time will envelop them all.

One of the many things complicating their attempts to investigate the Rip is Jessica's very nosy and interfering little sister, Beth, who wants to know why Jessica keeps disappearing around midnight, and how she can get involved in the great adventure. Jessica wants to protect Beth, but even she is unable to prevent Beth from finding out the truth in a frightening way.

As the barrier between the secret hour and normal time becomes weaker, other mysteries must be resolved. Just what are the connections between the Grayfoot family and the Darklings ? How can Rex and his friends stop the Darklings from destroying Bixby ? And is there a specific reason why they hate and fear Jessica Day more than any other Midnighter ? Does Jessica have more power than she realises ?

This is an interesting and intriguing finale to the Midnighters series, and although there were a couple of things that I didn't feel were resolved quite as well as they might have been, I think Westerfeld has done a good job of tying up the series.

The Vanquish Vendetta - David Lee Stone

The fifth book in the Illmoor Chronicles is The Vanquish Vendetta which is a direct sequel to The Dwellings Debacle (which I reviewed yesterday over on the Scholar's Blog) and is the middle book in a three book story arc.

In The Dwellings Debacle, Viscount Curfew was kidnapped and, after spending some time as a prisoner, was brutally murdered. But no one in Dullitch is aware of this face because the impostor who took his place looks exactly like him, thanks to some complicated dark magic. The impostor, Sorrell Diveal, is both ruthless and power-mad; he'll do anything to sustain his disguise, but one or two people start noticing and decide to challenge him, mostly with fatal consequences ! Diveal, however, is the pawn of a much darker force that's older than Illmoor itself.

In the meantime, King Groan Teethgrit, his half-brother Gape, and the dwarf Gordo Goldeaxe have discovered an ancient and valuable hammer which they take back to Dullitch, hoping to trade it to Viscount Curfew, little knowing that they've just unearthed a very crucial - and dangerous - part of Dullitch's past.

My only complaint about this book is that the story isn't sewn up at the end of The Vanquish Vendetta and the final part of this three-book story arc, The Coldstone Conflict, isn't due out until January 2007 !

Black Maria - Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones' Black Maria is a rather chilling tale. Everyone has an older relative who disapproves of you unless you do what they want and isn't nearly as nice as they pretend to be. But Aunt Maria turns out to be even worse than your average nasty relative. Take the most irritating old lady you can imagine - and then give her evil magic powers, and you've got Aunt Maria, who lives in Cranbury-on-Sea and is only an Aunt by marriage to Chris and Mig's mother. Chris and Mig's father was apparently killed in a car accident, plunging over a cliff on the way to visit his Aunt Maria. Mig and her family go to spend their Easter holiday with their Aunt mainly because Mig's mother feels guilty about Aunt Maria being on her own. However, Aunt Maria is a very prim and proper old lady who's not half as incapable as she likes to pretend, and who makes a point of guilt-tripping people into doing exactly what she wants. Life in Cranbury revolves around Aunt Maria's tea parties, to which only women are invited (the Mrs Urs as Chris and Mig term them). Meanwhile the men of the town act like zombies and the children, who are kept at an orphanage, are like clones.

Mig and her brother Chris hate it in Cranbury, in spite of the sorrowful ghost who appears in Chris's room, but then they start to suspect that magic may be at work in the town, and that Aunt Maria may be at the center of the magic. Then one day Chris annoys Aunt Maria so much that she transforms him into a wolf and it's up to Mig to uncover the magical plot which stretches back over several decades - and is the key to dethroning Aunt Maria.

It's hard enough dealing with elderly, sickly-sweet relatives if they are normal, so imagine what it must be like if they're cold-hearted witches who will turn their own daughters into wolves, as Aunt Maria does to her daughter Naomi (after whom Mig is named, Mig being her preferred nickname). Jones paints a chilling picture of Cranbury as a sort of a "Stepford Wives" situation, except that it's really "Stepford Husbands and Children", who are all slaves to the stifling sweetness of Aunt Maria. Mig is a likeable character, although her rebellious brother Chris is rather more engaging, and I wanted to shake their meek, submissive mother (although she does develop a bit more spunk towards the end of the book). Aunt Maria is frighteningly real: she has strong but outdated opinions - she's horrified at girls wearing trousers, at people eating fish and chips for dinner, and favours boys over girls. But even worse is the fact that she genuinely believes that she is a wonderful person and her magical manipulation of everyone, including Mig and Chris' father is horrifying.

Eastern Tide - Juliet E McKenna

Eastern Tide (Orbit) is the final book and satisfying conclusion to Juliet E McKenna's Aldabreshin Compass quartet (the preceding three are reviewed over on the Scholar's Blog: Southern Fire, Northern Storm and Western Shore.) It's now ten years since McKenna wrote her first book, The Thief's Gamble, and in those ten years her writing style has matured considerably, until the reader is presented with Eastern Tide.

The Aldabreshin Archipelago continues to be plagued by dragons and its people live in terror of the coming of the dragons to their island homes. Chazen Kheda, along with the poet Risala and the Northern mage Velindre, are chasing rumours of a water dragon, since they are the only ones who know the secrets of how to repel these fearsome beasts. In spite of the fact that they have saved hundreds of lives since the first dragon invaded the Chazen domain, they are forced to travel incognito, putting their lives at risk with their masquerade of the poet (Risala) and the zamorin scholar (Velindre disguised as a eunuch), and their slave (Kheda, who is really a warlord).

The ever-changing political balance between the island Warlords is teetering as various rival factions seek to gain advantage over their neighbours and warfare is threatened. Kheda finds himself reluctantly drawn into the rivalries as his fame as a dragon-fighter become more widely known. His apparent skill in defeating dragons is a powerful political tool and various Warlords seek to bribe, seduce (via their wives) or threaten Kheda into sharing his knowledge; but the one thing Kheda cannot do is reveal the source of his apparent power over dragons because then the lives of he and his companions will be at risk for they are tainted by forbidden magic from the Northern lands. If anyone was to uncover Velindre's true identity as a powerful mage from the feared island of Hadrumal, they would all be killed outright.

Unfortunately for Kheda, his contact with Northern magic has caused him to have doubts about the very foundations of his people's ancient beliefs in the reading of omens, which places his future as the Chazen Warlord in doubt and threatens the future health and happiness of his wife Itrac Chazen and their twin baby daughters.

To add to Kheda's woes, Velindre is forced to enlist the aid of another mage, Sirince; they discover there are more dragons in the Archipelago than they had guessed or believed; two of Kheda's former Daish wives have married out of the domain, leaving his unmarried son Daish Sirket in charge of the domain with only the support of Kheda's timid third ex-wife; Orhan, the son of Kheda's hated rival, Ulla Safar, is leading an uprising against his father - and he's proposing to marry Kheda's eldest daughter of the Daish domain !

This is a tense, thrilling, moving and thought-provoking finale to a fascinating series. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Eastern Tide is out on October 5.

The Aldabreshin Compass series: Southern Fire (2003), Northern Storm (2004), Western Shore (2005), Eastern Tide (2006).

Wintersmith - Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching can be described as the successor to Eskarina Smith, the young protagonist of the third of Pratchett's Discworld novels, Equal Rites (1987). Esk (as she's known) is the eighth child of an eighth son (eight being the magical number on Discworld, not seven), but the wizard Drum Billet, believing she will be born a boy (and therefore the eighth son of an eighth son and a wizard), gives the new-born Esk his staff of power, allowing her to inherit his magical power – and a host of unanticipated problems since women are not meant to be wizards, and wizard magic is quite different from witch magic. In a way, Equal Rites represents a missed opportunity for Pratchett to demonstrate the education of a young witch because Esk is taken, aged eight, to Unseen University, the premier wizarding educational establishment, in Ankh-Morpork, in order to learn (without appearing to do so since women are not admitted to the University as students) how to managed the power she has inherited.

Tiffany Aching, on the other hand, is spotted as a potential witch at the age of 9, by Miss Tick, a witch who searches out girls with the potential to become witches (a witch-finder, in other words), and ensures that they are taught to use and manage their power. Having spotted Tiffany's potential (in The Wee Free Men), she sees to it that Tiffany begins her magical education, not at a Hogwarts-style school, but by becoming an apprentice to different individual witches for a period of time. Thus A Hat Full of Sky opens with Tiffany setting off to stay with Miss Level as her apprentice. She then goes on to become the apprentice of Miss Pullunder; most witches are known as "Miss", only a few witches, such as Nanny Ogg, ever marry, whilst Granny Weatherwax (as she's known to a very small number of people) is accorded a "Mistress" (or she'll want to know the reason why !). Tiffany's apprenticeship with Miss Pullunder is glossed over by Pratchett and Wintersmith opens with Tiffany having only recently been apprenticed to Miss Treason, who said she was 113.

One autumn night Miss Treason takes Tiffany into the forest to witness a very special Morris dance that is performed to welcome winter. Unfortunately Tiffany (who is usually sensible and practical) disregards Miss Treason's instructions not to move during the dance, and throws herself into the dance. This attracts the attention of the Wintersmith, an unseen elemental being, who normally dances with Lady Summer. As a result of joining in the dance, Tiffany inadvertently acquires some of the powers of the Lady Summer (such as the ability to make things grow where she walks with bare feet), and the Wintersmith becomes fascinated by her. It sets out to woo her, intending to marry her, without knowing that she is a human and therefore very different from an elemental being; it creates roses sculpted from ice, then snowflakes and icebergs that look like Tiffany, and writes her name in the frost. Then the Wintersmith tries to turn itself into a human, and Tiffany tries to learn how to cope with its attentions, and how to survive the story into which she intruded by joining in the Winter Morris.

Whatever else you can say about Tiffany (eg. that she is young and inexperienced, and occasionally foolish), she is also hard-working, caring, and not one to shirk responsibility. Thus she looks after everyone at the funeral for Miss Treason (held before Miss Treason's death, since witches know when Death is coming for them); she also teaches Annagramma (the eldest of the nearby witch apprentices) about the people who live in the area which she is inherits along with Miss Treason's cottage, so that they are not left with an arrogant, inexperienced and untrained apprentice witch. Annagramma's mentor, Mrs Earwig, is married to a former wizard and is very New-Age-ish in her magic; she believes in crystal therapy and other modern (and nonsensical) magicks instead of the older, traditional magic that is practised by most witches – and she has taught them to Annagramma, who has never been apprenticed to another witch. Thus Annagramma has to learn from Tiffany how to be a midwife, how to lay out the dead and sit up with them after they die, etc. And all the time, Tiffany is trying to cope with the attentions of the Wintersmith. But no one ever said being a witch was easy – or that life was fair.

There are some very funny moments in Wintersmith, such as when Tiffany is reading a romantic novel which Rob Anybody and the other Nac Mac Feegles have acquired for her so that she can learn about romance – and she critiques the lack of realism in the setting of a sheep farm (Tiffany being the youngest daughter of a sheep farmer) and its inhabitants. Her reaction to the novel is pure Tiffany and just what the reader expects from a character who measures soup plates in order to establish exactly how big are Jenny Greenteeth's eyes (The Wee Free Men). There is also an intertextual joke that will only be noticeable to those readers who have also read Pratchett's last Discworld novel (Thud) – at the end of the book, Rob Anybody is reading a book that is clearly Sam Vimes Jr's favourite book, Where's My Cow?.

This book also contains some beautifully evocative descriptions, such as "And then summer filled her up. It must have been for only a few seconds, but inside them it went on for much longer. She felt what it was like to be the breeze through green corn on a spring day, to ripen an apple, to make the salmon leap the rapids – the sensations came all at once and merged into one great big, glistening golden-yellow feeling of summer . . ." (ellipsis in original; p. 386) This book also contains a flashback that's 11 chapters long, so that chapter 13 starts where chapter 1 ended, the other chapters having explained the events that led up to where Tiffany is at the start of the book. Such a lengthy flashback is a first for Pratchett – and fairly unusual for a novel.

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My thanks to Nikki Gamble of Write Away for sending me this book to review for her site.

Corbenic - Catherine Fisher

Catherine Fisher's Corbenic is part of Red Fox's Definitions series, which also includes Jonathan Stroud's The Leap, and like The Leap, Corbenic can be read on two levels, but I'll talk about that later.

Corbenic is based on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, le Conte du Graal, in which Perceval meets the crippled Fisher King and sees the Holy Grail, but fails to ask the question that would heal the injured monarch. When he learns of his mistake, Perceval vows to find the Grail castle again and fulfill his quest. In a similar way, Cal is on his way from his home in Bangor by train to Chepstow where he's going to live with his uncle Trevor and work in his accountancy firm. Cal's father left home when Cal was two and his mother has schizophrenia and a drink problem so Cal has been bringing himself up since he was 6. As the train is making its way to Chepstow Cal falls asleep and when he wakes suddenly at a station, he thinks he heard the guard say they were at Chepstow. He jumps off the train and it pulls away before he discovers his mistake. He is at Corbenic station. He waits some time for another train then decides to look for a phone instead. Walking along a dark lane he sees two men fishing on a lake and one of them tells Cal that there is a hotel about a mile down the road. Cal finds the hotel, a luxurious affair that must have at least 4 stars, and is surprised when he's told that a room for the night will be free. Cal rings Trevor to tell him where he is, then showers and dresses for dinner. Dinner is a sumptuous affair, more of a banquet than an ordinary meal and Cal feels as if he's strayed onto a film set. He is introduced to Bron, one of the two men who were in the fishing boat, who is wheelchair bound and apparently in great pain. Cal eats heartily then Bron talks to him, asking questions about his family. Bron urges Cal to go back home, but Cal refuses, then a strange procession takes place. Bron tells Cal that he must look at the Grail, which is coming, and see it then help them. Cal sees a bleeding spear, two golden candlesticks and then a dented golden cup which shines fiercely, carried across the dining room. However, he tells Bron that he has not seen it, believing himself to be affected by the unaccustomed wine he drinks during the meal. When Cal wakes the next morning, the castle is a ruin and there is a sword through his pillow, a parting gift from Bron.

Cal arrives in Chepstow and does his best to settle into his new life, in spite of boredom and his mother's phone calls begging him to come back home. One day he takes the sword to work, intending to take it to an antique shop to sell, but on the way to the shop, Cal is set upon by muggers, and finds himself trying to use the sword to defend himself. He is injured but picked up by a man and a girl who calls themselves Hawk and Shadow respectively. They are part of an historical re-enactment group in which Cal gets involved when he learns sword fighting from Hawk. The group is led by a man named Arthur, who has a foster brother named Kai. Also in the group is an old man who is referred to as The Hermit but calls himself Merlin.

Cal promises his uncle and his mother that he'll go home for Christmas since Trevor and his girl friend are going away, but Cal chickens out and stays in Chepstow so he can take part in a mediaeval festival on Christmas Eve. He rings his mother and tells her that he'll go home for the New Year instead, but before Christmas Eve is out, Cal is told that his mother is dead of an overdose. It's unclear whether she deliberately killed herself or whether she was too drunk to realise she had already taken her pills. Cal and Trevor go to Bangor for the inquest and funeral, and to sell the house and its contents, then Cal tells Trevor he wants to stay on for a few days. In fact, he's not going to stay in Bangor but go in search of Corbenic. He encounters Merlin in his wanderings, who tells him he's been away for more than 3 days, but it's only when he visits Sophie (Shadow), who has left Arthur's group and gone back to her home in Bath after Cal turns her in (since she had run away from home), that he discovers he's been gone for 3 months and Trevor has been worried sick about him, as have Arthur's group. Cal sets off to look for Corbenic in Glastonbury, following a tip of Merlin's. He finds it and is able to drink from the Grail, healing himself and Bron, and the land, and he is able to make peace with his mother who is the Grail bearer.

This book can be read on two levels. On one level Cal is an unhappy teenager suffering guilt over leaving his mother to deal with her illness and his experience of Corbenic is illusion, delusion or hallucination. At another level, however, Cal's experiences are real and he's a reincarnation of Perceval, who helps to find the Grail and heal the Fisher King.

Piratica II: The Return to Parrot Island - Tanith Lee

I was somewhat disappointed with Tanith Lee's Piratica: Return to Parrot Island as I didn't think it was as good as Piratica. Art Blastside managed to dodge the gallows at the end of Piratica and married her true love, Felix Phoenix. However, life ashore is proving too tame for the pirate queen, and when the Government invites her to become a legal pirate (a privateer) harrying the French, who resent the fact that England is now a Free Republic and have gone to war over it), Art jumps at the chance to go back to sea again. Unfortunately, Art hasn't anticipated that Naval war is horrific, and even more worrying is the fact that Little Goldie Girl, her arch-rival for the hand of Felix Phoenix (with whom she has had a row about her desire to go back to sea) is hell-bent on revenge. To that end, Goldie Girl kidnaps Felix and takes him aboard her ship; she intends to go back to Parrot Island to collect the treasure maps which Art and her crew had dug up during the events of Piratica. Art, meanwhile, is busy fooling the French and the Franco-Spanish captains, and even manages to prise a "blueprint" for a new supership from one gullible French captain !

Stormbreaker: The movie

I've posted these comments here because some of you may be intending to see the movie and not want to know beforehand what happens in it !

Anthony Horowitz wrote the screenplay to the movie of his book, Stormbreaker, and I would say he's done the job of adapting the book for the screen pretty well. I enjoyed this movie quite a lot; I thought Horowitz got all the major plot points in and then developed it into a fast paced movie. The only thing I really disliked was the "cat fight" between Frau Vole and Jack Starbright - it was far, far too silly.

There were some excellent stunts and special effects, and I felt Alex Pettyfer did a good job of playing Alex Rider - it's just a shame he won't be working on the next film; since Alex Rider is still 14 and Alex Pettyfer is now 16, they will replace the actor in a rather Bondesque manner !

It was interesting (but unsurprising) to see Alex's games device was updated to a Nintendo DS (I believe it was a Gameboy in the book) since the boy he was supposed to be was a computer geek - therefore it made sense for him to have the very latest games device. I loved the fact that Alex got pretty much all the gadgets that were in the book (from what I recall - it's been several months since I read the book) - and his walking-down-the-wall with the aid of the yo-yo was an awesome stunt.

Andy Serkis was incredibly menacing - far scarier as Mr Grin than he was as Gollum - the very fact that he didn't have a single line of dialogue just added to the menace, I felt ! Bill Nighy was delightfully nasty and unemotional - just how I saw Alan Blunt; also totally clueless (Talking to Mrs Jones about Alex: "Take him for an ice cream. He deserves a treat" !), and Mickey Rourke was just as slimey as he should have been !

I would have liked to have seen more of the characters played by Stephen Fry and Robbie Coltrane (and Ewan McGregor if it comes to that) - just because they're great actors and watching them never seems dull !

Sabina Pleasure had very little to do, unsurprisingly since the character isn't even in the first book (but of course Alex had to have a girl, as a "junior Bond" character).

This is a stonking good film that I am sure will storm (ho, ho !) up the blockbuster charts and give Captain Jack and his Pirates a run for their money...

Forever X - Geraldine McCaughrean

What interested me the most about Geraldine McCaughrean's Forever X, is that the story is as much about Mel, as it is about Joy. It looks in detail at the reactions of a 4 year old boy suddenly confronted with a place where it is always Christmas. Mel quite happily accepts that FC is Father Christmas, even when he isn't wearing a bushy white beard. Felix Cox is quite simply the essence of Christmas at Forever Xmas, as Holly explains to Joy after Felix's death – the B&B would not have continued in business without him; indeed it does not survive after his death, since Holly's parents decide to change the name and theme of the B&B to Forever England, based on their great interest in the Second World War.

Mel's simple acceptance that Mr Angel's job and his name are the same, ie. that he is an angel in charge of Health, rather than an environmental health inspector, is also interesting – and it leads to confusion. Mel approaches Mr Angel to ask him to make FC well again, when the latter is feeling the effects of his angina. But Mr Angel misunderstands (largely because he doesn't have the patience to discover just what Mel is asking of him), and when Mel repeats FC's remark that it must be something he ate that's making him feel poorly, Mr Angel assumes the worst (food poisoning) and establishes that the turkeys are undercooked (p. 57).

The confusion caused by Mel's literal interpretation of Mr Angel's name continues when the latter, finding himself locked in his room by Joy (who believes Mel has told Mr Angel that the wanted criminal, Mr Starr, is at the B&B with his son), climbs out his window onto a tree, only to discover he cannot climb down to the ground. When Mel notices Mr Angel is in the tree, he assumes that Mr Angel has flown up there, or is resting there after flying back from seeing God. Mr Angel attempts to make Mel understand that he is stuck and Mel goes inside to tell guests that "the Angel's on the tree", but everyone assumes he's referring to the model angel on top of the Christmas tree in the dining room.

When Mel sees the police approaching the B&B shortly afterwards, he believes they have come for Mr Starr (as his sister had told him), and runs away onto the moor, not realising that the police have brought Joy back to the B&B from the seaside where she had accompanied FC as he took the Starrs to a safe haven. Mr Angel finally manages to scramble down from the tree and reveals that Mel has run up onto the moor; it is then that he discovers that Mel believed he was a literal angel and he feels the full burden of his name for the first time.

There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom - Louis Sachar

I re-read Louis Sachar's There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom again yesterday. It's a lovely book about 5th grader Bradley Chalkers. As the book opens, everyone in his class (including the teacher) dislikes Bradley. He sits on his own in class, he doesn't pay attention in class, he doesn't do his homework, he cuts up his test papers and sticky tapes them to other bits of junk in his desk. He's aggressive and unfriendly. Then one day, two new people arrive at Bradley's school: Jeff Fishkin, a new 5th grader who is obliged to sit next to Bradley. Jeff is a friendly boy who automatically says "Hello" to people who say "Hello" to him, and he tries to befriend Bradley. The other new person in school is Carla Davis, the school counsellor. She meets with Jeff (because he's new) and with Bradley (because no one knows what to do with him). She has the best line in the book: "I won't tell you what to do. All I can do is help you to think for yourself.". Unfortunately this is going to prove to be a difficult stance for Carla to maintain after various parents misinterpret her ideas - one even tells Carla that it's not necessary to keep promises to children after Carla refuses to repeat to a parent what one of the children had told her, because she had promised she would not tell anyone else. (An attitude - the parent's, not Carla's - I found absolutely strange !)

Each time Bradley visits Carla, she greets him with the words "Hello, Bradley. It's a pleasure to see you today. I appreciate you coming to see me." Eventually, between the efforts of Carla and Jeff, Bradley starts to become both a better person and a better student. The big breakthrough comes when he and Jeff are invited to a birthday party by one of the girl's in class. Unfortunately, just before Bradley goes to the party, Carla is asked to leave the school, because of the objections parents have to her working with their children, and this causes Bradley to panic that he'll turn back into the horrible person he used to be. Carla does her best to persuade him this won't happen - and fortunately she's right.

Despite the fact that Bradley's a fairly unsympathetic character for much of the book, I did like him; I felt sorry for him and I wanted people to find the good in him, so the book was very satisfying in that respect.

I also liked Carla a lot - I loved the fact that she respects the children with whom she deals, and I really loved the way she loaned her books to children: she lends Bradley Uriah C Lasso's My Parents Didn't Steal an Elephant (which unfortunately doesn't appear to be a real book) and she lends Colleen (the girl who invites Bradley to her birthday party the very real Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters by J D Salinger. This books is very much a book about the power of friendship, but it's also a book about the value of reading and learning to think for oneself. I recommend it heartily.

The Great Good Thing; Into the Labyrinth - Roderick Townley

What particularly interested me about Roderick Townley's The Great Good Thing and Into The Labyrinth, and what differentiates them from Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series (aside from the obvious fact that Townley's books are aimed squarely at children), is the fact that Townley's characters interact with their environment: for example, they have to dodge illustrations; Sylvie goes to sleep in the margin of the book, leaning her head on the word "grandiloquent" (p. 8). And they respond to someone reading the story aloud - which makes it harder for them to concentrate on the story. For a Reader to read the entire story from beginning to end (as Claire does at one stage) is the equivalent to a non-stop performance of a play for a theatre company: exhausting.

It's also interesting that Sylvie (for example) doesn't comprehend the concept of scaring oneself for pleasure - although she doesn't realise that Readers who like to re-read the scary parts of her story are going to be less scared than Sylvie herself, to whom the events are happening.

I found Townley's conception of Internet cookies producing actual (inedible) cookies/biscuits amusing; as was the idea of the characters having to learn to step down lines of text when the story is being read on (and scrolled up) a screen, instead of in a book. I also liked the way that changing the words, affected the characters: thus Pingree the annoying and scheming jester, was transformed into a "greenpig" (which is very nearly an anagram of his name) when he falls into a "soft patch" in the text. A "soft patch" is an area of the story that's been affected by a virus which is created by Claire's brother Ricky's grandson, who is also called Ricky and who is as destructive as his grandfather was, but where his grandfather set fire to the original (and only) copy of The Great Good Thing, Ricky creates a virus to damage/destroy the text.