Library Mama

Leave It to Chance. Volume 1: Shaman’s Rain. by James Robinson and Paul Smith with Jeromy Cox. “Why aren’t there more Nancy Drew-style books anymore?” the creators of this book asked themselves, and set out to create one. Well, kind of. These people are comics types, so this is a graphic novel. And they seem to like fantasy, too (fine by me.) Chance is the 14-year-old daughter of a famous modern-day magician whose job is protecting the town of Devil’s Echo. She thinks she should be learning to take over the family business, but her father, shattered by the loss of his wife several years back, has decided that only boys should do magic. Refreshingly, Chance’s preferred clothes are pretty gender-neutral, so that even though her gender is central to her motivation, there isn’t a lot of girliness that would turn boys off of reading it. That’s great, because Chance’s adventures are top-notch. She frees a small dragon from being sent to a possibly hostile dimension. Naturally, he escapes, and chasing him down leads her straight into trouble, as well as a cute and powerful sidekick. Chance finds a dead body, perhaps related to the vicious mayoral campaign underway; overhears a gathering of very disgruntled sewer goblins; and decides to try to locate the kidnapped daughter of a local shaman. She teams up with a Hispanic female police officer and a reporter, and ends up solving bunches of interrelated mysteries while always managing to stay just out of danger herself. The art style is clear and vigorous and shows plainly that Devil’s Echo is diverse in the normal human sense in addition to its magical denizens. This is just right for elementary-aged kids looking for straight-up excitement. While there are definitely shady characters, there isn’t any graphic violence and our heroine always manages to squeak out of even the tightest situation without harm. My love brought this home from the library for us, and as it’s out of print, that may be the easiest way to get it in general. There are two more volumes that I haven’t seen, but may yet track down.

The Entymological Tales of Augustus T. Percival: Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone by Dene LowThis one I picked up just based on the title. It’s funny and light, set just after the turn of the last century. Petronella, a plucky British lass, is just about to have her coming out party, having just turned sixteen. However, two unfortunate events occur. First, her uncle Augustus accidentally swallows a beetle and develops an insatiable and most improper appetite for bugs. Secondly, two foreign dignitaries who showed up at her coming-out party uninvited are kidnapped from it. Despite rival factions of eccentric relatives trying to prevent her from doing so, Petronella sets out to solve both of these mysteries. She is aided by her best friend Jane and Jane’s brother James, a beautiful specimen of manhood. (If only James would notice Petronella as anything but a younger sister! Alas!) Petronella and her Uncle Augustus are both charming characters whom I would love to see more of. This is a romp for middle school and up both as historical fiction and for the mystery, at an age level where mysteries are in short supply.

I am indebted to Colleen at http://www.chasingray.com/ for this as well as the Sisters Grimm… I think she wrote a column about mysteries for kids and teens last summer. Somehow I missed the first in the series and started with the second… though I made it through without noticing, you might wish to start with the first book, The Case of the Missing Marquess.

The Case of the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy Springer. Read by Katherine Kellgren. Enola is the much younger sister of Sherlock – just 14, and knowing her older brother mostly through Dr. Watson’s famous books. Her mother recently ran away, and Enola is now living on her own, hiding from her brothers, who want to send her to boarding school. She and her mother communicate via ciphers in the newspapers, which enterprising readers could try to solve for themselves. Enola is posing as the secretary to a Scientific Perditorian or finder of lost persons, intending to do the finding herself. Dr. Watson comes to her office, seeking help in finding her, but accidentally leading her to the case of a missing society lady, only a few years older than herself. The police and Sherlock Holmes assume that she’s eloped, but Enola doesn’t believe it and uses her wits and multiple disguises to solve the mystery. Enola is an excellent character, determined to stay independent but still figuring herself out, and ever conscious that her name, backwards, spells “Alone.” Raised feminist by her mother, she knowingly manipulates the Victorian conventions regarding females to fit in multiple places without resorting so low as to disguise herself as a man, from high society houses to London’s poor and sooty underbelly. My husband and I both very much enjoyed these. For the children it’s actually aimed at, parents should be aware that there is some violence that could be disturbing for younger or sensitive children – I’d put it as more appropriate for 12 and up than the 10 years I read on the case. Katherine Kellgren’s assured British accents are perfect for Enola and adapt themselves well to the many characters of different classes in the book. Enola might not exist without Sherlock, but she’s well worth reading in her own right, a strong character in a vivid (if vivid is the right word for sooty fog) setting with just the right balance between plot tension and introspection.

What can I say? I like fantasy. Here's three new books and an old favorite. All but the old favorite are intended for adults, though I think the last one has universal appeal.

The Famous Flower of Serving Men by Deborah Grabien Did I enjoy this book? I stayed up past midnight – with Mr. Froggy Pants asleep on my lap – which is certainly a measure of enjoyment of sorts. The novel is the second of a series which turns traditional English ballads into mysteries/ghost stories. As in, the characters of the original ballad are now uneasy ghosts, and the main characters need to solve the mystery and find out who the people were to lay the ghosts to rest. This one was based on The Famous Flower of Serving Men, a ballad I’ve always enjoyed, where a woman is treated badly, but starts a new, successful life for herself and gets revenge in the end. I must not have been thinking too clearly past that – a scaredy-cat like myself has no business checking out ghost stories. And even less, as a new mother, when the trauma involves a new mother’s husband and baby being murdered in front of her. Also different – if you know the ballad, the source of the haunting is clear from quite early on, so the mystery revolves around how to appease the ghost, not in who or what the ghost is. The resolution of the story was also dissatisfying: after the ghost was established as being horrible and scary, resolving it as basically just a good person who’d gone a little crazy didn’t work for me. She’s supposed to be evil and I’d prefer that she stay that way. In spite of these flaws, the main characters, the director of a small theater troupe and her musician/restoration expert boyfriend, were quite likeable and the story compelling.

The Singer of All Songs by Kate Constable OK, this is another teen fantasy, though I read it before the teen fantasy project at work. Calwyn is a novice in a small matriarchal kingdom ruled by nuns, learning the chantments of ice. One day she finds a fugitive who made it over the wall of ice that protects the nuns, and she joins him in trying to stop the man who would become master of all nine Chantments. It’s the first of a trilogy (I’m not surprised, as fantasy books seem nearly always to come in trilogies.) I liked the world, obviously pagan and easy to slip into, and the sweet teen heroine. If you’re in to this kind of fantasy, you’ll enjoy it; if you’re not, this probably isn’t the book to convert you.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke This book got starred reviews in every journal I read, even for the audio version, though I was not about to attempt to listen to a 900 page book in a three-week loan period. It has a fascinating conceit: it’s Napoleonic England in a world where magic exists – maybe. Most of the people who call themselves magicians are only theoretical magicians, studying the deeds of the great magicians of the past. Only two men claim to be practical magicians, and they aim to restore the reputation of English magic by aiding in the war against Napoleon. The whole book sounds as if it were written by Jane Austen, if Austen had written fantasy. The first hundred pages or so were hard to get through – Mr. Norrell is not a sympathetic character, and Jonathan Strange is not introduced until later in the book. The language, while delightful, makes for slow going – it took me a full three weeks to get through the book, approximately three times as long as usual. But the story is compelling, the concept novel, and the descriptions of the fairy gentleman and his kingdom downright creepy.


Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, a girl named Sophie lives with her not-so-wicked stepmother and her two younger sisters. She’s resigned herself to a dull existence, because everyone knows that youngest sisters are the ones with the adventures. Then the Wicked Witch of the Waste comes into her hat shop and turns her into an old, old woman. Sophie decides that being nice is for the young, moves into the evil Wizard Howl’s castle and starts terrorizing him. It’s not a new book, but it is terribly funny and well worth reading.

Ok, these books have varying degrees of suspense, from the straight-out thriller to the relatively cozy mystery. But here they are:

Dead Ringer by Lisa Scottoline I was inspired to read this book (especially for all you fans of legal thrillers) by reading an interview with the author in [I]Publisher’s Weekly[/I]. She’s a defense attorney herself, and found herself frustrated by the lack of humor in most of the legal thrillers out there, as well as how generic the characters felt. Her books star Bennie Rosato, an Italian-American woman running her own little law firm, populated by several other Italian-American women and one Irish-American woman, all fond of making jokes. In this book, Rosato & Associates is suffering from hard times. No clients coming in, and the one they just had has declared bankruptcy. With an eviction notice on the door, Bennie almost doesn’t notice that her wallet has gone missing – until stacks of boxes charged to her card start showing up at her door, and she’s arrested for a theft caught on the store’s security camera. It must mean that her estranged twin, Alice, is back in town. But what does she want, and can Bennie keep calm enough to focus on running her first class-action suit, her last chance to save her business?

Death Gets a Time-Out by Ayelet Waldman Waldman is also a some-time attorney, now turned stay-at-home mom and author of the Mommy Track Mysteries. In this book, Juliet Applebaum, mother of two, is wondering how she can find the time to put in some hours at her job as a private investigator. Then, her old friend Lilly Green, an Oscar-award winning actress, asks for help clearing her stepbrother, the son of a famous cult leader, of murder charges. Things get complicated quickly, and the fact that she’s suddenly throwing up constantly doesn’t help things. She couldn’t be pregnant again – could she?

Someone to Run With by David Grossman This is a bestseller from Israel, translated into English. So many fewer books get translated into English than the other way around that I often feel a book must be extra-good to make it this far. At any rate, this book is like an oddly dreamy thriller. A boy runs through the streets of Jerusalem with a dog, trying to find her owner. The dog keeps running, and visits various friends of the girl – but she is missing, and none of her friends know what has happened to her. Meanwhile, we follow the girl, a month earlier, as she makes preparations for a dangerous mission. But what is it that she is so afraid of, and why is she giving up everything she cares about to do it? The tension only gets higher as the two timelines converge and the stakes and the risks become clearer.

Today, for your enjoyment – two new and highly rated books, and a trio of mysteries.

The New Books

I know, I said I was only going to review books I liked. Well, I can’t say that I loved these books, but they were interesting and got good reviews from other people, so I thought I’d let you know what I think.

Alva and Irva, the Twins Who Saved a City by Edward Carey. Library Journal listed this as one of the best science fiction novels of 2003. Alas, the setting, a fictional European city, is as close as it gets to science fiction. Alva and Irva are painfully socially awkward, unsure even how to relate to each other. To save their own relationship, they decide to make a plasticine model of the entire city, with Alva taking notes on the buildings and Irva making them. When the city is hit by a massive earthquake, this model is the only remaining record of how the city was. The twins are lauded as the saviors of the city. The writer is not French, but lives in Paris, which perhaps accounts for the odd feel of the book, written like an experimental film with odd lighting and film angles, giving ordinary things unusual prominence. Was it enjoyable? The jury is still out. But memorable and thought-provoking, definitely.

Bandbox by Thomas Mallon. This book was billed as a romp through the exciting publishing world of the 1920s. It is that, chronicling the battle between two men’s magazines. The biggest drawback to this otherwise fine book is that the perspective switches from section to section between any one of about 20 main characters. It took me most of the book to remember all of them. Write them down at the beginning, and you should be able to enjoy the book.

The Mysteries

These are all mysteries of the type called “cozy” by librarians – no graphic violence or sex (romance allowed), usually set in a small village, and generally feel-good-at-the-end books. If you liked Agatha Christy, you’re likely to like these.

Aunt Dimity’s Death by Nancy Atherton. This novel is about as comfort-read as it is possible to get, with nary a sharp edge. Down-and-out American Lori Shepherd finds she must spend a month in a cottage in England (all expenses paid), to fulfill the last wishes of Aunt Dimity, previously known to Lori only as a bedtime story. No, no murders or thefts, but this book does feature some friendly ghosts, plenty of romance, and a stuffed pink bunny. This is the first book in the series, which is still on-going, and seems to get only better as it goes on.

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. A mystery classic – this is the first in a series that has been going on for nearly thirty years, and still has legions of fans. Our heroine, Amelia Peabody, is (at this point) a sharp-tongued Victorian spinster, who would rather have her mind than a man, thank you very much. She sets off on a journey to Egypt for some amateur archaeology, taking the waif-like Evelyn under her wing along the way. When somebody – with the audacity to try to look like a mummy – tries to kidnap Evelyn, Miss Peabody sets out to stop the miscreant. I really enjoyed this as a recorded book, where the snap of Miss Peabody’s character comes through especially vividly.

OK, I lied. It was supposed to be a trio of mysteries – I’m still reading the third. I’ll get back to that one.