Old Mrs. Bell: a fractured "fairytale"

Well, actually a Christmas song. My least favorite Christmas song.

(Warning: Silliness ahead! Okay, carry on.)

In the backyard, Grandma Bell's green-cloaked figure lay stretched out, half sunk into the snow.

My brothers and I looked at each other with wide eyes. What kind of creature would be tough enough to best her? Even at 112, she could have won a fight with most of the younger wizards in the neighborhood. Nobody tangled with old Mrs. Bell. She was a grandma to be proud of, and all of us younger Bells adored her. If she was hurt...!

I recovered first and sprinted as best I could to reach her side. Then I looked back. The other boys huddled in the safety of the porch, watching me like owls.

"You chicken or what?" I hollered, but my voice cracked and betrayed me. I wagged my head with exaggerated pity. The act bolstered my deflating courage enough that I dared to wade the last few steps.

"Grandma?"

She groaned. "Sinterklaas!" came out like a muffled curse.

I knelt near her. "Are you okay?" I tried to ignore the ants crawling over my skin. What if it came back? What kind of deer had tracks that big?

She coughed and spit out snow. "Oh, honey, I'm fine."

There were rips in her cloak! And she said she was fine? "Grandma! What happened?"

"A Hyperborean deer! Knocked me down, insolent oaf!" Spitting out more snow, she sat up and took stock of herself. Her gnarled hands searched through the snow. "It's the third time this winter!"

I dug my mittens into the snow and uncovered her broomstick. "Here."

"Thank you, Daniel." She shook snow from her robes and mounted the broomstick. "Oh, I'll have his hide this time, if I have to chase 'im till morning!"

Sparks shot from the bristles and she sped away from us into the wintry night.
-----

The idea came from a list of parody song titles, here.

Review: Heartless, by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Back cover: Princess Una of Parumvir has come of age and will soon marry. She dreams of a charming prince, but when her first suitor arrives, he's not what she'd hoped. Prince Aethelbald of mysterious Farthestshore has travelled a great distance to prove his love -- and also to bring hushed warnings of danger. A dragon is rumored to be on the hunt and blazing a path of terror.

Una, smitten instead with a more dashing prince, refuses Aethelbald's offer -- and ignores his cautions with dire consequences. Soon the Dragon King himself is in Parumvir and Una, in giving her heart away unwisely, finds herself in his sights. Only those courageous enough to risk everything have a hope of fighting off this advancing evil.

My thoughts: To be honest, when I first saw this series on Goodreads I was more interested in Veiled Rose (the second book) than this one. A girl with a secret, living in the forest, who becomes friends with a boy and helps him hunt for a monster? Yes, please! This one sounded as if the emphasis was more on romance, so I was inclined to buy the other one first, until I saw that this one was free. Yes!

I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. The story has an old-fashioned beginning that takes time to build up. When the Dragon King finally breaks into the castle it gets pretty intense. You might suspect, with how many times dragons have laid waste to kingdoms in stories, that this would be clichéd, but oh, it's not. The Dragon is interested in more than just killing and maiming, more than just treasure. . . he wants Una, and what he wants to do with her is terrifying -- he wants to turn her into a dragon. He's so powerful, that they can't keep him out of the castle, and he succeeds. That's the point when the story really becomes a fairytale, Grimm-style. I had dreams about it for days, and I had to start my own story to help myself think about it. Books that are thought-provoking like this are the best kind.

I definitely liked Felix better than Una. The scenes where Aethelbald helps him learn swordfighting are wonderful ones. Una drove me crazy with her silly dislike of Aethelbald. He wasn't romantic enough for her? But he came from the faery realm! How could she care about his name being hard to pronounce?! *cough* She really should have known better. Of course, I can't say for sure that I wouldn't have been a sucker for Leonard too. I might have been as bad as Una. It made me wonder: would I have told Aethelbald about the horrible nightmares and asked him for help, if it was me? Or would I be just as foolish?

Speaking of Aethelbald, I felt like partway through the story, when he started searching for Una, the symbolism in him was a little too close to the surface and it threw me out of the story a bit. A passing thing, but worth observing. I don't know if I would feel the same way on a second read.

I can't finish this review without mentioning Monster, Una's mysterious blind cat. He came to her from Goldstone Wood, so of course there's much more to him than he appears. He can pass under the gaze of the Dragon without being noticed. He guides Una and tries to help her, and helps Felix and the others find their way when they're lost and fleeing. The fourth book, Starflower, is going to be about him and Dame Imraldera, and I can't wait to read it!

Also: isn't the cover beautiful?

Recommendation: I'd recommend Heartless to anyone who likes fairytales or fantasy stories with a mysterious, eerie atmosphere. It's still free on Amazon and B&N, so check it out!

Author's website: Tales of Goldstone Wood

The Starwood Ladder: a fairytale

photo credit: Lissy Elle Laricchia

I wrote this for a contest, but I missed the deadline by, like, a lot. I'm not really happy with it yet, but I have other stories to work on so I decided to stop fiddling around and post it. The contest page is here. The picture above was the prompt.

Basic idea: A girl without a name befriends a boy from the stars, both destroying and saving her life.


Click here to read the story on Wattpad.

Blog revamp!

So, I kind of ignored this poor blog for a long time. I was moving, and traveling all over, and I didn't have time to keep up with it, or so much as log in. I thought it was supposed to email me if I got comments, but it didn't, so if someone commented, I never even knew. :(

I didn't have time to work on it, and I thought no one was reading anyway, so I took it down. But I have more time now, and I'd still really like to have a blog, so I've decided I'm going to do it with a little more organization. I didn't have a topic before, but now my main topic is going to be books and book reviews, and I'm also going to post pretty things and writing inspiration. (Okay, so it's not the narrowest topic in the world, but it's better than when I didn't have one at all!) And I'll try really hard not to miss comments. And comment on other people's posts. :)

And I think this is worthwhile, because I very much doubt that the world is going to end tomorrow. ;)

More writing music

On the fear of making mistakes.

Fear of the blank page is not something I've experienced often. A blank screen, paper, or notebook always made me excited to fill it up with words, describing something fun, scary, amazing. I saved my fear for reading aloud.

I used to read with my brother every night, and every time we started a new book, it was so hard for me to get my voice going. I'd stare at the page, read the words over and over, with him complaining and urging me to just start already. And I'd try, and choke on the words, until I could bludgeon away the shyness and reach the part of my mind that really loved the story, that really wanted to say those words in that character's voice, the part of me that probably would have wanted to be an actress if some of the other parts were just a bit different.

If anyone else walked into the room, I'd inevitably stop, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, garnering suspicion that the book we were reading was bad. That wasn't why I stopped. It never was.

I haven't had the chance to read aloud for years. But now my comfortable relationship with blank pages is tenuous, and they're like those first pages of a new book. I stare at them with my fingers resting on the keyboard nubs, or my pencil on the paper, and my thoughts stick in my mind like tangled spiderwebs. Sometimes, music or tea, or a burst of anger or enthusiasm, unwinds some of them. But at the worst of times, my mind goes dark and I stay silent.

It's stupid to worry about what other people will think of what you're saying and let those thoughts shut you up, and I know it. But it's really hard, sometimes.

Music I'm listening to while writing Different Sky

Before Lindsey Stirling, I didn't like dubstep, but this song is pretty. And so is this:

Top Ten Tuesday: Books For People Who Liked Harry Potter

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

I've wanted to make a list like this ever since I saw one in a library somewhere as a kid -- "If You Liked Harry Potter" or something -- with a whole bunch of books on it that I had read and hated, and others that I had already read a million times (Chronicles of Narnia, I'm looking at you). I wanted a better one so much. Well, here's mine!

1. The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

2. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

3. Monster Blood Tattoo / The Foundling's Tale by D. M. Cornish

4. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

5. Gregor the Overlander (and following series) by Suzanne Collins (Better than Hunger Games, imho.)

6. Howl's Moving Castle and sequels by Diana Wynne Jones

7. Finding Angel by Kat Heckenbach

8. On The Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson. Don't let the title fool you, it's actually really good. And the following books in the series are even better.

9. Dragonspell by Donita K. Paul (The third book of this series is the best one.)

10. By Darkness Hid by Jill Williamson

Hailstorm

So, today it was very very hot. Dad and David were working on the RV engine, and I was hanging around waiting for them to finish, when we heard a terrific crack of thunder. I love thunderstorms, so I rushed outside and watched the storm grow.

The air was muggy and very still. Lightning flickered over the tops of the trees, loud but distant. The storm wasn't going anywhere and I didn't have anything else to do, so I stood motionless under the birch tree (I think it's a birch) and waited. The leaves started to hiss in the rising breeze. People on the lake were pulling their boats into the docks. The storm flickered and rotated but stayed put overhead, rumbling. And it got darker. The first drops exploded in the dust, and Kissa who'd been hanging out with me fled under the RV.

The rain stopped. The wind grew restless with a sound so like a waterfall that I couldn't get the image of the Oregon Cascades out of my head. The air cooled and smelled like wet pavement. I looked down from the sky and saw a fox trotting across the crackly grass towards the ruined buildings. (Next time I really want a picture of the fox, too.) It passed right by Kissa without even noticing her, stopped to scratch its fleas, then saw me and stared.

Strange popping sounds burst across the yard, just a few at first, here and there. For a second I figured, hey, more rain! But rain doesn't bounce.

The fox heard my yelp of surprise and vanished into the woods.

I fled to the pinoak tree and leaned against the bole. Marble-size hail I expected. That's not so bad, I thought. So I watched. And it grew. Quarter-size. Persimmon-size. This was too awesome to ignore (and rather alarming) so I ran back inside the RV.

Work on the engine was finished and David suggested we should stand under the fiberglass shade and watch the storm. So that's what we did.

The hail got bigger and bigger, smacking the fiberglass and grass and metal and wood. Some of them exploded in little showers of July snow.

Golf-ball size.

It was wild and scary and amazing.

The storm lulled for awhile -- we found a frog and collected hailstones for the picture. I caught my cat and put her inside, and just in time. The wind started turning the trees inside out and blowing the dust into clouds. And then it poured. After weeks and weeks without rain, everything was parched and the coolness and the smell were glorious. :D

Top Ten Tuesday: Rewind

 

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Top Ten Favorite Places To Read

Oh, am I going to have fun with this one! :)

1. Sitting on a fallen log, a nice, tall, fat one. It's lovely atmosphere. Unfortunately in the east the experience is quickly ruined when you're bitten all over by chiggers and ticks and mosquitoes and biting flies. Best to do it out west, where it's drier. It doesn't rain much at all in the summer in the Northwest, contrary to popular belief, and the trees are bigger.

2. I used to like to read in the car much more than I do now (I'd usually rather look at the scenery, honestly). But if there's nothing to look at but cornfields, then reading in the car is awesome! (While someone else drives. . . er, duh!) If the other people in the car are introverts and happy to be quiet, the car is a great place to read. The only other thing you could be doing is looking out the window or listening to the radio, neither of which stands out as especially useful, so no one can scold you to stop wasting your time, and spoil all your fun.

3. Reading while you wait for your laundry to finish is also good, for the same reason.

4. Under a weeping willow. They're so beautiful, and shady, and quietly breezy, and you feel as if you've already one foot in Faerie before you even sit down.

5. Inside a tent on a rainy day. The somber, cool light, the lulling patter of rain, and the cozy feeling of being outdoors in the wet and still staying dry I love.

6. In the desert, in the shade under the palms near a river or spring, while you wait for the heat of the day to pass. Pour water over your head if you like, only try not to get your book wet.

7. Sprawled on the floor. I don't know why reading on the floor is so much more fun than sitting in a chair, but it is.

8. In bed, in the dark, while everyone else is sleeping and no one knows what you're doing. If they're blissfully asleep, they have no reason to disturb you.

9. At a shady picnic table in a quiet corner of a public botanic garden, like the one in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

10. I've never had a window seat, or a tower-shaped room, but I think it would be really cool to combine them. It would be a really romantic place to read.

Lindon vs. the snake

Lindon does NOT like snakes. He's not always the bravest of cats, but he was determined that the slithery beast should not stay on his territory. (Even though he had no idea what to do with it!)

He's a giant teddy bear.

Across the yard, I saw him creeping along with his tail dragging the ground. He stared at the thing. He poked it with a giant paw and jumped back in horror. Then he snuck towards it again. Seeing him do this sort of thing usually means something is wrong, so I hurried over to see what he'd found.

The snake had some stripes and shook its tail as if it might be a rattlesnake, so I didn't snap any pictures of his attempts to deal with it. I chased him off and took a picture of the snake while my compadres attempted to pick it up with a long stick and take it back into the woods. (Maybe not the best of ideas, but it worked out.)

Here's the snake:

It wasn't amused.

I've seen western rattlesnakes. This snake was smaller, and lacked a rattle, so I'm not convinced that it was one, but better safe than sorry, right? :)

Kissa had a similar adventure last year with a black snake. She was way more determined than Lindon to kill it. When we found her attacking it out in the neighbor's weeds, it had fur from her ruff stuck all over its snout, but luckily, hadn't managed land a bite. She's a seriously fiercehearted little cat.

Invisibility cloak engaged

Yucca flowers

They look so exotic.

Song: Banner ~ Lights

This is a cool music video. Now that I've read the lyrics, I like it even more. :)



Maybe it's bricks and mortar now, whether or not they run it down
I don't want anything to shake that shape away
No one told us which way to come, nobody mapped oblivion
So I go growing roses in the disarray

Just like most, falling head in
'Til my ghost fills the bed in

So lift it up like a banner
Hold it up over me
If this war is never ending
I'll take this love down with me
Like a banner

I don't need fate to give it time, it doesn't take pain to change your
Mind
No weapon can sever the soul from me

Not the sorceress, not the money
All my cleverness, all my cunning

So lift it up like a banner
Hold it up over me
If this war is never ending
I'll take this love down with me
Like a banner

(chorus)
It's around me in my surroundings
It counts me when it starts the counting
In the chaos there is a standard
I'm carrying it like a banner

So lift it up like a banner
Hold it up over me
If this war is never ending
I'll take this love down with me



It's special because it's a song about love (according to the video above), but it's not a boyfriend song. Songs about friendship really aren't that common, so I'm impressed with Lights for making something unique.

I write like. . .

I write like
Neil Gaiman

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

I put Cecilia and the Bansídhe in. I really like this result. :D Even though I've never read anything by Neil Gaiman, I loved the episode of Doctor Who he wrote.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books You'd Like To See Made Into A Movie

 

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Everyone knows that books are (almost) always better than the movies made from them. Just the same, it's  fun to see them acted out or animated on the screen.

1. Replication: The Jason Experiment by Jill Williamson. It would have to be animated. 55 clones of varying ages? Hard for an actor to pull off. . . even with motion capture, I bet. The voice acting would even be tough. I don't know. It really wouldn't work, but if it could, it would be amazing.

2. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien. They're making the Hobbit. I wish they could make this one too!

3. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull. This would be SO COOL as a movie. Everything about it is right -- it's straightforward, fast-paced, and fun. If they could do well with it, more in the fashion of the first two HP movies and less in the fashion of the Spiderwick Chronicles, I think lots of people would want to see it.

4. The Door Within by Wayne Thomas Batson. I hope this happens eventually. And that they can let the story stand on its own. Christian movies always seem to require some kind of added-in didactic message that ruins the whole thing. No one goes to the movie theater for a sermon. They go for an awesome story! Not everything has to be "useful."

5. The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. YES PLEASE. I'd say Forest Born, but I think it's too introverted to translate well as a movie.

6. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett. (Unless it's already a movie, and I don't know.) Basically, just because Susan is in it, and she's awesome.

7. Warrior Cats: Into the Wild by Erin Hunter. This would be animated. Maybe anime. It would be unusual, because so many movies with cats portray them as evil (so unfair).

8. Foundling, Lamplighter, and Factotum by D. M. Cornish. One movie for each, and they would have to be made in Australia because that would be really neat. (And have Alan Rickman as Sebastipole! Though he's maybe a bit old.) They would also have to forget the stupid audience-pandering that seems to ruin every movie made nowadays and just do a decent job for once! (Case in point: the Prince Caspian movie. SUSAN DOES NOT KISS CASPIAN, okay? They only put that in because they thought it would make teenage girls more excited and thus rake in more money.{In MBT, what would they do to add a love interest? Make Rossamünd kiss Threnody? *makes face*}  And they also added more battles for the boys. {There's already plenty of violence in MBT so that shouldn't be an issue, but you know, it probably would be anyway. They might take a leaf filmstrip out of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and slim down battle scenes that are in the book to make room for nonsensical added scenes that they made up.} Just, come on. I get that books and movies are different. So make adaptations, not fanfics! /end rant)

9. Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet. It would be so beautiful.

10. Matched by Ally Condie. Romance. Forbidden poetry. I'm not usually into dystopian or romance, but I liked this one. :)

What about you? What books would you like to see made into movies?

Frogs are awesome.

I love frogs. They're so cute. I found this one hiding in a pile of building supplies. It was very dry out, hadn't rained in days, so I poured some water on the little guy and he seemed a lot happier.

A free book! Yippee!!

Heartless by Anne Elizabeth Stengl is free on Amazon for this week! I'm excited! I've been wishing I could read it for months. :D It's been ages since I got to read something new. Since I got it free, I'll definitely write a review for it, too. :)

Wood sorrel

I've been taking a bunch of pictures lately, and these are my favorites. :)

Lilies of the valley

Bluet

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Were Totally Deceiving

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

1. The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. When I was 14, everyone I knew was talking about it, and I had no idea what it was so I (foolishly) asked my father about it. (This was before Wikipedia.) Confused by the title, he (I only found this out much later) thought I was talking about the Lord of the Flies (HORRORS) and told me he'd read it in school and that it was the worst book ever written.  I believed him, at first, but what other people were saying did not match up. At all. And then the movie came on TV. I was hooked. So, so, so unbearably, marvelously hooked. The Lord of the Rings became my favorite book ever, in triumph over its misunderstood title. Peter Jackson's movies may have flaws (of which poor Faramir is the most wronged victim), but because they're what brought me to the books, they are pure epic win as far as I'm concerned.

2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling. The back cover of my paperback copy says Harry blows up Aunt Petunia. WRONG. It's Aunt Marge. Gur.

3. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander. I picked up this book a couple times and thought it was childish, and Taran was irritating. It took a third time for me to finally read far enough in to see that it actually gets pretty good later (once Eilonwy and Fflewddur show up). I love Fflewddur, and I can totally sympathize with him over the constantly bursting strings on his harp. If I had one like his, the strings would probably bust a lot too. . . It's just so easy to make a story I'm telling someone more interesting, that sometimes I don't even realize I'm adding to it until it's too late. :P

4. The Door Within, by Wayne Thomas Batson. I thought this book would be an allegory or something so I shied away from reading it. But, it isn't an allegory, and is actually pretty amazing.

5. The Clockwork Three, by Matthew Kirby. The back cover makes this book sound a bit boring, but the cover art is pretty enough that I decided to check it out anyway. It turned out to be pretty interesting and well-thought-out -- a great steampunk story. (I know, that doesn't tell much, but it's been awhile since I read it and I can't get my copy back.)

6. The Guernsey Literary And Potato-Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The back cover and the decidedly peculiar acquaintance who gave me this book led me to believe it would be a really interesting story about World War II. It was boring. I couldn't get into it at all. So I skipped through to see if it got better, and encountered a graphic depiction of someone killing a cat. Anyone who knows me, knows this is the last straw. I slammed it shut.

7. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. Everyone was raving about this book one way or another. They all seemed to love it or hate it. I expected it to at least be interesting. After 200 pages struggling not to fall asleep, occasionally enlivened by some irritating negative comment or exasperating misinformation about my favorite place ever, I started flipping through, looking for the funny parts. IMO, Twilight would have been much better if it didn't take itself so seriously. There's so much potential for comedy in the idea that it's no wonder everyone makes fun of it.

8. Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. The back cover doesn't describe this story well at all! It describes Wizard Howl as "lecherous". I mean, what?

9. Monster Blood Tattoo Trilogy, by D. M. Cornish. (Why is this on every single list I write? Write about different books already, you say? Nope. These are just Too. Insanely. Awesome.) It was the title that confused me here. They were always on the shelf in the library, beckoning, but the name sounded alarmingly creepy, so I ignored them. In light of that, switching the name used for the U.S. versions was a fairly good idea, even though the new name ("The Foundling's Tale") isn't as interesting.

10. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Did anyone else picture CDs when they first heard of it? :P

Finding Angel by Kat Heckenbach

Storyline: Angel doesn't remember her magical heritage...but it remembers her. Magic and science collide when she embarks on a journey to her true home, and to herself.

Angel lives with a loving foster family, but dreams of a land that exists only in the pages of a fantasy novel. Until she meets Gregor, whose magic Talent saves her life and revives lost memories. She follows Gregor to her homeland...a world unlike any she has imagined, where she travels a path of self-discovery that leads directly to her role in an ancient Prophecy...and to the madman who set her fate in motion.

My Thoughts: After reading the sample on Amazon, I simply had to buy this book. Angel is a very fun character, and she's not even the best yet. (My favorite is Kalek. He's an Elven rocker. How cool is that?) I loved the setting. The peaceful island farm, the forest of magical trees, and the town that reminds me of a quieter, more Irish version of Hogsmeade, are such lovely places to visit between the pages of this book. The mystery kept me turning pages, and I finished this book much more quickly than I wanted to.

Angel's prophecy kind of confused me when it entered the story, but some of that was resolved by a re-read. I kept losing track of the words of the prophecy. It might not have been a problem had I been reading a real copy and not the un-flippable Kindle version.

The cover is very pretty, and suits the story in a way you probably won't guess.

Recommendation: Read this if you like magic and fairytales (and especially if you also like science!) Fans of Donita K. Paul's Dragon Keeper Chronicles might especially like it. Yes, there are dragons. :)

Author's site
Finding Angel on Amazon

Tortoiseshell cats are like snowflakes

Kissa is immune to mad science.

How Tortoiseshell Cats Show The Limits Of Cloning.

Conundrums of "Twilight"

I visited Forks, Washington the summer I was sixteen, and adored it - I'd wanted to go to Olympic National Park ever since I knew it existed. It's soo beautiful. A few years later, I decided to read Twilight before I knew much more than the setting, just because I had loved the forest so much. (I found the book disappointing.) I lived in the Olympic Peninsula area for a summer a few years later, so I know a lot about the geography and what the place is like. We ate pizza in the diner in the exact same booth Bella and her dad do in the movie, without even knowing it. . . not sure how I feel about that. :P

Anyhow, I know lots of details in Twilight that are pretty ridiculous, and this one is my favorite.

In the book, as Edward drives Bella home from Port Angeles, he goes way over the speed limit, insanely fast, and says that he can do that because of his superhuman reflexes. (Let's try to ignore the fact that she went there because she wanted books. I mean, come on. UPS delivers in Forks! And the library's pretty decent, actually. They have books about local Native American myths and everything. I know, I know, I'm being too picky.)

source

Highway 101 between Port Angeles and Forks snakes along the shore of Lake Crescent in tight curves. It's narrow, has blind curves and crazy drivers from Seattle, and it's wet and slippery in the winter. There is no way at all any car, not even one driven by the Stig, could go 110 mph around those curves. Cars are heavy and affected by physics. The only way Edward could manage it is if he had a magical car. A special vampire car. One that can go intangible whenever it meets a normal car, so it doesn't crash. If that's actually what it was, that would be cool, but it's just a Volvo!

If Edward tried, he would end up in the lake. He might not mind, but Bella probably would. :P

It's no wonder they didn't try to put that in the movie, because special effects/computer animation would definitely be required. :D

Monster Blood Tattoo, book 1 - Foundling, by D. M. Cornish

The cover. So cool!

Storyline: Set in the world of the Half-Continent—a land of tri-corner hats and flintlock pistols—the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy is a world of predatory monsters, chemical potions and surgically altered people. Foundling begins the journey of Rossamund, a boy with a girl’s name, who is just about to begin a dangerous life in the service of the Emperor. What starts as a simple journey is threatened by encounters with monsters—and people, who may be worse. Learning who to trust and who to fear is neither easy nor without its perils, and Rossamund must choose his path carefully.

My thoughts: I LOVE this book. I first read it in 2010, just before Factotum (the third book) came out, and again just recently. With Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings, it's one of my most favorite series I've ever read. I don't want to compare them, though. This book is just as awesome, but completely different.

I like Rossamünd a lot, he's a wonderful character. He may be "too small and too meek" and have a girl's name, but he handles the things that happen to him with surprising bravery. The book has lots of interesting characters, but he's my favorite.

There are plenty of encounters with monsters, and some mysterious clues to revelations from the next book that are dreadfully curiosity-making. By the end of the book I was desperate to get to the library for the next one and find out what it all meant. (And boy, did it surprise me... but that's another review.)

The world is like steampunk, but really, it's biopunk. The inventions are fascinating and incredibly cool. There are lahzars, people who are surgically altered to have superhuman powers (they must pay for it all their lives). There are ships powered by engines made of muscles. The sea is caustic acid; and it's coldest in the south, because the Half-Continent is in the southern hemisphere of its planet. 

The concept of threwd has to be the single coolest invention I've ever encountered in a fantasy book. Think of that creeping feeling you get when you're outdoors and suddenly feel like you're not alone, like something is watching you, when there's nothing there. In MBT this is pretty significant. (No spoilers. You should read it and find out!)

Cons: To keep this review from being too glowing, I will mention a few things.

The first time I read the book, I was frustrated with Rossamünd for not realizing more quickly that the riverboat captain was lying to him. It drove me crazy. It makes sense to me now, but back then it was exasperating.

The rich language and wonderfully inventive words Cornish created I really like, and I had fun reading it, but some others might have trouble following and keeping track of meanings. There's an explicarium at the back of the book that helps with that, though. I used my dictionary app a lot while I was reading and enjoyed learning the new words. I'm a nerd, LOL. ;)

For parents, since this is a children's book: The author, D. M. Cornish, is a Christian, and while not being overtly religious at all, it feels right, somehow. There's nothing to object to here, unless you don't like the occasional invented curse word or something like that. (On the other hand, if you're not a Christian, you most likely won't notice any difference. It's in the eye of the beholder.)

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Where I have been in the past month.

Short answer: All over the place.

Arizona, California, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming visited 16 states (32%)
(Had to remove the map because it was driving lots of spam traffic from Russia for some reason.)

Eldritch.

This is my new word for the day. It means "unearthly, alien, supernatural, weird, spooky, eerie." Exactly the kind of word I needed. And it's fun to say! :D

Oregon is my happy place.

As soon as my mom gets settled here, the rest of us are going on to Idaho. But I still really want to live in Oregon at some point. It's so friendly and beautiful.

This is the kind of post that should have a picture! But I don't have any loaded on my computer yet, at least, not of Oregon. Here's Idaho:

WWOOF?

I'm keen to try this sometime in the future. It's World Wide Opportunies on Organic Farms, a charity setup where you can volunteer on organic farms, in exchange for room and board, anywhere in the world, and learn and have fun. My friend Sarah is going to do this in Ireland and it sounds sooo wonderful. I'm definitely going to be planning to try it, hopefully in Scotland or Wales. :)

WWOOF

Let's keep our internet freedom, please

SOPA/PIPA would allow the government to censor the internet, removing intellectual freedom and stifling new sites (and shutting down Youtube and even Blogger). Check out this post:

The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas on techdirt

[Added later: Here's a petition to stop Congress from making these law: Google petition ]

Searching for land.

The frustrating problem with hunting for affordable land is: if it's cheap, there's a reason. Like, it's on top of a mountain and can only be accessed by helicopter, or it's in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road with two-foot-deep ruts, or it's on a floodplain that floods every year, or it's in on a lake where it blizzards constantly 6 months of the year. Or, if by some miracle it's sort of inexpensive and in a nice area, it's in a homeowner's association, or it's tiny, or the county building permits have severe requirements to meet that pretty much makes it impossible for people to build on their own. (Okay, because I know this isn't obvious: I am not talking about owner-builder or whatever, I'm talking about literally building your own house.) Or, it's on a beach on sand. If it was simple to build on sand my family could be living in Washington right now. :\

All those "ORs" aren't random. They're taken from properties we've looked at. :P

Spontaneous Me ~ Lindsey Stirling

I just discovered this song and I love it!