Cherry Blossom Baseball

(Copy provided by NetGalley.)

From Goodreads:
“Is pretending to be someone else the only way Michiko can fit in?

Michiko Minigawa’s life is nothing but a bad game of baseball. The Canadian government swung the bat once, knocking her family away from a Vancouver home base to an old farmhouse in the Kootenay Mountains. But when they move into town, the government swings the bat again, announcing that all Japanese must now move west of the Rockies or else go to Japan.

Now in Ontario, Michiko once again has to adjust to a whole new kind of life. She is the only Japanese student in her school, and making friends is harder than it was before. When Michiko surprises an older student with her baseball skills and he encourages her to try out for the local team, she gives it a shot. But everyone thinks this new baseball star is a boy. Michiko has to make a decision: quit playing ball (and being harassed), or pitch like she’s never pitched before.”


~~~~~

I enjoyed Cherry Blossom Baseball. Michiko/Millie/Mich was an exceptional main character--she stood up for herself, she thought for herself, and yet she was respectful to her parents and other adults (I'm a big fan of respect--ask my kids!). The story itself really captures the tug of changing--for instance, the cultural shift demonstrated by the changing tide of the old ways brought over from Japan merging with the new ways of Michiko's Canadian home, as well as the social change brought about by World War Two--freedom for women (or girls!) to do the things formerly thought of as men's sole domain, like playing baseball. I also loved the tender interactions of the family as they coped with the necessary changes in their lives brought on by the move.

Overall, this is a good story. It's solid, it teaches without preaching, and I would happily hand it off to any middle grade kid in my family.

Gentle Reader Alert:I found nothing of concern.

Magic Below Stairs

From Goodreads:
“Young Frederick is plucked from an orphanage to be a footboy for a wizard named Lord Schofield in Victorian England. Is his uncanny ability to tie perfect knots and render boots spotless a sign of his own magical talent, or the work of Billy Bly, the brownie who has been secretly watching over him since he was little? No matter, for the wizard has banished all magical creatures from his holdings. But Billy Bly isn't going anywhere, and when he discovers a curse upon the manor house, it's up to Frederick and Billy Bly to keep the lord's new baby safe and rid the Schofield family of the curse forever.”

~~~~~

I've been a fan of Caroline Stevermer's work for a long time. Ever since I read Sorcery and Cecelia, written by Ms. Stevermer and Patricia Wrede, another of my favorites, I've enjoyed her light tone and Victorian-esque settings. When The King Comes Home is also excellent. For years, I've pined to read Magic Below Stairs, the only Stevermer novel I couldn't get my hands on and that my previous library didn't seem inclined to order. But my new teeny library had it! Oh, the happiness!

Magic Below Stairs feels like an oblique continuation of Mairelon the Magician, which was also written by Patricia Wrede, but in tone and quality, it is to Mairelon what The Hobbit is to The Lord of the Rings. I have found that many times an author who is writing a novel for children or about children will often write down to them in a mildly condescending tone, as from a superior adult who has experienced it all and is now handing a piece of candy to a very deserving lad or lass along with a pat on the head. Kind, but misguided. Children aren't stupid. They can easily climb to the author's level as long as the author makes it accessible.

AHEM. I'll climb off my soapbox now.

Magic Below Stairs has that faintly superior tone, unfortunately, but the story is charming and enjoyable, so it's easy to overlook. It was also a very fast read, which helped immensely. This story is well suited for tweens who are just beginning their forays into fantasy.


Gentle Reader Alert: I found nothing of concern.

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Life and Death

All right, y'all, this is where we get real. *cracks knuckles* If you're a paranormal romance hater, skip this post. If you're a Twilight hater, get out. You can come back when you've read my paper (Bella the Mother-Savior).

Ok. We all good here? Great. In my estimation, Twilight was a fine story. It wasn't on the level of Shannon Hale's Goosegirl for prose perfection, but that didn't matter. It was the story of a boy and a girl falling in love and the impossible obstacles they faced. There were incredibly well-drawn characters, great motivation, and a clarity to the narrative that allowed me, as a reader, to get into the story. For a first-time writer, that was MIRACULOUS. The series built up on that promise, and I enjoyed every minute of it, even when things didn't seem to be going well for anyone involved.

Then the pendulum swung (and the movies were made) and the hate started pouring in. Not from me--I love the series. But all these former fans suddenly rescinded their membership in the camp of adoration and marched straight over to the haters, the crab-bucket that took anything good about the series and found innumerable ways to bring it down. That's human nature--if someone excels, someone else will look for the dark side to cheapen their achievement. I hate it, but I understand it. And if you want to fight with me about it, get your own blog.

Anyway.

Ten years later, and Stephenie has written Life and Death, flipping the gender roles of nearly everyone in the book, somewhat in reaction to the haters (Bella's such a damsel in distress! Yeah, no. As Stephenie says, she's a HUMAN in distress. READ THE STORY. *ahem* Moving on). So, you know the story, but now the human is Beau (a boy) and the vampire is Edythe (a girl). The stakes are the same, the obstacles are the same, but Beau and Edythe have their own voices and their own story to tell. Edythe isn't as emotive as Edward--she doesn't always clearly explain what she's thinking and she's not nearly as philosophical. And Beau isn't as vulnerable as Bella--his emotions are kept mostly to the inside. It took a few chapters for me to let go of the original story and hear Beau and Edythe's voices, but once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. AND THE ENDING. If for nothing else, read Life and Death for the ending. I cannot say anything else, but must quote Professor River Song: "Spoilers!"

The plot synopsis on Goodreads is absolutely useless--they don't even talk about the gender swap. The Amazon synopsis isn't much better, but at least they mention the switching of the roles. So, go into this with an open mind, and read it as a new story, and ponder this question--how would the whole Twilight phenomenon be different if the story had been told this way first?


Gentle Reader Alert: I found nothing of concern.

The Gray Zone

(Copy provided to the Kindle Book Review.)

From Goodreads:
“The victim of a cyber-prank gone viral, Autumn was forced to transfer schools—not exactly what she wanted to do as a sophomore. But what choice did she have when all her personal information was posted all over the web? Determined to make the best of her situation, Autumn decides to reinvent herself as the outgoing, popular, not-at-all-shy girl she'd always wanted to be. But even the best plans go awry and Autumn fails to change the old habits that had given her that shy girl reputation in the first place. So when she learns that her best friend, Sophie Rose, is transferring to her new school she’s relieved, until Sophie starts keeping her distance. Autumn finds herself adrift without the support of her best friend. But when tragedy shakes her world she stops feeling sad. Now she's angry—and she's determined to put a stop to this cyber-torture and bullying of herself and the people she loves.”

~~~~~

The topic of this book is so, so important—cyberbullying is real and had chilling effects on its victims. It is not something to be taken lightly, so with that perspective, this book is an excellent launching point for discussing cyberbullying and bullying in general with a teenager near you.

As a story, though, it falls flat because the main character's tone is too mature and self-aware for a sophomore in high school. Also, her internal monologue is unwieldy, wordy, and sometimes aimless. Autumn's interactions with Maurice felt far from real, and the reasoning for his reactions to her seemed implausible. Perhaps if the author had continued to add entries throughout the story from Sophie Rose's diary, the struggle with bullying would seem more real. There were flashes of humor throughout the story, in appropriate places, and the writing itself was excellent. However, the author's emphasis on telling, rather than showing, makes the story feel like an after school special. With a topic this vital, the story needs to be engaging and accessible, especially to its target audience.

Hello World 5000

(Copy provided to The Kindle Book Review)
From Goodreads:
“Hello World 5000 can be called a "children's story," if you're a child, that is, who's either secretly or noticeably intelligent, slightly on the sad side, possessing a fine vocabulary, and who has perhaps even grown embarrassingly tall and has a job. The story begins with a boy named Royal. Royal was named after a typewriter and raised by "The Master," Eduardo Aquifer XXVII, the last in a 500 year old line of unpublished authors who runs St. Millar's Writing Academy for Illiterate Orphans, and where Royal and Olympia, the two main protagonists grow up together. Upon leaving St. Millars, Royal joins the other children of the region who travel the Wire like an undersized French Foreign Legion, along the way delivering cargo without asking questions and trying to evade Feudal Lee, the orchestrator of The Big Dark, as they call the revolution that both evicted parents from their lives and broke history, replacing it instead with the programs run on the Wire. As they travel the Wire they encounter other Digital Natives. At each of these orphaned tribes border they face a Gulag, a challenge which if they are lucky enough to pass through takes them to the Keep, and then the Tell where a Wisenhut (a schoolroom) connects to the Wire and brings a new lesson, development, or death. What is their cargo? What happens when they reach Zero Pole at the end of the Wire, and what does a world without parents look like? Are bedtimes good or bad? Who can raise children better, the state or parents? All these questions and more are raised and answered in this exciting, funny and dangerous book. Read it or die."

~~~~~

Hello World 5000 is impossible to define. It could be a very difficult read, dealing with thousands of children ripped from their parents and muddling through a seemingly post-apocalyptic world, but the narrative is utterly ruled by whimsical storytelling, leading the reader through a whirling dance of eccentricities that occasionally drops to present a serious picture, then takes off again. Reading it was enjoyable, though a slower experience than I'm used to, because I had to wade through the explanations for the compacted eccentricities on every page and the back stories for almost all the characters.

Backstories are completely necessary in this story, though it was disappointing not to have a clear explanation for The Big Dark or how Feudal Lee came into power. And yet, I grew to love the characters. As I have usually found in these kinds of stories, the main character (Royal) is a bit null, while the colorful secondary characters swirl and dance around him. Hunt masterfully uses flashbacks and just a smidge of foreshadowing to round out each character's story, like streamers winding around a maypole—with a similar sense of barely controlled mayhem. Sometimes, he even tells the readers what the characters are about to do, which adds a little delight to the sometimes-heavy narrative. On the other hand, the conflict's resolution wasn't complete—the children seemed to be in a good place, but what happened to the antagonist? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Beware of the Elephant

(Copy provided to The Kindle Book Review)

From Goodreads:
"For years, Ziggy Breener, Burnt Cove’s eccentric Can Man, has lived a simple life, riding his bicycle along the town roads to collect returnables.

Life gets a lot more complicated when Ziggy inherits a piece of prime waterfront land from the equally eccentric Myra Huggard.

Moving to a new neighborhood brings new friends as well as new enemies. Sadly, his friends turn out to be more dangerous than his enemies, especially when he’s presented with an elephant who moves into his backyard.

Things go from bad to worse when his new guest apparently kills somebody, and the elephantine suspect turns out to have a checkered past. Desperate, Ziggy persuades his friends, amateur sleuths Sarah Cassidy and Oliver Wendell to help prove the elephant’s innocence.

But if the pesky pachyderm isn’t the killer, then who is? Did the murder have something to do with a long-forgotten legend about buried treasure hidden on Myra Huggards’ land? Were Ziggy’s angry neighbors behind the death? Was there some darker motive?

These questions and more lead Sarah back to her tangled childhood relationship with the Huggards. Once again she finds herself having to confront painful memories from her past in order to solve an old mystery and find a modern-day killer."

~~~~~

Beware of the Elephant is an easy-going mystery, full of aw-shucks residents and other oddities, light on plot but well-done in character development. But to the author's credit, no one is too stupid to live (even the victim!) and the entangled mysteries are solved satisfactorily.

The story relies heavily on the reader's affection for the collection of quirky characters that make up Burnt Cove, from the Russian mobster and his philandering wife to the former ER doc turned can-collecting beach bum and his foil, the preacher who moonlights as a logging truck driver. These characters are so eccentric that the main sleuths, Oliver and Sarah, could almost be sticks of wood in comparison. But, as they are romantically involved and Sarah is actually working through some baggage of her own, they held my interest well enough. The thing I appreciated the most was that the local law enforcement wasn't a yokel, though I wasn't sure at first. He was well-played and I was pleasantly surprised at his involvement in the mystery.

Beware the Elephant is not a thriller, nor is it action-packed. This is a cozy mystery with very little peril outside of the main murder victim. If you're looking for a heart-pounding read, move on. If you'd like a simple mystery to curl up with on a lazy afternoon, this will suit you just fine.

Gentle Reader Alert: There were a few swears, but nothing beyond a PG level.

General Winston's Daughter

From Goodreads:
"When eighteen-year-old heiress Averie Winston travels to faraway Chiarrin, she looks forward to the reunion with her father and her handsome fiancé, Morgan. What she finds is entirely different from what she expected. She realizes that Morgan is not the man she thought he was; and she finds herself inexplicably drawn to another. Handsome Lieutenant Ket Du'kai is like no one Averie has ever met, and she enjoys every moment she spends with him, every delicious flirtation. Averie knows she's still engaged to another man, but she can't help but think about Lieutenant Du'kai, and she wonders if he feels the same."

~~~~~

Sharon Shinn has long been one of my favorite authors, ever since my friend Ami handed me Archangel and said, "Ignore the stupid cover. You'll love this book." Ami has good taste. I've read the entire Samaria series and the Twelve Houses series and enjoyed the worlds and the people that Ms. Shinn has created, even the impossible situations she's put them in sometimes, and I hate being emotionally wrung out at the end of a book. So, needless to say, I'm a fan.

Anyway, it drove me NUTS that my local library didn't have her stand-alone, General Winston's Daughter, and it's been on my to-read shelf for a long time. I'm glad to have read it, but I don't feel that it stands on the same level as Archangel or Mystic and Rider. Maybe it's because the protagonist is young and at the beginning of her life, where impossible decisions are less impactful. Maybe it's because the conflict in the story--the actual war and the events that make Our Noble Heroine question her worldview--is pedestrian. The ringing debate between Conquerer and Conquered and whose lives are *really* being improved has been hashed out time and time again, and I don't feel that Ms. Shinn covered any new ground there. Even the romance has been done. Averie herself wasn't likeable enough to carry the story, and nothing she did was out of the ordinary. So. It's a well-written book that would challenge a young reader as to why they see some people as Other, but it's also a well-beaten dead horse.

Gentle Reader Alert: I found nothing of concern.