The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

Title: The School for Good and Evil
Author: Soman Chainani
Publisher: Harper
Rating: WORTHY!

So after all the ebook authors who have dot com websites, now I have a hardback author who has a dot net! I loved that! So I've never heard of this guy before, and I found this book purely by accident at the library, on the "New" shelf. This, of course, merely means that the novel could have been published any time in the last four freaking years (they also have Sapphire Blue on that shelf! It doesn't mean that the novel is new: just that it's new to this library!

This is one of the most charmingly-written books I've read in a long time, and it starts out perfectly. The novel is about the fortunes and misfortunes of Agatha and Sophie, two extremely disparate friends who live in the extraordinarily isolated village of Gavaldon, surrounded by an impenetrable forest - well, it’s penetrable, but everyone who has gone in there trying to find a way through it has inevitably ended-up right back at Gavaldon - assuming they made it back at all.

Life in Gavaldon would seem idyllic, but there is a shadow over it. Every four years the 'schoolmaster' arrives in the night, and takes two children who miraculously later reappear, but not as children in the village: as characters in a fairytale which anonymously arrives on the door-step of the local bookseller at random times. Now you see what I meant about it being idyllic: it has a book shop and no distractions from reading the books!

Talking of shadows, Sophie has her own: she's unhappy because she just knows she's a good and real princess who deserves much more than she can expect in this little village. Indeed, her friendship with Agatha arose only because she wanted to do a good deed, any good deed, and chose Agatha as her victim. But it became much more than that. Agatha, because of her rough appearance, is shunned by pretty-much everyone except Sophie. The entire village thinks she's a witch. Sophie's dad barricades his daughter into her room on the night the schoolmaster is expected, but she pries her way out because she wants to be taken into the fairy tale world to become a princess. Agatha doesn’t believe in this schoolmaster crap until she sees a gnarled shadow that night, heading for Sophie's house. This shadow belongs to one of the most reticent, but important characters in the whole novel.

She races after it to rescue her friend, but both are caught up and bustled off to The School for Good and Evil. Unfortunately, from both their perspectives, there seems to be a mix-up: Sophie finds herself deposited into the evil side of the school, and Agatha into the good side. They both protest vehemently, but to no avail. When they finally kick and fuss, and run and side-step, and manage to meet on the bridge over the lake (good side) / moat (bad side) which divides the two branches of the school, there's an impassable barrier which prevents Agatha from saving Sophie, or Sophie from escaping to the side she knows must be right for her. Even when by subterfuge they manage to switch sides, they suddenly find themselves magically back on their original side again. It seems there is no escape. But there is.

Everyone can plainly see that both of them are (it would seem) quite evidently out of place, but no one seems either willing or able to do anything about it, and as if that wasn't bad enough, when Sophie and Agatha finally do meet, at the welcome assembly, and the princes come prancing in, it’s Agatha, and not Sophie, who (accidentally, to boot) catches the rose which Prince Tedros (son of King Arthur) tosses! This is, of course, before she decks him and gives him a black eye when they later meet, and she sets fire to an entire school tower! Tedros is a complete loser who deserves everything he gets, and is very much the paragon of Disney animation.

There is an apparently all-important question which the schoolmaster asks the two girls to resolve in order to be free: "What's the one thing evil can never have…and the one thing good can never do without?", and the answer is rather trite and disappointing, but it's resolved in a very unexpected manner. The manner in which it's answered is perfect, and I confess I was seriously hoping it would go this way, but in all honesty doubted that Chainani would have the guts and vision to go there. He did, and I love him for it!. Actually, you'd know the answer if only you’d been foresighted enough to buy my book Poem y Granite and read the poem on page 140! Hah!

So the last thing you need to expect from this novel is the expected, and I can say that with a certainty because I've finished reading this now, and my opinion is unchanged from what it began as: this novel is simply one of the best I've ever read. I've looked at some adverse criticism of the novel to see if I missed something other critics might have spotted, and I really didn't. It's anyone's choice, of course, whether they like a novel or not, but I have to say that a lot of those who are low-rating this novel do show seriously skewed views of what it was, what it was about, and what it tried to do. One silly criticism was that the characters were shallow and black and white. I disagree with that, because the two main protagonists were about as nuanced, complex, and conflicted and you can get, but even if that were not so, this is a novel about fairy-tale characters! For goodness sakes, since when have they had any depth?

How foolish is it to whine about how the characters are playing to type when it's a fairy-tale, and the characters are in a school which has the express purpose of training them to play to the very types which the critics complain about? Honestly? Some of the critics evidently haven't even read the novel because they're banging on about how the evil witch makes all the princes disappear (which would have been a very cool ending) but that's simply not what happened. Worse than this, some are also hypocrites, complaining that the characters are shallow and then describing the two main characters as the "beautiful" princess and the "ugly" witch! Seriously?

The whiny critics are simply wrong, so there! This novel is awesome and I fully and unreservedly recommend it.

Far Far Away by Tom McNeal

Title: Far Far Away
Author: Tom McNeal
Publisher: Knopf
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is shorter so as not to rob the writer of her story, but even so, it will probably still be more detailed than you'll typically find elsewhere!

ebook galley proof errata provided in case the author hasn't caught them yet!
P118 "...because he asked me not to tell you." has the word 'he' split between two lines!
P120 "...cinnamon gun" should be "...cinnamon gum..." (presumably!).

Here's a nice song of the same title which has nothing whatsoever to do with the novel, but which might get you in the mood to be transported far away even if only from the song!

This novel is amazing. I've never read anything by Tom McNeal before but he's definitely on my radar now. I'm going to buy this book and force my kids to read it on pain of merciless tickling if they don't. The story centers on two high-school kids, Jeremy Johnson Johnson and a girl who becomes an increasingly closer friend, Ginger Boultinghouse. The story is narrated by the ghost of Jacob Grimm. The writing is outstanding - perfect in tone, measure and content.

Jeremy lives with his father in a bookstore which his grandfather opened to sell nothing but the two volumes of his grandfather's autobiography! Jeremy's father married Zyla Johnson, but Zyla left them a while after Jeremy's birth. While this seems callous and mean on the face of it, to attentive readers of the story it will be obvious that she had no choice in her action. She had no choice because choice was subtracted from her (by The Finder of Occasions, perhaps - an evil presence who does nothing but stir up trouble, and appears to be occupying the form of a police officer?) Zyla isn’t the only one who went missing - lots of children are going missing, and disturbingly, the police don't seem particularly interested in doing anything about it.

Ginger one day talks Jeremy into going to the town's fabulous bakery where "Prince Cakes" are available. They're not available often, and Jeremy can't afford one even when they are, but Ginger tells him that they might get lucky, and indeed they do. The kindly baker, Mr Blix, produces coffee and cakes in return for an IOU. Ginger and Jeremy begin spending more time together, innocently growing closer until one evening, Ginger and her two girlfriends lure Jeremy out to conduct a mild prank on the baker.

The story offers insufficient motivation for me in this instance, for Jeremy to involve himself in something like this. It’s not in his character, but I'm willing to let that slide since it's the only bump in a very smooth tale. However, the consequences of this incident run deep. Jeremy loses a shoe and his house key on the baker's property, and he's rapidly picked up by the police; however, when Blix himself insists it was not Jeremy he saw on his property that night, he's released. Jeremy's reputation is nonetheless shot; everyone in town thinks him a potential thief! They know that he and his father are on the verge of being thrown out of their property into the street because of unpaid debts. Jeremy's father is incapable of earning a living, and all the odd jobs by which Jeremy was keeping them afloat quickly dry up. Now his family has no income, but things are about to turn around. Right around.

I highly recommend this story. This is how a YA romance should be written: not in the hammering, blundering, ham-fisted way of all-too-many stories, but in this natural, warm, and easy way which McNeal reveals, and in a story which is engaging from the start and told so well that you don’t want it to end. 212 pages is way too short for a story like this. I look forward to more tales of this nature and to this story becoming a movie.

The story intensifies as a friend of Ginger's "Conk" who is the son of the mayor, offers to help Jeremy with his foreclosure problem by involving his dad. Seeing an opportunity to own the entire block in which Jeremy's store is situated, the mayor offers an interest-free loan to Jeremy, which will pay off his debt. The loan will be due in six weeks, which gives him more breathing space by pushing out his deadline.

A slight problem here is that Jeremy is clearly not in any way old enough to sign a promissory note! But moving quickly along, Ginger Boultinghouse offers an out from even this new deadline by setting Jeremy up as a contestant on his favorite show, Uncommon Knowledge wherein guests are quizzed about what they claim is their expert topic - which can be pretty much anything. Jeremy signs up as an expert on the Brothers Grimm and their fairy tales; this should be a no-brainer given that he has one of the brothers advising him, but he has a weakness, which is that he's never seen any Disney movie based on those tales.

On the quiz, Jeremy does blazingly well, never putting a foot wrong, even on the $64,000 question, but he decides to try for one level higher: all or nothing on winning the jackpot. Unfortunately the last question involves what the huntsman returned to the queen in the Disney version, in place of Snow's intestines and liver (which is the request in the Grimm story), and Jeremy doesn’t know. In the sound-proofed booth, he hears a voice, not Jacob's, twice tell him to answer 'heart' but he ignores it, and consequently he loses all the money. This part didn’t work to well for me because Jeremy is already habituated to listening to, and trusting, the voice he hears from Jacob Grimm. Why would he suddenly go against all that and pick a lock of hair instead of repeating 'heart' which is what the voice advised him? I needed a bit more motivation there, but the story is so well done overall that I'm more than willing to let an occasional faux pas flow past!

And that's all the detail I'm going to offer for this story! Yes, I'm more cruel than Hansel & Gretel's witch! But I refuse to rob McNeal of any more of his amazing story by relating another single detail. To find out how this apparent disaster all plays out, you'll have to do what I now fully intend to do: buy the book, and then you read the story all the way through! You will not regret it if you're even mildly into stories of this nature. Even though at this point I haven't finished the entire story, I'm confident enough by now of McNeal's talent and skill to highly recommend this. Even if it goes downhill and ends in a miserable disaster, the first half of the book is so well done that it would still be worth the purchase just to read a half-a-story of this quality! I fully intend to get my hands on a hardback of this for my kids to read; it’s that good!

Just a quick post-script: I finished the novel and it did turn out to be excellent, so no issues there, although the villain turned out to be a wee bit obvious even to me! I loved the Ginger character immensely!

Huntress by Malinda Lo

Title: Huntress
Author: Malinda Lo
Publisher: Little Brown
Rating: worthy

Huntress promises, at first blush, to be a better than Ash. It begins with a vision experienced by Taisin (which my spellchecker wants to change to raisin, lol!), of another girl in her year at the sage's school, a girl called Kaede, getting into a boat on an icy shore and rowing towards an ice castle across the water. In these times, there is a blight on the land. It's cold; there's very little sunshine, and crops are dying. People are starving.

There comes an invitation from the fairy kingdom for a representative from the human world to meet their queen. Despite a longstanding treaty between the two peoples, there has never been any contact between them since the treaty. The king himself cannot undertake this journey because of the perilous condition of his kingdom, so his son is chosen to go. Because of her vision, which has been confirmed by other means, Taisin must also go, and because her vision involved Kaede, she, too, must go. Three royal guards, one of whom is a woman, make up the party of six who undertake this journey. It's a complete mystery why they do not send more guards. The prince, a rather lackluster and feeble royal pain reminiscent of the royal dishrag Prince Kai in Cinder asked that they limit the party, the ostensible reason being that they want to undertake the journey in secret, but undertake is what they do as their number is cut in half when they travel in the forest.

Lo skirts dangerously with instadore (my term for "instalove", a word which I dislike because it's never actually about love) between the two main protagonists. It stays just this side of absurdity, but flirts dangerously with it. There is no real attraction between the two main protagonists in any meaningful sense, only an inexplicable compulsion, as though they aren't in control of their feelings, which is a huge turn-off if you ask me. It's like getting drunk and having sex and then someone crying rape. Well duhh! These two girls have spent absolutely no time together in any capacity prior to this journey, and they barely know who each other is, so it's really hard to accept this acutely focused attraction they suddenly develop, and Lo's prose describing it is rather too Harlequin for my taste. It comes off very badly when compared with her awesome romance in Ash for my money.

Having bitched about that, the story itself is pretty good, and made me want to find out what's happening on the next page. Lo relates the tale in the third person, but alternating subtly between the PoV of Taisin, and that of Kaede. A note here about pronunciation. I've already addressed this bit of silliness in my review of Ash. In that novel there was no guide to names, whereas Huntress does feature one at the front of the book, but it makes as little sense as the names in Ash did! For example, in Ash, the name Kaisa is pronounced Ky-sa, but in this novel, Taisin is pronounced Tay-sin - pretty much as in Mike Tyson! Who knows, maybe the pronunciations have changed in the couple of hundred years between the two novels - or maybe Lo is just annoyingly whimsical. Kaede is pronounced Kay-dee FYI, which does make a bit more sense.

As they approach a certain village, tales of a demon child begin to grow, until at last, Taisin can stand it no longer. She insists that her party do not avoid this village, and when they arrive there, she purposefully seeks out the child, only to find it's possessed by an ugly demon. Kaede saves Taisin's life by stabbing it with her iron knife, but then it vanishes and Kaede's knife is stuck into a dead baby.

The push on with the journey until the reach Shae's home town, where they find a thoroughly weird "monster" the like of which they've never seen before. It's dead, and the villagers are about to bury it as the travelers arrive there. it's blindfolded and has a stone in its mouth so that if it rises from the grave it cannot find anyone, and cannot lure them away with whisperings! Yeah - and it can't spit out the stone and tear off the blindfold, either...!

After a day or so of rest and (relative) relaxation, enjoying some good food, the team of six push on, heading for the part of the map which is blank! In fact, it's so blank that it doesn't even say "here there be monsters" even though there are actually monsters there! They find as they press deeper into the forest that there are whisperings on the night (why not in the day is a mystery), and one of their party, Tali, is lured from the camp and is found dead, with no identifiable means of execution visible anywhere. From that point onwards, Taisin wises up, decides to protect her fellow travelers each night by casting a spell around the camp. Unlike the wizards in Patricia Wrede's Thirteenth Child series, Taisin can't cast this kind of protective spell while they travel. This ritual leads to rapid heartbeats in Kaede as Taisin has to touch each of the party on their chest as she completes the circle.

As the journey in the bleeding cold and fatiguing wet continues, the party finds itself stalked by wolves, and as usual the wolves are portrayed as evil which is an awful stereotype to perpetuate. One night the wolves launch an attack and because Prince Con perhaps he has that name advisedly?) failed to bring along sufficient protection, another of their party is savaged to death by the wolves and the girl, Shae (which is actually pronounced Shay believe it or not) is mauled so badly that they cannot continue. Fortunately a "greenwitch" ex machina shows up and they're able to stay with her for a couple of days to recover. This greenwitch (no word on whether she's actually from Greenwich, but they do have a mean time!) also happens to be a skilled healer, but Shae cannot continue with them which breaks Prince Con's heart because he was falling in lurve with her - again for no apparent reason. It broke my heart, too, because she was my favorite character!

So they continue the journey and after Kaede saves Taisin's life yet again in the river crossing, they encounter the Xi (of course, pronounced she, as in sheesh!). From that point they are escorted to the fairy city, Taninli (TAN-in-LEE) on Midsummer's eve. Taisin and Kaede have a hot and heavy moment, but then they're escorted to meet the fairy queen.

The upshot of this is that the fairy queen wants them to kill her daughter Elowen who is at the root of the blight. She's capturing fairies and sucking them dry of life force to make herself stronger, and she's trying to invent an army of half-breeds to destroy the fairy queen and take over as ruler of both the fairies and the humans. Only a human can kill her because Elowen is a half-breed human-fairy, so the three of them set off on a tedious journey over the raw ice until they reach the ice castle of Elowen, whereupon Con the wimp waste of time promptly breaks his leg, and Taisin becomes a limp rag, weakened by Elowen's psychic invasions during the journey, so Kaede is the only one who can go kill her with her iron knife, which she does. It ought to have ended there, but inexplicably, it doesn't. Lo tacks on a really bad extra ending which is just nonsensical, and the actual ending sucks weiners.

How anyone can rate this is a great example of a feminist-leaning novel is a mystery to me. I saw no reason to perceive this as a great example of feminism or of how a decent lesbian story should be told. But it is a story about two lesbians, and it was okay as such.

However, I am prepared to rate this as worthy with the exception of the ending! I don't know how Lo could have slipped so badly after her outstanding ending in Ash, but the bulk of the story - with a bit of a meh! for the instadore-wannabe - is really rather good. Even the anticlimactic non-fight between Kaede and Elowen is acceptable. It's just the last 20 pages or so (part five) which is a waste of time. Dud only knows why she wrote that tacky tack-on. Just don't read that, imagine the romantic and happy ending of your choice, and you'll like this as much as I did before I read the last 20 pages!

Ash by Malinda Lo

Title: Ash
Author: Malinda Lo
Publisher: Little Brown
Rating: WORTHY!

I picked up the two Malinda Lo novels, this one and the prequel, Huntress because I'd read somewhere (I forget where, now) that Lo is a strong voice for feminism. She's also a lesbian, which might make for another interesting perspective on her writing, and as long as we don't confuse lesbian with "feminist" (the two are not the same set after all) I think we have we should have a cool read here - at least I hope we do!

I have to confess, though, that I don't see any overt feminist influence on this story at this point; that is to say that I don't so far see how the story is any different from how it would have been had it been written by any other author, lesbian or straight, male or female. Maybe there won't be any, or maybe it will be too subtle for me to see it, but if that's the case, then I fail to see how she garnered for herself the reputation for being a feminist author. Or maybe that rep came out of pure invention like so much in the popular press does these days! We'll see. it really makes no difference as long as we get a good story out of it, after all. That's what we're looking for when we read, are we not?

To her credit, at least Lo has no problem calling fairies fairies, which is nice. I hate it when authors try to hide the fairy-esque-ness of their writing by calling them "fae" - like they're so mortified to be writing about fairies that they're willing to do anything, no matter how obvious, to cover their embarrassment!

So Aisling (pronounced Ashling or Ash for short) begins with Ash losing her mother, and her father disappearing on business and coming back with a wife and two children; then her father dies. Lady Isobel blames Ash for her financial position: if her father had been better with his money, she claims (not that I necessarily believe her!), she would not have to be scrimping, and firing the maid and having Ash take her place! Way to justify slavery!

But Ash has an out, of a kind: she's entranced by fairy stories and by the real possibility of meeting fairies in the forest, which she does, and one in particular, named Sidhean (but pronounced Sheen!). I have to say a word about these pronunciations! There's no guide to the pronunciation in the novel (at least not when the name is first given). These names, for reasons unknown, are evidently Irish, in the cliched tradition of fairy-folk being Celtic, no doubt, but the Irish name has a version which starts with 'Ash' so why go the pretentious route instead of calling her Ashlinn?

This business of translation from a foreign tongue is a pet peeve of mine. The Chinese "alphabet", for example, bears no relationship whatsoever to the English one, so why not spell Chinese names phonetically instead of the bizarre translation we do get, whereby for example, 'Xiao' is supposed to be pronounced '(H)see-ow' (or something similar)?

It's the same with the Celtic language. That's a lot closer to English than is Chinese, but it's still notably foreign. Unless the fairy wrote his name down for Ash to read it before he pronounced it, there's no way she would know that the spelling of it wasn't phonetic! All too many writers make this mistake with pronunciations of obscure names. But I admit it's a fine line between trying to make something sound exotic or different, and going overboard, so let's move on before I have a hoard of irate Irish and Chinese on my tail. (Now I'm thinking of a scene from the Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles but let's not go there!)

So Ash gets into the relaxing habit of walking on the forest and eventually Sidhean begins walking with her, except for one period where he goes off in a huff and she doesn't see him for two weeks. Inexplicably, she starts falling for him! I say that because he's described as looking like a thinly-skinned skeleton! Perhaps his fairy power is overwhelming her; however, despite repeated warnings of the fairy people's evil intentions, no one harms her and Sidhean seems commendably interested in seeing that she gets home safely - even to the point of taking her on his horse on one occasion. But like Neo in The Matrix, the fairies are apparently waiting for something.

Ash herself has to leave the area next, because she's to accompany Isobel and her eldest daughter (as her maid!) to the capital to go to the Royal Ball (those royal balls are huge!). Once the family is dressed and off to the event, Ash's friend, a fellow maid called Gwen (no exotic names for anyone other than Ash and Sidhean, sorry!) chivvies Ash to hurry up so she can attend the peasant "ball" which is held in the village square. Everyone is supposed to costume up, and Ash dresses as a boy. I don't doubt that's going to play a part in some misunderstanding or other down the road (or more likely, in the town square). Is the Royal prince going to play hooky and attend the peasant ball instead of the palatial one? We'll see how predictable that is!

The answer was no, no, no, and no! The story was even better than my abysmal predictions. Ash sees Kaisa (kay-sa) the leader of the royal hunt, and encounters her on other occasions until the two of them become acquainted and begin spending significant time together. Kaisa invites her on the hunt and Ash has to make an expensive bargain with Sidhean so that he can wangle her into a position to attend the hunt and the ball. She has a wonderful time. I was a bit disappointed in Ash when she made the deal, Sidhean said the price was that Ash would be his, and she failed to ask him exactly what that meant! But aside from that, her conduct was exemplary.

So She also attends the big masquerade, and is asked to dance by the Prince, without her realizing who he was to begin with, but when she does, she sneaks away to visit with Kaisa and they spend time together, as indeed they do at the next dance (which is actually rather reminiscent of the one in Cinder, except that Lo wrote it first, and wrote it better). In this occasion, they pretty much confess their love for one another, but Ash reveals that she has a debt she must pay, and while she will do her best to return to Kaisa, she cannot promise anything. Ash returns to Sidhean and flatly tells him that she will offer him only one night and then their deal is over, and Sidhean amazingly agrees. The next morning, Ash returns to the palace and to Kaisa's arms.

Yeah, I kinda blew off the details at the end there, didn't I?! But this was because this was one of the easiest books I've ever read and I rather lost it and became completely immersed in the novel for the last half of it (Essentially, 'Part 2 - The Huntress'). The story drew me right in and pulled me almost helplessly along, and it had an immensely satisfying ending. So yes, I highly recommend this, and I'm so grateful to Malinda Lo for providing me with such a great novel after having had so many dissatisfying ones of late. Now I'm anxious to get started on Huntress in the desperate and nervous hope that it will be equally satisfying!