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Patricia Wrede - Dealing with Dragons Genre: Basics: This is the first - chronologically speaking - book of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Princess Cimorene runs away from her proper and stodgy life of princessing to have adventures, seek her fortune, and make cherries jubilee. It’s a delightful little adventure story that makes intelligent fun of the world in which most of the disneyfied fairytales are set, kind of like Shrek but with less flatulence. Why I like it: Because there are dragons. There’s lots of other awesomeness going on - the overriding structure of influential and intelligent women wielding power in a complicated and often hostile world, the exploration of valuable versus valueless information, especially as regards formal education, the absurdities and pettiness of political decision-making … – but mostly it’s because there are dragons. Favorite Part: Either the overly dramatic djinn or the advice-dispensing talking frog scenes are my favorite, probably. Or maybe Roxim and his absentminded destructiveness and allergy attacks. Or … Weakest Part: The wizards are pretty one-dimensional. This problem continues through the entire series; there’s not a lot of depth or complexity, just more greedy, smarmy malice. Then again, who needs depth? Religious Objectors Might Object To: Spells & magic, and possibly themes of disobedience toward parents. I think, personally, the story is more of an indictment of child-rearing practices that give greater consideration to the parents’ expectations of normalcy than to the capabilities and personality of their individual child than it is a justification or glorification of rebellion, but to each their own. Diana Wynne-Jones - Deep Secret Genre: Basics: You know how every text is kind of a world in itself, even the ones set in a world that’s relatively like the “real” one? And the way that world is put together tells you a lot about what the writer is (cue authoritative, meaning-laden Literary Critic voice) saying about this one? Well, Dianna Wynne-Jones, not satisfied with that level of complexity, actually went to the trouble of coming up with a way for all the worlds (or at least most of them) that she’s created - and it’s a whole potful by now - to sort of hang together and exist in the same multiverse, so that the insights she gives in her various tales can interrelate in all sorts of new and complicated ways. Well, this is the novel in which you finally get a few explanations about how that works. Also, there’s a fun and exciting story. Why I like it: Because it’s a well-done spoof of a genre I like, because it takes far too many minor characters and makes them all not only believable but interesting, and because it reminds me that there really are people - real people - way weirder than I am. Favorite Part: The ending. I don’t think it’s giving anything away to say that Wynne-Jones has the deus ex machina ending down to an art form. She does seem to use it a lot, but it - at least in my opinion - works far more often than it doesn’t. Weakest Part: The bad guys. They weren’t nearly creepy enough for me. Yeah, they were bad, but they weren’t nearly as bad as the good guys were good, you know? Rise and Shine This is an article about the novel Rise and Shine by somebody or other. It’s a wonderfully insightful article. You should read it. Because I have tons to say about this book. But … not right now. |
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