The Girl Who Fell Below Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M Valente

Rating: WARTY!

This sequel really wasn't needed, but you know there's pressure from Big Publishing™ to milk a successful title for all it's perceived worth. This is why ten years after The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins is coming back to milk it some more with a story that's pretty much the same thing over again. Doubtlessly it will be made into a movie. That's not my world at all. I only started in on this one because I already had it in my possession. If I hadn't already bought it when I bought the first one, impressed by that one's title, I would never have read this.

This story was even less engaging than the first, which is entirely unsurprising. It felt like a series of sketches rather than a story - a litany of set pieces which really had no real connection with one another. The basic plot is that September misses fairyland, and jumps at a chance to return, but she finds it a different place to the one she left: her own shadow is now queen of the underworld. She goes by the name of Halloween (now there's an original) and is stealing everyone's shadow.

Why this is even a problem, I have no idea, but of course just like in Peter Pan (yawn), shadows have personalities here. Why September's own shadow is evil, again I have no idea. It makes no sense. Maybe it's explained in the story, maybe not, but I'd be willing to bet that any explanation offered is as limp as a shadow. Fortunately she hasn't yet stolen the shadow of the dragon which September befriended in the first story, so at least she has a friend.

That reminds me of a funny picture taken by comedian Rick Gervais of his wife and tweeted to his followers, and that one image had more soul than this story. I can't commend this any more than I could the first one, and I am done with this author.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M Valente

Rating: WARTY!

I am not a fan of series, but I loved the title of this middle-grade book, so hoping against hope, I bought both it and the sequel since they were on sale at a bookstore. I gave both of the titles a shot, but neither impressed me.

I think I made it about a third of the way through this one, but the story was so rambling and dissipated that it felt like it wasn't so much a story as it was a boring sort of a diary. Apparently the author crowdsourced funding to work on this. I should be so lucky! Then she put it online for free and it was discovered by a publisher, so a success story in that regard, but the story itself left a lot to be desired for me.

Taking a leaf out of wizard of Oz, the author starts her story out on the plains, in Nebraska, though, rather than Kansas, and has her young girl whisked away by a powerful wind, to a fairy-tale land. The child is a 12-year-old named September, who is apparently the only one who can fix a problem. Why this is, I don't recall, assuming it was ever revealed. She needs to recover a talisman, and of course she does and all is put to rights - until of course things necessarily break down in order for a sequel to be written.

The story didn't entertain me despite my gamely plowing into it quite a ways - about a third or so, as I recall. Despite the author's attempts to add whimsy and novelty, it was still your typical story, requiring a cis girl to meet a boy (named Saturday - seriously?) and solve the problem. I couldn't get into it and I cannot commend it based on what I read of it.