R.I.P. III Challenge

I've only been blogging a few months, and thus have not had the pleasure of participating in one of Carl V's R.I.P. Challenges. This years challenge will have various related activities, so keep an eye on Stainless Steel Droppings as the challenge progresses. R.I.P. III runs from September 1st through October 31st, 2008, and there are three possible variations. There are three perils to choose from, and the challenge is to read between 1 and 4 books from the following subgenres:

Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
Dark Fantasy.
Gothic.
Horror.
Supernatural.

Instead of a fixed list of books, each participant should create a pool of books that they would like to select from. This pool can be books they already want to read and you can get ideas from other participants' pools. Reviews should be posted on the R.I.P.ing Yarns website.


I have chosen Peril the Second, and will be reading two (or more!) of the following books in the subgenres:

The Master and the Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruis Zafon
Smoke and Mirrors - Neil Gaiman
Nocturnes - John Connolly
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger - Stephen King
The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield
The Collector - John Fowles
Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter

So whatever you choose, enjoy!!

Snow - Tove Jansson

Rating: 3 1/2
Read for: The Short Story Reading Challenge

Tove Jansson is well known as an extraordinary woman, and writer of children’s stories. Most famous for her stories of the Moomins, Jansson reached more recent acclaim after her death, with the publication of two collections of short stories, The Summer Book and The Winter Book. I remember loving the Moomin stories as a child, and wanted to select one of Jansson’s short stories for this challenge. I selected Snow as I was drawn to the simple title, I knew nothing of the content of any of these stories.

Snow appears to be a simple story. A child and her mother have moved to a strange old house, which is permeated with the memory of the previous family. The mother is relaxed and settled there, finding peace from the outside world. The child however, finds no comfort, becoming obsessed with the falling snow outside, and the prospect of being buried forever in a terrifying snow drift. I said appears to be a simple story. Snow is really about the unfamiliar, about resisting change and the unknown, but about finding hope in family, in companionship. Ali Smith, who selected this collection, described A Winter Book as "Beautifully crafted and deceptively simple-seeming, these stories are pieces of scattered light."

Jansson's writing itself is beautiful. Much of her work is semi-autobiographical, and this is understandable when reading her descriptions of the empty rooms, of the sounds and light, and about a child's reaction to the unknown, the silence, the resignation. You can feel the child's loneliness and confusion, being removed from her own life and deposited in a large, empty, old house.

"If you stood in the furthest room, you could see through all the other rooms and it made you feel sad; it was like a train ready to leave with its lights shining over the platform. The last room was dark like the inside of a tunnel except for a faint glow in the gold frames and the mirror which was hung too high on the wall. All the lamps were soft and misty and made a very tiny circle of light. And when you ran you made no noise."

Since reading Snow, I have read more about Tove Jansson, a fascinating woman of nature, who lived her life in the towns and islands of Finland, living well into old age, and her work is permeated with her life experiences and love of the natural world around her. Reviews of other stories in A Winter Book are heaped with praise, and thus I will certainly be reading the rest of this and other collections. I will however be waiting for the appropriate season for the rest of this wintry collection, as I think the glorious sun beaming down on me while reading about Snow did hamper my enjoyment just a little! Definitely one for being curled up in front of the fire, with snow falling outside.

Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer

Rating: 4 1/2

I think I must be one of the last people left in the blogging world to read and review this book! And yet, to my surprise, I managed to skilfully avoid any spoilers and thus my reading experience was entirely untainted. Since then, I have scanned a few reviews, and the inflammatory nature of some have been a great source of amusement!

Stephenie Meyer is huge in the USA. Far more so than in the UK. That is not to say she is unheard of here. Indeed, I went into my local Waterstones the other day and found that Breaking Dawn is the number 1 on the bestseller list at the moment, thus filled the front of store. The day I bought the book, they had to fish me one out of the window display as they had already sold out (and yet I managed to get a signed copy..curious!).

Needless to say, I am not the first to review this book, and thus am not too worried about spoiling the story for many people, but nevertheless I will warn you when spoilers are ahead.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series, which has been a special pleasure for me as I have never read a vampire series before. As with J.K. Rowling, Meyer is not the best writer in the world, nor are her ideas groundbreaking, but she is highly creative and imaginative and her stories are engrossing to say the least. For this reason, Twilight will always be my favourite of the series. It is where I was introduced to the characters and the story, and where I became hooked. New Moon was a fascinating exploration of loss, depression and what one person would do for love. Eclipse is about passion and friendship (as well as the newborn vampire attack story), but Breaking Dawn is where Meyer introduces a truly new vein of storytelling. Up until now, the Twilight series has been Bella's story. Breaking Dawn is split into three parts, telling Bella's story, then Jacob's story, then Bella's again. An interesting divergence from the author's usual style of writing, but very effective. The second part could certainly have been written from Bella's perspective, but probably would have become quite dull and repetitive. Using Jacob as the protagonist allows us some more insight into his mind and feelings, and allows us to see more of Edward also, as they struggle with the situation in hand (which I will get to!).

I found Breaking Dawn to be a mature exploration of family, as well as dealing with Bella's wedding and inevitably leading up to her transformation. As usual, Bella is faced with all kinds of obstacles, not to mention the self-proclaimed leaders of the vampire world...the Volturi. We are graced with the showdown that has been building since Bella first met the Volturi in New Moon, but it certainly wasn't what I had expected.

On that note..

~WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD~

Breaking Dawn starts where Eclipse left off, and we are rapidly swept through wedding arrangements into the wedding and then the honeymoon on a romantic isolated island. Here Edward has to fulfil another part of his bargain with Bella and attempt to safely have sex with her, without causing her injury or worse. I say safely, how ironic! Soon (very soon!) Bella discovers that she is indeed pregnant with Edward's child, and while he is fixed on aborting the foetus, Bella becomes ardently attached to it, and calls Rosalie to assist, who she knows will side with her decision to keep the 'child'. Upon their return to Forks, the story switches to Jacob's point of view, as he and the Cullens deal with Bella being pregnant, with the fact that the birth will likely kill her, and with the foetus itself, a truly unknown quantity. As the 'child' develops far more rapidly than a human, they discover that though it grows and has a heartbeat, it needs blood to survive, a true human-vampire hybrid. The birth draws nigh, and Bella is indeed mortally wounded, though the child itself survives. Edward is forced to bite and inject his venom into Bella in an attempt to save her, thus her transformation takes place.

I was not surprised that Bella becoming a vampire was a life-saving measure, it had been so for most of the other Cullens, Carlise, Alice and Jasper excluded. I was a little disappointed at first that Bella did not exhibit the famed newborn tendencies, the frenzied feeding and uncontrollable urges. However, her self-control seemed relevant, both for her and for Edward and his ability to be with her, without killing her, when she was human. This then leads to speculation about her 'special gift' which turns out to be far more special than anyone could have imagined. The child herself is irresistable, and everyone immediately falls in love with her, not least Jacob, who imprints on her, leaving him forever entwined in the lives of Bella and the Cullens, as Bella herself had previously suggested, he was meant to be part of her life. This was no huge surprise to me, and I was very glad that he did not end up with Bella. That to me would have been a huge disappointment, given Edward and Bella's supposed incomparable love for each other. I really like Edward, and am happy to say that I am not in and am nowhere near the Jacob adoring fan club! He really annoys me, less so in this book to be true, and though he and Bella probably deserve each others irritating nature, I have always wanted Edward to get his girl!

There was so much about this book that I liked. Alice's story sideline is interesting, as I always rooted for her and was glad to be proved right! The cottage that Bella and Edward are given is beautifully described, I only wish I could have had more time in it. And the vampires that join the Cullens to stand against the Volturi are all so varied and interesting. I particularly like the Amazon vampires, and Benjamin, but am glad that they were not all instantly likeable. No large group of people (or the undead) are all likeable, and the variety was more realistic, if I can possibly describe vampires as such! The ending was certainly not what I expected, but I was grateful for that, that after four novels, Meyer's story was not predictable (ok, except maybe the Jacob imprinting on the baby thing!). I have been rather amused by the uproar surrounding the conclusion to this series. It certainly was not perfect (there was never enough about Carlisle), but what series ever ends that way, and no author could ever please all their readers. I've enjoyed this little journey.

~SPOILERS END~

Though skeptical at first, I am now very much looking forward to Midnight Sun, the telling of Twilight from Edward's point of view. The first chapter (draft) can be found on Stephenie Meyer's official website, which has a particularly delicious banner very close to my heart! I am also looking forward to the film of Twilight (I think Robert Pattinson is perfect for Edward), though I am a little concerned that it will be a disappointment. Perhaps I should lower my expectations, just in case.







Other blog reviews:
Melody's Reading Corner
Becky's Book Reviews
Rhinoa's Ramblings
Maw Books Blog
the bookworm
Tripping Toward Lucidity
In Spring it is the Dawn

The Ice Queen - Alice Hoffman

Rating: 4 1/2

"Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back. They bruise and bake and come back to haunt you. I've made far too many wishes in my lifetime, the first when I was eight years old. Not the sort of wish for ice cream or a party dress or long blond hair; no. The other sort, the kind that rattles your bones, then sits in the back of your throat, a greedy red toad that chokes you until you say it aloud. The kind that could change your life in an instant, before you have time to wish you could take it back."

This is the story of a girl who makes a wish, one that leaves her devastated with loss. She grows up with a heart of ice, her life cold and unfeeling, until one day she stands by her kitchen window and is struck by lightning. She survives, but is forever changed, and not just because of the injuries caused by the strike, her irregular heartbeat, headaches, her loss of the colour red. A series of events and meetings are set in motion until she finally meets Lazarus Jones, her opposite, a man whose very touch scorches, the fire to her ice. Through their passion they learn each other's secrets, the very truths behind their desires, and their hopes for a second chance.

Alice Hoffman's protagonist is unnamed. As if naming her would give her something, some tangible quality that the reader would recognise. Instead, she represents desire, all the wishes we could ever make, however ill- or well-meaning, and their potential consequences. She represents the search for love, the search for happiness, and ultimately hope. Her story is moving, precisely because of her coldness, because she cannot feel. This ice is certainly why I was drawn to her. This need for something just out of her reach. Something intangible. Something I really cannot express in words.

I loved the references to Grimms' fairy tales throughout the story. Perhaps Hoffman's Ice Queen sees her own life as one of these dark, atmospheric tales, and inevitably sees her own unhappy ending. A very modern take on Hans Christian Anderson's Ice Queen, with an interesting segue into the world of lightening strikes and survivors. A great deal of food for thought.

When reading reviews of this book, I found that "haunting" was often the word used to describe it. Haunting...certainly a word to use for this gorgeous novel. A story of friendship and family, of heartbreak and hope, of love and loss. The Ice Queen is one of the most beautiful books I have read in a long time, and only my second of Hoffman's work. I shall definitely be seeking more of her evocative style of writing. And the butterflies...again I don't have the words!

A heartbreakingly beautiful fairy tale for adults.

Other blog reviews:
Nymeth @ things mean a lot
Naida @ the bookworm
Rhinoa's Ramblings

A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

Rating: 3

I am probably one of the last people to read this book, and am a little ashamed to say it is the first of Ursula Le Guin's work that I have read. But I got there eventually!

The first in Le Guin's Earthsea Quartet, A Wizard of Earthsea was written in the 1960's, and has had a major impact on fantasy writing in the decades since.

The Wizard of Earthsea is the story of Sparrowhawk, who we meet as a young boy on the island of Gont. Sparrowhawk discovers that he has a talent for magic but his only teacher is an old village witch, until he uses his gift to save village from attack by foreign invaders. He is physically drained and injured by the feat, and is only saved by a mage, Ogion the Silent, who hears of the boy's skills. Ogion takes the boy as his apprentice, giving him his true name, Ged, but the boy is frustrated by the pace of his training. Ogion gives Ged the choice of staying with him, or travelling to study in a school for wizards on the Island of Roke.

Ged leaves for Roke, where he learns the craft very quickly, but his arrogance causes him to attempt a spell that is beyond his skills to control, to conjure a dead spirit. The result is a terrifying creature being unleashed, and it is only the Archmage who saves him, but not before the creature escapes. Racked with guilt and fear, Ged must leave the school and enter the world with the threat of the creature hanging over him. Ged is now a powerful wizard, but his strength is tested against a family of dragons, a strange evil force and the creature that is still hunting him.

I enjoyed the story, the battles that Ged has to face in his struggle for survival, but I never felt truly involved. The writing was beautiful, but the characters felt a little distant to me, so that I was never drawn in as with other fantasy series I have read. Ogion was probably the only character I was ever really interested in learning more about. Other tales in the Quartet have been recommended to me, so I will probably read the others, but am not in quite so much of a hurry!

Big Fish - Daniel Wallace

Rating: 4

For the first time in a long time, I have read a book after seeing the film! I usually tend to avoid doing just this, as I find films place very set images in my mind, which make it difficult for me to imagine characters when reading the book.

Because of this, I perhaps did not enjoy this book as much as I would have, had I not already seen the film. I loved the film. Though I love anything Tim Burton creates, so that may not be saying much! Burton's use of colour and imagery are always stunning and imaginative.

Daniel Wallace's Big Fish is just as imaginative, but not quite what I expected. Our narrator is William Bloom, son of Edward Bloom, the titular "Big Fish". Edward is dying, and his son seeks a finally chance to truly know the man, who has spent his entire life telling fantastic stories rather than truths. Edward's life has been a colourful one, full of magnificent tales, but William has trouble separating the truths from the fiction. Throughout the tales, Edward's death is revealed in four different chapters, each bringing us a little closer to the old man's true self. Even at the end, Edward's stories are still fanciful and William's sense of frustration is palpable. However, I felt drawn to the old man and his stories, and the ending was very sad yet heart-warming.

Full of tall tales and extraordinary adventures, Big Fish is a beautiful, magical and charming read. Very much a fairy tale for adults. Highly recommended.

Here, There Be Dragons - James A. Owen

Rating: 3 1/2

The first story in the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, this blending of real-life characters and fantasy fiction is a fun-filled journey through mythological and fantastical lands.

Set in 1917, following the death of his Professor, a young man and his companions are entrusted as guardians of the mysterious Imaginarium Geographica. Chased by the vicious Wendigo, creatures that are half-man, half-werewolf, the companions flee with a strange man onto an unusual ship that leads them into the lands described within the atlas that they are protecting, the Archipelago of Dreams. On their journey, the companions discover that the some of the lands in the Archipelago of Dreams are from our own world, such as Avalon. The ship they travel on it one of 7 dragon ships, able to cross between our world and the Archipelago.

They learn that the secrets within this book must be protected in order to bring peace not only to the Archipelago of Dreams, but also in our own world. The Winter King is destroying the Islands in the Archipelago and turning their residents into shadows, forced to fight on his side. To truly become King of the Archipelago however, he needs the Imaginarium Geographica.

Throughout their adventure, it becomes clear that the three companions are more familiar to fantasy readers than first thought. A rollicking ride through multiple fantasy lands, but with a darker tone to the latter part of the book. Richly detailed with intricate iullstrations, Here there be dragons is an excellent start to this series.

Snakehead - Anthony Horowitz

Rating: 3 1/2
Alex Rider Series

Snakehead is Alex Rider's 7th adventure, picking up where it left off in the last story, Ark Angel. For those who have not discovered this fabulous series aimed at younger readers of 12+, especially boys, Alex Rider is just your normal 14 year old boy. That is, until his guardian is killed in suspicious circumstances, and Alex discovers that he worked for MI6, and that he had been groomed throughout his childhood for the same future. Forcibly recruited by MI6, Alex carries out several missions for the UK government, to rid the world of evil supervillians.

This series is reminiscent of a young James Bond, with ridiculous but entertaining escapades and highly inventive gadgets! Each of Alex's adventures are unique, but with a pervading sense of the familiar. This is a fabulous series that I have seen capture the imaginations of countless young boys.

The following may contain spoilers for those who have not read the rest of the series..

The conclusion of Ark Angel left Alex in space, and this is where Snakehead begins, with the boy spy returning to Earth. He is picked up by the Australian authorities, and persuaded to go on a mission, to infiltrate the criminal underworld of South-East Asia, and himself go up against the ruthless Snakehead. Alex is also confronted with his own past, the truth behind the death of his parents.. Will he come out of this one alive?

As exciting and ridiculous as ever, Alex's adventures are always thrilling. This one however, was the first with a true emotional impact. The truth about his family has never been closer, but Alex may find that won't want to hear it.

An excellent installment for fans of the series, but not likely to win over any new readers.

Booking Through Thursday

Other Worlds

Suggested by Miko

Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?
Or where you certainly would NOT want to live?
What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life?
(This came to me when reviewing a Jonathan Carroll book - I’m not sure I’d like to live in the worlds of his books.)

Well the first question is pretty easy for me! I would love to have gone to school at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter world! I would have enjoyed all the magical classes (especially transfiguration and potions!!) and playing Quidditch! I could also totally live in Middle Earth, especially in Rohan (!), or in Ileadh in Alison Croggon's world of Pellinor. I would also love to live in Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next's world, where I could move in and out of all my favourite books!

I would not like to live in Wonderland..I think it would make my head hurt! Very confusing... And I certainly would not want to live in a dystopian world like that of The Handmaid's Tale, I Am Legend or 1984!

As for who I would like to write my life story..I think Susanna Clarke for her beautiful way of writing, and her balanced view of all her characters. (Maybe thats the Libran in me...all about the balance!).

Where would you live?

Weekly Geeks #13

Welcome to Weekly Geeks #13. I haven't participated in a while, but couldn't resist this week’s theme, to post author photos. My photos are posted using my adaptation of Dewey's meme-like list, and as requested, no names are included. Feel free to guess away, and the first person to get all of them right, wins a book by one of the fabulous authors I have met!





1. Photos of some of my favorite authors.

























2. Photo of the author of the book I am currently reading.















3. Photos of some of the authors I have met in person.















4. A photo of the author of the book I most recently finished.

Lost and found?

I'd been having a lovely time on my holidays, walking, canoeing and exploring the history around my home until last weekend, when sadly my grandfather passed away. He's had two very difficult years of illness after losing my grandmother, and although I will miss him terribly, I am truly glad that he will not be suffering any more. I've spent the past few days blubbing on and off, partly due to losing him, and partly due to the book I've been reading that has really touched a nerve..The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman. Very much about loss and finding joy in life, this really hit a sore spot with me, but in a good way. Watch this space for a review.

So I've decided to sort myself out. I'm really going to get on top of this job situation, and make sure that I get to spend more time at home where I can actually have a life and do all the things that my grandfather has been inspiring me to do since childhood. I'm torn at the moment between disappearing off to Africa for a year or so, travelling round and working on conservation projects..or buying a house somewhere in the country and getting dogs and cats and chickens!!! Two very different things, but I want to do both! Any suggestions?!