Verdict: Not racist! (Phew.) I read somewhere that The Thirteenth Child was racist, and it stressed me out because Patricia C. Wrede was one of my favorite authors when I was coming up, and I didn’t want her to be racist. Especially because she’s the other author besides Jane Yolen that I wrote to in my youth, and she wrote me back a really nice email telling me to keep on reading and pay close attention to the things my favorite authors were doing, and that’s how I would get to be a better writer myself (which is what I…
5 CommentsTag: fantasy
So when I was about thirteen, I thought these books, Sister Light, Sister Dark and White Jenna were just about the best thing in the entire world. I got them from the library after my sister gave me Dragon’s Blood for my birthday, and then I wanted to get more Jane Yolen books, and seriously, I totally loved them. My sister made me a white sweatshirt that said Jo-an-enna in black letters, and she had a black sweatshirt that said Skada in white letters, and that’s how much I loved those books. They are all about a girl called Jenna…
5 CommentsSkellig is about a boy called Michael, who finds an angel in his crappy old broken-down garage. Or, to be more precise, in his crappy old broken-down garage, he finds a filthy, exhausted, starving, unfriendly man called Skellig with growths on his back that Michael suspects are wings (which proves to be the case). Michael’s baby sister is very sick, and because he is very worried about her, and can’t help her, he focuses his energies on taking care of Skellig instead. Mina, the strange, clever girl next door, helps him and teaches him about bones and William Blake (two…
6 CommentsI simply cannot get on with Patricia McKillip. I don’t know what it is about her books that displease me. The writing is lovely, her characters are likeable, the plots are interesting – and still, every single time I pick up one of her books, I end up stewing in displeasure and finally asking myself, Jenny, why are you torturing yourself like this? Just put the damn book down and read something else. Winter Rose is a retelling of Tam Lin. I love that story! As previously mentioned, I am reading a bunch of retellings of that story. And there…
10 CommentsI do not appreciate casual slaps at the South for being racist. I do not mind delineations of particular racist things the South has done and continues to do (that’s fair, although I don’t know why the North always gets such a pass), but I just can’t stand this unsupported assumption that the South is full of people ten times more racist than the rest of the country. So I didn’t like it in this book when the Mysterious (read: deeply aggravating and nobody in her right mind would ever bother with him) Boy Next Door, Dominic, says a few…
11 CommentsI read somewhere (who knows?) that War for the Oaks is a retelling of Tam Lin. I’m on a mad craze to read all the retellings of Tam Lin that I can find, which is brilliant because Fire and Hemlock is waiting for me at the end. Also, I am interested in reading a whole bunch of retellings of one story, because I am thinking of doing an adaptation of “The Little Mermaid”, and I am curious to see how people do it. War for the Oaks isn’t a retelling of Tam Lin, but it’s fun and I enjoyed it.…
4 CommentsBlast. I wrote a nice, thoughtful review of this book, and then it somehow got lost when I reviewed Death: The High Cost of Living. Bother bother bother. Suffice it to say – The Queen of Spells is a retelling of “Tam Lin”, which is such a great story that I have checked out or reserved five different adaptations of it, to decide which one is best (apart from, obviously, Fire and Hemlock). The Queen of Spells is not best. The sequence where Janet is hanging onto Tom as he turns into all sorts of things is trippy and nifty…
2 CommentsOh, steampunk, why do you keep breaking my heart? I want to love you, I do. What’s not to love about steampunk? In theory it should be everything good: Victorians, and flying machines, and (usually) fantasy elements too. How can it be that I have never read a steampunk book and really loved it? The Court of the Air is about two plucky orphans who are being chased by assassins, and they’re not sure why. I got bored about 150 pages in and didn’t finish it. There were several reasons for this. First of all, there were dangling participles all…
3 Comments