Merlin’s Blade by Robert Treskillard

Feb20

Blurb from back cover: “When a meteorite crashes near a small village in fifth century Britain, it brings with it a mysterious black stone that bewitches anyone who comes in contact with its glow—a power the druids hope to use to destroy King Uther’s kingdom. The only person who seems immune is a young, shy, half-blind swordmith’s son named Merlin.”

This YA title in Zondervan’s new teen fiction imprint Blink joins my shortlist of favorite fantasy novels and series that play off the Arthurian legend of Merlin, King Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table. Tereskillard’s Merlin is likable and easy to root for, and the minor characters are also well-realized and interesting. The fight between good and evil is engaging, and the ending is not a foregone conclusion. Even though Christ is greater than the old gods and the new magical stone of the druids, God’s ways are not always our ways and man’s sin and weakness are ever-present, making the story both suspenseful and satisfying.

I’ve read L’Morte d’Arthur, the long and sometimes repetitive compilation by Sir Thomas Mallory of fifteenth century stories about Arthur and his knights, and despite the repetition and the archaic language, I enjoyed Malory’s version of Arthur very much. I’ve also read several other novels, poems, and series that use these legends as a starting place. Here are some of my favorites:

The Once and Future King by T.H. White. White’s version of the Arthur legend is the source, in its turn, for Disney’s Sword in the Stone and for the musical Camelot. It’s light-hearted and rather fun.

Idylls of the King by Sir Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Arthurian legend in poetic form. Victorian Arthur.

The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And we that fight for our fair father Christ,
Seeing that ye be grown too weak and old
To drive the heathen from your Roman wall,
No tribute will we pay: so those great lords
Drew back in wrath, and Arthur strove with Rome.

And Arthur and his knighthood for a space
Were all one will, and through that strength the King
Drew in the petty princedoms under him,
Fought, and in twelve great battles overcame
The heathen hordes, and made a realm and reigned.

*************

If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

'Glastonbury Abbey' photo (c) 2009, Elliott Brown - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/The Pendragon Cycle by Stephen R. Lawhead consists of six novels:
Taliesin (1987)
Merlin (1988)
Arthur (1989)
Pendragon (1994)
Grail (1997)
Avalon (1999)

Lawhead’s druids, as I remember it, were good guys, for the most part, worshipping the One True God, whereas Treskillard takes the opposite approach with the druidow, as he calls them, being the definite bad guys in the story, evil and pagan through and through. Nevertheless, Treskillard, in the author’s note at the end of Merlin’s Blade, thanks Lawhead for his “unique and expert critique” and for inspiring him. There’s apparently room for more than one vision of Arthur and Merlin and druids.

King Arthur and His Knights of The Round Table by Howard Pyle is a summary/re-telling of Mallory without much extraneous material or re-interpretation. Pyle does organize the story and leave out a lot of the repetition to condense it down to a more manageable length.

Rosemary Sutcliff wrote several books related to Arthurian legend and early medieval/Roman Britain: The Lantern Bearers (1959), Sword at Sunset (1963), Tristan and Iseult (1971), The Light Beyond the Forest (1979), The Sword and the Circle (1981), and The Road to Camlann (1981). Excellent stuff.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain is mostly ridiculous, but not a bad read.

The last book in C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, That Hideous Strength, is set in post-modern Britain, but it features the “return of the king” (Arthur) and of Merlin.

The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment, all by Mary Stewart, are called together her Merlin Trilogy. Sh later wrote two more books based on Arthurian legend, The Wicked Day and The Prince and the Pilgrim but I have not read those.

Here There Be Dragons by James Owen, reviewed at Semicolon, has allusions to Arthurian legend: one of the islands in the story is Avalon, and King Arthur has some influence on events in the book.

The Sword in the Tree by Clyde Robert Bulla. Shan, son of Lord Weldon, hides a sword in the hollow of a tree. The events of this book take place during the time of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, and Shan eventually ends up in Camelot. This easy chapter book was a favorite of one of my daughters when she was younger.

The Defence of Guenevere by William Morris, with Semicolon commentary.

Of course, when talking about Arthurian farce and legend, one can’t forget the film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My friend in high school had the “hand grenade” monologue, and several other parts of the movie, memorized:

Cleric: And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, “O Lord, bless this thy hand grenade, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.” And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and large chu…
Brother Maynard: Skip a bit, Brother…
Cleric: And the Lord spake, saying, “First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

I liked Merlin’s Blade well enough that I have the second book in the planned Merlin Spiral trilogy, Merlin’s Shadow, on hold at the library. What’s your favorite version of or allusion to Arthurian legend?

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your A–– by Meg Medina

Feb19

When you have to delete a word from the title because you’re a middle-aged (old) lady who can’t bring herself to even type words that her mother taught her never to use, it’s probably a sign that this book is not for you (me). Yaqui Delgado, as I will dub this YA Cybils winner for the rest of this post, wasn’t written with old lady readers in mind. However, since I sometimes enjoy YA fiction, and since it’s a Cybils book and Ms. Medina is winner of the 2014 Pura Belpré Author Award, I struggled through.

Yaqui Delgado is a book about bullying. Along with gender identity confusion, bullying seems to be the topic du jour in middle grade and young adult fiction these days. Piddy Sanchez is new at her high school, and she gets a message that someone named Yaqui Delgado wants to beat her up. Why? Piddy (an unfortunate and distracting nickname for Piedad) never really knows, and she doesn’t even know know who Yaqui is at first. Various schoolmates speculate that the source of the enmity is because Yaqui’s boyfriend looks at Piedad’s rear end too much or because Piddy swings her hips and bottom when she walks. Whatever the reason Yaqui and her gang are out to get Piddy, and the harassment escalates as Piddy tries to figure out how to pacify her enemies without reporting them to the school authorities.

The school authorities are fairly helpless even when they do get wind of the bullying that’s going on, and the book ends with a resolution that doesn’t seem to me to be much of a solution to Piddy’s problem. At the very least, the solution is non-transferable to readers who may be dealing with the same issue; not everyone can move themselves to a magnet school and never see their tormentor again.

I wanted Piedad to fight back, tell Yaqui Delgado and her minions to take a flying leap, tell everybody, yell, scream, and generally make havoc until she got some real protection and help from the adults in her life who are supposed to be able to do something about such problems. Perhaps such character development would be unrealistic, but the plot as it was frustrated me. I’m an old lady, and I don’t believe in tolerating bullying or crude language. Zero tolerance for bullying takes more than a few signs to that effect posted around the school. It takes adults who will make sure the bullies don’t win.

The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller

Feb18

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller, sixth grade language arts and social studies teacher at Trinity Meadows Intermediate School in Keller, Texas.

Ms. Keller’s thesis can be summarized in two sentences: To make children into lifelong readers, surround them with books and let them read whatever they want to read. Treat them like readers, and they will become readers.

I’ve been following this plan in our homeschool for about twenty-five years now, with mixed results. Most of my eight children are readers. Several of them are voracious readers, the kind I am and the sort Ms. Miller describes herself as:

“I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go, don’t-look-at-my-Amazon-bill reader. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase. I am the person whom family and friends call when they need a book recommendation or cannot remember who wrote Heidi. (It was Johanna Spyri.)”

However, even with all this reading environment and encouragement and, yes, pressure, I have one child who does not see herself as a reader (she reads, just says she hates to read) and another who has quit reading for pleasure for the last two or three years at least. Unfortunately, Ms. Miller’s book gave me very few ideas about how to re-awaken the love of reading in my son or how to instill a love for reading in my daughter. I already let them read pretty much anything they want to read. I already suggest books for them, buy books for them, borrow books for them, encourage them to read about subjects they love, and show them daily how much reading means to me by reading as much as I can, anywhere I can. Our house is full of good books.

The Book Whisperer is a very public school, teacher-ish, kind of book, but it is a good resource for teachers of reading in school settings. It did spark a couple of ideas in this homeschool mom mind of mine: I could have a time (half an hour? an hour?) each day when we participate in ye olde public school D.E.A.R (Drop Everything and READ). I could require them to read 40 books for the school year (a requirement Ms. Miller has for her sixth graders) and see what happens. I could keep giving my daughter piles of books that I think she might like until she finds one she loves. It hasn’t worked yet, but it might still click one day.

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys

Feb17

My mother’s a prostitute. Not the filthy, streetwalking kind. She’s actually quite pretty, fairly well-spoken, and has lovely clothes. But she sleeps with men for money or gifts, and according to the dictionary, that makes her a prostitute.

That’s how Ruta Sepetys’ second YA novel starts out, and that intro pretty much tells you whether or not this coming-of-age novel set in the 1950’s about a girl who’s desperate to get out of NOLA is the right kind of book for you. I liked it—with reservations.

Let’s get the reservations out of the way first. The obligatory homosexual subplot and gay minor character are forced and awkward. I’m tired of authors notching their figurative diversity belts by shoehorning in a gay character or an episode in which their authorial lack of homophobia is displayed. But I expect to see more and more of this sort of thing in books just as I’m seeing it in TV series and movies. Skim time.

Some of the other characters are rather stereotypical, too. Our protagonist, seventeen year old Josie, has a mother-substitute, since her own mother is a witch. Of course, the maternal figure is a brusque, sharp-tongued madam with a heart of gold. Maybe madams with hearts of gold exist in all “respectable” brothels, I wouldn’t know, but they are a little too cliche to be believed. Then, there’s the old quadroon servant/chauffeur, Cokie, who knows his place but turns out to be the the most intelligent and dependable person around. Again, possible but hackneyed.

Nevertheless, these drawbacks can be overlooked because Josie herself is such a wonderful character. She lives and works in a bookstore in the lower class part of New Orleans. She loves to read. She also cleans the cathouse every morning, and she knows she wants to do and be more than her mother, more than her friends in the NOLA underworld, and more than New Orleans can ever give her. When Josie gets the bright idea that she could apply to go to the prestigious Smith College in far-off Massachusetts, she gives the application and the preparations her best effort, even when her mother’s cruelty and criminal connections threaten Josie’s dream.

Out of the Easy was one of the books nominated for the 2013 YA Fiction Cybils Award, and I liked it a lot more than I liked the winning book, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your A–. Rose Under Fire was the best of the shortlisted books, by the way. What all three books have in common is the rough, filled with evil, poverty and hardship, settings. There’s not a whole lot to choose between the barrio, the New Orleans underworld, and Ravensbruck. OK, Ravensbruck is much worse, but on the other hand, Rose Under Fire is a much more tragic, and ultimately redemptive, story than either Out of the Easy or Yaqui Delgado. Anyway, I would recommend Out of the Easy with the above caveats, and if you’re able to stomach another book with a truly horrific mother.

Saturday Review of Books: February 15, 2014

Feb15

“This is what you need to know about me: I’m anti-category in general. I am a literary anarchist. Read widely, rule the world. ” ~Maggie Stiefvater

SatReviewbutton

Sorry I’m so late: I lost my internet connection for a while, but it’s back now.

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Yvann@Readingwithtea (Bellfield Hall)
2. Hope (Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist)
3. SmallWorld Reads (Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes)
4. Susan@Reading World (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
5. Jilleen (Emma vs the Tech Guy)
6. Becky (Rachel)
7. Becky (Love’s Sweet Beginning)
8. Becky (To Kill A Mockingbird)
9. Becky (The New Treasure Seekers)
10. Becky (Midnight Falcon)
11. Becky (Beauty’s Daughter)
12. Becky (Dolphins of Shark Bay)
13. Becky (Colonel Brandon’s Diary)
14. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (Against Calvinism)		 15. Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son, A Broken Mother
16. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon)
17. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (The Sea of Monsters)
18. Guiltless Reading (The Trickster’s Hat Nick Bantock)
19. Guiltless Reading (The Trickster’s Hat by Nick Bantock
20. JD@The Literary Atlas (Don’t Even Think About It)
21. Susanne@LivingToTell (Forever After)
22. Colleen@Books in the City (While We Were Watching Downton Abbey by Wendy Wax))
23. Harvee @Book Dilettante(Savage Girl)
24. Harvee@Book Dilettante(The Fever Tree)
25. Harvee@Book Dilettante(I Am Abraham)
26. Lazygal (Half Bad)
27. Lazygal (Evertrue)
28. Lazygal (Codename Zero)		 29. Lazygal (Grasshopper Jungle)
30. Lazygal (Fire)
31. Lazygal (The Museum of Extraordinary Things)
32. Lazygal (Game Slaves)
33. Lazygal (Split Second)
34. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Pr1me of Life)
35. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Friend Me)
36. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Longbourn)
37. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Legend of The Easter Egg)
38. Guiltless Reading (Silk Armor by Claire Sydenham)
39. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Cybils 2013 short listed picture books)
40. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Armchair Cybils wrap up)
41. The Reader & The Book (Puff the Magic Dragon)

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Poetry Friday: A Madness Most Discreet

Feb14

A Slice of Life by Edgar Guest

'Sailing' photo (c) 2013, Miroslav Vajdic - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Let loose the sails of love and let them take
The tender breezes till the day be spent;
Only the fool chokes out life’s sentiment.
She is a prize too lovely to forsake . . .

Come Live With Me and Be My Love by Christopher Marlowe

COME live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

She Walks in Beauty Like the Night by Lord Byron

'Starry night, My copy' photo (c) 2013, Saad Faruque - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that ‘s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe.

But we loved with a love that was more than love–
I and my Annabel Lee–
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

Young Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott

'Knight' photo (c) 2011, Sam Howzit - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

As I Walked Out One Evening by WH Auden

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.

If Thou Must Love Me by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Sonnet 116: Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds by William Shakespeare.

Oh, My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns.

'Red rose' photo (c) 2011, Marina Shemesh - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun!
O I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti.

My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

The Bait by John Donne

'Golden hair' photo (c) 2010, Andrey - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/Come live with me and be my love
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.”
~Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Linda at TeacherDance has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup.

Sidekicked by John David Anderson

Feb13

Superheroes, from Gilgamesh and Enkidu to Samson and Gideon to Hercules to Beowulf to Superman and The Incredible Hulk—we weak mortals have always been fascinated with the adventures and exploits of men (sometimes women) with incredible talents, beyond human strength, and extraordinary intelligence. Superheroes are the stuff of legend and comic book—and nowadays middle grade speculative fiction.

John David Anderson’s Sidekicked takes one aspect of the superhero mythos, the Sidekick or assistant or superhero-in-training, and builds it into a snarky middle grade fictional essay on ethics. The moral of the story, however, is a little murky.

Andrew Bean, seventh grader and citizen of the city of Justicia, is a member of H.E.R.O., a secret organization of middle school students with exceptional gifts who are training, each under their own superhero mentor, to become Superhero Sidekicks. And there’s always the possibility that these junior heroes might even graduate to become Superheroes on their own someday. Meanwhile, Drew (aka the Sensationalist), his best friend Jenna (aka The Silver Lynx) and the other members of H.E.R.O. spend several hours a week training for their future as crime fighters in a secret room in the basement of Highview Middle School. Plus for everyone except Drew, there’s one-on-one training with their very Supers (special Superhero mentors). Drew has a Super, too, but unfortunately The Titan is a superhero of the washed-up variety, “going through a little identity thing”, and totally uninterested in mentoring, or rescuing, his erstwhile sidekick, Drew (aka The Sensationalist).

So, if you’ve got Superheroes, you also have to have Supervillains to match. And in Sidekicked the villains are coming out of the woodwork, and back from the dead, to attack and take over the city. Drew is committed to the Code, the Superhero Sidekick Code of Conduct, but things start to get complicated when the meaning of concepts like justice and honor and good and evil come into question. And when there’s a girl involved.

Like I said, this book is big on snarky, self-deprecating, middle grade humor (my favorite kind of funny) and confusing ethical discussions, but it’s a little short on answers. Which is OK. It’s the sort of book that entertains a lot while making kids think a little, and that’s the best kind, as far as I’m concerned.

Sidekicked is on the short list for the Cybils Awards in the category of Middle Grade Speculative Fiction. The winners of the Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category and all the other categories will be announced tomorrow, Friday, February 14th.

Superhero books that riff off the basic superhero model abound in middle grade fiction these days. Here are a few favorites:

Failstate by John W. Otte, reviewed at Semicolon.
The Cloak Society by Jeramey Kraatz.
Hero by Mike Lupica.
Geeks, Girls and Secret Identities by Mike Jung.
Dangerous by Shannon Hale, due out in early March, 2014.
Of course, Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo, recent winner of the Newbery Award, is a different kind of superhero story (squirrel superhero), maybe for a little younger audience than the above-listed. However, I enjoyed it immensely.

Do you have a favorite kid superhero novel?

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

Feb13

Geometry and drawing and chalk duels and strategy games and kidnapping (or murder?) and boarding school and alternative fantastical history with a touch of steampunk. The Rithamtist, by the same author who finished Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time adult fantasy series, is an excellent conglomeration of all of the above plus a lovely set of characters who made the reading both interesting and fun.

Joel is a poor scholarship student, son of the cleaning woman, at a rich people’s school. And what’s more, he longs to be a Rithmatist, but knows he’s missed his opportunity. Rithmatists are an elite bunch, even within an already elite school. They are the specially chosen fighting force that holds off the chalklings on the frontier in Nebrask and keeps them from overrunning the island states of the United Isles. Rithmatists are chosen in a special ceremony when children are only eight years old, and only one in a thousand is picked to join the Rithmatists. Unfortunately Joel missed his “inception” ceremony, so he’s doomed to hangout on the periphery of The Rithmatists who study at Armedius Academy and pick up what he can about Rithmatics as he makes unauthorized visits to Rithmatic classes.

However, now Rithmatist students are disappearing in very suspicious circumstances, and only Joel and the brilliant but aging Rithmatics Professor Fitch can possibly figure out who is behind the disappearances and how to stop them. But Joel suspects that Professor Fitch’s rival, the brash young Professor Nalizar, might be involved in the kidnappings, and a Rithmatist student who’s taking remedial classes, Melody, is definitely involved in Joel’s life whether he wants her to be or not.

You can’t go wrong with this Cybils-nominated fantasy adventure—unless you’re allergic to geometry or chalk dust. The winners of the Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category and all the other categories will be announced on Friday, February 14th. The Rithmatist is definitely a contender.

Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

Feb12

A homeschooling mom friend recommended Under the Never Sky, the first in a futuristic, dystopian trilogy of YA novels about a place I wouldn’t want to visit In Real Life. Aria lives in Reverie, an enclosed pod-like city where everyone spends their time experiencing life in virtual reality “Realms”. When she visits the outside, the “Real”, Aria is in for a dangerous surprise and a journey that will both change her and show her true self.

Perry is a hunter and a fighter; for him, violence is a way of life, a tool for survival. When he meets the Dweller-girl Aria, the two opposites form an unlikely alliance so that both of them can maybe get what they want. Aria wants to find her mother who has been lost in a research accident (or attack), and Perry wants to find his nephew who was kidnapped by the Dwellers.

Plot and characters were at the forefront of this YA novel, and the story itself was a page-turner. I couldn’t tell you what the story was about, in terms of themes, except maybe that surviving together in a harsh and dangerous world can breed inter-dependence, or even what Perry calls “being rendered” with another person.

“Aria smiled, turning toward him, her eyes dropping to his mouth. The room sweetened with her violet scent, drawing him in, becoming everything, and he felt it. A shift deep within him. The seal of a bond he’d known once before. And suddenly he understood . . .
It happened.
He had rendered to her.”

This one is a good, romantic yet wild and ferocious, adventure story for alternate universe geeks who love a good rendering on or around Valentine’s Day (or anytime really). The second and third books in this trilogy are titled Through the Ever Night and Into the Still Blue.