SYNOPSIS: September is now 14 and she has waited a whole year for her birthday to roll around and her 3rd trip to fairyland to begin. But her birthday comes and goes, and she is afraid she will never go back until, when she least expects it, an irascible Blue Wind shows up and grudgingly allows her to hitch a ride to the moon above fairyland. After a happy reunion with L and Saturday, September and her friends must go on a journey to find a Yeti who is terrorizing the moon's citizens. THOUGHTS: I should really give Cathrynne Valente credit for at least co-writing this post because a big chunk of it will be in her own words. Why? I love this series though they are not the most riveting books in the world and they take forever to read, especially for a middle grade book. They sometimes feel like they are just a collection of creative ideas Valente had - really, really creative with beautiful imagery - but with a barely-even-there plot. They are dreamy and odd. The characters took me a bit to warm up to though I must profess that I do now adore September, A-through-L and Saturday. Here's the thing, though. The reason I love them. I'll be listening-reading along, feeling ever-so-slightly bored and then this will happen:
“A silent Library is a sad Library. ... A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of delight and horror as the wonders of the world are discovered or the lies of the heavens are uncovered or the wild adventures of devil-knows-who sent romping out of the pages. A Library should be full of now-just-a-minutes and that-can't-be-rights and scientifick folk running skelter to prove somebody wrong. It should positively vibrate with laughing at comedies and sobbing at tragedies, it should echo with gasps as decent ladies glimpse indecent things and indecent ladies stumble upon secret and scandalous decencies! A Library should not shush; it should roar!”
And this...
“Marriage is a wrestling match where you hold on tight while your mate changes into a hundred different things. The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl, a brawny black bull while he's a little blue crab scuttling for shelter. It's harder than it sounds.”
And this...
“Listen to me. Love is a Yeti. It is bigger than you and frightening and terrible. It makes loud and vicious noises. It is hungry all the time. It has horns and teeth and the force of its fists is more than anyone can bear. It speeds up time and slows it down. And it has its own aims and missions that those who are lucky enough to see it cannot begin to guess. You might see a Yeti once in your life or never. You might live in a village of them. But in the end, no matter how fast you think you can go, the Yeti is always faster than you, and you can only choose how you say hello to it, and whether you shake its hand.”
And yet again, this...
“September tried to show her sternness. It was becoming a habit. She could show her sternness and think about this another time, when it was quiet and no new red Moon turned somersaults in the sky. But when she reached for her sternness, all September found in her heart was the bar of a trapeze, swinging wild, inviting her to catch it. ...She leaned up and kissed her Marid and hoped it was the right thing. Her heart caught the bar and swung out, swung wild, over the lights and the gasps below, reaching for a pair of sure blue hands in the air and willing them to find hers.”
And finally, a whole lot of this...
“Oh, aren't you just the rottenest wet blanket whoever spoiled a sport.”
In other words, whenever I start to get a little bored or dismiss the books for having too little plot and flow, Valente hits me with a sentiment which is made of beautiful words and a unique perspective that makes my brain stretch. And occasionally laugh out loud. That's why I keep coming back to this beautiful middle grade series. FINAL VERDICT: It's always good to visit with September and her friends and this installment has a lot of great imagery and thoughts about growing up. 3.5 out of 5 Stars
Awards: It did not win any but was nominated for a couple Format: Audio (from Library)
Narrator: Miranda Raison
WHY?: It's about kids who hunt ghosts. Who doesn't want to read that?
SYNOPSIS: In an England that has been overtaken by spirits that only children can see, Lockwood & Co. is one of the many agencies that people can hire to rid themselves of ghostly problems. When one of their cases goes spectacularly wrong, Lockwood, Lucy and George, who make up the agency, must take on an extremely deadly assignment; to quiet the spirits in the most haunted house in England.
THOUGHTS: I am fascinated by ghosts but, strangely, I haven't found many books featuring them that I really love. I'm happy to say that the first book in the middle-grade Lockwood & Co. series is a book about ghosts that really worked for me. It is exciting, has a multi-layered plot and a distinct take on ghosts and the hunting of them.
The story is told from the perspective of Lucy Carlyle. In the England the book is set in, something has occurred that has caused spirits to manifest all over the country and these ghosts are not just a spooky nuisance. If one touches you, you don't just feel a chill, you die.
Children under a certain age (15 or so) are the only people who can actually see the ghosts and some kids are more adept at it than others. Lucy is one of the more talented ones so she is recruited at a young age to become a ghost hunter. Ghost hunters usually work in a group supervised by an adult who can't see the ghost but takes feedback from the children and develops the plan of action. When Lucy's handler loses his nerve and makes a bad call during an assignment, sending all but she to their deaths, Lucy decides to strike out on her own and heads to London to see if she can find a better situation.
She ends up being hired by Lockwood & Co. which is unique in that it employs no adult handlers. In fact, it is just Lockwood and his confederate George. Adding Lucy makes them a threesome working out of Lockwood's large house left to him by his parents who are mysteriously missing. Each of them brings something different to the table. Lockwood is very smart and bold, a good planner, strategist and leader and is also very good at seeing ghostly phenomena. George is a science and research dork who spends his time tinkering with ghostly artifacts and doing background research for their cases. Lucy is very talented at hearing ghostly phenomena and at getting emotional readings and flashbacks from the dead and objects associated with them. All together they make a good team and they are all glad not to have the supervision of adults.
Normally, that whole idea of kids doing dangerous things and not involving adults, is a barrier when I reader literature aimed at a younger audience. What for a younger reader is empowering, I find unrealistic and frustrating. However, there was none of that in this story. Lucy's experience with her adult mentor at the start of the story and the maturity of Lockwood and all of the gang really convinced me that they are better off taking care of themselves. It's a fascinating power structure to explore, with kids having a useful and necessary skill that adults don't, and the story does a good job of imagining what this would mean - it both empowers the kids as well as making them vulnerable for exploitation.
The idea of kids having this "superpower" denied to adults is only one of the very interesting things in the universe Stroud builds. At first I thought the book was set in a historical setting, likely Victorian, as some of the trappings of the story and setting suggest but actually the book is set contemporarily or even slightly in the future. There are television sets and other modern things but the phenomenon of the ghosts appearing has scrambled society in many ways. And that's one layer of the story that will likely be a constant in the series; what happened to "awaken" the ghosts and how can it be stopped once and for all.
The specific plot of the book is also pretty great. It is a little slow to get started but it builds to a really exciting and pretty scary climax. Lockwood & Co. are trying to keep the agency open after a disastrous case and partially as a ploy to get positive publicity they are trying to track down who murdered a young socialite who has become a very restless and murderous ghost. Their involvement in the cold case brings to them the business of an enigmatic millionaire who wishes them to "clean" out his house which is reputed to be the most haunted in a very haunted England. The night they spend at the house is chilling and exciting! My only complaint is that Lockwood has information/suspicions that he does not share with his colleagues and there doesn't seem to be any reason for him to do this except to build suspense and conflict in the story, but I'll let it slide because it leads to a great reveal in the end.
Finally, all three of the main characters are great. George is the least developed of the three but his peculiarities and bickering with Lucy and Lockwood add much of the humor in the book which lightens up what would be a completely dark tale otherwise. Lucy, as narrator is the one we get to know best and she's a great character, being both traumatised and extremely brave and empathetic. She's got attitude and her narrative voice is engaging and provides interesting perspective. Lockwood is charming and immediately likable but he is also a huge mystery and I expect that also to be one of the plot threads that carries throughout the series.
Taken as a whole this was a really good start to a series and I think it would go over really well with all age groups. It doesn't shy away from the scary parts so if your young reader is on the easily frightened side I might be a little wary. I listened to the audio and the narrator, who I think is new to me, was great. She is essentially the voice of Lucy and I think she did a great job bringing her to life.
FINAL VERDICT: A nicely creepy, complex and ultimately exciting ghost hunter story aimed at middle-grade readers though it als entertained my middle-aged brain. Will definitely be continuing the series. 4 out of 5 stars.
WHY?: Honestly I'm surprised it took me as long as it did to start this series. I was (and still am) a HUGE Greek Mythology nerd as a kid and this series would have been a godsend (Hee!) for me back then. It's natural that I would pick it up now.
This book was my entry into the sordid world of the Greek Gods.
If you've never read it and have any interest in Greek Mythology go get it and read it now. Go on. I'll wait. ...... Isn't it great and the artwork stunning? I eventually graduated on to Bulfinch's Mythology and Edith Hamilton's Mythology but D'Aulaires' will always have my heart. I would pore over it again and again and again and my young self was never even phased by the fact that the Gods? Kind of assholes and really amoral. It is one of the things that is so great and impressive about Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. He manages to capture all the stuff that fascinated me as a child and he doesn't ignore the more troublesome aspects of the mythology but it also never seems sordid and ugly. It's full of love, adventure and Satyrs just like D'Aulaires.
From D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I like how Aphrodite is at the bottom all "I was born of sea foam so who knows where I fit on this family tree!"
Persisus or "Percy" Jackson is a dyslexic 12 year old, apple of his mother's eye but who has seemingly been kicked out of every school in New York City. Unbeknownst to him, his father happens to be a Greek God. I won't say which as that is a bit of a spoiler for the first part of book one but suffice it to say his dad is very powerful. Percy becomes aware that there is something different about him when he starts to see things others do not. Oh and his math teacher turns into a monster and tries to kill him. Percy is what is known as a demi-god which are somewhat more plentiful than you would assume (or if you've read the Greek myths maybe not) and all these children of the Gods are powerfully attractive to monsters. Many don't live for very long and others are destined to be great heroes. Before their fate is known however many, including Percy are found and brought to Camp Half-Blood, a summer camp in upstate New York where they are kept safe and trained to take on missions for the good of the Gods of Olympus.
Rather than going into the plot of each book, the overall trajectory of the series is to follow Percy from the age of 12 to the age of 16, when a great prophecy says he (or some child of the gods) will make a decision that will save or destroy the world. Each book features a different quest-type adventure except for the final book in the series which focus on a war among the Gods and the fulfillment of Percy's prophecy. On all his quests Percy has some help from his friends like Grover a somewhat bumbling but goodhearted satyr who just wants to find the lost nature god Pan; Annabeth, daughter of Athena and very smart; Tyson, Percy's half-brother and also a cyclops; Thalia, daughter of Zeus and somewhat too like Percy for them to work together comfortably; Chiron, the famous centaur and Percy's mentor; Dionysus, the negligent camp director; Nico D'Angelo, a mysterious young demi-god with troubling powers; Rachel Elizabeth Dare, a mere mortal who somehow can see through the "mist" which usually obscures anything magical from humans and many more of the campers. All the Gods also make appearances, some to help, others...not so much. In all it's a fun cast of characters and Percy's voice as the narrator of it all is pitch perfect. He's very personable, funny and believably adolescent and his growth from kid to young man worked really well for me.
I haven't seen the movies but Logan Lerman looks perfectly cast to me (though he's too old)
I have to admit that I wasn't immediately drawn into this series. I started it a couple times before I persevered and I'm really glad I did. The Lightning Thief was a little slow for me; there was so much set up and the quest portion of the book ended up feeling very short and anti-climactic. The Sea of Monsters (book 2) was also a little slow but it featured the introduction of Tyson, a character I really love, and I liked it a bit better than book one. Riordan really hits his stride though in Book 3, The Titan's Curse, and I think each of the following two volumes just get better and better. Book 4, The Battle of the Labyrinth was probably my favorite. which isn't surprising considering it has a pretty baldly stated environmental message. All that is to say, if you are like me and after book one are unsure what all the fuss is about, hang in there because ambrosia and nectar are on their way. The books did not seem to age up quite as much as happens in for example the Harry Pottter series but they do become a little more complex and deal with some of the more interesting ethical debates that might be expected to be confronted when dealing with the ever so naughty Greek pantheon. Basically the themes become a little more mature but it never loses it's overall playful spirit nor gets as dark as the HP series.
I also felt like in the first couple books that the slotting in of the Greek mythology into modern civilization was a little clunkier then it is in later books. In fact, Riordan's skill at doing this in the later books is one of the total delights of those books. It's fun to see his vision for how each of the Gods and mythological creatures fits (or not) into our modern culture. As a hardcore Greek mythology geek, I love revisiting all the myths but seeing them in a new light.
I like how the series ends. The final battle is sufficiently infused with tension and is exciting with the wrap up of all the moving pieces being mostly satisfying. I was a little disappointed in the fate of Rachel Elizabeth Dare who kind of immediately became one of my favorite characters when she was introduced. In fact,
I would have preferred her and Percy to end up together vs. he and Annabeth - Horrors! Don't worry, I'm not that strongly against Percy and Annabeth but I did like the character of Rachel better than Annabeth.
I feel like I should also comment on how I think this series would work for the target audience since I am WAY out of it. In a word, I think it would go over great and of course it has since it has sold a floppity-jillion books. I know my nephews, who aren't big readers loved this series when they were younger (they are now teenagers). I think Percy's status as the hero of the books despite his dyslexia and problems in school might be incredibly empowering to many kids. As I've said the Greek Myths do not always provide the best examples for good behavior but I think Riordan does a really good job presenting and addressing all things in a responsible way while also understanding that kids will eat up all that borderline scandalous behavior.
Finally, I listened to the whole series which had the same narrator, Jesse Bernstein, so I should say something about him. For me Jesse was absolutely perfect for Percy. His normal voice and the way he voiced Percy's thoughts and jokes and dialogue were perfect. For everything else, he was somewhat less perfect, only because his voices for the other characters tended to be a little too exaggerated and cartoonish. When voicing someone who is meant to have an American southern accent he sounds oddly Australian. He voices Annabeth, with kind of a valley girl type inflection ending each line of dialogue on a up note which may have contributed to me not liking her as much as I could have. Overall, I really enjoyed listening to the series and he did a great job conveying the meaning behind the lines but he did struggle with the voices. So, if that's a pet peeve of yours beware.
FINAL VERDICT: A fun middle-grade series that got better and better as it went along with an engaging cast of characters and action/adventure galore. Plus GREEK MYTHS! 4 out of 5 stars for the whole series (3 out of 5 for the first two books and 4 out of five for the final 3).
Genre: Middle Grade, Historical Mystery
Series: The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place #5
Awards: NA
Format: Audio (from Library)
Narrator: Katherine Kellgren
WHY?: I discovered this series in 2015 and absolutely adore it, especially the audio. Probably my favorite middle-grade find of recent times.
SYNOPSIS: In this installment, Penelope Lumley and her three charges, Alexander, Beowulf and Cassiopeia Incorrigible, travel to Brighton along with all the other denizens of Ashton Place. While in Brighton, Penelope hopes to convince Simon's Uncle Pudge, former cabin boy to Admiral Ashton, to reveal the exact wording of the curse placed on the Ashton family. Along the way, the Incorrigible's learn about hermit crabs and dinosaurs and become fast friends with the children of a Russian family who are the only other folks vacationing in Brighton in January.
This series just keeps getting better and better. Book 4, The Interrupted Tale was my favorite and The Unmapped Sea surpassed it. This is the second to last book in the series so many of the mysteries about the origin of the Incorrigible children and the enigmatic Judge Quinsy, come to a head and many secrets are revealed. However, all that has been accomplished by uncovering the mystery is being able to define exactly what the problem is and it is not resolved. The books ends with all of our beloved characters in some form of peril. Another of my favorite developments of the book is that Penelope finally embraces her romantic feelings for Simon Harley-Dickinson, her loyal friend of the last 4 books. It set things up for book 6 to be a very exciting conclusion!
All the books in the series are very cleverly written from a third person omniscient narrator with a modern sensibility who not only reveals the character's motivations but also comments rather humorously and educationally on the customs of the Victorian era. It highly entertains me and seems like it would make a great entry point for the intended audience of 8-12 year olds.
“Hard-hearted people may be no fun to sit next to at parties, but they are just as entitled to earn a living as the rest of us. Fortunately-for them, at least-the need for insurance adjusters, tax collectors, theater critics, and the like continues to this very day.”
One of my only complaints about listening to the book rather than reading it, is that there are so many great and funny passages and plays on words that I don't get a chance to capture on the audio. I especially love all of Agatha Swanburne's sayings (the founder of Penelope's school) which range from the silly to the profoundly wise and are often a bit of both.
The whole tone of the series is silly and delightful and Katherine Kellgren, the narrator of the audiobooks captures this perfectly! She once again is amazing in her reading of this book where she has to voice 10 year old Russian twin boys, an ancient mariner and also howl with enthusiasm. Her range is amazing and she completely commits to all the goofiness. If you want to read this series, I highly recommend the audio!
FINAL VERDICT: This series just keeps getting better! This installment is extremely satisfying because it provides so many answers to the nagging questions of the series but ends in such a way that promises book 6 will be exciting. My favorite words to describe this series? Charming and Delightful. 4 out of 5 stars.
