Library Mama

The Name of This Book Is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch. Read by David Pittu.
This is first in a series of five books all named to discourage the reader from opening up the book. It’s a fun concept, and I’d been meaning to get around to them for a while. Pseudonymous Bosch is a very prominent narrator throughout the story, and he (or she!) spends a great deal of time at the beginning explaining that the setting of the book and the names of the characters are all meant to be non-specific, to protect the people involved, and most importantly, to protect us, the reader, from the horrors that might befall us if anyone found out that we know the secrets. Then we get on with the story, which is adventure, mystery and a little fantasy. Our heroes are Cass and Max-Ernest, both of whom have trouble fitting in at school. Cass lives with her overprotective mother and spends a lot of time with two older men she calls her grandfathers, who run an antique store in an old fire station. Max-Ernest lives with his parents, who are divorced but live in separate half of the same house, refusing to acknowledge each other’s existence. The adventure begins when a real estate agent brings a pile of boxes from an estate house in to the antique store. In one box, Cass finds a fascinating box called the Symphony of Smells, which contains hundreds of tiny bottles of different scents. She learns that a fire burned only the kitchen, and, it is presumed, the owner of the house, an old magician. Cass and Max-Ernest go to explore the house and find a secret room. They barely escape with the magician’s old journal just as a creepy-looking couple, including a woman whose beauty and stiffness are both unnatural. When the same couple – Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais - turns up at their school the next day and a boy with synesthesia from the school goes missing at the same time, Cass is highly suspicious. Unfortunately, she’s of such an openly suspicious nature that now, when it really matters, no one will believe her. She goes off, followed by Max-Ernest, to solve the mysteries: what happened to the old magician? Why have series of talented children with synesthesia gone missing over the years? Why does the spa known as the Midnight Sun keep itself so very secret? Doom is predicted at every turn, but with somewhat less depressing results than another popular series with a prominent narrator. As in The Calder Game, there are a number of puzzles for Cass and Max-Ernest to solve, which the interested reader can solve along with them. There’s just a hint of magic as Dr. L and Ms. Mauvais are (shh!) searching for the secret of immortality. There's even some character development, which one doesn't necessarily expect in an adventure/mystery type book. The boy and I listened to this, narrated by David Pittu. He quite enjoyed it; I liked it fine, if it didn’t particularly grab me. That may be me just being jaded about danger levels, finding the dangers in the book not nearly as dire as the narrator foretold. So maybe better for kids than adults, but still a lot of fun.


Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .

The Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon. It must have been my very first year as a librarian, nearly ten years ago now, when a patron I was talking to put her hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and said, “You have got to read the Outlander series. They are the best books in the world.” Well, I’m too fond of having lots of books to call any one series the best in the world, but for once, I took her advice and started the series. The books are addictive, long and involved, such a tight blend of historical fiction, time travel, and romance that the publishers originally decided to market them as romance mostly because romance had the biggest audience, though at the library, we shelve them in SciFi/Fantasy. Gabaldon now has a spin-off series and has done a graphic novel featuring the story from the first book from the point of view of the other main character. I haven’t kept up with all of these – I have a hard time justifying reading everything in a series as a librarian – but considering the volume of the output, I think that missing just one of the main series (which came out the same time my daughter was born) and one of the spin-offs is doing pretty well. Given all that, I was shocked to realize that I couldn’t find that I’ve ever reviewed a Gabaldon book here. However, there is again no way to review (or read) this book without massive spoilers for the first couple of those books.

This book is somewhere between a spin-off and a main series book. It stars Jamie, the hero of the main series, and Lord John, the hero of the spin-off Lord John mysteries. It takes place during the time covered by the third series book, when our heroine Claire is back in her present day. That makes it a little lighter on romance than most of the other books, though Jamie does spend a lot of time thinking about her. Anyway, as our story begins, Jamie is serving parole at the estate of Helwater for his crimes of being on the wrong side at Culloden (being a Highlander and all). Lord John found him this position, where he’s technically a prisoner, but working as the master of horse under an assumed name. What is a secret even to Lord John is that the current heir to the estate and title, Willie (aged two) is actually Jamie’s son. While the story of his conception and his mother’s death was covered in one of the other big novels, this was the first time to my recollection that we get to see Jamie with his son, as affectionate and protective as he can be within the confines of his role. His peaceful retreat begins to break down when one of the maids sends him a message to meet with someone up in the hills, someone who turns out to be Quinn, an Irishman and Jacobite who previously fought in the war with Jamie. He brings news of a second Rising and begs Jamie to help lead it. Jamie refuses, though he cannot tell Quinn that he refuses because he knows from Claire that the Rising is doomed to failure, and more attempts will only mean more suffering and death. Quinn is quite determined, and follows Jamie even when soldiers come to take him to London. Meanwhile, Lord John has received a last request with a packet of documentation from a recently deceased friend – use the documentation to convict Lord Siverly, a high-ranking military official of some dark and evil deeds. Siverly is currently holed up in Ireland, and John’s brother Hal decides that Jamie, coming closer to speaking Irish than anyone else he knows (I think this is the reason, anyway) is the best person to accompany John on the journey to fetch him back to England where he can be court-martialed.

Got that? There’s two separate strands of twining political intrigue, between the politics of the original crimes and the second rising. There are lots and lots of characters that I wasn’t sure if I’d met before or not, only that it was challenging keeping track of them all. This is par for the course, really. Beyond the tangles, the story is about Jamie and Lord John being forced back together after their friendship exploded back in Ardsmuir prison when, among other dramatic events, Lord John made a romantic advance on Jamie and was rebuffed with horror. Can they find a way to trust each other again? Will their friendship ever recover? And how will Jamie balance his desire to keep Scotland safe from a second Rising with the need to protect those he cares about from implicated in the plotting currently occurring? Even though I felt that rereading the first couple of books might have helped me feel less lost, this is still addictive Gabaldon, with strong characters and immersive plotting. And yeah, if you haven't read her before, start at the beginning, with Outlander. The audio books are famously well done, too.

Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier. Translated from German by Anthea Bell.
16-year-old Gwyneth (Gwendolyn in the original German book) has grown up living life as a normal kid, except that she now has to keep an eye out for her cousin Charlotte. Charlotte, glamorous and sophisticated, has been trained all her life to prepare her to be a time traveler. Except that Gwyneth turns out to be the one with the time travel gene, something she never wanted. Time travel is dangerous unless controlled – Gwyneth ends up in the same place but a different unknown period in the past for an unpredictable length of time, with only a few minutes of nausea and dizziness for preparation. To counteract them, the secret organization known as the Guardians trains time travelers and owns the Chronograph, a clockwork machine that can send time travelers to a planned place for a planned length of time. For that reason, Gwyneth’s mother takes Gwyneth to the Guardians, despite a distrust she hasn’t explained. It turns out that Gwyneth is the Ruby, the last of twelve known time travelers, each represented by a jewel. The other time traveler in her generation is handsome 18-year-old Gideon de Villiers. The previous two time travelers, close friends with Gwyneth’s mother, fell in love and are hiding in the past with the only other existing Chronograph. The Guardians want to send Gideon and Gwyneth on missions to get blood samples from all of the previous time travelers, which were lost when the original Chronograph. When all twelve samples are present, something will happen – but what? Should Gwyneth trust the Guardians, or Lucy and Paul, the couple she’s never met but whom her mother trusted? Though it’s fairly clear that Lucy and Paul are Good Guys, Gwyneth and her best pal and research buddy Lesley, have yet to figure out why Lucy and Paul distrusted the Guardians enough to give up their lives in the present. There’s a slowly percolating romance between Gwyneth and Gideon, which helps nicely to make Gwyneth’s choices harder, as Gideon has no reason to distrust the Guardians.

Despite the dangers of time travel and the potential evil nature of the Guardians, the book never gets bogged down in heaviness. (I think the German cover conveys this better.) There’s the romance, more fun than fraught; Lesley and Gwyneth’s friendship, and – I really loved this part – costumes. The Guardians hire a full-time French costume designer, whose sole job is to make historically accurate clothing for each of the trips back in time, which are all described in detail. I really liked the original German covers, but I guess you can’t have everything. This is the first of a trilogy, all of which are now published in Germany but which I guess are taking some time to be translated. The translation is done by the inestimable Anthea Bell, who also translated the Inkheart books as well as tons of others. The time travel, romance and history combined to make this a quite lovely book for me, and I’m now anxiously waiting for the next installments to arrive.

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld Australian YA author Westerfeld of Uglies fame takes a turn toward a steampunk alternate history with this first in a trilogy. The year is 1914. Prince Alek, son of the Archduke Ferdinand, is woken in the middle of the night by his tutor, who takes him for what he thinks is a midnight training ride in one of the two-legged walkers that Austria-Hungary is becoming famous for. Except that it turns out not to be training. His parents have just been assasinated, his people have turned against him, and Alek must run for his life. Meanwhile, Deryn Sharp is posing as a boy so that she can join the British Air Service, where genetically engineered ecosystems of animals create large dirigible-like ships that float through the air. Unlike Jacky Faber, Deryn finds the constant jockeying for position among the midshipmen wearing, but she is already experienced in the air, brilliant and courageous. She ends up serving on the Leviathan, a very large airship that is carrying Dr. Nora Darwin Barlow and some precious cargo on an urgent diplomatic mission to the Ottoman Empire. The world is on the brink of war between the Darwinists and the Clankers – can two young people from opposite sides prevent it? The action is non-stop, the characters a delight, and the technology intriguing. We have it in teen, but so far I haven’t seen anything in to make it inappropriate for middle graders, while it’s deep enough to work for adults as well. I’ve already devoured the first two books and am now waiting for book three to come out in September.

The Iron Duke by Meljean BrooksThis is going further into my exploration of the steampunk genre. Once again, we are in quasi-Victorian England. However, no Queen Victoria, but a young king. England (and the rest of Europe) was, some time ago, taken over by the Mongol Horde, who used radio-controlled nanoagents to control the population. England is now free, however, due to the actions of former pirate and now Duke Rhys Trahaern. In the present time, the nanoagents are necessary for survival, as they clean the pollutants from the lungs in the heavily coal-operated country. Society is now divided into “buggers” and “bounders” – those with nanoagents and those who fled during the occupation and returned afterwards, sans nanoagents. Once again, my explanation might make it seem as if there is no action, but anything but. Our heroine, Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth, is in a somewhat precarious position as the daughter of nobility, but obviously born of a Horde-induced Frenzy, and thus subject to open hostility in the streets. As the story opens, she is called away from a ball to investigate a frozen body that has landed seemingly from nowhere on the front steps of Duke Trahaern. There is of course instant attraction followed quite some time later by Hawt Sex and novel description of steampunk-style personal pleasure devices. There is action and adventure involving chasing down airships and escaping from zombies. There is political intrigue and some reflection on how mores and the roles of women would be changed by generations growing up under the Horde Occupation. It is a darker steampunk world than usual – certainly lacking the lightheartedness of Soulless - but still absorbing, with enough action to satisfy those frustrated by pure romance and enough romance for those looking for that.

Crossposted to http://sapphireone.livejournal.com and http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org .

The Unwritten Vol 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity by Mike Carey and Peter Gross Metafiction! With action! Tommy Taylor is the star of a Harry Potter-like series, only it’s even more popular. And Tommy Taylor is not grateful that his father made the real Tommy Taylor star of a fictional series, making the fictional character close enough to the real that some die-hard fans believe him to be the boy wizard. But his father disappeared years ago under mysterious circumstances, leaving Tommy penniless. Now, suddenly, evidence turns up that Tommy might not really be his father’s son. A young woman calling herself Lizzie Hexam might have some answers – if Tommy can survive that long. While the excerpts of the Tommy Taylor stories as presented don’t seem like they would actually rival Harry Potter, the fiction within fiction and fiction crossing the borders to the real world is fascinating. It’s an exciting story, filled with references to other great works of literature for the discerning reader. Fans of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books, which have more humor and less reflection on the capricious nature of fame and fan worship, may enjoy this as well.

Rex Libris: I, Librarian by James Turner Some libraries have gone soft, allowing talking, hanging out, even tolerating overdue books. Not at Middleton Public Library, where Rex Libris and Circe are in charge. Middleton may sound average, but it has rare books from all over the universe, and is situated on a convergence of ley lines that allows fictional characters to wander around the library from time to time. Hard-hitting sesquipedalian librarian Rex Libris is on the job, preventing evil samurai from destroying the library and journeying to outer space (assisted by his gun-happy chickadee) to retrieve overdue books from space emperors. I have read more than once that comic books use higher vocabulary than regular fiction, but this uses the highest proportion of erudite words I have ever seen in a non-scholarly text. It’s also highly self-aware, with editor’s notes from a fake editor at the beginning of each issue (several bound together in the book) and the occasional nonsensical intrusion from the editor, which Rex must take a break from the story to protest before the story can continue. The one downside is that the book has such dense and tiny text (was it shrunk down to fit the paperback?) that it took focus and holding the book up close to read. Still, this is good adventuring for book-lovers with a sense of humor.

Under the Jolly Roger by L.A. Meyer. Read by Katherine Kellgren Several years ago, I read the first book in this series, Bloody Jack, a rip-roaring tale of adventure on the high seas, as Mary “Jacky” Faber, street orphan, disguises herself as a boy so as to make an honest living as a ship’s boy. I read it in print at the time, which was fun. Now my love and I are rediscovering the series on audiobook. I think that someday soon I will have to write Katherine Kellgren a fan letter, because she is such an amazing reader. The books are full of people and accents from all over, from Jacky’s Cockney to Irish to Jamaican and American, which Kellgren brings beautifully to life. There are also a number of folk songs, and Kellgren not only has a fine voice for singing them, but also manages to make the different character’s singing voices different. This series is winning her all the major audio book awards, and rightly so, but I also loved her work on the Enola Holmes series, where Enola putting on a Cockney accent still sounds different from Jacky in this one.

Under the Jolly Roger is the third book in the series. Jacky has made her way back to England in search of her beloved Jaimy, from whom she was parted for all of the second book. She has only just found him again, disguised as a boy again, when she is caught by a press gang. This time, the ship (Wolverine) is captained by a lecherous man who refuses to let her go even when she reveals her female nature. Events move quickly, if increasingly improbably, as Jacky works her way from Midshipman (a rank she earned in the first book) up to Lieutenant in the Navy, then captures her own ship and gains a letter of marque so that she can operate as a privateer. We do not care about the improbability, though, any more than we care about the improbability of Indiana Jones, because this is about adventure, pure and simple. Well, with some music and romance thrown in, too, because even though Jacky is broken-hearted about Jaimy in this book and vows to live single, she always has a very hard time resisting a pretty boy, and there are several on the Wolverine. This is a great sea-faring romp for teens and up. It will be good in print, too, but listen to the audio if you possibly can.

Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon Ai Ling was a scholarly girl who mostly stayed properly home with her mother. Then, her father gives her a jade pendant before leaving for a month at the emperor’s palace. Months later, their family finances dwindling, Ai Ling decides that it’s time to go find her father. It’s not easy for a girl of marriageable age to travel alone in China, but Ai Ling finds herself facing one demon after another, recognizing them from the book that she’d thought her father forbade only because the stories were so frightening for a young girl. Early on, she is rescued by the handsome and exotic Chen Yong. He’s travelling in search of his real parentage, a secret even from his adoptive parents. They start travelling together, and are joined on the way by Chen Yong’s adoptive brother, the openly flirtatious Li Rong. Their straightforward journey to the palace takes unexpected turns as mountain paths lead them to strange lands mentioned only in the classical texts that Ai Ling and Chen Yong have read. Eventually, they are given a deeper quest by the Goddess of Records. Ai Ling is a delightful and sympathetic heroine. Though she finds the courage she needs to fight off the demons attacking her, she also never develops Amazing Martial Arts Prowess, instead finding her own magical abilities. She also has a refreshingly large appetite, which gives plenty of opportunity for vivid descriptions of the food. This was a delightful adventure with a Buffy meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Nation by Terry Pratchett Once upon a time, perhaps a two hundred years ago or so, in a world very but not quite like ours, a young boy left his boy soul on the Island of Boys and prepared to go back to the Nation in the canoe he had made. Back at home, there would be a feast. He would be given the tattoo that said he was a man and he would have the soul of a man. At the same time, a ship with an exceptionally devout captain and a mutinous first mate sailed to the remote Mothering Sunday islands to take a girl to her father. And then there was a wave, which left Mau and Ermintrude the only survivors on what the boy called Sunrise Island. Mau is thrust into new doubt – how could Imo have let this happen to his people? But even though he now believes that people invented the gods, he hears the voice of Locaha, the god of death, talking to him, and the Grandfathers telling him to put back the god anchors and start bringing them their offering of beer again. Ermintrude, meeting Mau, decides to introduce herself as Daphne. She starts hearing voices too - and both Mau and Daphne find reason to stay alive helping the other. But they are not alone for long, as Sunrise Island was the biggest of a tiny chain, and the straggling survivors from all the islands start coming, looking for refuge. Mau might be possessed by a demon, since he left his boy soul behind and never got his man soul. Daphne is just a trouserman girl, too pale to look normal. Still, the demon boy and the ghost girl, struggling to learn each others languages, are the ones rebuilding the new, tiny Nation. My one frustration with the book, really, was that it was clear that they were speaking different languages to start with and gradually learning to understand each other – but there was no difference in language or typeface to tell you which language was being used at any given point. In the hands of anyone but Terry Pratchett, this story could have been depressing, preachy, or worse. But the compelling action and the thinky questions never really answered keep it from being preachy, while Pratchett’s signature humor keeps it from being depressing. This is a great book about the meeting of cultures and the meaning of religion. While it’s written with teen protagonists, there’s a lot here for adults as well.