Review: Ring of Fire - P. D. Baccalario

Synopsis: A mix-up with their reservations forces Harvey from New York, Mistral from Paris, and Sheng from Shanghai to share a room with the hotel owner's daughter, Elettra from Rome. Soon the four kids discover an amazing coincidence - they all have birthdays on February 29, Leap Day. That night, a strange man gives them a briefcase and asks them to take care of it until he returns. Soon afterward, the man is murdered.

The kids open the briefcase. In it they find a series of clues that takes them all over Rome, through dusty libraries and dark catacombs, in search of the elusive Ring of Fire, an ancient object so powerful that legend says even a Roman emperor couldn't control it.

Review: I'll say it right now: this wasn't as good as the Ulysses Moore books. For one thing, it's written in present-tense, and unless I am just utterly losing my head, Ulysses Moore wasn't in present-tense. Sometimes present-tense can work, but very, very rarely, and in this case, it just made everything so very movie-ish, and anyone who has read my reviews before knows how much I dislike the movie feeling in literature.

On top of that, there just wasn't a single character that I particularly cared about. None of the four kids is especially annoying, but there's nothing to really like about them, either. Harvey's name gave me reason enough to mildly wish him dead; his attitude gave me more of one: whiny and not wanting to pursue anything. I kept wanting to call Elettra "Elektra" - especially since she affected electronics. And absolutely everyone's dialogue almost always trails off with ". . .", even when the character has actually finished a thought and isn't trailing off. The Author just writes it like that.

The storyline itself is interesting, but due to the present-tense and lack of likable characters, I had a very hard time becoming engaged and staying that way. Which is a complete pity, because I love Baccalario's other series. The Century Quartet isn't a good judgment of his books; I would encourage Readers to check out his Ulysses Moore series before condemning all of his writing.

Despite the shortcomings of Ring of Fire, I will read the next three books, if only to discover what happens, and maybe things will improve as the story continues.

Overall Rating: KK

Others in the Century Quartet Series:
1)Ring of Fire
2)Star of Stone

3)City of Wind
4)Dragon of Seas

Review: City of Stars - Mary Hoffman

Synopsis: Georgia loves horses and hates Russell, her stepbrother. It seems Russell's goal in life is to make Georgia miserable. All Georgia wants is to go horseback riding whenever she can - and to avoid Russell. When Georgia finally saves up enough money to buy the little model of a winged horse she has admired in the window of an antique shop, she knows she has to keep it out of Russell's way. But what Georgia doesn't know is that the little horse offers her an escape to another world and another time, that of sixteenth-century Remora, a city that is similar to Siena, Italy, but that has evolved quite differently.

Review: The second book in the Stravaganza Series is every bit as fun and exciting as City of Masks, though I admit that I liked Lucien's character a tad bit better than Georgia. City of Stars has a wide variety of wonderful characters, both new and old, and the Author does a tremendous job in making the Reader hate, love, and pity them. I was certainly filled with hatred towards Georgia's stepbrother Russell, and I pitied Falco's father, while I absolutely loved Falco and Cesare. The horse race in the end is thoroughly exciting, even if its result is predictable, and even if the Reader is not a horse-person like myself.

I look forward to the next book!

Overall Rating: JJJ

Others in the Stravaganza Series:
1)City of Masks
2)City of Stars
3)City of Flowers
4)City of Secrets
5)City of Ships
6)City of Swords

Review: Player's Ruse - Hilari Bell

Synopsis: Sir Michael Sevenson and his squire, Fisk, were just beginning to enjoy the quiet life. They really should have known better. When Lady Rosamund runs away from home to marry a traveling player, former knight errant Michael makes a noble promise to help the object of his unrequited love. The quest takes our would-be heroes to the coastal town of Huckerston, where savage sea pirates called wreckers terrorize the coast. With the help of a reluctant Fisk, Michael plans on catching the wreckers and winning back his lady; but when mysterious murders and dangerous accidents threaten the town and its players, love might be the least of his problems.

Review: These stories just grow better and better with each new installment. The humor is ramped up even further than the last two, though some of them are bawdier than Rogue's Home (however, they aren't excessive), and the mystery all the more intriguing. I thought I had it all figured out, but I quickly turned out to be incorrect about a major part of my theory, much to my delight. I always love it when authors can make one solution seem obvious while planting clues to the true answer that are obvious if the Reader looks hard enough. Hilari Bell also manages to keep a good balance of humor and danger. One moment things are pretty light-hearted, then something happens that sends a chill right down the Reader's spine. Few authors can pull that off without making events seem schizophrenic, but she does it.

I dearly hope that Player's Ruse is not the last Knight & Rogue Novel. I absolutely love this series, and I would hate to see it end only after three books.

Overall Rating: |||||

Others in the Knight & Rogue Series:
1)The Last Knight
2)Rogue's Home
3)Player's Ruse

Review: Alchemy and Meggy Swann - Karen Cushman

Synopsis: "Ye toads and vipers!" Thus says Meggy Swann, newly come to London from the country village where she was raised. She's not happy to be there, and why should she be? Her mother was glad to see the back of her. Her father, who sent for her, doesn't want her after all. The city is awash in dirt and muck, teeming with thieves and rogues, and very wearying to walk around in - especially for Meggy. She is the alchemist's daughter, though. Just as her father seeks to transform base metal into gold, Meggy sets out to change her condition for the better. In doing so, she finds herself to be braver and stronger and friendlier than she ever thought possible, and a competent rhymer as well.

Review: I absolutely love Karen Cushman's stories, even though she sometimes likes to go into detail about the lack of hygiene in the Renaissance a bit too much at times. And Alchemy and Meggy Swann has to be one of her best, if not the best. Meggy is a girl who, no matter the situation, lands on her feet and will fight her way to survival. She has a sharp tongue, but that sharp tongue keeps her alive and she is genuinely witty.

The dialogue, too, is wonderfully authentic without being just impossible to read. And the Author writes of the horrors and filth of Elizabethan London streets in such a matter-of-fact manner as to render it humorous, actually rather reminding me of Charles Dickens.

Alchemy and Meggy Swann comes highly recommended for all ages. It's a very quick and enjoyable read that anyone would like.

Overall Rating: |||||

Review: Steel - Carrie Vaughn

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Jill has fought in dozens of fencing tournaments, but she has never held a sharpened blade - a real sword. When she finds a corroded sword piece on a Caribbean beach, she is instantly intrigued and pockets it as her own personal treasure. The broken tip holds secrets, though, and it transports Jill through time to the deck of a pirate ship. Stranded in the past and surrounded by strangers, she is forced to sign on as crew. But a pirate's life if bloody and brief, and as Jill learns about the dark magic that brought her there, she forms a desperate scheme to get home - one that risks everything in a duel to the death with a villainous pirate captain.

Review: I had complete misgivings even before I started reading this book, and my misgivings only proved to be correct - not in all instances, mind you, but in many of them. In the Afterward, the Author claims that she did a lot of research regarding historical piracy. I have to question how much research she thought "a lot" was, because hardly any of it made itself known in the story. To be fair, she also admitted that she ignored some of what she researched because clearly she wanted her pirates to be heroic and moral.

Um, well, there is her first mistake. Pirates were - and still are - criminals; no better than today's street gangs. There was no pirate code or pirate's honor (true, captains made rules according to their individual standards. There was no specific code, like the Articles of War, that all pirates followed), their voting system was anything but fair or civil (again, look at today's street gangs and how they replace leaders; it was no different then), and pirates were, in fact, known to be terrible seamen. While the Author does mention in her Afterward that pirates who captured slave ships would sell the slaves for profit, it just illustrates further her poor attempt to make heroes out of villains when her pirates free the slaves they capture. So what is it exactly that makes them pirates?

Ah, yes, and female captains . . . Now, I can understand why the Author made the "good" pirate captain - Margery Cooper - a female. If she hadn't, then it would have been a prime setup for bad, but accurate, things to happen to Jill among "rogue and tumble" men who certainly had no regard for a woman's virtue. And Captain Cooper could have been extremely unbearable as most female pirate characters are in stories, but I still protest at how unlikely it would be in real life for Cooper to become - and then maintain - her position as captain. There is a reason that history only knows of two famous female pirates (not counting the few in the Orient; Chinese piracy was an entirely different kettle of carnivorous eels); women were considered bad luck.

To top this off, there's the name of the "bad" pirate captain. I don't know what made the Author think that Blane was a threatening name. I kept picturing a Californian surfer Ken-doll whenever I read his name. He made Captain Shakespeare from Stardust seem threatening. But then it all made sense, when it was revealed that the whole premise of the story was, in fact, much like a Barbie-and-Ken relationship. I'm afraid that I am not joking. Blane was the only unforgettable character simply because of his unbelievable name. Jill was not too annoying (she whined a bit much), but many times I mistook her for an inanimate object, she was so lacking in personality, and for someone who had just been launched from the 21st century into the early 1700s among a bunch of murderous criminals, she takes to it all very well - indeed, she takes to it so well and thinks so little about her family, that it actually bothered me. I hate it when characters take forever to come to terms with their situation, but she is too okay with it. And the romance between her and Henry (who was also another inanimate object) was so gradual that it came as a shock to me when they started expressing feelings for one another.

But all of this I could have handled fairly well (perhaps, even Blane's name) if there hadn't been the terrible fact that the Author made the worst mistake that so many modern sea-faring writers make: she didn't research her sailing terms and the workings of a ship in general, and she never actually went to sea on a tallship. In the Afterward, she says that she consulted someone on these things. Either she completely disregarded his information or he knew just as little as she did - or a combination of both. I have an actual tallship sailor living in my house to confirm any flaws the Author made - i.e. my sister -, and goodness, were there many. First rule for all people who want to write a sea-faring story: research, research, research! You have to immerse yourself in it; read books that historical sailors actually used, history, technical books - indeed, you need to make yourself seasick on it. There is nothing more painful, more horrid, than authors who insist on writing sea-faring stories and don't do proper sailing research. If an author is not willing to do this, then either find a different genre, or write the story in first-person; from the perspective of a character who knows absolutely nothing - and learns absolutely nothing - about sailing.

Steel by Carrie Vaughn was torturous. I didn't think I would get through it, honestly (had it resembled Pirates of the Caribbean any more - and thankfully it really didn't that much, to give the Author some credit - I would not have). Pirates simply cannot be cast as moral, heroic people. They simply can't. If they're moral, they're not pirates.

Overall Rating: N