Beatrice Shakespeare Smith is in trouble. She’s always been notorious for the mischief she creates around the Theatre Illuminata, but after an incident involving a cannon, the destruction of several set pieces, and a spectacular fire, she finds herself stuck with two options—make herself useful, or leave the Theatre forever. Bertie isn’t like other members of the Theatre Illuminata. Everyone else has a defined purpose—They are all characters in famous plays, and without them at the Theatre, the plays cannot be enacted. Bertie was a foundling, with no written purpose, and for her, leaving the Theatre means leaving the only home she’s ever known. She decides, then, to give herself a purpose by restaging Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet, setting it in Egypt rather than Denmark. Her efforts begin roughly. Further complicating her problem is a plot surrounding The Complete Works of the Stage, otherwise known as The Book, a magical tome containing every play ever written, and the force that holds the Theatre Illuminata together. Without its influence, the characters are free to leave the Theatre, and one handsome and cunning player (and close friend) wants to escape at any cost, even if it means sending the Theatre into chaos…
Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev is a unique book. While I’ve encountered plenty of novels about the re-written or reinterpreted doings of famous literary characters, I’ve never before read one where the world was set up quite as creatively as this one. The experience of it is a bit disorienting at first—The Theatre Illuminata is not only a theatre populated by famous characters, but a theatre in which the set pieces are more wonderful than even the most imaginative set pieces in our world. Sets change themselves, as if by magic. Underwater scenes literally take place underwater. The sets themselves are also fully functional pieces of setting, rather than the mere suggestion of place that real-world sets tend to be, which means that if a character wants to take a break in a decadent Turkish bath, she only has to pull up the set piece for it, and Ta-Da! Instant luxury. Because of these elements, the Theatre Illuminata easily falls among the more interestingly established worlds in teen fantasy, and is bound to appeal particularly to theatre geeks.
The author herself had years of theatrical experience upon which to build the world in this novel, and it shows in both the details of the plot and the writing style itself. Bertie’s dealings with the various department managers—from props to scenery to wardrobe—read like fictionalized versions of actual experience, as does the energetic chaos surrounding every action requiring the cooperation of cast and crew. In clever keeping with its subject matter, the novel is also presented in both prose and script form. The switches are a little infrequent—the script format is only used early in the novel, despite there being several places later in the novel where it could have appeared—but they serve their purpose, and help to establish the theatrical setting of the story with greater clarity.
Mantchev’s personal love of theatrical literature is also apparent, as she packs a number of detailed theatrical references into the novel, mainly in the form of familiar characters. Said characters are mostly Shakespearean, which is a little bothersome, given that the Theatre is supposed to gather characters from every play ever. (A few characters, one a major character, hail from other plays, but the dominance of the Shakespearean characters makes the non-Shakespeareans feel out of place.) However, the characters are depicted well enough to compensate for this imbalance, especially Hamlet’s Ophelia and A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s fairy quartet, the latter of which, despite being minor characters in Shakespeare’s play, are amusingly written as main characters here, and through their mischief and snark are bound to become reader favorites. In further homage to the Bard, Mantchev also works in some elegant bits of wordplay. While she never goes so far as to write entire scenes in iambic pentameter, she frequently slips in little jewels of almost-poetry, which, combined with the imagination behind the setting, renders the novel an inventive read on several levels.
Unfortunately, the novel does struggle with a small, yet notable set of flaws. Its largest is that it juggles more major conflicts than it should have, and the conflict that it seems to set up as the major one—Bertie’s restaging of Hamlet—ends up falling by the wayside as trouble ensues with The Book. In fact, the Egyptian Hamlet is never actually staged in the novel, and though the play that replaces it is vastly more interesting and relevant to the narrative, the absence of Egyptian Hamlet made the novel feel incomplete. (Though I could be biased, since Hamlet is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, and I like seeing neat interpretations of it). It also isn’t clear until the end of the story whether the Theatre Illuminata is a theatre in our world, a theatre in a fictional world, or a universe unto itself, which, though only a minor detail, was nonetheless one that I found annoyingly distracting for the first half of the book.
Still, for its flaws, the novel does have charm. It also has sequels! It’s a trilogy completed by Perchance to Dream and So Silver Bright, so readers who love this first book have more to look forward to!
Princeless, Volume 1 – Graphic Novel Review
I came across Princeless by Jeremy Whitley and M. Goodwin at a local comic convention and didn’t have to think twice before picking it up. The cover alone promised all kick-butt girls, dragons, and adventure galore. It did not disappoint.
In Volume 1, when Princess Adrienne comes of age, she’s locked in a dragon-guarded tower because that’s A Thing That Happens to Princesses. Between the boredom of waiting and the dim-witted knights who show up to rescue her, she tires of this quickly. She decides that she’s going to be her own knight and so, with the aid of her dragon pal Sparky, rescues herself and embarks on a quest to free her sisters from their own towers.
A blurb on the front of this book calls it “the story Disney should’ve been telling for the past twenty years.” It’s entirely true. Adrienne is smart; the first few pages show a younger Adrienne tearing apart the plot holes in a traditional fairy tale. She’s also resourceful, and though she admittedly has a lot to learn about adventuring, she’s a capable heroine, well worth admiring.
Granted, she is entirely the “Not the Typical Princess” trope – a trope which, given that nearly every fictional princess these days is “Not the Typical Princess,” is becoming somewhat tired. However, Princeless makes this work by surrounding her with inversions of many other medieval fantasy tropes. Most obviously, despite the European-inspired setting, nearly every character in the main cast is a person of color. Likewise, Adrienne’s prince brother, who would normally be a heroic manly man in this sort of story, is meek and hesitant to inherit the throne, to the point where his father tells him to “stop being a woman.” Instead, his strength is found in his loyalty to his family and, unbeknownst to Adrienne, he plays a small but significant role in the beginning of her adventure.
Even the adventuresome elements are somewhat inverted. While it is all rollicking and fun, Adrienne encounters several practical bumps on her way to saving her sisters, discovering that dragons are hard to ride without saddles, and that it’s hard to fight in jangly armor that isn’t fitted to one’s body type. Though I usually prefer over-the-top adventure, it’s a nice change of pace to read about an adventurer whose problems are more mundane (well, for a person who has a dragon as a friend).
The comic is not without its flaws. However, most of them are minor. For some reason, the quality of the third chapter’s art falters in comparison to the art around it. It’s never off enough to be distracting, though. A bigger problem for me was that there are points where it feels like it’s trying too hard to be a commentary on sexist fantasy tropes. One chapter (also the third, in fact) is blatantly titled “On Sexism in the Armor Industry.” As relevant as the chapter is, I found it hard to believe that the female blacksmith introduced here designed and hand-made a whole line of armor for women without once realizing how impractical battlekinis are for protection—at least until Adrienne points it out. Throw in some stereotypical piggish behavior on the part of nearly every male in the scene, and the chapter reads like it was constructed solely to make a point. Fortunately, though, its actiony bits maintain the rest of the book’s sense of fun. And even with this forced point, it never reads like a preachy political pamphlet. Ultimately it treats its messages with the same sense of fun that it does its adventure.
That said, Princeless is a must-read for those who like to read about heroines with no time for princes. Still, casual readers of fantasy, comics and non, will find much to like in it, too.
Buzz – Graphic Novel Review
If you’re part of that rampant, raving crowd looking for books about illicit underground spelling bees, boy are you in luck!
In Buzz! by Ananth Panagariya and Tessa Stone, Webster just wants to survive his first day of high school. But on the way, he stumbles upon a street brawl of a spelling bee and is quickly flung into a world of spelling battle royales, where spoken letters transform into explosions of force, where champion spellers must go by aliases, lest they be swamped by overzealous fans, and where the secret Spelluminati has darker plans that may involve Webster himself…
Buzz! might be the most fun piece of print material that I’ve read, ever, y’all. It takes talent to take a concept as ridiculous as this and turn it into something more than a B-grade guilty pleasure, and Panagariya and Stone, combined, are that talent.
As one would expect (or at least hope) of a story that is centered on words and wordplay, Panagariya has a blast with all the potential inherent in his topic. Some of his plays are obvious (The main character’s name is Webster. His sister is Merriam.), but the words chosen for the characters to battle-spell are often thematically relevant to the area of the story in which they appear. Beyond that, Panagariya recognizes the basic silliness of his concept, and he runs crazy with it. His story reads like a spelling-bee-turned-Hollywood-action-movie. Webster’s opponents, in particular, become increasingly outlandish in the best way as the story progresses. My favorite was The Cosmonaut, a combat-trained Russian cosmonaut who, through an accident, was left adrift in space with nothing to do but read books and play word games until he was rescued, at which point we’re treated to this delicious description:
“After a while, when he looked into the darkness, the stars themselves seemed to take on the shapes of letters. He was rescued six months later. They said you could see stars in his eyes, carrying messages only for him.”
P-O-E-T-R-Y
Stone’s artwork is a massive delight on its own. I was familiar with Stone’s work prior to this book, having followed her delightful (if incomplete) webcomic Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name. (In fact, I discovered this book when researching what exactly happened to the webcomic.) The exuberance established in Hanna continues here. Energy bursts palpably off of every page, facilitated in no small part by the coloring of the artwork. In a clever color design choice, the art is in black, white, and selective uses of golden-yellow—perhaps a visual pun on the “bee” in “spelling bee?” Relatedly, her illustrations of the bees themselves are giddily wonderful to look at. Letters spring dynamically off the page in the early battles, or are illustrated in ways reflective of their word’s meaning. Later battles are illustrated with fun absurdity matching Panagariya’s writing. Especially adept spellers can manipulate the words they spell to have physical effects on their targets, or speak letters into existence for use as weapons, and Stone has as much fun with this as Panagariya does with his plot.
Granted, for all its goodness, it does take a certain sense of humor to appreciate this book. If you see “spectacular spelling battle royale” and instantly think “omg that is so stupid,” you’re definitely not the audience for it. But if you have just enough curiosity to pick it up and flip through it, that’s all you need. After that, you’ll be H-O-O-K-E-D.
***
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Holo Writing at AWA!*
*Second in a series of VERY BELATED con posts because, again, EDITING. 😛
This past September, Jacob and I decided it was time to branch out from our usual tiny, comfy cons and tackle something a little bigger. So we packed up our bow ties and headed to Anime Weekend Atlanta.
AWA held a lot of firsts for us:
It was our first large con (over 30,000 people)!
It was the first con for Bane of the Dead and Throne of the Dead.
It was the first con for our snazzy new Time Reavers t-shirts.
And it was the first con at which we had a t-shirt stolen, which is a sign of success, I guess?
Despite that bump, it was one of the best cons we’ve ever attended. The Seraphim Revival was a massive hit (because obviously, giant robots at an anime convention).
Also, not to toot our own horn (Oh, who are we kidding? We are totally tooting), but the following exchange happened with a surprising number of people:
“I bought (insert book here) yesterday and read half of it last night. I want all the others!”
Variants included “I started this book at lunch and decided I needed the rest.”
My first thought at all of these was “When do you people find time to read at a con? Are there time turners involved?”
My second was, “WHOA. People really like our books.”
Which is a really lovely feeling to have.
Also lovely? Cosplayers, of course! I didn’t get to snap as many photos as I usually do at cons (because OMG SO BUSY), but awesome costumery was rampant. Here are some of my favorites:
Zeppeli! 😀
KOS-MOS!
Princess Tiana!
Mac and Bloo!
Finally, not a cosplay, but rather the best Dealer’s Room ad that I’ve ever seen:
Needless to say, House Holo is now a little more manly.
Holo Writing at Dragon Con (The Sequel)!*
“We should do the most ridiculous cosplay we can think of.”
This is something that is said frequently in House Holo (mostly by me, with Jacob nodding politely), but rarely comes to fruition. When my sis said that she was joining us for this year’s Dragon Con, however, we knew this was our chance to rock it.
Thus, we bring you Steampunk Kronk, Yzma, and Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove.
*Super late because, unfortunately, novels don’t edit themselves.
I chose Kronk to give myself motivation to get buff. Ha.
Kel chose Yzma because she’s basically young Yzma anyway.
Jacob is Kuzco because we found the idea of Jacob with a llama head too good to pass up and he didn’t say no.
Jacob did Kuzco’s dancing expertly in the hotel room but punked out on us at the con, so Kel and I had to make up for him.
We were supposed to have additional steampunked props—an oven backpack for me, a potion gun for Yzma, a Tesla coil for Kuzco because why not?—but ran out of time because if you’re not rushing to finish your cosplays at the last minute before a con, you’re not doing it right. Perhaps next year!
Because sis and I are both Disney nerds, we also tossed together some other Disney cosplays. Kel wanted to be The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s Esmeralda, so I elected to be her goat (or rather, a steampunk-ish version of said goat).
And because no day with my sis is complete without a Little Mermaid reference, she went as SailDress!Ariel, and I recycled bits of Djali to be (steampunk-ish) Scuttle.
Meanwhile, Jacob wandered around as the 11th Doctor pretending to be bewildered by his strange companions.
Event-wise, over the years we’ve found that it’s best to approach Dragon Con with no plan whatsoever. It takes so long to go places and waits for the headlining panels are so long that it’s really more fun to walk and people watch until we get tired, and then just go to whatever event is happening nearby to rest our feet.
The panels that we went to were a blast, though. Granted, this long since the event, I can’t remember specifically what we went to, but I remember that at some point we got to sit in the same room with Jim Butcher, Peter F. Hamilton, John Ringo, Jody Lynn Nye, and a general TON of our favorite authors, so that was cool.
And of course, no con post is complete without a gallery of awesome cosplays, so here are some of our favorites from this year:
This Mad Max: Fury Road cosplay wins everything.
Calvin and Hobbes! 😀
Legion from Mass Effect!
Satine from Moulin Rouge!
Not one, but two Willy Wonkas!
Budget cosplay = EXPERT LEVEL.
A stellar Belle and the Beast!
This poor guy waited the whole con.
And finally, a very in-character Krieg from Borderlands (complete with chatty CL4-PTP)!
The Wizard’s Way – 1st Draft Complete!
artwork by Mandy O’Brien
Hey, everybody! H. P. here! I’ve been largely invisible on this blog for the past age or so. This is partly because I’m a lazy blogger and partly because I do all the marketing, layout, and graphic work for Jacob’s books while he makes the writing magic happen. Mostly, though, it’s because I’ve been devoting every valuable microsecond of my free time to finishing my own first novel, which is…
~ F I N A L L Y F I N I S H E D ~
(The first draft, that is.)
Now, you may be asking, “What is this masterpiece that H. P. has been so reclusively working on?” Well, it comes down to three things:
Monsters.
Murder.
Swashbuckling pug butlers.
Yes, you read that right.
Beyond that, The Wizard’s Way is a story of a young man finding his way in the world. This is challenging for any young person, but it’s especially challenging for one whose way involves keeping giant mechanical flamethrower lions from popping out of him.
Specifically, it comes down to this:
artwork by Mandy O’Brien
J. Chaucey Thatcher has a monster inside him, but this is the least of his worries.
A murderer prowls the Iron City, slaying inventors. An angry mob storms close behind, blaming wizards. Any they find, they burn alive.
Chaucey is an inventor. He is also secretly a wizard, and the only person who can help with this secret was just murdered before his very eyes.
But when it comes to investigating, Chaucey is as dogged as his best friend is dog. With the help of his loyal pug butler, his sparky (almost? maybe?) girlfriend, and a sleuth of rambunctious bears, he has vowed to unravel the mystery of these murders and save the city from the grips of terror.
But the monster inside him burns for escape.
Will he save the Iron City? Or will the monster destroy it first?
artwork by Mandy O’Brien
The TL;DR version? Wizard puberty is the worst.
Now you may be asking, “How soon can I expect to read this redonkulous thing?” Presently, the Jacob half of Holo Writing is giving the book its first hardcore editing pass. Pending a few revisions, we’re aiming for an early 2016 release. (SUMMER 2016 UPDATE: Well, that didn’t happen. But it’s happening soon, so hooray!)
While you wait, however, you can feast your eyes on the above sketches of the cover art, produced by the talented artist linked above! And also here because you are totally not making good use of your Internet life if you skip her page.
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Baker’s Dozen – Book Review
Jacob and I went to LibertyCon in Chattanooga, TN this June! (This article is WAY LATE because life.) Anyway, LibertyCon is notable for being more reader- and author-oriented than other conventions in the area…which means that I ended up coming home with approximately 90,000 books to read and likely review.
I am already exhausted just thinking about that. (Since this article is late: still exhausted.)
First on my pile was Baker’s Dozen: 13 Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories by Scott W. Baker.
First off, the cover does this book a real disservice. I love its visual pun, but nothing about a carton of a dozen plus one eggs screams sci-fi, and had I not encountered the author at a signing, I’m pretty sure I might never have picked it up.
I’m glad I did, though, because it’s a fun sampler platter of short stories. Baker divides the anthology into Space Opera, Urban Fantasy, Near Future SF, and Zombies. The best stories are found later in the book, but overall it was worth the $8 print cost.
Admittedly, I was a little underwhelmed by several of the early stories. While the point of a short story is, of course, to be short, a lot of the early entries in this anthology feel too short. Either they end just when they feel like they’re getting started, or the end brings a dark, abrupt twist that makes the story feel abbreviated.
Really, though, this complaint stems from the fact that I wanted to see more of each featured world. “Chasers,” a space opera about pilots who race to refuel spaceships, had the potential to be one of my favorites and could have expanded into a great action drama, but succumbed to one of the aforementioned dark, abrupt endings. “Ten Seconds,” a contemporary fantasy about a bullied child who can see ten seconds into the future, was another that, while ending happily, also ended just as I was getting excited to continue it.
When your main complaint about an author’s writing is that you want more of it, though, it’s not a bad thing.
In this anthology, Baker is at his best when he’s writing quirky humor or putting fantastic spins on modern settings. “Faerie Belches,” about a child who, well, hears fairies belch, is a fun read with some interesting twists. (Given the stories’ similarities, I pictured the characters from “Ten Seconds” and “Faerie Belches” belonging to the same universe and kind of hope that the author will turn this into a complete children’s novel.) “Excuse Me,” about a man who travels back in time every time he farts, is amusing for its concept alone, while “ZFL” is a hilarious look at a zombie football game from the perspective of its commentators.
There’s intriguing drama in many of the late stories, too, though, and I think a lot of these could support complete novels as well. “Secondhand Rush” was a particular favorite; it follows a man who performs daring, even foolish stunts, all for the purpose of selling the digitized memory of performing them to disembodied human minds stored in computers, which is straight up cool even before you consider that the man suffers Multiple Sclerosis (and all the conflicts that implies). “Thinking Out Loud” is an intriguing multi-point-of-view look at a psychic experiment being performed on prisoners; “How Quickly We Forget” is a haunting look at the actions of a memory-removal technology company; and “Call Me Z,” while humorous in places, is largely a look at what happens when a zombie fanboy (in a world where zombies can be domesticated) encounters his first zombies.
The contents of Baker’s Dozen may be too short for my taste, but the volume’s best stories and the sheer variety of material included make it worth a try. Recommended!
The Sons of Liberty – Book Review
Two escaped slaves get superpowers, team up with Ben Franklin, and wreak havoc on their corrupt former owner. This tells you all you need to know about The Sons of Liberty.
This graphic novel, penned by Alexander and Joseph Lagos, is more National Treasure than history class, which is probably why it’s one of the most fun comics that I’ve read in a while.* Graham and Brody begin as slaves under the cruel Jacob Sorenson. When Sorenson’s son attacks Brody, Graham’s act of defense puts them both on the run, where they encounter Benjamin Franklin’s crazypants son, who has been electrocuting animals and, increasingly, slaves in effort to see what effect it has on their bodies. In this case, superpowers! (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.) The boys proceed to befriend Ben Franklin, who gives them work in his print shop, and Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay, who teaches them the African martial art of dambe and suggests that they use their newfound powers to right the wrongs slavery has inflicted upon the country.
Normally I’m irked by historical inaccuracy in books, but I make a gleeful exception for this one. After all, via Authors’ Note, the writers are pretty blatant about the historical inaccuracy (see again: superpowers), and most of the relevant inaccuracies are so ridiculous that they’re instantly noticeable. For example, while Benjamin Lay was truly eccentric and loudly anti-slavery (as depicted in the book) he also had a hunched back (as also depicted in the book), which logically seems like something that would interfere with the learning of most martial arts (not depicted in the book). William Franklin, too, is such an exaggeratedly despicable character that it’s hard to see anything that he does as historically-based (other than his strained relationship with his father, which was accurate). Such exaggerations permeate the book, from the fictional slave hunter who outfits his dog collars with foot-long spikes to a terrifyingly huge Hessian character who has no problem scalping a person with his bare hands. These are all the things of over-the-top action movies, which make it easier to suspend disbelief for this particular tale.
Graham and Brody, however, are decidedly non-exaggerated characters, which is what makes the story work so well. Most of the problems that they face in the story are problems that would be faced by any runaway slave—having to evade slave hunters, trying to find food without being conspicuous, worrying about the friends and family they left behind, etc.—and even once they acquire their powers, they react as one would expect teens in their situation to act—terrified at first, and then WHOA THESE POWERS ARE AWESOME. Surprisingly little of the story centers around their powers, too, but this is far from a flaw. Between Lay’s abolition efforts, Franklin’s conflict with William, William’s own several duplicities, and both of Graham and Brody’s conflicts (that is, hiding from Sorenson while learning to use their powers), there’s more than enough to keep the reader interested.
The writing itself zips between each storyline quickly, but never feels rushed. Dialogue is particularly well-handled, with several characters possessing their own unique styles of speaking. The art, too, is energetic, with smart use of color, expression, and character design, even if the lineart beneath the color occasionally looks too quickly-drawn. (It’s far from bad, but every now and then a character will look off-model. It’s not frequent enough to interfere with the reading experience, though.)
Ultimately, The Sons of Liberty is more concerned with entertainment than education. Considering that this was its goal in the first place, it does it with panache—so much so that it might even make readers interested in the true history behind the story! At its heart, it’s an exciting fantasy romp through pre-Revolutionary America, and highly recommended.
***
*No offense to history teachers. Mine were magnificent, but I’ve had several teens refuse historical fiction because they say their history teachers ruined it for them.
11 Doctors, 11 Stories – Book Review
The history of Doctor Who spans 50+ years of TV broadcast, radio plays, print publications, video games, and several spinoff series, which means that there are lots of places for newbies to dive in, and not all of them are easy starting points. For those first approaching Doctor Who through print, the short story collection 11 Doctors, 11 Stories is one of the best ways to do it (and is also a fine read even for established Whovians.)
For the uninitiated, Doctor Who follows a Time Lord known as The Doctor as he travels through time and space, usually with one or more companions, but always with the aid of his trusty Sonic Screwdriver and intermittently trusty TARDIS (a.k.a. iconic-blue-police-box-slash-time-and-space-traveling-machine). As a Time Lord, he cannot die, but rather regenerates into a different form whenever death-like circumstances require it.
He might also be the most powerful being in any of the series’ universes, simply because he can speak total BS and use it to world-rendingly save the day: He’s been poisoned? No prob, he’ll just eat some walnuts and ginger beer and then burp it out in a cloud of magic Time Lord smoke. The day generally looks hopeless? Give him some complicated space-and-time-pseudo-science babble and a random mundane object and THAT MESS IS FIXED. The Doctor Who canon never formally acknowledges this superpower, just as it never acknowledges the fact that the time-traveling structure of the series renders every bit of tension that happens null and void when you even try to think about it. That said, its consistency is a hot mess, but it’s also a fun, whimsical, and refreshingly optimistic series, and that alone makes it worth a try.
As of this writing, the series has moved up to its Twelfth Doctor (well, Thirteenth, but that’s a tale for a decided Whovian), which is one reason why this anthology is such a good starting point. Each story in the collection follows a different one of the then-eleven Doctors and thus provides a good series primer. The stories themselves have impressive pedigrees for the YA sci-fi and fantasy crowd, coming from the pens of Neil Gaiman, Patrick Ness, Eoin Colfer, Philip Reeve, and others, which gives the anthology the added benefit of exposing readers to some of the finest writers in this genre, all in one place.
Unfortunately, this pedigree doesn’t always equal absolute goodness. The first two entries are easily the anthology’s weakest. Eoin Colfer’s First Doctor opener “A Big Hand for the Doctor” suffers from a bland, action-oriented plot. Action has never been one of Doctor Who’s strengths, considering that the Doctor’s favorite battle strategies consist of running or distracting enemies until he can drop a convenient plot bomb. There is no plot bomb in this story, either, which makes it seem like a huge waste of the infinite BS possibilities of the Doctor Who universe. The story also features a lot of random, misplaced elements that feel like they belong in another story, sometimes because they literally do; the Gnommish language from Colfer’s Artemis Fowl series makes an inexplicable appearance, and a late story twist credits the Doctor’s adventure with the creation of another classic, beloved story that, in the context of this adventure, is also inexplicable. Overall the entry reads like Colfer forgot that he was assigned to write the thing and so turned in the first draft that he scrawled out, which is disappointing because 1) when he’s writing in his own worlds, Colfer is one of my favorite writers, and 2) the story could have been pretty cool if fully developed. As for the Second Doctor, I literally remembered nothing about Michael Scott’s “The Nameless City” when I sat down to write this review (two days after reading it).
Fortunately, the rest of the anthology vworps in like the TARDIS on a good day and saves everything. BSery aside, the real strength of the Doctor Who series is its ability to craft clever, quirky storylines around whatever random props the BBC had lying around its lot at the time. Obviously, a book does not have the same type of budget limitations as a TV series, but the stories in this anthology are written in keeping with the series’ rag-and-bone spirit.
Marcus Sedgwick’s Third Doctor tale “The Spear of Destiny” is a prime example of the series’ strengths. I mean, it’s got museums, Vikings, uniquely Whovian explanations of how certain historical events really went down (you know, time magic and stuff), and plenty of well-placed twists. You can’t really go wrong with that, and it doesn’t.
Philip Reeve’s “The Roots of Evil” only adds to the momentum, setting its adventure on a space-station-that-is-really-an-enormous-complex-sentient-populated-tree-that-exists-solely-to-kill-The-Doctor (Fourth, in this case). It’s in this story and the previous that the collection begins to actually feel like a genuine entry into the Doctor Who canon, combining the series’ distinct eccentricity (All the alien names are elaborate commentaries on The Doctor’s intended fate) with a thoroughly fascinating, whimsical setting.
These elements all cumulate in Patrick Ness’ Fifth Doctor tale “Tip of the Tongue,” which may be the best entry in the anthology. In this tale, Truth Tellers have become all the rage in World War II-era Maine. These devices speak absolute truths about the people at whom the wearer directs them, which, predictably, leads to all sorts of unpleasantness. However, most of the entry’s conflict comes not from the fantastical elements, but the tensions that are inherent in its main characters being, respectively, biracial and a German Jew in a time period that was especially unfriendly to both. The story manages a delicate balance of quirk and respect for the darker elements of history (and those who suffered them), which is a mark shared with some of the finer episodes of the TV series.
Richelle Mead’s “Something Borrowed” gives readers a break from the serious, taking the Sixth Doctor on a romp through a planet modeled on the ridiculousness of Las Vegas. The fact that it involves an alien Las Vegas wedding and mini-pterodactyls tells you all you need to know about the colorful wackiness of this one.
Malorie Blackman takes readers back to the serious with the intriguing “The Ripple Effect,” in which the Seventh Doctor accidentally re-writes the universe (yep) and must decide whether to leave it as is or revert back to the original universe. This decision is complicated by the presence of the Daleks; in the original universe, the Daleks are an indiscriminately murderous race (which, after Classic Who, becomes partly responsible for the annihilation of the Time Lords and thus a whole lot of dramatic Last Time Lord angst). However, in this new universe, the Daleks are so docile and benevolent that they give lectures about bad manners! Most of the tension in this story comes from the Doctor himself, who can’t fathom a universe with such Daleks, and it’s interesting to watch his moral dilemma unfold.
After this, Alex Scarrow finishes up the Classic Who with his Eighth Doctor tale “Spore,” which is easily the creepiest piece in the collection. Much of what makes it cool can’t be revealed without revealing spoilers (and thus reducing the creep factor), but the twists behind all the creepiness rendered it another of my favorites.
The anthology enters the New Who timeline with Charlie Higson’s “The Beast of Babylon.” This story is notable for assigning the Ninth Doctor an unexpected sort of companion, and also for a clever twist that ends up setting it inside the first episode of the re-imagined TV show. Higson’s depiction of the Doctor is spot-on, too; the Ninth Doctor’s voice clicked effortlessly into my head the moment he first spoke in the story. (Not that the previous Doctors don’t sound like themselves; I’m simply not familiar enough with Classic Who to comment on the accuracy of those depictions.)
Derek Landy takes the Tenth Doctor into literary territory in “The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage,” plunging the Doctor into a mysterious world constructed around his companion’s favorite childhood book series, The Troubleseekers. Despite revolving around a fictional series of books, the story has the same charm as the TV series’ literature-related episodes (even if the reveals are a little underwhelming) and Landy’s writing style is well-matched to the Tenth Doctor’s personality.
Finally, Neil Gaiman finishes the anthology with the Eleventh Doctor story “Nothing O’Clock.” Here, a dangerous race known as The Kin has escaped from a defunct Time Lord prison and is up to no good on 1980s Earth. The story borrows from current showrunner Steven Moffat’s tendency to take mundane things and make them terrifying—in this case, people in amusing masks, innocent questions, and selling a house. Its twists and world building rank it among the best (i.e. most coherent) Eleventh Doctor tales, and the writing, being Neil Gaiman’s, is the most charming in the anthology (if you like Neil Gaiman, as I do).
As a whole, then, the anthology more than overcomes its underwhelming start. Whether you’re an established Whovian or a noob who still abbreviates the show as Dr. Who (DON’T), 11 Doctors, 11 Stories is definitely worth reading.
Soul Eater Cosplay: Eruka Frog
Moving a long drive away from my seamstress mother led me to stop mooching off her sewing skills and finally teach myself how to sew. This is the result!
I chose Eruka Frog from Soul Eater as my first genuine sewing project because of the simplicity of the costume. Pattern-wise, it comes down to a polka-dotted sundress, long sleeve T-Shirt, tights, and boots, three of which can easily be purchased and used as-is*. However, her distinctive frog hat is also a must, and having never made a hat before, I wanted to tackle that, too.
*supposedly. I had a hard time finding white boots that weren’t cheap costume boots, but I assume they exist somewhere.
For the dress, I used Simplicity pattern 2176 and patterned cotton cloth. The pattern itself required minimal alterations, but the cloth I chose ended up presenting some small problems: The relative transparency of the polka dots made any seams behind the dots visible upon close examination, and of course, by the nature of patterned cloth, it was nearly impossible to make the polka dots flow seamlessly from piece to piece.
After the costume was finished, I happened upon several tutorials that suggested beginning with black cloth and painting the polka dots on once it was finished. Should I ever remake this costume, this might be the approach that I’ll take.
After the dress came the hat, which was loads of fun to make!
I used a combination of tutorials to guide the design. Shironotenshi’s at DeviantArt was the main one. I deviated from it some in that I used orange broadcloth instead of stretch cotton (for the main hat), Free Form Air instead of Sculpey (for the eyes), and that I didn’t use spray adhesive (for the internal batting) but rather sewed everything together after stuffing the upper portion.
I used broadcloth because it was cheap, and I (correctly) anticipated making many mistakes until everything came together nicely.
Free Form Air I used because I had it lying around anyway, and also because it is a very light material that was less likely to weigh down and disfigure the hat. It’s also easy to sand, which enabled me to get a nice, round, eye-like shape with minimal effort. And while we’re on it, to mold the eyes, I just plopped the stuff in a 2” wide PVC pipe cap, stuck in some .25” O-rings, and let it dry. (Should you want to do this, note that you’ll want to line the cap with something like plastic wrap to prevent the Free Form Air from sticking to the mold.)
When it came to determining the size of the brim, I found the earlier tutorials too vague, so I switched to this one, which helped me determine the brim size using the magic of math!
The hat was easily my favorite part of the project. Ultimately, a combination of incorrectly estimating the size of my head and having to make an extra seam (and thus lose .25”) ended up making it a little too small, but overall I think it came out quite well.
The costume debuted at a local con earlier this year, but is not as finished as I intend it to be. About a week before the con, I remembered that I hadn’t secured any white boots, so I attempted to convert an old pair of black leather boots. This ended disastrously, thus necessitating an emergency shoe change.
From now on, I’ll listen to tutorials when they tell me not to use regular spray paint on leather boots.
Because of some admittedly amateurish mistakes, I’ll likely remake parts of the costume in the future (bigger hat, more accurate polka dots on the dress, etc.). However, for the first project I completed entirely on my own, I was quite pleased with the result.
In the future, I hope to add boots (of course), Eruka’s suitcase, and possibly a Tadpole Jackson prop.
Thief’s Covenant – Book Review
Once she was Adrienne Satti, an orphan with a rags-to-riches story. Now she is Widdershins, a thief with a sharp blade, a sharper wit, and help from a secret god living in her head. But now something horrid, something dark, is reaching out for her, a past that refuses to let her go…
So declares the back of Thief’s Covenant by Ari Marmell.
I first encountered this title when researching books that read like video games, and after reading it, am surprised that it took me the effort of research to actually find out about it. It’s a title that has appeal for a wide variety of audiences. Fans of historical adventure, low fantasy, kick-butt heroines, good old-fashioned sneakery, and playing stealth games solely to climb on things will all find something to like in this novel.
The most perfect audience for Thief’s Covenant is the teen who just wants to play Assassin’s Creed but has a book report due tomorrow that hasn’t even been started yet. It’s quick, it’s witty, and its combination of stealth tactics, action, and political intrigue basically render it Assassin’s Creed with a girl.
Widdershins herself deserves to rank among fan-favorite heroines like Graceling’s Katsa and pretty much every Tamora Pierce heroine. She’s quick-witted, adaptable, determined, and in no way is she going to let the powers that be step all over her. When both the Davillon City Guard and Finders’ Guild (that is—ha—thieves’ guild) start harassing her for (mostly) unfounded reasons, she decides to show them both by stealing an item from a visiting dignitary—not because she actually wants the item, just to show that she won’t be so easily contained. Her very nickname suggests opposition, “widdershins” meaning “counterclockwise.” Of course, as exemplified by the aforementioned adventure, her determination sometimes (read: often) translates into headstrong recklessness. Widdershins frequently gets into trouble without the aid of any force but herself. For readers, this isn’t a bad thing. It’s fun to watch her fall into exponentially worsening trouble because it means she’ll have to do something equivalently clever to get out of it, which she frequently does.
She’s also too busy running from the City Guard, Finders’ Guild thugs, other people who generally want her dead, and oh, demons, to have time for a romance, which is a refreshing change from other heroines whose goals are complicated by the two hot guys vying for their attentions.
Her relationship with the god in her head, Olgun, is fascinating, too, as is the entire concept of religion in this setting. Davillon’s is a faith centered around a Pact of 147 acknowledged gods, from which families and organizations choose to take as household deities and official patrons. The gods are active in the city, visible through tangible boons granted to worshippers; Widdershins’ in particular helps her thievery in subtle ways. These gods also regulate the behavior of the city; organizations with patron gods of the Pact can’t openly attack one another without violating the Pact, which is why the City Guard can’t take on the Finder’s Guild without resorting to sneaky methods (or otherwise starting a war). The resulting tension, combined with a plot involving the history of Widdershins’ personal god, makes this religion one of the most interesting pieces of world-building in the book.
The writing itself is another strength of the novel. The prose is peppered with amusing, ironic wit, and the style balances the derring-do and drama quite well, never becoming too over-the-top or too melodramatic. Also, despite being the first book in a series, the story functions as a standalone, and thus is a welcome departure from the cliffhanger endings favored by other YA series starters.
For squeamish readers, it’s worth noting that the novel opens in the midst of carnage involving a ton of murdered bodies that have been hacked into such fine pieces that the characters can’t figure out which body parts belong to which victim. However, that is by far the worst of the violence in the book, and most that occurs is pretty standard for a book of this type.
Overall, Thief’s Covenant is a solid start to a promising series. I look forward to reading more!
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Department 19 – Book Review
From book jacket: When Jamie Carpenter’s mother is kidnapped, he finds himself dragged into Department 19, the government’s most secret agency. Fortunately for Jamie, Department 19 can provide the tools he needs to find his mother, and to kill the vampires who want him dead. But unfortunately for everyone, something much older is stirring, something even Department 19 can’t stand up against…
I read Department 19 at the frequent recommendation of one of my regular teens at the library. His enthusiasm for the series, combined with the first entry’s shamelessly and splendidly Expendables-like cover, led me to expect the best in ridiculous action movie-style epicness. Unfortunately, the book never truly lives up to the anticipated epicness, but it’s still a pretty fun read for readers who are willing to put up with its flaws.
Department 19 follows the classic Teenager Discovers Dark and Awesome Family History and Suddenly Has An Important Coming of Age Adventure plot. In this case, unbeknownst to his family, Jamie’s father was secretly a member of the titular vampire-hunting organization, and his family’s relevance in the organization ensures him an eventual place in it, as is Department 19 tradition. First, though, he has to rescue his mom and earn that place.
The novel is basically an entertaining read. It’s rarely short on action, there are plenty of fun vampire-hunting gadgets and codenames for things (The series’ main weapon is called a T-Bone because it’s a big stake GET IT? xD ), and the story’s world is derived from classic monster literature (Department 19 itself was founded by the main characters in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Jamie’s partner/bodyguard is Frankenstein’s monster).
Its flaws are mainly found in its structure and characters. One would expect a novel with a cover like this to explode to a start and never really slow down; however, despite most chapters involving an action scene of some sort, the novel’s momentum takes a long time to build, and even then never hits a healthy stride. A lot of this is due to the fact that the novel is actually composed of several different stories taking place in different time periods—Jamie’s storyline, the founders’ and founders’ descendants’ storyline, Jamie’s father’s storyline, and a few random other storylines. None of the stories are necessarily uninteresting, but the way in which they’re interwoven slows the pace down a lot. Sometimes the amount of information gained from the non-Jamie chapters is so insignificant, too, that I wondered why the author chose to revolve a whole chapter and action scene around something that could have been conveyed in a single expository paragraph. A few chapters and even a few characters are introduced in detail only to have no impact on the story whatsoever! Also, most of the characters, while Action Movie Cool, are not very engaging on an individual level, and many of their decisions seem very noodly in logic. Characters switch allegiances and drop plot twist bombs out of nowhere, and near the end it happens so frequently that parts of the climax just make you go WHUT. But then vampires start attacking, and the high octane combined with the fact that these vampires explode gloriously (goriously?) when staked provides enough distraction to carry through the end of the novel.
Another major flaw is that the novel stretches suspension of disbelief a little far. One expects to suspend at least a little disbelief in stories like this, but Department 19 expects readers to believe that, despite his father being somewhat reviled in the organization, Jamie can sass and faux-tough-guy his way into getting Department 19 officers to give him the resources needed to help fight the vampires who kidnapped his mom. The organization does, but it’s in an “UGH, OKAY,” kind of way, which strikes me as highly unrealistic even in a setting like this. I can’t think of any functional government organization that would willingly, much less begrudgingly, bestow crazypants anti-vampire weaponry on a teenager who 1) didn’t even believe that vampires existed until yesterday, and 2) is not very good at acting tough or competent in the first place. Especially when he is stupid enough to run to the aid of a hot vampire girl and not expect her to try to tear out his throat (which also happens). Yet somehow, the novel also expects readers to believe that, after a mere 48 hours of training, Jamie can nearly ace a testing simulation that provides a challenge even to seasoned agents.
Pacing and believability flaws aside, though, Department 19 is ultimately an entertaining read. When taken as individual units, the chapters actually read pretty quickly, and though there were points when I became exasperated with Jamie’s silly heroics and the useless detail, I never stopped enjoying the book. I just wish that it had been written more efficiently.