A Brief Post on Mr. Thornton

For some time now it seemed I couldn’t turn around without tripping over mention of the BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South and, more particularly, Richard Armitage.

My library did not own it, of course, because I wanted to watch it so badly see, and so I put a request for it in at another library. And then I waited. Waited. Days stretched into a week, more, and my impatience got the better of me. Several stores later, I was the proud owner of North & South. Yesterday I finally got to watch it.

And I’m so very glad so many wonderful bloggers wouldn’t stop talking about it.

In Rhiannon’s post, she states: “It takes a woman, of course, to write a man we will all fall so violently in love with.” It’s true, and I was just having a similar discussion with a co-worker (though we were discussing Sara Donati’s Nathaniel Bonner.) And yet it takes the right man to pull off what the woman has written. Richard Armitage was definitely the right man.

There were so many scenes I could mention. And while he brooded with the best of them, it was the quiet, more vulnerable moments that crept into my heart. I’m thinking of the scene with his mother, where he has crouched down in front of her, denying with heartbreaking surety what she has said about Margaret. The way he searches his mother’s face to determine if what she said could possibly be true. The barest hint of a smile that is gone almost before you realize it was there to begin with. So many sigh-worthy scenes.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that also highly enjoyable was Brendan Coyle’s portrayal of Nicholas Higgins. In fact, I quite loved the scenes he shared with Armitage, especially towards the end. Begrudging trust between two strong men has its own charm.

As I type this, actually, I’m rewatching favorite scenes. (Currently the scene at the train station. She’s just gotten up from the bench and he’s killing me with his expression as he watches her walk away.)

So, thank you to all you wonderful bloggers who left this one laying around for me trip over. I most definitely appreciate it.

Revolver ~ Marcus Sedgwick

A LOADED GUN. STOLEN GOLD. And a menacing stranger. A taut frontier survivor story, set at the time of the Alaska gold rush.

In an isolated cabin, fourteen-year-old Sig is alone with a corpse: his father, who has fallen through the ice and frozen to death only hours earlier. Then comes a stranger claiming that Sig’s father owes him a share of a horde of stolen gold. Sig’s only protection is a loaded Colt revolver hidden in the cabin’s storeroom. The question is, will Sig use the gun, and why? [Summary from Amazon]

Three words that perhaps best describe Revolver: Tense, menacing, philosophical.

My first foray into Marcus Sedgwick’s writing will not be my last. I found his prose chilling in its lucidity and at times overwhelmingly atmospheric, qualities that were fully supported by the story. I’ll admit to being impressed by his writing style, but even moreso was I taken with the urgency and tension that Sedgwick expertly delivered from the very first page.

Before going further, consider this description: “His features were coarse, his eyes far apart, his nose broad, his mouth hidden by a rough beard of ginger and white. His head, when he removed his fur hat, was shaven to his scalp. His skull was a disturbing shape, flat at the back, his ears too small. It was not a face stroked into creation by God’s loving hand, but battered into shape by the Devil’s hammer.” (ARC, p 50)

Now consider that this stranger is big, built like a bear, and that he forces his way into your house, a loaded gun at his hip. Imagine that he demands something from you that you have no knowledge of. That he speaks to you in one or two word sentences, assuming  with arrogance that you will follow his terse orders. Imagine that he will not leave, no matter what you say. You are young, alone, six miles away from people that would have to traverse thawing ice in order to help you. If they even knew you needed help to begin with.

The entire time I read I was metaphorically on the edge of my seat. My emotions ran the gamut from fear to fury, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. I didn’t want to put the book down because an interesting twist would rear up, taking the story in a direction I hadn’t thought to guess at yet, and all the while with that stranger’s breath dancing on the back of my neck. So, yes, tense and menacing are perfect terms to apply to this short novel.

But philosophical? What’s that all about? Sig, our young protagonist, was only five when his father decided to test his luck during the Alaskan gold rush. Alaska during the late 1800′s and early 1900′s was a dangerous place, which is why, instead of buying food for his family, Sig’s father bought a gun. An old revolver with a limited supply of bullets. He brought it home and set it on the table despite his religious wife’s protestations. And he taught his children how to shoot it. But the question was: Should they use it? Was violence a solution? Or a sure way to bring more trouble down on their heads? Sig thinks about that constantly, even as he remembers the feel of the gun in his hand, how easy it was to pull the trigger. And in the end, with both his mother’s and father’s words in his head, it’s up to him to determine the answer. Philosophical fits, then, and all of Sig’s musings blend into the rest of the story without a hitch, amplifying an already awful situation.

Sedgwick obviously did his homework for this book, learning about the gold rush, about guns. And it paid off. Also, the marks of latitude, temperature, and the relevant quotes that lead off each chapter fantastically supplemented the story itself.

As soon as time allows I’ll be checking out Sedgwick’s backlist. As for Revolver, you can expect to see it on shelves in April.

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I received an ARC of Revolver from the publisher at the ALA Midwinter Conference.

Killbox cover

Okay, so this all over the place, and probably already old news, but…C’mon. Ann Aguirre’s new Sirantha Jax cover? Amazing.

From Ann Aguirre’s site:

“TALK IS CHEAP WHEN
LIVES ARE IN JEOPARDY

Sirantha Jax is a “Jumper,” a woman who possesses the unique genetic makeup needed to navigate faster than light ships through grimspace. With no tolerance for political diplomacy, she quits her
ambassador post so she can get back to saving the universe the way she does best—by mouthing off and kicking butt.

And her tactics are needed more than ever. Flesh-eating aliens are attacking stations on the outskirts of space, and for many people, the Conglomerate’s forces are arriving too late to serve and protect them.

Now, Jax must take matters into her own hands by recruiting a militia to defend the frontiers—out of the worst criminals, mercenaries, and raiders that ever traveled through grimspace…”

There’s  an  excerpt up, too, and it made me happy because both March and Vel were accounted for in the first chapter.

All of the Jax books have had amazing covers, but they keep getting better. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but I think this one might have just edged into that position. But now, do we really need to wait until September? That hardly seems fair in light of this beauty. Just sayin’.

Into the Wilderness ~ Sara Donati

It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her family in a remote New York mountain village. It is a place unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man unlike any she has ever encountered—a white man dressed like a Native American: Nathaniel Bonner, known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives. Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village, Elizabeth soon finds herself locked in conflict with the local slave owners as well as with her own family. Interweaving the fate of the Mohawk Nation with the destiny of two lovers, Sara Donati’s compelling novel creates a complex, profound, passionate portait of an emerging America. [Summary from B&N]

I loved Into the Wilderness. Loved. Which means a couple of things in regards to this review: one, it is likely to be incoherent and, two, it may be unconvincing because I will fail to impress upon you why I loved it so much. But this book? It consumed me.

Nathaniel Bonner is the son of Hawkeye and Cora Munroe from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. He is…Incredible. (My inclination here is to gush and sigh like a schoolgirl, but I’ll try not to. Know that that is exactly how I feel on the inside, however.) Nathaniel, like his father, knows firsthand that the world is not fair, that people are not kind, and that you have to protect what is yours – including your beliefs – with ferocity of mind and body. He is unflinchingly strong, determined, fair-minded but suffers no fools, devoted to his family, and is capable of rousing…well, everything.

“Tell me you don’t want to kiss me,” he said, his thumb stroking the curve of her cheekbone.

“I can’t,” Elizabeth said hoarsely. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Then do it,” Nathaniel whispered. “Kiss me.”

Startled, Elizabeth pulled away a little. Nathaniel was looking at her with an intensity that frightened her, and she saw that he meant it, that he was waiting for her to do this. His fingers threaded through her hair. He waited; she knew he would wait forever. She could do this, and take what she wanted, or walk away, and live without it.

But Elizabeth being the strong woman that she is, knowing perfectly well what she wanted above all else and despite the fact that it went against beliefs she had held nearly all her life, takes it. And the love that she and Nathaniel shared gripped me, moved me; I will never forget him, them. I can’t put it into words, how the romance in this book swept me up, and it is with great hesitance that I even type the word “romance” because it isn’t right. And I don’t want to scare you off by using it. But let me just say this: Nathaniel knows how to speak to a woman, and I have several pages tagged so that I can go back to them again and again.

While this novel has a strong romantic element, it is not the sole premise, and there is adventure to spare. Elizabeth and Nathaniel, specifically, endure awful trials, and they bear the scars of their physical and emotionally journey. In that respect, this book isn’t easy. You will cringe, you may find yourself outraged, but you will always be emotionally wrapped up in the events that unfold. That was one of the novel’s biggest appeals for me: It played to all of my senses, pulled all of my emotional strings, but I never felt as though the author was trying to manipulate me into feeling. That could, in part, be chalked up to the era and the setting, when travel was arduous, when men were a bit rougher around the edges, when the law wasn’t such a strong presence or could otherwise be made to look the other way. The pieces fit and the events were believable enough.

Into the Wilderness is almost 900 pages long. The action ebbs, and while you readily turn the pages, it can’t be rushed. The characters carry you through. Urge you to keep on. Without having finished it, I ordered the second book in the series, Dawn on a Distant Shore, and I can’t wait to read it.

It’s not a perfect book, but for me? For the emotional impact it had? It was just right.

Looking this over, I realize this review is incredibly reserved. All the time I was writing it I was thinking: “NathanielSiiighhhNathaniel!!!!!” I’m even hesitant to hit ‘publish’ on this post because, you know what? I don’t really want to share him. Yes. He’s that good.

(Also, the cover above is on the recently re-released trade paperback. I read the mass market and I’m not sure which cover I prefer, but I think they say different things about the book. Neither gets it quite right, but I do have a fondness for the paperback, mostly because it was in those pages that I found something wonderful.)

Waiting on Wednesday – The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee

Steeped in Victorian atmosphere and intrigue, this diverting mystery trails a feisty heroine as she takes on a precarious secret assignment.

Rescued from the gallows in 1850s London, young orphan (and thief) Mary Quinn is surprised to be offered a singular education, instruction in fine manners — and an unusual vocation. Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls is a cover for an all-female investigative unit called The Agency, and at seventeen, Mary is about to put her training to the test. Assuming the guise of a lady’s companion, she must infiltrate a rich merchant’s home in hopes of tracing his missing cargo ships. But the household is full of dangerous deceptions, and there is no one to trust — or is there? Packed with action and suspense, banter and romance, and evoking the gritty backstreets of Victorian London, this breezy mystery debuts a daring young detective who lives by her wits while uncovering secrets — including those of her own past.

The Agency is set to be released on March 9th by Candlewick Press. Read an excerpt here.

This looks fabulous! And according to the author’s website, we can expect the second book, The Body at the Tower, this September.

“Jedediah Berry Wins Crawford Award”

According to Locus: “Jedediah Berry has been named the winner of the 2010 William L. Crawford Award for first novel The Manual of Detection. The Award, presented annually at The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, is for a new fantasy writer whose first book appeared the previous year.”

If you click on that Locus link above you can see the titles that were shortlisted for the award.

Berry’s reaction to the news? Apparently it involved the sending of a text message consisting of the letter ‘a’ on repeat and a lot of wrong turns. Click here if you want the whole story.

As for me, this has awesome written all over it. I was (am) a big fan of The Manual of Detection (review) and it deserves all the attention it can get. The book recently came out in paperback and just look at that cover (it captures the mood of the novel perfectly. If I didn’t love my hardcover, if it wasn’t signed by the author, I would be tempted indeed to pick up a copy of the paperback just for that atmospheric cover.) Congrats, Mr. Berry!

More Alanna Love

Today I’d like to direct your attention over to Persnickety Snark and, particularly, Adele’s fantastic post about how Tamora Pierce’s Alanna series changed her life.

From the post (and excerpted with permission):

“However the title, or series, I would like to put forward Tamora Pierce’s Alanna: The First Adventure as a book that changed my life. I was eleven years old when I stumbled across Alanna in my primary school library and I swiftly fell in love with the world of Tortall. You see, I wasn’t that girl who loved pink, or dreamed of riding unicorns or even crushed on Jonathon from New Kids on the Block (the 80s Jonas Brothers). I have always been pretty practical and pragmatic so Tamora Pierce’s land of sword play, magic (not the Xanadu kind) and palace intrigue was like heaven to this bookworm with tomboy tendencies.

Alanna showed me a girl working her butt off to follow her dreams and aspirations. Alanna disguised herself at ten years of age, exchanges identities with her twin brother and rode to Tortall’s castle to learn how to be a knight. She commits to hiding her gender for eight long years in order to step into a role she was destined to have. As Alan of Trebond, she earns her friends respect by working her guts out and striving to be her best, despite opposition from a loathsome bully and the risk of being found out. Alanna was truly noble. She possessed firm ideals and was loyal, selfless and stubborn as all heck. She may have been a name on a page in a book, but to me Alanna was something to aspire to. Not that I ever wanted to become a knight but the way in which she conducted herself, the quality of her friendship and the divine George Cooper (from where I developed my fascination with bad boys) made me long to be her.”

Read the post in its entirety.

Okay. Who took my crime solving cloak?

The recent announcement of the 2010 Edgar nominees crystallized a thought that had been flitting about in my head for a while now: I need to get back to reading mysteries.

When I was sixteen and working in a local B.Dalton, I inhaled mysteries at an alarming rate. (And romance. But that’s another story.) And then somewhere along the way my mystery reading ground to a halt. Oh, I still read a few: Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell series, Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse mysteries, anything Deanna Raybourn, and Joanne Dobson’s Death Without Tenure recently appeared in my mailbox. But more often than not I’ll take note of a new series or title and that’s it. Me + follow through = not happening.

There are several reasons for this but what do they matter? I should carve out a few hours, throw on my crime solving cloak, and get back to a genre I adored, one book at a time. And that’s what I’m going to do! So I look to you, Edgar nominees, for some ideas. But I’ve got a few others in mind, too.

Though I’m not entirely sure it counts, I just ordered Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ($5.50 for the trade pbk at Amazon! Could not pass that up.) In one of her blog posts, Kristin Cashore said of this one: “TGwtDT, in fact, was so unputdownable that at one point, when I absolutely had to tear myself away to run a critical errand, I took the book with me, so that I could go to a coffee shop after the errand and read it there rather than having to wait the 10 minutes it would have taken me to walk home.” Sold!

And a few days ago I added Barbara Cleverly’s A Darker God to my library reserve list. Here’s a little more about that one:

“In Athens in 1928, Letty begins a perilous race to unearth a plot steeped in betrayal, seething with retribution, and about to explode in a wave of lethal violence. In the open-air theatre of the dark god Dionysos, Letty watches a performance of an ancient Greek tragedy. But the revenge that is exacted onstage, the dagger that is wielded, and the blood that flows in full view of the audience are not theatrical effects. As Letty digs for clues, she unearths disturbing secrets and dark animosities with catastrophic implications worthy of a Sophocles—but of far more recent vintage. Now, as a killer cuts a merciless swath across a country in the throes of political instability, Letty herself steps unawares into the murderer’s savage spotlight—a light so bright she may not be able to see the dark figure behind it until it’s too late.”

If you have any suggestions of mystery titles or series, I’d love to hear them! And if you don’t see me posting an occasional review of a mystery novel, get a virtual stick and poke me with it.

Illyria ~ Elizabeth Hand

Madeleine and Rogan are first cousins, best friends, twinned souls, each other’s first love. Even within their large, disorderly family – all descendants of a famous actress – their intensity and passion for theater sets them apart. It makes them a little dangerous. When they are cast in their school’s production of Twelfth Night, they are forced to face their separate talents and futures, and their future together. [Summary from ARC]

Really, Maddy and Rogan’s family set them up from the beginning. Called “kissing cousins” since birth, the pair grew up as inseparable halves of the same whole, until one day they gave literal meaning to the absently affectionate moniker their family labeled them with.

This book is challenging to review. On the one hand, Elizabeth Hand’s writing is admirable. The prose is not spare, it is coldly shocking at times, and manages to flow across the page like water over stones. Smooth and rough at once. I might have coo’d over a particularly beautiful bit of imagery, but then a grossly unappealing description of character would shake me up and right out of the story.

Since the central plot revolves around Maddy and Rogan’s relationship, it follows that the reader should care about them, or should understand how one might be attracted to the other. Maddy is telling this story as an adult looking back; I never felt that she gave of herself fully as a narrator. I could not tell you, for that matter, if I empathized with her or cared about her. And Rogan, he was worse. His character is suppose to be electric, dynamic, the type of boy that is so charismatic he seems entirely too good to be true. And I didn’t like him at all. I couldn’t come to terms with his appeal. By way of example, when they kissed, Maddy used words like “sour” to describe his breath, and his scent was “sweetish and rank, slightly ammoniacal” – that’s not even accounting for his physical description, which the other characters in the novel seemed to be both repulsed and seduced by. That may be entirely too superficial, but add to that his arrogant slide into drug addiction, his cavalier attitude about most things, and there you go…I just didn’t care for him.

Another surprising bit of contradiction: the summary leads you to believe that the theater is what these characters lived for. Having read the novel, I can only say that that is partially true, but that it felt like a side-effect of the plot, their love for it, and I was not convinced that it should be given such importance. As for their physical and emotional bond, it felt more immediate, but their family’s reaction didn’t seem…quite right. Meaning, when the explosion came, it seemed overwrought and not inline with everything else. Or, perhaps, like more had been brewing behind the scenes and the reader is just never made aware of the extent of it.

I cannot honestly recommend Illyria for its plot or characterization, as neither left me with a strong impression, but for the writing, if you read for the language of a novel before all else, or even for the themes of family, talent, and love if that’s what you enjoy in your fiction.

Illyria will release on May 13th.

Additional reviews:
Green Man
The Mumpsimus
(These reviews dig a lot deeper than I did. They weighed the themes, the literary references, etc.; there is a great deal of depth to this novella, absolutely. That said, if at least one character does not grip me, all the rest could be beautiful and I would still be unable to fully appreciate it.)

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I received an ARC of Illyria from the publisher at the ALA Midwinter Conference.

The Secret Year ~ Jennifer R. Hubbard

Colt and Julia were secretly together for an entire year, and no one—not even Julia’s boyfriend— knew. They had nothing in common, with Julia in her country club world on Black Mountain and Colt from down on the flats, but it never mattered. Until Julia dies in a car accident, and Colt learns the price of secrecy. He can’t mourn Julia openly, and he’s tormented that he might have played a part in her death. When Julia’s journal ends up in his hands, Colt relives their year together at the same time that he’s desperately trying to forget her. But how do you get over someone who was never yours in the first place? [Summary from Amazon]

Colt would be the first to tell you: what he had with Julia Vernon, their year long, hushed relationship, was nothing like Romeo and Juliet’s doomed affair. It’s true that Colt was from the flats, Julia from Black Mountain, and never the two should have hooked up. But here’s the thing: Romeo, at least, was convinced of Juliet’s love. Even after reading the epistolary notebook Julia kept, Colt couldn’t say the same.

While not as emotionally gripping as I anticipated and wanted it to be, The Secret Year was both sexy and saddening. Julia’s letters to Colt were written with the overwhelming headiness the teenage years tend to impress upon us, most especially regarding lust, love, and sex. Hubbard didn’t hold back, she didn’t cage Julia’s letters with modesty, but instead gave Colt and the reader lines like this: “All I want is to be back with you, standing thigh-deep in the river, feeding you my tongue.” (15) Colt turns that phrase – feeding you my tongue – over in his mind, absorbing the words with the same awareness he had of that first kiss with Julia. That line isn’t the only example, not the only turn of phrase that gets under your skin, portraying Colt’s relationship with Julia as something not quite romantic, but raw.

The sadness, when it comes, is not so much prompted by  Julia’s death. It’s more because she left behind so many questions that Colt can only guess the answer to. Her letters, though addressed to Colt and filled with the excruciating, exhilarating details of  their sexual relationship, continually intones another name: Austin. Julia’s Black Mountain boyfriend. The guy perfect for her because he belonged to the same country club, because her parent’s loved him, and because, quite frankly, everyone expected him to be the other half of a golden couple. Colt grapples with her attachment to Austin. He can’t puzzle out if she meant it all those times she said her and Austin were done. Not knowing drives him to think about her constantly, long after he’s finished her notebook, and long after she’s gone.

I appreciated just how complicated their relationship was. That’s not to say I bought every minute of it, but the parts that rang true…it was worth reading for those.

Tension between students living up on Black Mountain and those on the flats also propelled the story forward. A tagline posted somewhere – Amazon, I think – referenced The Outsiders, and that might work on the most basic level. As plot devices go, the class resentment and ensuing conflict mostly worked in The Secret Year.

If I had one problem with the story it was this: How is it possible that every girl Colt pursued had sex with him, and so quickly? I’m not saying teens don’t have sex. I’m saying that not every girl will want to or would be comfortable doing so, and yet almost every girl Colt speaks to in the book has sex with him. Really? The promiscuity wreaked havoc with the authenticity because it didn’t seem reasonable. That’s my opinion, of course; you may think nothing of it, or maybe even the exact opposite, if and when you read the book.

In the end, The Secret Year was a quick read and one with a lot of teen appeal.