Rampant – Diana Peterfreund

Astrid Llewellyn grew up to her mother’s tales of unicorns; far from fluffy pink ponies with dainty, sparkling horns, Astrid’s mother swears that real unicorns are beasts with razor-sharp teeth and equally sharp, venomous horns, preferring to gore people than to help them. They are vicious hunters, and the only humans who stand a chance against them are themselves hunters: virgin female descendants of Alexander the Great, bestowed by nature, genetics, or possibly magic with superhuman speed, strength, and aim—but only when unicorns are present. Plus, they’re immune to alicorn (unicorn horn) venom.

Naturally, sensible would-be-doctor Astrid doesn’t believe a word and is ashamed of her obsessed and possibly delusional mother.

Also naturally, Astrid’s mother is right. Except for one thing: Astrid’s ancestress did not successfully exterminate the unicorns. After two centuries without any sign of unicorn activity, they’re back, starting with the one who nearly kills Astrid’s jerk of a boyfriend. Astrid is promptly packed off to Rome, where a cloister for the training of hunters is being hurriedly restarted. Astrid doesn’t relish her new role; she chafes at the restrictions, the assumptions that different families of hunters have different unicorn-related specialties, the refusal to let her near any of the unicorn and hunter biology being studied. Still, she doesn’t see herself as having much of a choice, and generally constrains her opposition to sneaking out with her cousin to spend time with their new boyfriends.

The unicorn lore is detailed and consistent, showing signs of careful and loving craft. I do wish some things were a bit more spelled out; I’m sure the author knows what was going on with some surprises toward the end (relating to unicorn healing powers), but it would have been nice if she shared. The plot is well crafted and the pacing is interesting; it moves in fits and starts as life in the real world does, without dragging.

The characters are decidedly less fleshed-out than either the unicorns or the plot. Most of the hunters never develop distinct personalities; factions developed in the cloisters and had fairly messy disputes, but I could never remember who was on which side, who was related to whom, etc., because they were just names, not people. The worst offender is Lilith, Astrid’s mother. Her obsession with unicorns and desire for Astrid to gain glory as a hunter completely overwhelms any other personality traits. Even after a supposed sea-change and revelation, Lilith just keeps beating the same dead horse (er, unicorn?): unicorn hunting should be glamorous and exciting, as a Llewellyn Astrid should be the best of the best. It goes beyond obsession; reading it, I was uncomfortably aware of Lilith as a construct, rather than a person.

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Rampant ~ Diana Peterfreund ~ Dianna Peterfreund’s Blog

 

Dairy Queen – Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I read a book about football.

And I liked it.

I don’t understand football. I don’t understand team sports in general.¹ When I was in high school, I completely avoided all interscholastic sports events. I was regularly accused of having zero school spirit, a charge which was largely justified, but really, high school football was also not that big a deal in my town.²

So an obsession with football is pretty alien to me. I watched the first season of Friday Night Lights and enjoyed it on an intellectual level, as a sociological study of a foreign culture.

Dairy Queen I flat out enjoyed.

D.J. is the only girl in a family of football men, poor but extremely hardworking farmers who are better at football than at dairy farming. Since her dad busted his knee, D.J.’s been doing all the farm work (and her dad has taken over the cooking, with mixed results) and is getting it done, though it cut into her ability to do schoolwork. Luckily, it’s summer, so all she needs to do is the farmwork. And do a favor for a family friend by training the quarterback of her school’s rival football team. And maybe fall for said quarterback. And definitely decide to go out for football in the fall.

And maybe learn communication methods other than her family’s abysmal passive-aggressive ones. And maybe figure out what’s up with her best friend and her little brother. And her parents.

In some ways, it feels like reading a therapy transcript. A very funny therapy transcript, minus the therapist. But with a lot of emotions and relationships, looked at through day to day events. D.J.’s often a bit of an idiot when it comes to people, but she’s so honest and drily humorous that it would be hard not to like her. I don’t understand football, but the overworked mom, the closeted friend, the frustrated dad, the isolated brother—he’s almost as closeted as the friend, it’s just not about sexual orientation in his case— are all real, believable, understandable people

Don’t worry; I’m still staying far, far away from football.

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¹There’s the cooperative part of the brain, and there’s the competitive part of the brain. These parts in opposition. Somehow team sports imply that they can be turned on simultaneously. This is… weird.

²Our team lost almost all the time, anyway. Occasionally, the town could muster up some enthusiasm for hockey or soccer. When we were winning.

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Dairy Queen ~ Catherine Gilbert Murdock
My review of Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Princess Ben

 

The Last Olympian – Rick Riordan

The Last Olympian is the fifth and final volume in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. My reviews of the first four books are here, here, here, and here. The bare-bones explanation: Percy Jackson is a half-blood, the son of a human mother and a Greek god. There’s a prophesy that when he turns sixteen, he will make a decision that will determine the fate of the world, whether the gods will continue to shepherd humanity or if the titans will destroy the gods and reclaim ultimate power over Earth.

We get almost nothing by way of exposition, and not much of the quest-type action that characterizes the earlier books; there’s a little bit of ominous preparation and then we’re dropped right into the climactic battle. For the most part this is just fine; the battle has its own plot arc, and its placements fits well into the overall plot arc of the series. The bit of questing that takes place at the beginning of The Last Olympian is important but feels a bit rushed, squeezed in on our way to demigods and titans duking it out around the Empire State Building.

Yep, the Empire State Building, entrance to Olympus and focal point of the novel. The first four books take some pretty awesome road trips around the United States, always coming back to New York. This one sticks close to home, with a clear love for Manhattan (and a casual disregard for the rest of the city; the Brooklynite in me bristled a few times.) It also sticks close to home emotionally; everyone Percy cares about is at risk. The details are solid and often surprising—the identity of the last Olympian, for instance, or the issues surrounding the Oracle—and the writing is likewise solid. There is less exploration of Greek mythology in this volume, but the world Riordan painstakingly crafted in the first four is rich and consistent. Basically, The Last Olympian is a well-crafted novel and a satisfying conclusion to an consistently excellent series.

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Rick Riordan
My reviews of The Lightning Thief (Book 1), The Sea of Monsters (Book 2), The Titan’s Curse (Book 3) and Battle of the Labyrinth (Book 4)

 

Creature of the Night – Kate Thompson

Bobby’s mother says she’s moving them to Clare for the summer to keep him out of trouble; in Dublin, he’s a bit prone to stealing cars, iPods, and purses with a small gang of older boys. She’s also taking them off to Clare to keep herself away from the moneylenders. Bobby doesn’t want to be in Clare, with the locals telling them about fairies, disappearances, and murders in the cottage where they’re living.

It’s a much darker book than Kate Thompson’s two earlier ones, though equally suffused with Irishness and just as well-written. Fairies appear mostly in the stories Bobby’s told—though his four-year-old brother keeps talking about a little woman who comes in at night for milk and chocolate—this one isn’t a fairy story, it’s a haunting portrait of a dysfunctional family trapped in their destructive patterns. Bobby’s mother is at least as messed-up as he is and their issues clearly play off each other’s. Bobby is struggling so hard against the misery and boredom of his life, but he’s barely able to see a way out that doesn’t involve substance abuse. And all while he’s struggling to get his footing and figure things out, strange noises and discoveries in the cottage throw him even more off-balance.

It’s short and powerful, with a blend of harsh realism and hope that makes it difficult but not overwhelming to read.

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Creature of the Night ~ Kate Thompson

 

Devil’s Kiss – Sarwat Chadda

Billi doesn’t want to be a Knight Templar. Originally an official Church-sanctioned crusading order, they were officially disbanded and declared heretical in the thirteenth century. Now they exist in secret, a small band of deadly fighters based in London, charged with protecting humans from a standard slew of nasties: vampires, werewolves, and demons possessing dead bodies. Billi’s father, the current Grand Master, insisted that she become one of them, though several of the older Knights objected: Billi’s a girl and, historically, girls were not allowed in the Knights Templar (being a monastic order and all that). At fifteen, Billi is officially a member of the order, but would much rather go on dates and get her homework done on time than spend her nights fighting vampires. She might be slightly happier about it if her father ever showed the slightest pride or care for her well-being, but no such luck.

Angsty teenager + supernatural evils = melodrama.

Also, there is a general problem with many reluctant hero(in)es: we pick up books about, say, modern-day female Knights Templar because we want some badassitude. It’s an added bonus if the badass hero(ine) has a realistic, complex personality and therefore thinks about the reasons (s)he’s kicking ass, has some moral compunctions, and is generally three-dimensional. The bonus turns into a penalty if the thoughtfulness turns into whininess. Alas, the whininess:badassness ratio in Devil’s Kiss is rather high.

In a separate issue, I was left with an unanswered question: why are all the Knights except Billi (full name: Bilqis) named after Arthurian figures (Arthur, Percival, Gwaine, Bors, Balin, Pelleas, Kay, Elaine)? Granted, Devil’s Kiss is set in England, where Arthurian names are much more common, (I have a British cousin named Merlin), but to have all of them named thus begs an explanation. There are, apparently, some modern conspiracy theories connecting the Templars to Arthur¹ (and, of course, the entire book is based on the conspiracy theory that the Templars are still around), but neither these theories nor King Arthur are mentioned in the book, so that doesn’t go far in the way of explanation. Unlike Billi, the others weren’t born into the Templars; they came to it as adults. Did they change their names? Billi didn’t have to change her name when she officially joined. Was there some monumental coincidence? Where there are prophecies, as there are here, I have trouble accepting coincidences. So why the Arthurian names? Why does Billi pull a sword out of a stone? There could be some cool Arthurian connections, but the lack of explanation or exploration left my vastly unsatisfied. Perhaps Chadda will explain in one of the planned sequels, but I doubt my curiosity will be enough to get me to pick them up.

September 2009

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¹ Wikipedia says, “Revisionist historians and conspiracy theorists claim that the Knights Templar stored secret knowledge, linking them to myriad other subjects: the Rosicrucians, the Cathars, the Priory of Sion, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the Hermetics, the Ebionites, the Rex Deus, lost relics or gospels of James the Just, Mary Magdalene or Jesus (such as a ‘Judas Testament’), King Solomon, Moses, and, ultimately, Hiram Abif and the mystery religion/mysteries of ancient Egypt.”

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The Devil’s Kiss ~ Sarwat Chadda