"Moss hates her life. As the daughter of the Executioner in the Tower of London, it’s her job to catch the heads in her basket after her father has chopped them off. She dreams of leaving, but they are prisoners with no way out.
Then Moss discovers a hidden tunnel that takes her to freedom, where she learns that her life isn’t what she believes it to be and she doesn’t know who to trust.
Her search for the truth takes her on a journey along the great River Thames. Could the answers lie deep in its murky depths?"
Most categorized this as a YA novel, and I found this in my library's YA section, but I don't think it belongs there, it's very obviously a childrens' book, and while there's nothing wrong with that it definitely shows.
The prose is childish and basic. The description also lacks any real pizazz, I found my self skim reading.
I suppose the biggest difficulty I faced, was a lack of empathy for Moss. Hardstaff tried, but the character didn't interest me in the least and I was incredibly disappointed with how she was presented. She's supposed to be eleven, but there is nothing childlike in her makeup and that fact didn't sit well with me, not when her age is so important to the story at hand.
Her dissatisfaction with life felt realistic but bolstered and I felt her attitude towards her father was down right churlish.
The plot posed another problem in that it was all over the place. Moss' eavesdropping seems preposterously implausible, as did her sojourn to Hampton Court. Anne and Henry's appearance makes absolutely no sense within the context of the narrative.
Over-all a good read for a much younger audience.
Age Rating 10+.
"One Life to One Dawn.
In a land ruled by a murderous boy-king, each dawn brings heartache to a new family. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, is a monster. Each night he takes a new bride only to have a silk cord wrapped around her throat come morning. When sixteen-year-old Shahrzad's dearest friend falls victim to Khalid, Shahrzad vows vengeance and volunteers to be his next bride. Shahrzad is determined not only to stay alive, but to end the caliph's reign of terror once and for all.
Night after night, Shahrzad beguiles Khalid, weaving stories that enchant, ensuring her survival, though she knows each dawn could be her last. But something she never expected begins to happen: Khalid is nothing like what she'd imagined him to be. This monster is a boy with a tormented heart. Incredibly, Shahrzad finds herself falling in love. How is this possible? It's an unforgivable betrayal. Still, Shahrzad has come to understand all is not as it seems in this palace of marble and stone. She resolves to uncover whatever secrets lurk and, despite her love, be ready to take Khalid's life as retribution for the many lives he's stolen. Can their love survive this world of stories and secrets?"
Honestly this is a bit of a hot mess of a book. First I will say what enjoyed. The sassy dialogue was fun, witty and the insults where hysterically subtle. The secondary characters such and Rahim, Despina and Jalal where funny, easily believable and relatable. The hint of magic was interesting and left me wanting to know more about the light vs dark magic in this universe. The food descriptions left me salivating and packing my bags to Morocco and "Shazi's" occasional moments of bad-assry where enjoyable.
Now the things that weren't so good.
The main character is stupid. She sacrifices herself to a murderous king and believes she will be able to stave of the executioners axe by telling him a story each night and leaving it on a cliff hanger. But that is not what gets me. What gets me is her botched plans for revenge. She's all like I WILL KILL THE KING!!!!! I WILL AVENGE MY FRIEND'S DEATH AT THE HANDS OF THE MURDEROUS MONSTER. Then literally 2 days later she feels a pull on her heartstrings when he glances at her. Where is your commitment girl. Obviously didn't like your friend that much.
And the truth? I don't know why she's not dead. I don't know why he lets her live. Her charms are entirely hidden to me. I cannot comprehend the attraction she holds. Her stories bore me to tears.
Her attempts at sniffing out Khalid's weaknesses are poorly thought-out and completely disappear after she falls in insta-love with sunlight-scented emo boy. I mean, Khalid.
There's a scene where she directly confronts Khalid on why he kills his wives and he leaves because she has the subtlety of a hippo in a tutu. She then spends the whole day fretting she hurt his feeeeelings and apologizes. Apologizes. For wanting answers. For demanding an open relationship. For understanding why her best friend had to die.
Keep in mind Shahrzad falls for Khalid before she discovers the real reason behind the murders (in which he's totally blameless because God forbid he's a morally grey character). She is in love with someone who murdered her best friends and hundreds of other girls. At one point, she calls him her "beautiful monster".
There is of course a love triangle shoe-horned into this plot which was personally completely unnecessary and beside the point. I would have been far more interested to see Shazi's father start the rebellion.
Another thing that bothered me are the rape scenes that where mentioned in one maybe two lines. Their marriage consummation and the night after was rape, okay? Shahrzad didn't want it. She just went ahead with it to earn Khalid's trust.
Later, we discover Khalid had never entered any other bride's bedchamber except hers. Which begs the question: Why? If he loved her from the start, which he does, why would he violate her like that? Why would he perform on her one of the cruellest crimes you do to a person? Or is it supposed to be romantic and special because she's the exception? I understand that that was the norm in those days but for her to fall in love with him so quickly was crazy to start with, but further compounded by this insanity.
Then there's the plot itself. Or should I say lack of plot. For a story about murder and mind games, it is surprisingly slow. Nothing really happens until the climax, which abruptly cuts off just when the story ball starts rolling. They cheated me out of a decent climax. Most of the storyline is devoted to the romance, people traveling, and descriptions of clothes.(Which there is a lot of, I assure you.)
Age Rating 13+. Murder and god I don't know what to call it, "The consummation of a marriage where neither party is interested." Not explicit but still mentioned.
"A rare meteorite struck Alex Woods when he was ten years old, leaving scars and marking him for an extraordinary future. The son of a fortune teller, bookish, and an easy target for bullies, Alex hasn't had the easiest childhood.
But when he meets curmudgeonly widower Mr. Peterson, he finds an unlikely friend. Someone who teaches him that you only get one shot at life. That you have to make it count.
So when, aged seventeen, Alex is stopped at customs with 113 grams of marijuana, an urn full of ashes on the front seat, and an entire nation in uproar, he's fairly sure he's done the right thing …"
The Universe Versus Alex Woods starts off seeming like it's gonna be a quirky sort of book: the narration is matter of fact where it possibly shouldn't be, and the situation Alex is in on the opening pages is an interesting one. Unfortunately for everyone who picked it up on the basis of that, it's not really the kind of book it turned out to be. The quirky "buddy comedy" I was expecting turned out to be a stark talk on the realities and circumstances surrounding assisted suicides.
I don't know that I'd call it funny -- it's not laugh out loud funny, anyway; more "wry smiles" funny -- and I don't know that I'd call it heart-breaking, either. The simplicity of the narrative voice kept it from being maudlin, from dwelling too much on any of the important details, which is what for me made them strike all the more forcefully.
It has been described as a coming of age story but I can't say it is though, because Alex is quite mature for his age already if a little naïve. Instead, this is a story about how little incidents in our lives influence events in the future. You will have to ask yourself, if these series of incidents didn't happen to Alex, would his life have been different? If I had chosen to take the bus instead of walking, would I have met my best friend and similar questions. Which makes life so damn confusing and yet amazing. In a way, this book is a celebration of that.
I suppose people could easily compare this with Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and all those other books with introverted young men who are fascinated with math and sciences. Alex is introverted, but is it because he was struck by a meteor, became epileptic, held behind a grade, that he was isolated from his peers? Was Alex autistic? . In any case, I found I liked Alex because he was such a nerd and didn't compromise his principles to be accepted. I also liked that he was thoughtful and yet sensitive.
It is written in an slightly odd way, it starts at the end, goes to the beginning and skips around a bit, but by about 1/4 way through, you are hooked and everything makes sense, things start clicking into place like magnets and you are rolling down the reader track eagerly anticipating every event as it unfolds. At it's most basic, it sounds like a typical boy/man bonding story that's been done a hundred times, but it has surprising twists and a modern slant.
Age Rating 15+. There is marijuana cultivation and smoking and a lot of existential talks surrounding the assisted suicide of Mr Peterson.
"Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness."
I have a love/hate relationship with this book. The writing and imagery are superb and I always love a "down with tyrannical overloads, generic living, and medicalization" moral. The finding of your own self worth and inner strength and excepting your own flaws. However its other lesson leaves me cringing and the first half of the book dragged. In the basic knowledge I have of Ken Kesey, the book ultimately seems very misogynistic.
The plot seems to involve men mentally castrated by a domineering woman who could just as easily be labelled "Bitch" as she could "Big Nurse." Enter main character, McMurphy who is a man that pretty much shakes the men up to the supposed feminization of American culture and how it's destroying their identities as males. (Read here: a huge characterization of the male ego is to dominate the female with opposites all around.)
How is this man so easily labelled a hero? While his escapades are humorous and his bolstering of his friends admirable have we forgotten he has been charged and convicted, among other things, with rape of a female minor and the main reason he's in the asylum is to skimp out on his prison sentence? How is that "masculine," if I am to continue on with the stereotypes the book itself perpetuates--and yet backpedals when necessary? Why do we consider him the "main character" when the story is being told in the first person by a Native American who shows the largest amount of humanity, morality and in the end bravery and compassion?
Maybe because McMurphy is the quintessential American, and he can be seen as a metaphor for the spirit of America. He is the entrepreneur, the self-starter, the untamed rebel who makes his own rules. He is the great equalizer, the leader who kicks down the boundaries, who champions the little guy, who colours outside the lines and who picks the small boys and the fat kids on his team and then wins anyway and wins big.
An interesting and eye opening read. Funny and heart warming at times, tragic and bittersweet at others.
Age Rating 15+. Drinking, shock therapy and uncomfortable subject matter.
"It is 13th century B.C. and aboard the ship Argo, Medea, Jason and the Argonauts make their return journey across the Black Sea from Persia’s Colchis, in possession of the Golden Fleece.
David Vann, in brilliant poetic prose, gives us a nuanced and electric portrait of one of Greek mythology’s most fascinating and notorious figures, Medea; an ancient tale reimagined through the eyes of the woman often cast as sorceress and monster.
Atmospheric and spellbinding, Bright Air Black is an indispensable and provocative take on one of our earliest texts and the most intimate and corporal version of Medea’s story ever told."
A hauntingly and disturbingly visceral read. While the prose was beautiful, I found it occasionally repetitive and heavy to the point where I wasn't too sure what was really going on. This might have been on purpose as it definitely added to the mystic and surrealism of the story. The whole book felt abit like going on a macabre drug trip to be honest.
Some interesting points are raised on the social attitudes of the time in regards to misogyny, religion and power that can be seen as relevant to this day. Medea is not a sympathetic character and is made all to human while still retaining a large amount of her original monstrous otherworldly aura.
A very difficult book to describe or review as I think this is one of those marmite books. You will probably love it or hate it. I will definitely be trying something else of David Vann's in the future to see if maybe his prose will be slightly more understandable in that one.
Age Rating 15+. Trust me on this, not for the faint of heart. The book opens with Medea chopping up her brother and doesn't really let up from there. Allusions to sex and necrophilia. Th murder and gore is visceral and occasionally nauseating.
"Moss hates her life. As the daughter of the Executioner in the Tower of London, it’s her job to catch the heads in her basket after her father has chopped them off. She dreams of leaving, but they are prisoners with no way out.
