Shattergrave Knights

This was a book I read on Kindle, because it kept popping up on my suggested list.  At first I didn't think I'd like it because it was set in a totalitarian world - those sort of books are usually disturbing.  This one was disturbing in parts - there is a witch hunt for traitors and innocent people get hung.  Overall

Jack and Olive are teenage twins living in a small town.  Early in the book we are given a history lesson in the form of a pageant that Jack is forced to participate in.  Basically there was an evil guy called Maxander who was supported by his Shattergrave Knights and goat-headed creatures called Tautho.  He was defeated by the Protectorate, the current religious totalitarian government.

A very nasty witchfinder is sent by the government to investigate an old woman who may be a witch.  The witchfinder starts convicting people of treasonous activities on flimsy or no evidence, and hanging them in the public square.

Jack and Olive find out they are the descendants of one of the Shattergrave Knights, and are given some magic items, just as the witchfinder decides to investigate them.  They are forced to flee, along with their newly discovered aunt and her friend.  Their destination is a city ruled by a dragon where the Protectorate has no power.

The book then becomes a journey style novel as the four of them head for the dragon's city.   They use ruses and magic to escape their pursuers.  They get into bad situations and escape them in surprising ways.  They pick up some unusual companions who end up helping them.   All of this is very enjoyable.  

After an interlude in the city they must go back and rescue their parents from a mind control prison situation and carry out rebel type activities on the Protectorate.  This is where the book feels a little choppy.  The journey to the city was covered in detail, down to what the characters are feeling and the vegetation of the terrain they are travelling on.  Then all of the sudden for the second journey - bang!  There they are at the destination.  I guess we are just supposed to imagine that a bunch of stuff happened, like the first trip but different and they got there ok.  This was not a major problem with the book though, I just felt like it could have been handled a little smoother.

This is a spoiler free review so I'm not going to talk about what happens next - it's pretty much what you would expect if you read a lot of fantasy novels, done in an entertaining fashion.

I was surprised how much I liked this book.  I hope there will be a sequel or other books set in this world.

A few things that worked well:

Most people have pretty common names in this book.  The main characters are Jack, Olive, Daniel, Prudence and Zanzibar.  Ok, the last one is a little unusual.  But there's no one named A'athurun or Emmyldr or anything like that.  The author doesn't need to constantly remind us that we are in a fantasy world by using made up names.  

I liked the system of magic a lot.  Magic is mostly done by speaking a special language which lets you overwrite reality.  You have to be very careful with pronunciation.  There are magic objects too, such as the magic circlet Jack was given which whispers to him the best way to destruct anything and anyone around him.  Very handy!

I hope there are sequels to this book, I would definitely read them.

The Game By Diana Wynne Jones

A quick read, this novelette is a retelling of some of Greek myths in a modern setting. Since the book is so short there's no time to develop characters and I never felt I got to know them or really care what happened to them. I also had a hard time with suspension of disbelief. In a book like this I need to really feel for the characters in order to turn of the part of my brain that says "No way!"

The main character is little Hayley, a staple of young adult and fantasy fiction. She's the parent-less child sent to live with strict relatives. And she doesn't know what happened to her parents either. Her grandmother is a humorless and unpleasant woman obsessed with rules. Her grandfather can be OK, as long as his wife isn't around. But a lot of the time he's off visiting his other family.

The book starts off with Hayley shipped off to her aunts' house in disgrace. But she has no idea what she's done. Gee, do you think it might have been the time you entered the Mythosphere, that mysterious realm that you aren't allowed to know about? Duh. And what kind of a punishment is it to be sent off to a house full of cheerful happy cousins who love to play games?

They play hide and go seek, but their favorite game is The Game, you know, like the title of the book. It's where they go to the Mythosphere, that dreamlike land where characters from myths, fairy tales and astrology hang out. They have to bring back objects like Cinderella's glass slipper or the sword in the stone and the first one back with their prize wins. This is forbidden though, and when their mean uncle catches wind of it he's furious, and Hayley has to be brought to her other Aunt's house in Scotland to be hidden, where she was apparently supposed to have gone two days ago. Right, like the Mean Uncle is not going to look there.

After this they spend time in and out of the Mythosphere, meeting mythological characters and avoiding the mean uncle and being all quasi-mythological and stuff. The whole Mythosphere thing is murky, like I never really understood how they get there or what the point of the game was and when one of the cousins is in danger of being ripped apart by a mob of drunken slatterns I didn't care a bit.

This book would have been a lot better if it was longer and had character development. But Diana Wynne Jones is a skillful enough storyteller that I still enjoyed this quick little tale.

Amazon Link:

The Game (Firebird)

Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan

This is a young adult book which alternates chapters between our world and the world of Faerie. Until of course, the worlds meet up.

The main characters are Harry from our world and and Pyrgus from the other world of Faerie.

Harry lives in modern day England, and his family is having problems pretty typical of the type you find in YA novels, but with a kind of a surprising twist. He finds solace with his friend Charlie (a girl, but not a girl friend) and by spending time working for an old man, cleaning his house. The old man is quite a character who believes in all sorts of conspiracy theories and has a house full of junk.

When we first meet blank he is being pursued through the world of faerie by some thugs and the book becomes action packed quickly.

The world of faerie has a cool combination of science, industry and magic. It has a steampunk feel to it. There are portals to get between Faerie and earth and the description of how these were discovered and then improved upon was really imaginative. I loved the orange dwarf with the poisonous bite who has a slot to put an information card in his head. Where can I get one of those?

There is more sickening violence in this book than in most YA books I read. The demon prince gives quite a description of what he is going to do to one of the heroes of the book. I did skip a half page or so when I was at the part with the glue factory and I figured out what was going on.

The glue factory owners were fun, in a very bad way. With Brimstone, the main glue factory owner, it almost seems a little stereotypical bad rich man (oh noes, he enjoys evicting widows) but I did like what happened to him.

Blue, Pyrgus' sister is a more interesting character than he is. Their father seems kind of bland and unbelievable. The part where Blue has uncovered evidence of a plot to kill Pyrgus and her father insists on just throwing away the evidence just doesn't ring true at all. His son has been poisoned and diverted to another world and he is concerned that his daughter has stolen a journal from someone who had been trying to kill his son and sends his daughter to bed without the book, which will be returned to it's rightful owner? Yeah sure.

What I didn't like - light faeries vs the dark faeries and the dark ones are evil. Could there not be some other way to differentiate between types of mythical creatures that are good and evil besides dark and light? I guess maybe it's just the classic way but it seems so ham handed.

I would have liked to have seen Charlie, Harry's friend, either have more of a presence in the book or just be taken out. The part with her in it almost seems like a false start.

However, there is a whole series of these books and it's entirely possible that she will turn up as a stronger character in the next one.

I did enjoy this book and will look forward to reading at least the next in the series.

Amazon Link
Faerie Wars