The Ropemaker

By Peter Dickinson.
This has got to be the most surprising randomly-pick-a-book-up-and-start-reading-it success stories. I was sucked into this story faster than you can say Mary Poppins. Peter Dickinson surely deserves every literature award he's ever received. What a master. I can't believe I've never read anything of his before when he is married to one of my favorite authors.

In a nutshell, this story is a piece of history from a fictional Empire. Mr. Dickinson is a very disciplined writer---you find out things as you go that would be really easy to get lost in, but his way with words and information assist you along so that your mind stays focused on the plot and not the fantastical details of the culture and lifestyles encountered along the way. When the story ends you're left satisfied but extremely willing to start reading the sequel, Angel Isle. And incidentally, I'll be on my way soon to find Angel Isle at my local library...and please note that any synopsis I attempt is sure to be poor indeed. The story is just too epic, too layered, to be given justice in less than 2000 words. And I don't think you'll want to waste your time on 2000 words when you could spend it reading the actual book itself...

Tilja has lived all her life on the family farm Woodborne. However, the day comes when she and her younger sister Anja discover that Anja can hear the voices of Cedar trees, while Tilja cannot. This means Tilja will not inherit the farm while her sister will. Tilja is heartbroken at the thought of leaving Woodborne. Meanwhile, the Valley in which her people have resided for 20 generations unmolested is losing the magical protection which kept the wild horsemen to the north and the Empire's soldiers to the south from ravaging the homesteads therein. Although Tilja has no magical gift she must accompany her grandmother along with 2 men who can hear the voices of water to seek a magician to reinstate the protection the Valley has long enjoyed. Along the road Tilja discovers something about herself that may prove the difference in whether they succeed or fail in their mission.

Stardust

by Neil Gaiman.

I have to confess, this is one of those rare times in my life where I find myself appreciating ...NAY, ADORING... the film version of a story more than the book itself.

Usually I'm a hardcore 'original story is always best' kind of girl. And this time I don't believe it is. Gaiman has written this book with great fantasy flair, any fantasy lover will enjoy it no doubt. And he mentions without apology many adventures that Tristran and Yvaine have along the road just like Tolkien refers without apology to many histories, adventures, and overlaps throughout his works. But there is something missing (for me anyway) in the novel that the film Stardust captures. Maybe it is the fact that the moviemakers set out to make their adaptation more whimsical than the pages inspiring it, openly acknowledging that they'd like to be compared to The Princess Bride. (And there, my friends, is an interesting comparison of book/film----I think The Princess Bride is a great book and a great movie adaptation, but at the same time there are a lot of differences but each is enjoyable, thoroughly, in its own right). Whereas the novel Stardust really can't be called whimsical at all. I could say it was fantastical (it is fantasy after all) or magical or really intelligent for the way it references classic nursery rhymes and poetry we've all heard since the cradle. But it isn't necessarily humorous and definitely not whimsical and it isn't even witty and for that reason I feel that the movie has taken the story from the book and improved upon it, greatly. Just the ghost princes alone illustrate this point with their witty commentary and laugh-out-loud body language, symbolically narrating the audiences' reactions to plot development with hilarious accuracy as opposed to their somber presence in the book, not to mention other changes which contrast the two. Perhaps its because I feel like the movie is a smart movie--there are layers in it so that people can pick up nuances and innuendos and really enjoy the banter, whereas this is missing in the book. In the book what you see is what you get, there really isn't room for more interpretation. I could watch the movie every week and still laugh and glean inspiration for living a better life from it...sadly, I cannot do that from the novel. Nope.

But it is still worth reading, at least once.

Now I'm curious if anyone else feels the same way I do.

Stardust is a story about Tristran Thorne (yes in the book his name is Tristran but in the movie its Tristan) and how he sets out to gain his Heart's Desire, whom he believes to be a lass called Victoria. Tristran is the result of his father's brief interaction with faerie magic during a visit to the Wall Market, but has no idea of his unconventional parentage. He is ignorant of who his true mother is or where he was born, and has been raised in the village of Wall which is located on the border of the land Faerie, with only a broad stone wall with one gap separating the two. Tristran and Victoria see a star fall one evening, and Tristran bravely goes through the gap in the wall to bring back the star to gain the love of Victoria. However, when he finds the star he is met with a woman, not a stone of celestial volcanic rock like he has imagined he would find, and the adventures he has a result make for a very enjoyable read. And of course there is a surprise ending (very different from the movie) for tying up loose ends and resolving character plots!

Enchantment

by Orson Scott Card.

This was an amazing book for me to read. I love fantasy, and I love the way that Orson Scott Card's brain works. Yes, it was published in 1999 but sometimes I'm a little slow to jump on the wagon okay? Okay.

Essentially what he has done is to gather all the versions of several fairytales/folk stories and combine them all into one big novel. You'll no doubt recognize Sleeping Beauty, but I loved recognizing little bits of Andrew Lang's compilations along with tales from the Grimm Brothers, not to mention quirky and not-so-popular characters from old tales as well. The research he had to have done gathering all the versions of these stories to write this book just overwhelms me. He did a phenomenal job.

The story starts during the Cold War, or just as it was beginning, in the Soviet Union. It follows the thoughts and actions of Ivan, a child whose parents decide to convert to Judaism in order to obtain visas to leave the Soviet Union since they believe the time for free travel is going to be limited or cut off entirely (and of course they were right). They end up coming to America to raise Ivan in the land of opportunity, and that is pretty much all I can tell you without spoiling the book. Granted, all that I've told you happens in the first 5 chapters so please know that I haven't given anything away, this story is amazing, and I ended up staying up until 3am to finish the book like a teenager because I was so enthralled.

Dragonhaven

by Robin McKinleyI felt a little bad for saying I was mad at Robin McKinley in the last post, so I decided to read one of her recent novels to make up for it.

Dragonhaven is the story of Jake, a teenager growing up in a Wild Animal Preserve. Both his parents have worked there his whole life, and he plans on living there his entire life as well. The catch is that life at the preserve is a bit precarious because money is tight and various government factions are always looking for ways to get rid of it so they can use the land for development or oil drilling or gold hunting or whatever. And the biggest catch of all is that the preserve is actually for preserving dragons. Thats right, dragons.

It turns out dragons aren't just mythical creatures afterall. They've just figured out how to survive without attracting much human notice. There are preserves in Kenya and Australia too. But the preserve Jake lives/works at is the biggest in the world. And other than finding dragon scales and smelling the air no one has seen a real dragon in decades. Until Jake stumbles upon a dying dragon who has just given birth...and all the babies are dead except one. Technically it is illegal for a human to "interfere" with nature to save a dragon's life...and so Jake makes a split-second decision to try to save the dragonlet, come what may in consequences. And the entire book is pretty much about his struggle to help the dragonlet survive without attracting the notice of anyone around him....

I enjoyed reading this book a lot. It was laugh-out-loud funny in a quite a few places. And it was interesting, I didn't want to put it down because I genuinely didn't know how the plot would resolve itself. However, I picked the book up not knowing anything about it, and it took about 50 pages for me to catch on to what the book was really about. Mostly this is because the entire novel is told via Jake's streaming consciousness, in the past tense because the story happens when he is 14-15 years old, but he's writing it down as an 18-19 year old. The author does a great job of getting into a teenage boy's head: this book reads just like you're really listening to a 15 yr old talk and try to explain things. And this is partly why its so funny in places, because of his descriptions or whatnot. But it is also why its a bit hard to get into until after 50 pages, because Jake is struggling with how to start telling his story.

If you can make it past the first 50 pages I definitely recommend this book. Its entertaining. Original. And it feels real, even though its fantasy. I think you'll find it gives a view of dragons that hasn't been given in literature ever before.

Inkspell

by Cornelia Funke.

I read this as soon as I could after reading Inkheart....but I was kind of disappointed. Mainly because the book really sets up the third and last installment instead of wrapping its own storylines up nice and tidy. I really got to like Dustfinger, a character brought to life from a book in Inkheart, during this story. You really see him as a rounded character. In fact, I would venture to say that the majority of this book is more centered around him than around Mo, Meggie, Elinor, and Resa.

After reading Inkheart and Inkspell so close together I have noticed the author's foreshadowing style is a bit predictable, and I guessed correctly what happened in the 3rd book, according to wikipedia. (I just don't have the time to read it, and there are a few plot spins that make me not want to read it too so I cheated by reading the synopsis on wikipedia. Hey, I still wanted to know how she ended it!)

Plus, I have to admit that a close associate warned me over the weekend that the 3rd book was night and day different from the first book....so that kind of turned me off too. But I'm glad she warned me because after seeing the synopsis I would have been mad if I had spent a couple days reading it and was disappointed that what I wanted to happen didn't happen afterall.

Inkspell continues the adventures begun in Inkheart, only instead of having characters come out of books into the "real world" like in Inkheart, the characters enter the inkworld within the pages of the fictional Inkheart book in Inkspell.

The Neverending Story

by Michael Ende. Translated by Ralph Manheim.


This story is one that I fear gets overlooked because of people's memories of the movie that came out oh so long ago. I passed it in the library last week and decided to check it out again. I hadn't read it for about 13 years. I was worried it might not live up to my expectations, but it did! This story is every bit as good as I remembered, which is a relief! The book is 27 chapters long, and the first chapter is really a sort of prologue. The first letter of the first word of each chapter is gigantic and made into a picture, just like with old-fashioned story books, and the second chapter's letter is 'A' and the very last chapter's letter is 'Z' which is kind of fun.

Also, I would like to say that the very first Neverending Story film ends after the chapter beginning with 'L' and the second movie is pretty much made up and doesn't resemble the second half of the book at all. Also, I seem to remember being scared of a wolf in the movie when I was younger. That wolf is barely a character in the book at all. That is how much the films are edited-down/altered versions of the story. Of course the book is better---it always is.

Bastian Balthazar Bax stumbles into a bookstore one day and sees a book called the Neverending Story. He spontaneously steals the book, and is so overcome with shame about it that he decides he can't ever go home and face his father. Instead he hides in the school attic, and spends the rest of the day reading. The more he reads the later in the day it gets, and the more engrossed he becomes. The crux comes when he realizes that his story is part of the story he's reading, and unless he makes an important decision the two stories are destined to continually repeat themselves, over and over, in a type of Groundhog Day phenomenon. Bastian makes a hard decision, and soon finds that his life will never be the same again.

Inkheart

by Cornelia Funke

I LOVED the beginning, got a smidge bored just before the middle, and then zoomed through the entire second half.
It tells the story of a man named Mo and his daughter Meggie. When Mo reads aloud, characters from the book come out to stay - but always trade places with someone from our world. It's basically a run-in with some dark characters that used to be in the book he read from. There's danger, intrigue, a little bit of romance, as well as some good friendships. A few interesting plot twists and enough creativity to keep you thinking.

Twilight

by Stephenie Meyer.

All I'm going to say is that in my opinion, the book is
way better
than the movie.

The End.