Category: Once Upon a Time
The Dark Lord of Derkholm
“My kingdom is being ravaged,” he said, “I have been selected as Evil King fifteen times in the last twenty years, with the result that I have a tour through there once a week, invading my court and trying to kill me or my courtiers. My wife has left me and taken the children with her for safety. The towns and countryside are being devastated. If the army of the Dark Lord doesn’t march through and sack my city, then the Forces of Good do it next time. I admit I’m being paid quite well for this, but the money I earn is so urgently needed to repair the capital for the next Pilgrim Party that there is almost none to spare for helping the farmers.”
Elves, demons, dwarves, dragons, wizards, griffins. (Oh my!)
All this and more in one book.
What? You need more?
How about Friendly Cows and garden monsters? Or flying pigs and talking horses? Magic spells and battles?
And Pilgrim Parties, organised by a man from another world – Mr Chesney who holds a demon captive in his pocket to make the magic world do his bidding. The people of Mr Chesney’s world pay good money to him to dress up, to be fought with, chased by avians, led by wizards as they journey through this other world of magic. It’s not just about illusions and magic though, people from both worlds actually get killed (some pilgrims are marked ‘expendable’ and aren’t meant to make it back home) and the lands racked and ruined.
This time, the Wizard Derk has been chosen to play the Dark Lord (and also chief tour coordinator), his son Blade is to be a Wizard Guide leading one of the many Pilgrim Parties, and their lovely home to be magicked into an evil citadel. It’s not an easy job but Derk is managing well enough, until a dragon puts him out of action, and Blade, his bossy bardic sister Shona and their five griffin brothers and sisters have to figure things out in his place.
“Just remember that when the Pilgrim Parties arrive there, they will expect to see hovels, abject poverty, and heaps of squalor and that I expect them to get it. I also expect you to do something about this house of yours. A Dark Lord’s Citadel must always be a black castle with a labyrinthine interior lit by baleful fires – you will find our specifications in the guide Mr Addis will give you – and it would be helpful if you could introduce emaciated prisoners and some grim servitors to solemnise the frivolous effects of these monsters of yours.”
The Dark Lord of Derkholm was just such great fun. A romp! A hoot! A whole cast characters who frustrate, endear and amuse. No wonder I sighed when it was over – all too soon!
I read The Dark Lord of Derkholm for Once Upon a Time VII (review site)
Now why have I waited so long to read more by Diana Wynne Jones? I enjoyed the animated film version of Howl’s Moving Castle some years ago (I’m a Miyazaki fan, although I have to admit that Howl’s is not among my favourites – which do include Totoro and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind) and might have been overwhelmed by the long list of works she’s created. I did pick up Derkholm after discovering that many of her works are in the e-book library catalogue. Hooray!
I will definitely be reading Derkholm #2 but I would love to know your DWJ recommendations! And ‘all of it!’ doesn’t count.
Here’s her bibliography in chronological order:
1970s
Changeover (1970)
Wilkins’ Tooth (1973)
The Ogre Downstairs (1974)
Dogsbody (1975)
Eight Days of Luke (1975)
Cart and Cwidder (1975) – Dalemark
Charmed Life (1977) – Chrestomanci
Drowned Ammet (1977) – Dalemark
Power of Three (1977)
Who Got Rid of Angus Flint? (1978)
The Spellcoats (1979) – Dalemark
1980s
The Magicians of Caprona (1980) – Chrestomanci
The Time of the Ghost (1981)
The Homeward Bounders (1981)
Witch Week (1982) – Chrestomanci
Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories (1984), collection
Archer’s Goon (1984)
The Skiver’s Guide (1984), nonfiction
Fire and Hemlock (1985)
Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) – Howl’s Castle
A Tale of Time City (1987)
The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988) – Chrestomanci
Wild Robert (1989)
Hidden Turnings, edited (1989)
“Mela Worms”, in Arrows of Eros (NEL, 1989)
1990s
Castle in the Air (1990) – Howl’s Castle
Black Maria (1991)
“A Slice of Life”, in Now We Are Sick (1991), poem
Yes, Dear (1992)
A Sudden Wild Magic (1992)
Hexwood (1993)
Crown of Dalemark (1993) – Dalemark
Stopping for a Spell (1993), collection
Fantasy Stories, edited (1994)
Everard’s Ride (1995), collection
Spellbound, edited (1995)
Minor Arcana (1996), collection
Deep Secret (1997) – Magids
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1997), nonfiction
Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) – Derkholm
Puss in Boots (1999)
Believing is Seeing (1999), collection
2000s
Year of the Griffin (2000) – Derkholm
Mixed Magics (2000), collection – Chrestomanci
Stealer of Souls (2002), originally in Mixed Magics (2000) – Chrestomanci
The Merlin Conspiracy (2003) – Magids
Unexpected Magic (2004), collection
Conrad’s Fate (2005) – Chrestomanci
The Pinhoe Egg (2006) – Chrestomanci
Enna Hittims (2006), originally in Believing is Seeing (1999)
“I’ll Give You My Word”, in Firebirds Rising (Penguin, 2006)
The Game (2007)
House of Many Ways (2008) – Howl’s Castle
“JoBoy”, in The Dragon Book (Ace, 2009)
2010s
“Samantha’s Diary”, in Stories: All-New Tales (HarperCollins, 2010)
Enchanted Glass (2010)
Earwig and the Witch (2011)
Reflections On the Magic of Writing (2012), nonfiction
Once Upon a Time VII Challenge
It’s here!
Ok so it’s already begun and I am a little late to the game. Still, I have until June 21 to read and read! Here’s what Carl of Stainless Steel Droppings has to say:
Thursday, March 21st begins the seventh annual Once Upon a Time Challenge. This is a reading and viewing event that encompasses four broad categories: Fairy Tale, Folklore, Fantasy and Mythology, including the seemingly countless sub-genres and blending of genres that fall within this spectrum. The challenge continues through Friday, June 21st and allows for very minor (1 book only) participation as well as more immersion depending on your reading/viewing whims.
The Once Upon a Time VI Challenge has a few rules:
Rule #1: Have fun.
Rule #2: HAVE FUN.
Rule #3: Don’t keep the fun to yourself, share it with us, please!
Rule #4: Do not be put off by the word “challenge”.
I am taking it super easy and going with The Journey, where it’s about reading at least one book. I hope to read more than one of course, but with wee-er reader due in early May, I don’t expect very much reading to be done after that.
And of course it’s so much fun to make a list of books!
My pool:
Spindle’s End – Robin McKinley
All the creatures of the forest and field and riverbank knew the infant was special. She was the princess, spirited away from the evil fairy Pernicia on her name-day. But the curse was cast: Rosie was fated to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a poisoned sleep-a slumber from which no one would be able to rouse her.
Cinder – Marissa Meyer
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . .
Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
Tithe – Holly Black
Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother’s rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms – a struggle that could very well mean her death.
The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart–he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone–but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
Black Swan, White Raven – edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
A stellar assymbly of many of today’s most creative and accomplished storytellers has gathered around the tribal fire to embroider well-worn yarns with new golden thread. Black Swan, White Raven revisits the tales that charmed, enthralled, and terrified us in our early youth – carrying us aloft into the healthy, beating heart of cherished myth to tell once again the stories of Rumpelstiltskins and sleeping beauties, only this time from an edgy, provocative and distinctly adult perspective. The themes and archetypes of our beloved childhood fiction are reexamined in a darker light by 21 superb teller of tales who deftly uncover the ironic, the outrageous, the enigmatic and the erotic at the core of the world’s best-known fables, while revealing the sobering truths and lies behind “happily ever after.”
The Magic Toyshop – Angela Carter
One night Melanie walks through the garden in her mother’s wedding dress. The next morning her world is shattered. Forced to leave the comfortable home of her childhood, she is sent to London to live with relatives she never met: Aunt Margaret, beautiful and speechless, and her brothers, Francie, whose graceful music belies his clumsy nature, and the volatile Finn, who kisses Melanie in the ruins of the pleasure garden. And brooding Uncle Philip loves only the life-sized wooden puppets he creates in his toyshops. The classic gothic novel established Angela Carter as one of our most imaginative writers and augurs the themes of her later creative works.
And I would also love to read something by Diana Wynne Jones.
Here’s the link to the Review Site
Are you taking part in Once Upon a Time VII?
The huh where did the time go post
Because I have been reading. And you know, all those other necessities of life. And running after the now too-mobile wee reader. Because of all that and more, I have not been writing about what I read. And it is a pity because some of what I read has been Awesome (capital A there, in case you didn’t notice), of course others were more like an eh. As in, eh, shouldn’t have bothered.
So the Awesome
The Lions of Al-Rassan. The word to describe this book by Guy Gavriel Kay is perhaps not Awesome, but Magnificent. Its swooping soaring battles, its love, its heart, its bro-mance. Magnificent.
Castle Waiting Volume 2. What fun I had revisiting the castle and its quirky inhabitants. And now, dwarves! Or Hammerlings as they are known. And a chance to explore the castle and learn more about Jain’s childhood. Awesome!
The Last Werewolf. And once again, I go into a book written by a new-to-me author with no expectations, and am blown away. Clever, intriguing, kind of exciting. Written as a journal, The Last Werewolf is Jake Marlowe and he is being pursued by World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomena (WOCOP).
Somewhat Awesome/Not too bad
Empire State: A Love Story (or Not). Cute and kinda geeky, this graphic novel features Jimmy, who works in a library, and whose best friend Sara is moving from Oakland to NYC. Jimmy decides to hop on a Greyhound to go find her and win her back. It’s sweet and awkward.
Scott Pilgrim Vol 1. Another geeky graphic novel, a lot of fun, but first I have to get onto the rest of the series – and then check out the movie – in order to say more.
The Kingdom of Gods. So I gushed about N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms, books one and two of the trilogy, but have yet to say anything about book three. Well, I didn’t really like it as much. Perhaps because the main character is the godling Sieh, the trickster god, the child, and he is (horrors) growing old. It took me a while to get into the story, but it grew on me.
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. A gorgeous snow-filled setting, a mansion with secret passages, a vile governess and wolves. I wish I had read this as a kid. But I had great fun reading it as an adult.
D’Aulaires’ book of Norse myths. Gorgeous illustrations that fill the page (and they are big pages). And cross-dressing Norse gods! And a one-eyed Odin, and magic apples that revive one’s youthful looks (that illustration of befores and afters is worth the book)!
The eh
Dating Mr December. Read it to fulfill the ‘romance’ portion of the Mixing it Up challenge. What was I expecting? Silly, frivolous, lust-filled. Check, check, check.
There, that wasn’t too bad was it. Just in time for breakfast.
Beauty
Ugh.
So apparently I wrote a couple of paragraphs about Sherri S. Tepper’s Beauty not too long after I read it. And I just read it and now have no idea where I was going with it.
And the problem is, the indifference, the disinterest. Because with a book you love, it’s so easy to write a gushy, full-throttled love fest. And with a book you hate, it’s also pretty easy to fling it against a wall and rant your head off. But with the indifference, there’s a struggle to move the cursor forward and fill that page. So what happens is that drivel such as this is used instead.
So.
Beauty is the story of well, Beauty, that is, of Sleeping Beauty fame but manages to escape her fate and does some time traveling. There’s some bits in the land of Faerie, the future, and even melds into some other fairy tales. So it pretty much fits the Once Upon A Time categories.
It was an ok read, as you can probably guess by now. It was a little weird, but a little clever how the rest of the fairy tales fit into the bigger story. And there was just a little too much heavy-handedness as Tepper tries to put her agenda across. However, Tepper has some interesting ideas and I’m curious to see what her other books are like. Perhaps more SF and less fairy tale-ish?
Ah the neutral review. Never very interesting to read, is it?
So this is my fifth read for Once Upon A Time VI
Library Loot (9 May 2012)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
Oof, I am just so tired today that I really struggled to put up this post! But I think I picked up a pretty good haul this week. A little bit here, a little bit there. That will make for some interesting reading.
Girl Reading
Thanks to Buried in Print
Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading. A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena. An artist’s servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. An eighteenth century female painter completes a portrait of a deceased poetess for her lover. A Victorian medium poses with a book in one of the first photographic studios. A girl suffering her first heartbreak witnesses intellectual and sexual awakening during the Great War. A young woman reading in a bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture. And in the not-so-distant future a woman navigates the rapidly developing cyber-reality that has radically altered the way people experience art and the way they live.Each chapter of Katie Ward’s kaleidoscopic novel takes us into a perfectly imagined tale of how each portrait came to be, and as the connections accumulate, the narrative leads us into the present and beyond. In gorgeous prose Ward explores our points of connection, our relationship to art, the history of women, and the importance of reading. This dazzlingly inventive novel that surprises and satisfies announces the career of a brilliant new writer.
Dating Mr. December
So not my cup of tea, but I’m trying to finish more categories for the Mixing it up challenge.
Emma Tremayne leaves her high-powered PR job and moves to the Lake District looking for peace, quiet–and celibacy. So perhaps it’s not the best idea when she agrees to help the local mountain rescue team raise funds by putting together a “tasteful” nude calendar.
D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths
We recently rewatched the movie Thor, and I was curious about the actual myths behind the comic/movie.
The Norse myths are some of the greatest stories of all time. Weird monsters, thoroughly human gods, elves and sprites and gnomes, with grim giants nursing ancient grudges lurking behind—the mysterious and entrancing world of Norse myth comes alive in these pages thanks to the spellbinding storytelling and spectacular pictures of the incomparable d’Aulairse. In this classic book, the art of the Caldecott Award—winning authors of d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, a longtime favorite of children and parent, reaches one of its pinnacles. It offers a way into a world of fantasy and struggle and charm that has served as inspiration for Marvel Comics and the Lord of the Rings.
Locke & Key, Vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft
A friend recommended this series. And I was just so pleased that the library actually has it that I went out and grabbed what I could find.
Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them…. and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all…! Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) creates an all-new story of dark fantasy and wonder, with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez.
Locke & Key, Vol. 2: Head Games
New York Times bestselling writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, the creators behind the acclaimed Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft, return with the next chapter in the ongoing tale, Head Games. Following a shocking death that dredges up memories of their father’s murder, Kinsey and Tyler Locke are thrown into choppy emotional waters, and turn to their new friend, Zack Wells, for support, little suspecting Zack’s dark secret. Meanwhile, six-year-old Bode Locke tries to puzzle out the secret of the head key, and Uncle Duncan is jarred into the past by a disturbingly familiar face. Open your mind – the head games are just getting started
Empire State: A Love Story (or Not)
Ok so I also did some browsing of the graphic novel shelves too…
Jimmy is a stereotypical geek who works at the library in Oakland, California, and is trapped in his own torpidity. Sara is his best friend, but she wants to get a life (translation: an apartment in Brooklyn and a publishing internship). When Sara moves to New York City, Jimmy is rattled. Then lonely. Then desperate. He screws up his courage, writes Sara a letter about his true feelings, and asks her to meet him at the top of the Empire State Building (a nod to their ongoing debate about Sleepless in Seattle).
Jimmy’s cross-country bus trip to Manhattan is as hapless and funny as Jimmy himself. When he arrives in the city he’s thought of as “a festering hellhole,” he’s surprised by how exciting he finds New York, and how heartbreaking—he discovers Sara has a boyfriend!
Jason Shiga’s bold visual storytelling, sly pokes at popular culture, and subtle text work together seamlessly in Empire State, creating a quirky graphic novel comedy about the vagaries of love and friendship.
Wee reader’s loot:
Don’t Throw That Away!: A Lift-the-Flap Book about Recycling and Reusing (Little Green Books)
Daisy’s Day Out
Mangia! Mangia! (World Snacks)
Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?
What did you get at your library this week?
Library Loot (May 2, 2012)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
Unintentionally, this week’s loot is largely geared towards Once Upon A Time VI.
Three Hainish Novels: Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions
It’s been too long since I’ve read Le Guin. That is, anything by Le Guin that is not the Earthsea series because I reread those every once in a while.
Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the greatest science fiction writers and many times the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. her career as a novelist was launched by the three novels contained in Worlds of Exile and Illusion. These novels, Rocannon’s world, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions, are set in the same universe as Le Guin’s groundbreaking classic, The Left hand of Darkness.
The Kingdom of Gods (The Inheritance Trilogy)
Yeah I just had to go for the third book in the series. Because I had such a good time with the first two.
The incredible conclusion to the Inheritance Trilogy, from one of fantasy’s most acclaimed stars.
For two thousand years the Arameri family has ruled the world by enslaving the very gods that created mortalkind. Now the gods are free, and the Arameri’s ruthless grip is slipping. Yet they are all that stands between peace and world-spanning, unending war.
Shahar, last scion of the family, must choose her loyalties. She yearns to trust Sieh, the godling she loves. Yet her duty as Arameri heir is to uphold the family’s interests, even if that means using and destroying everyone she cares for.
As long-suppressed rage and terrible new magics consume the world, the Maelstrom — which even gods fear — is summoned forth. Shahar and Sieh: mortal and god, lovers and enemies. Can they stand together against the chaos that threatens?
Overdrive e-books:
Geek Love
Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out–with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes–to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious–and dangerous–asset.
As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
For wee reader:
Russell the Sheep
Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?
What did you get at your library this week?
Read in April 2012
Oh April, where did you go? It seems like just the other day that I was writing a similar post for March!
It was an interesting bookish month of plenty of new-to-me authors (I just realised that all the fiction I read, with the exception of course of the sequel, were by new-to-me authors! That must be a first).
Fiction (9)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy #1) – N.K. Jermisin
Oronooko – Aphra Behn
The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino
Jar City: A Reykjavik Thriller – Arnaldur Indridason
Photographing Fairies – Steve Szilagyi
Beauty – Sherri S Tepper
The Broken Kingdoms (The Inheritance Trilogy #2) – N.K. Jermisin
Dreams of my Russian Summers – Andrei Makine
The Iron King (Iron Fey, #1) – Julie Kagawa
Graphic Novels (4)
I’ve finally finished Season 8! Yay! And then I read the last book and find out there is a Season 9. Not sure what I think of that, especially the way they ended things in Season 8…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Retreat – Joss Whedon et al
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Predators and Prey – Joss Whedon et al
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Twilight – Joss Whedon et al
Buffy the Vampires Slayer: Last Gleaming – Joss Whedon et al
Non-fiction (7)
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
A Human Being Died that Night: A South African Story of Forgiveness – Pumla Gobodo -Madikizela
Travels with Myself and Another – Martha Gellhorn
The Yellow Wind – David Grossman
Far Flung and Well Fed – R.W. Apple Jr
To end all wars: a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914-1918 – Adam Hochschild
Life is Meals: A Food Lover’s Book of Days – James and Kay Salter
Total: 20
Library Loot (25 April 2012)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
That wondrous smell of oxtail stew cooking in my crockpot is wafting around the study as I type this and it’s making my mouth water. So erm, I shall go and see whether it’s ready to eat. Meanwhile, here’s what I got at the library this week.
The Book About Blanche and Marie: A Novel
From one of the world’s most acclaimed authors comes a tale that explores the complex relationship between Blanche Whitman, the famous hysteria patient of Professor J.M. Charcot, and Marie Curie, Polish physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
A Celibate Season
It seems like ages since I’ve read anything by Shields, and this one sounded pretty interesting.
Carol Shields, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Blanche Howard, winner of the Canadian Booksellers’ Award, teamed up to write this delightful epistolary novel that probes the inner life of one couple’s rocky marriage. Faced with a job-related ten-month separation, Jocelyn and Charles choose to maintain contact through letters — an economic decision that paves the way for two very different and very entertaining sides of the same story. As the months progress, the couple’s letters grow less frequent and more revealing — and their “season of celibacy” becomes more of a challenge than either Jocelyn or Charles had imagined. Posing important and timely questions about commitment, monogamy, and the pressures of career and money, this insightful novel by two extraordinary writers offers a perceptive and hopeful look at how men and women really communicate.
The Lions of al-Rassan
This will be the second book of Kay’s to grace my shelves, and I just loved the first (Tigana) so I can’t wait!
The ruling Asharites of Al-Rassan have come from the desert sands, but over centuries, seduced by the sensuous pleasures of their new land, their stern piety has eroded. The Asharite empire has splintered into decadent city-states led by warring petty kings. King Almalik of Cartada is on the ascendancy, aided always by his friend and advisor, the notorious Ammar ibn Khairan — poet, diplomat, soldier — until a summer afternoon of savage brutality changes their relationship forever.
Meanwhile, in the north, the conquered Jaddites’ most celebrated — and feared — military leader, Rodrigo Belmonte, driven into exile, leads his mercenary company south.
In the dangerous lands of Al-Rassan, these two men from different worlds meet and serve — for a time — the same master. Sharing their interwoven fate — and increasingly torn by her feelings — is Jehane, the accomplished court physician, whose own skills play an increasing role as Al-Rassan is swept to the brink of holy war, and beyond.
Hauntingly evocative of medieval Spain, The Lions of Al-Rassan is both a brilliant adventure and a deeply compelling story of love, divided loyalties, and what happens to men and women when hardening beliefs begin to remake — or destroy — a world.
An Overdrive e-book
The Iron King
I’m not really liking Meghan Chase but am having fun exploring the faery world.
Meghan Chase has a secret destiny—one she could never have imagined…
Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan’s life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school…or at home.When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she’s known is about to change.
But she could never have guessed the truth—that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she’ll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.
Wee reader’s loot!
Clifford Cares
Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z
Hey! Wake Up!
Mama, Where are You?
Grandpa Green
Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?
What did you get at your library this week?
The Broken Kingdoms
I wasn’t prepared for this book.
That probably is a strange thing to say considering that this is book two of a trilogy. And with the second book there tends to be fewer surprises, more exposition. Frankly, book twos have often been a bit of a letdown.
But in The Broken Kingdoms, Jemisin took me by surprise. She more or less picks up where she left off in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, ten years later (which as you may recall, I Loved). But she brings in a new character, Oree Shoth, a blind artist who sells her wares in the city of Shadow and who stumbles across a dead godling. Oree is a woman “plagued by gods”:
“Sometimes they followed me home and made me breakfast. Sometimes they tried to kill me. Occasionally they bought my trinkets and statues, though for what purpose I can’t fathom. And yes, sometimes I loved them.
I even found one in a muckbin once. Sounds mad, doesn’t it? But it’s true. If I had known this would become my life when I left home for this beautiful, ridiculous city, I would have thought twice. Though I would still have done it.”
The godling in the muckbin becomes an important part of the book, but that’s all I should tell you about.
Oree is more certain than Yeine (from the first book), and there’s less backtracking in the storytelling, probably because there’s less need for the explanation of the gods-mortals relationship now. But like Yeine, she is more or less drawn into situations that are beyond her control.
I really appreciated that the story, while set in the same world, is told from a completely different viewpoint. Sky was where the ruling Arameri family lived (even the servants were Arameri). Shadow, beneath the leaf canopy of the World Tree, is where the regular folk live – some are pilgrims and worshippers, some priests and many, like Oree, are just working hard to make a living. And like many other regular folks, isn’t all that sure about what had happened those ten years ago up in Sky.
“I’m just an ordinary woman with no connections or status, and no power beyond a walking stick that makes an excellent club in a pinch. I had to figure out everything the hard way.”
I’m looking forward to seeing what Jemisin has up her sleeve for the third book.
So my fourth read for Once Upon a Time VI.
Photographing Fairies
Does this count as a Once Upon a Time read? There are hints of other-worldiness, with ‘evidence’ of fairies when policeman Walsmear brings photographer Charles Castle photographs of fairies. Castle becomes completely convinced that those smears around the photographs are indeed fairies and heads to the garden to photograph the fairies for himself. Arthur Conan Doyle makes an appearance.
And based on that alone, it sounds like a fantastic read, doesn’t it? I was all ooh, Doyle and fairies!
But bah. It wasn’t. It started out fine enough but once Castle heads to the little village of Burkinwell to find the fairies, things just get too bizarre. Not in the otherworld-ly sense, which would have made for at least an interesting sort of bizarre. But in the human sense, where Castle meets the vicar’s wife and falls in with some gypsies and just drinks far too much. I’m kind of surprised I stuck with it, but I guess since the book opens with Castle telling his tale from prison, I wanted to find out what he was incarcerated for. So Steve Szilagui got me there. And I wasn’t the only one, as Photographing Fairies was shortlisted for the 1993 World Fantasy Awards and was even turned into a film starring Ben Kingsley.
So my third and first ‘eh’ read for Once Upon a Time VI.
