Another month, another procrastination update...
Recently Finished:
The Last Dragon (Silvana De Mari, MG fantasy, paperback): The young elf pup Yorsh wanders a world plagued by foul weather and famine, a world where humans have regressed to unlettered barbarians and his kind are as reviled and feared as dreadful ogres or trolls. Falling in with a pair of humans, he finds himself on a path laid out in a prophecy... a prophecy that names him as the last elf, who will bring a new age after he finds the last dragon. But something must've been left out of the prophecy, because years after he finds the beast and the perpetual rains end, things are worse than ever.
I had a very mixed reaction to this book. At first glance, it looked like a fairly typical middle-grade fantasy with familiar parts. Only De Mari's writing style (or possibly that of her translator) kept me reading, and made me actually enjoy the occasionally-irritating quirk of Yorsh not understanding a thing about human culture or other dangers of the wide world. Then the second part began, and the twist reveals itself in a prophecy that seems to have gone all wrong. The real theme of the book is about the cycle of fear and misunderstanding and xenophobia. Nobody is immune to these traits, either: Yorsh's lack of understanding about humans leads to a generalized dislike, the dragon's arrogant nature sees everything not magnificent enough to be a dragon as ultimately expendable (particularly if they taste good with rosemary), and the humans find plenty to hate and fear about each other in addition to every other species and race. I generally enjoyed the tale, but wasn't sure I bought some of the character transformations by the end, and the antagonist seemed underexplored and underutilized. The conclusion therefore felt a trifle flat, despite the steep price paid for it. Younger readers, those looking for a fantasy with a fairy tale feel but with more meat on the bones, would probably not be bothered by such issues.
The Wee Free Men (Terry Pratchett, Discworld: The Tiffany Aching series, Book 1, MG fantasy, Nook via Overdrive): When peculiar things start happening in young Tiffany Aching's backwater corner of Discworld, such as the appearance of small blue men and a monster that tries to eat her kid brother, there's nobody to turn to: there aren't wizards for miles around the Chalk, and the Baron isn't the kind of clever ruler who could be relied upon to solve things. (Tiffany's granny probably would've known what to do, but she died a while ago, leaving little but an annotated compendium of sheep ailments.) Armed with a frying pan, a head full of words from the dictionary nobody told her she shouldn't read, a talking toad who may have been a man once, and sheer determination, Tiffany sets out to save the Chalk, beginning on the long and winding path toward witchhood.
I've yet to be disappointed by Pratchett, and this book is no exception. Sure, he has superficial humor and silliness and some hilarious throwaway lines and references, but there's always a solid story behind that, and solid characters behind the story, and solid themes behind the characters. It's these layers that give Pratchett's work their staying power and impact. Being a middle-grade title, it skews a slight bit juvenile, but not in a way that talks down to kids (or grown-ups.) Very enjoyable, and I expect I'll be reading more of Tiffany's adventures.
Currently Reading:
Starflight (Melissa Landers, YA sci-fi, Kindle): At eighteen, the orphan Solara is too old to be a ward of the state anymore, and the felon tattoos on her knuckles (plus her lack of family connections or money) mean she has no prospects on Earth or any of the other civilized worlds. She plans to turn her engineering prowess into a job on the fringes, the outermost frontiers of terraformed worlds, beyond the reach of government influence and officials: out there, talent and usefulness speak louder than prejudices and tattoos. But to get there, she has to indenture herself with a paying passenger - and, just her rotten luck, the one passenger who takes her on is Doran, wealthy scion of a man who nearly owns the government, with whom she has an adversarial personal history. He takes sadistic pleasure in treating her worse than a slug, waiting on him and his pink-haired socialite girlfriend hand and foot - but when he crosses the line and tries to boot her from the ship at a refueling stop, Solara takes matters into her own hands...
So far, this isn't a bad read, a well-paced space adventure. Solara isn't exactly an angel; given the chance, she proves she can be every bit as petty as Doran when the life of someone she despises in in her hands, though she does start feeling guilty about it as her plans go increasingly awry. (She doesn't want him dead, but she does want him to get some of his own back.) Doran, for his part, is a spoiled teen who simply never learned to consider others' feelings, or comprehend that life beyond the bubble of wealth is often cruel and unfair. He's smart enough to start figuring things out, at least.
Really need to get another physical book started...
