The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

How ironic that a young woman whose name translates "Morningstar' has written such a magical tale about the night.  Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus is an enthralling tale of love, twisted ambition, mystery and obsession, but mostly it's a tale of controlling one's dreams, visions and future. All these themes are wrapped up in a story about a magical circus that appears mysteriously at the turn of the 20th century and travels the world, attracting a cast of really memorable characters.

Celia and Marco are two very talented and sensitive young people taken into tutelage under older and far more experienced teachers ... magicians, illusionists, one might say, madmen. They are bonded at a young age to be in competition with each other. BUT WHY? AND HOW?

The Night Circus becomes the playing field for these two to begin molding a surreal and completely entrancing experience for the public, a circus like no other. This circus magically appears in places all over the world. It opens its gate at night and closes at dawn. Its troupe of artists include the most talented of acrobats, illusionists, fortunetellers, lion tamers and animal trainers. The characters become intertwined in their circus lives, as Celia and Marco produce tent after tent of increasingly intricate magical experience for circus-goers. What begins as a way for them to hone their considerable talents becomes a glorious collaboration of love. BUT ... and that's a big but ... their mentors have had other plans for their future and that future has no place for them to be together. One must extinguish the other in some fashion.

The fate of The Night Circus rests in how Marco and Celia respond to this more urgent challenge. They have come to cherish their mates in the circus troupe, respect and care for the public and the legions of reveurs (dreamers) who follow the circus from place to place. How can they put this warped challenge to rest and save the circus?

I loved this read. It's a debut book by Ms. Morgenstern and is soon to be a motion picture with a proposed fall 2015 release. I think I will be glad that I read the book before seeing the movie. There is so much depth and 'premise' to the words of her story that I frankly have problems envisioning how it will be made visual and how dialogue will be able to convey the intricacy of the story. I fear it will lose much of the magic of the novel.  The settings are so incredibly rich in imagination that each reader is bound to have strong images in mind. The characters, too, are well described and in the case of the main characters well-developed so seeing a movie casting director's vision may be disturbing when one has one's own concept of the character. And just how can that magical circus clock of Herr Thiessen's be conveyed through film ? I just don't know ... but I suppose time will tell.

This is the first book reaction linked with this year's RIP X literary event. See details at The Estella Society blog to read other reactions/reviews and/or to join with other lovers of Gothic, mystery, horror,  and fantasy genres.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender - Leslye Walton

In preparing to write my reaction to this novel, I did a bit of research on the literary technique of using mystical realism in one's plot development. My only experience of the sub-genre (?) is with certain Latin American authors whose stories were so mystic that they were far over my head. I left this type of novel alone for years until I read Like Water For Chocolate, at which point, I thought that I'd fallen back into the mystic just enough.

The point is that this type of writing is not for everyone. You have to let go just a bit of what you consider real and true, latch onto the images and experiences of the characters and accept that what they experience is based in reality - their reality - a reality that serves to say something about life, higher ideals, et cetera. That being said, I found Leslye Walton's debut novel a winner. It's already being short-listed for awards across America as one of the best new young adult reads. I'm not so sure that it is strictly for young adults, but I often think that much of what is written for young adults is really 'cross-over' stuff. That's another rant post, though. Suffice it to say, this story addresses a bunch of issues like opening one's self to love and its messy possibilities, loving enough to allow one's children to become their own distinct personalities, fulfilling one's dreams and not being afraid to fail in the attempt, finding one's self in the midst of one's strong family influence and history, and overcoming society's sometimes harsh assumptions about one's self. Among a bazillion other things ...

Ava Lavender looks back on her life and her family history to tell a tale that will make you feel like you've entered a fairy tale. This is a love story, but it's not about the heart thumping happy ending of romantic love fulfilled. It's about the messiness of love, the development of love over time, the way love is nurtured by some and destroyed by others, the way one comes to love oneself enough to survive sorrows. The members of Ava's family experience love's foibles in vastly different ways and Ava reflects on these joys and sorrows, as her own life moves toward a strange climax.

I loved this book, but I'll warn you. It's not for everyone.

A Discovery of Witches/Audio Version - Deborah Harkness

Something light and fluffy. That was what I wished for after the last read, so what better than a romance? That's exactly what one gets when one cracks the pages (or plops the CD into the player) of the first in the Deborah Harkness 'All Souls Trilogy' series. This book spent time on the NYT best seller list when it came out. I'd seen the title on the library shelves, but always shied away. I was thinking that it would probably be taking a page from the 'Twilight' trend of YA chick lit. 

I was right. I listened to this in the kitchen, as I performed the nightly dinner ritual. At times, I laughed at how cliche some of the writing becomes. Matthew Clairmont is always ruggedly handsome, with just the right amount of chest showing, knows everything about wine (woman's fave beverage, right?), has the appropriate arrogant attitude and physical strength to throw his woman over his shoulder when she shows any sign of fainting or fatigue. Oh, by the way. he's a vampire. 

Diana Bishop is a brilliant history scholar who is deep into research on the mysteries of alchemy. Working at Oxford University, the books are flying off the shelves as she prepares for a scholarly conference at which she is supposed to 'present'. Things get muddled when she discovers a long hidden text that has been lost to civilization for ages in the depths of the Bodelian Library. The moment she touches the book strange forces are unleashed within her. Yup, she's a witch who has been in denial of her powers and the book brings on a power surge, so to speak. 

The book escalates from that one incident to unleash a history of vampires, demons, and witches that becomes a name-dropper's paradise. The novel revolves around the steamy relationship that develops between Matthew and Diana and references to actual historical events in history that become linked to the premise that vampires, demons and witches have lived with we, mortals for ages and have been at the center of many of the great advances of civilization. Matthew and Diana become a parallel to Romeo and Juliet, forbidden lovers, a lesson in race relations, so to speak. Vampires and witches don't mix and they will have to fight old taboos to maintain their relationship. Oh, and there's the matter of that book Diana discovered that started the whole mess! It's front and center to the story - a convoluted tale that will take A LOT of telling. Hence, the series. 

This is definitely a light and fluffy series - a combination of Outlander meets Harry Potter meets Twilight - a treat for young romance fans ( horny women, is what my husband said, as he passed through the kitchen last week). Harkness builds her story on strong description. She has an obsession with telling her readers the fashion details of both Matthew and Diana, using dialogue over endless cups of tea and glasses of wine as a platform for moving the plot along, and placing the character of Matthew Clairmont at the crucial points in history with very famous historical figures. It gets a bit annoying at times, but I suppose that was half the fun of writing a story such as this! The tales of witches, demons, and vampires are so mythic that they cross over all cultures and civilizations, cutting a  ... well, romantic swath. 

I finished the audio version over the weekend - probably won't continue on with the series until I need another light read. Don't get me wrong here. There IS a place in everyone's reading life for lighter, undemanding reads that are pure escapism. Harkness has cashed in on a profitable niche with her 'All Souls Trilogy'. More power to her!

The Ocean At The End of The Lane - Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman has an incredible imagination. Let that be said.

In The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, he has given us a story, that at first glance, can be taken as a fantastical adventure in which a young boy faces powers of both good and evil during a painful time in his life. The story seems a sort of fairy tale memory that is told in retrospect when a man returns to his childhood home for a family funeral. As he wanders down the road from his childhood home and comes to the land that belonged to the neighboring family, he returns to a particularly trying time when his parents took in boarders, his mother was forced to return to work, and a strange and evil nanny came to stay. The young boy takes refuge in a friendship with a girl who lives on a neighboring farm. The friendship takes on magical elements that spiral into the mystical and fantastic. In the process, the young boy learns hard truths about adults and their human frailties, faith and trust in friends and family, and courage in facing evil.

Hard lessons are learned that cave in the 'pillars' that have supported his young life. We can't always count on our parents to keep us safe, sometimes trusted adults don't live up to our expectations, learning to trust again is a necessity to surviving psychologically, friends sometimes go away, sometimes we do things when we're afraid that we regret, sometimes it takes great bravery to face our fears.

This is a book that could easily be read as an archetypal take on the fairy tale, but it can also be picked apart and thought about on much deeper levels ... I will admit that it spooked me and made me wonder about the adults that I remember interacting with in my neighborhood when I was very young. My experience of their lives was just so very naive and, while I never experienced true evil or danger, there were some close encounters with sickness and eccentricity in some neighbors that I was reminded of while reading this book.

Neil Gaiman intrigues me. Let that be said.

The Witches - Roald Dahl

We always did read-aloud time in our family. All three of the kids were read to right up through elementary school and into middle school, too. Consequently, I miss reading aloud and being read to!

The popularity of books on tape, though, never really caught on with me until I retired and found myself home alone, the kids having grown and flown. Nowadays, you can usually find an audio book on the kitchen table with an accompanying book. I listen to audio books while I cook or putter in the kitchen at dishes and housework. 

The past couple days have been great fun, as I've reacquainted myself with Roald Dahl's fun adventure story called The Witches. This is the perfect read/listen for the Halloween season! I've known the story for ages, as the kids read it when they were young and we used to watch the movie adaptation of the book every Halloween. Anjelica Huston is just so perfect in the character of the Grand High Witch!

When I first joined in on this year's Readers (R) Imbibing (I) Peril (P) reading challenge at Carl Anderson's Stainless Steel Droppings blog (see link here RIP-IX reading event,) I noticed the title of Dahl's kid classic as the number one entry on the link up page. "Oh!, I thought, I haven't thought about that old story in sooo long!"  That's when I knew I'd seek out an audio version of the book to see how it would feel to have it read to me! 

What fun! The version I received from my public library's inter-library loan program is quite old, but the CD's are still in pretty good condition. The story is narrated by the actor, Ron Keith. He does a great job. It was really fun to hear his voice develop 'a smile' in it when he read particularly funny or clever parts of the story. You can hear the delight he is taking in the story and that adds to the charm of the experience.

I found myself cheering on the young protagonist of the story, as he came face to face with the dreaded witches that his dear grandmother warned him of in her many stories and tales of witches that live right among us! Imagine the smarts and derring-do it would take to outsmart a whole convention of withces! Therein lies the fun in Dahl's fast-moving romp of a story! It's a delight and one book that most elementary kids would love to experience! It's the perfect Halloween week read!

A Spooky Reading Challenge - R.I.P. IX

Okay, I'm up for this! Fall is here and before you know it Halloween will be knocking on our doors and rattling the window latches. Leave it to Carl to spur me to dig a bit into the murky, muddy, malevolent depths of the genres of fantasy, horror, mystery, Gothic romance, suspense, and real-life non-fiction mayhem. His seasonal literary challenge is called R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril and it runs through September and October. Visit his site called Stainless Steel Droppings  (cursor over blog title = link to site) to read about all the options for participating in this literary blogshare!

I am always impressed by Carl's level of preparation for his literary events. The badges are clever and really beautiful. He is always diligent in catching up with his participants. His themes are always fun and wide open to different readers' interpretations. To boot, he always promotes good dialogue between his various participants.

I'm opting to participate on a few levels. Thus far, I have an audio version of Joe Hill's haunting thriller called Heart-Shaped Box, Dennis Lehane's creepy psychological cop story called Shutter Island, a collection of spooky short stories by Joe Hill called 20th Century Ghosts, and finally a movie edition of Susan Hill's novel called The Woman in Black that stars Daniel Radcliffe. These titles and the movie should give me a few creeps ... I'm also looking for a real-life story that will creep me out. Suggestions anyone? I've already read Helter Skelter, In Cold Blood, and The Devil in the White City ...

So ... that's my scary reading list for the next couple months. What are you planning to check out as Halloween approaches? Check out Carl's blog to see about this neat reading share!

The Rathbones - Janice Clark

A tale of a family that lived by the sea - The Rathbones reads like fantasy, mythology, adventure, Gothic romance. How does one categorize this first novel by Janice Clark? Being a child of the television era, I felt a distinct Gothic feel a la Addams Family. Remember that wonderful old television program? Wacky, dark characters, strangely beautiful Gothic Morticia-like female characters, odd ball relatives, dark and sinister locations, comic relief, weird creatures that keep you wondering. This book has it all.

As I made my way deeper into the family history of the Yankee whaling family, I found myself wondering if I would read this book aloud to middle school students. Short of there being some sexual content that could be construed as questionable, I really felt that the story line would capture young adult readers (or listeners) with its fantastical feel.

At any rate, I think Janice Clark has come up with a winner. She has definitely plumbed Homer's saga, The Odyssey and that's okay. After all, one can't go wrong by emulating the classics, right?

So ... I wonder what she'll write next!

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

This was possibly one of the most bizarre reads that I've ever stuck with ... to the bitter end. I read Gaiman's fantasy Neverwhere last year with an on'line group and loved its quirky characters and spooky/creepy/weird plotline. It was nothing compared to this tome!

So ... the premise of this book is that North America, the great wilderness is inhabited by the gods that the native peoples believed in and the gods brought by explorers, immigrants, castaways and slaves over the milennia. However, these ancient gods are feeling pretty threatened by the new gods that modern American civilzation has turned to ...

No longer are we hapless humans happy to kowtow to Christ, Thor, Anansi, Mami Wawa, Selene, etc, etc. We've got new gods to worship - those of modern media, Internet gods, the gods of commercialism and those gods are just as jealous and power hungry as the ancient gods, just as bloodthirsty, just as tricky and downright devious! Looks like there's a confrontation brewing!

Wrapped up in this brewing conflagration, is Shadow, our human protagonist. Shadow has just done a term in the state prison and is looking to head home to his wife and a job provided by a good friend, but the gods have other plans ... tragedy strikes and Shadow learns that his wife and best friend are killed in a highway accident. The road home for Shadow becomes a series of strange encounters with even stranger folk. Shadow comes to undertand that he is dealing with creatures from the heavens and the underworld, as he makes connections through dreams, bizarre meetings along the road, and in the air. Think of this book as 'Trains,Planes, and Automobiles' with a decidedly phantasmagorical bent !

Gaiman always has had a creative imagination! In this book, he uses it plus an encyclopedic knowledge of different cultural gods and goddesses to create strange comment on religion, faith, reverence and duty, courage and rewards.

Did I like it? Yes and no. It was real work reading this book. I had to Google a kazillion times to figure out who some of the characters were based on. I had to take breaks from some of the more bizarre encounters that Shadow made ... cookbooks are a great release, just sayin'. Ultimately, though, Gaiman drew me back. I couldn't help but want to see Shadow come out of this horrible chapter of his life on an even keel, headed for some sort of peace with himself, his past, and his spiritual mindset, and his future ... oh, and there was the matter of that strange disappearance and presumed murder ... yeah, that too.

The Child Thief - Brom

The cover of this book is arresting enough, never mind the premise ... a side of Peter Pan that exposes a much darker character than H.M Barrie ever dared put to paper. Here is a Peter Pan tale that brings a more sinister and dangerous intent to his spiriting away of children to Neverland. And Neverland is not what we remember either! Yes, there is a pirate-like figure a la Captain Hook, fairy sprites that are full of mischief, dangerous beasts with fangs and slimy skins, but their danger and intent are magnified a hundred-fold. Gone are the strictly good and strictly evil characters of Barrie's story; they are replaced with like characters that are ... complicated, complex, more balanced with light and dark.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

Once Upon a Time there was a magical island with a strange mysterious portal to the past ...

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children got a lot of press back when it was first published in 2011. A new spine-tingling young adult read, it relies on an old equation - misunderstood young man with unusual ability is drawn to an isolated haven for children with equally unusual abilities that is looked over by a matronly and well-meaning mother figure. Yes, the Harry Potter syndrome strikes again. Once again, age-old themes work with a new author's imagination to give us a whiz-bang adventure fantasy that promises to be ripe for subsequent novels.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy - Jonathan Stroud

Audio books have been one of the greatest additions to classroom and public library stacks - in the years that I spent in the classroom, more than a few audio books were instrumental in lighting a reading fire under some of the most reluctant readers (nine times out of ten, young boys) that came my way. Consequently, I have a soft spot in my heart for any audio book that holds my attention, has a fast plot, an excellent narrator/reader, and is unabridged.

This series, that I stumbled upon in our little public library, caught my attention from the first words uttered by Simon Jones. Mr. Jones is an established Broadway actor with the deepest and most sonorous voice - his verbal abilities and vocal characterizations of the numerous characters in Jonathan Stroud's trilogy make for a wild romp for any young adult reader/listener who has a hankering for a good fantasy tale.

The trilogy centers on the relationship struck up by a young magician-in-training named Nathaniel. Nathaniel summons a jinni named Bartimaeus early on in Book 1 of the series and their love/hate relationship forms the basis for an involved tale of political intrigue within the British government, strained relations and rebellion between the common people and the magician hierarchy that rules the United Kingdom, and the mystery of the void in which jinni, imps, fairies, monsters, and demons reside in the ether of the universe. It's a fantastic and fun story that is full of magic, wild escapes, and mad adventures.

Suitable for kids eight and above, there is the occasional 'naughty' word - nothing horrific, but vernacular, just the same, a touch of innocent romance, the usual rough 'potty' humor that tickles the pre-pubescent, and a lot of sarcasm and wit. Some parents may think it coarse, but I say it's an innocent and fun crowd-pleaser.

Mr. Stroud writes like a screenplay writer in that his scenes are short vignettes that are descriptive and easily envisioned - an important skill when writing for young readers. His command of dialogue is good, although I think reading the dialogue for a struggling reader would be too much, as some of the wit and sarcasm might be lost on one working to carry the thread of the sentence structure and length of dialogue passages. He has been clever in structuring the series around three characters, a young girl named Kitty, one of the common folk who is in rebellion against the magician leadership, as well as Nathaniel and Bartimaeus. Girls as well as boys will enjoy the series and have a character to identify with. Mr. Stroud also does a good job of developing his characters over the course of the series ... one is not disappointed with the way things end, although it may not be to the liking of all readers.

A worthy audio book series ... enough said!

Ghost Knight - Cornelia Funke

Another fantasy from Cornelia Funke ... I love her fun and fanciful approach to children's literature. She places her stories in a setting that will lend itself to educating kids without overwhelming them with the minutiae of history or detail. In the Inkheart series, it was all about allusion to and quotes from classic literature. In The Thief Lord, it was the geography of Venice, Italy. In Reckless, it was the vast collections of fairy tales and folklore, that was the stage for the drama of the story. Here in Ghost Knight, readers will have fun learning a bit about Medieval English history as they follow the adventures of Jon Whitcroft and his new friend, Ella Littlejohn, as they enter the haunted world of Salisbury, England and help to squelch an age-old curse that has befallen Jon's ancestors and dragged him into the haunted world of medieval knights and ne'er-do-wells.

This book moves fast and has not got the depth that Funke's Inkheart series has. It will, though, appeal to young boys and any child that is enthralled with a good ghost story.  I am always pleased to see a good solid story that appeals to young boys, as I often feel that their reading interests get short shrift in the kid's literature field. The quality of some of the stuff aimed at boys is ludicrous, at best (Can anyone say Captain Underpants or Diary of a Wimp ? ... sorry, if I offend.) Finding a story that has adventure, a bit of 'naughtiness', kids with real feelings, and a bit of history makes my old teacher heart beat a little faster and steadier.

So... keep on writing,Cornelia Funke ! There's room in this world for a few more of your stories !

Bit By the Bug ...

This past week, I started a new series. I must have been living under a rock to have missed all the hoop-la that surrounds G. R. R. Martin's wildly popular fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, but there you go. I picked up A Game of Thrones , the first book in the series, at the public library last week. As I placed it on the check-out desk, the librarian raised an eyebrow and shook her head. She told me I should probably be prepared to surrender my summer to the series. Then, she told me there are five books thus far, with more slotted to come and that each is, as she put it, 'a tome'. Well, yes.  A Game of Thrones is a very long book, but it is one of the fastest reads I've had in a while. I think the structure of the book accounts for the speed with which I'm devouring it.