Saturday Review of Books: December 15, 2012

Dec15

â€œBooks, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institutions—such call I good books.â€ ~Henry David Thoreau

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™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 youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™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 youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™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. Lazygal (Grave Mercy)
2. Lazygal (The Ballerinas)
3. Lazygal (House of Meetings)
4. Lazygal (Out of the Easy)
5. Lazygal (Summer at Tiffany)
6. Lazygal (A Blink of the Screen)
7. Lazygal (A Tangle of Knots)
8. Lazygal (The Dinner)
9. Lazygal (A Thousand Pardons)
10. Deb on the Run (Recently Read Books)
11. Mental multivitamin (Reading life review)
12. Mystie (Blink)
13. Mystie (Recently Read)
14. Mystie (Storycraft)
15. Mystie (Fairy Tale Picture Books)
16. Melinda (The Conviction to Lead)
17. Barbara H (Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing)

18. Hope (The Hobbit)
19. the Ink Slinger (On the Bookshelf XIII)
20. the Ink Slinger (Peter’s Angel)
21. Girl Detective (Fairest, a Fables GN
22. Girl Detective (The Devil in Silver)
23. Girl Detective (Drama)
24. Girl Detective (Tiny Beautiful Things)
25. Girl Detective (Turn of Mind)
26. Becky’s Book Reviews (The Hobbit)
27. Becky’s Book Reviews (Because Amelia Smiled, This Is Not My Hat, etc.))
28. Becky’s Book Reviews (The Winter of Red Snow)
29. Becky’s Book Reviews (Like the Willow Tree)
30. Becky’s Book Reviews (The Dragon’s Apprentice)
31. Becky’s Book Reviews (The Dragons of Winter)
32. Becky (God Loves You by David Jeremiah)
33. Becky (Lancaster County Christmas)
34. Becky (Where God Finds You)

35. Becky (A Marriage Carol)
36. Becky (Pierced by the Word)
37. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Fables #1)
38. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Murder at the Vicarage)
39. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Leader of the Pack)
40. Glynn (Talking About Detective Fiction)
41. Glynn (The Christmas Box)
42. Guiltless Reading (Cross Country 101)
43. Guiltless Reading (Hollywood Buckaroo giveaway!)
44. Annie Kate (The Genius of Ancient Man)
45. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Nothing to Hide)
46. Shonya@ (7: Experimental Mutiny Against Excess)
47. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (Paradox)
48. Melwyk (A Stitch in Time)
49. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (The Plum Tree)
50. Guiltless Reading (American Dervish)

The Cup and the Crown by Diane Stanley

Dec13

Yawn.

I really like Diane Stanley’s beautifully written and illustrated picture book biographies of famous historical figures such as Joan of Arc, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter the Great and others. And Brown Bear Daughter and I both enjoyed her fairy tale fantasy Cinderella story, Bella at Midnight. But The Cup and the Crown, a sequel to The Silver Bowl (which I haven’t read), just wasn’t up to snuff in comparison to the biographies or to Bella.

Molly’s friend King Alaric asks her to find a Loving Cup for him, a magical cup with the “power to bind two souls together for life, to bless their children and their children’s children down through the generations.” He needs the cup to make a neighboring princess fall in love with him and thereby gain a strategic alliance for the kingdom. Strike one against this story. I didn’t care if Molly ever found the cup or not, given the rather mercenary purpose of her quest.

Molly, accompanied by several friends and companions, travels to the north in search of the cup, and lead by a magical raven, they discover a hidden city where no one is allowed to enter lest they give the secret location of the rich and powerful city of Harrowsgode. But Molly is allowed in by an inhabitant who should know better, and then she is imprisoned so that she can never leave and give away the secret. Strike two. Why did Master Pieter let Molly in? Even more to the point, why did Master Pieter let her friend Tobias in when he knew that Tobias’ life would be forfeit?

Then, by hard work and a little magic, Molly and Tobias manage to escape, someone makes them a Loving Cup, and they all live happily ever after—maybe. Strike three. I made it all the way through the book, but I was not rewarded with a very satisfying ending. I think there’s a third book in the series yet to come.

12/12/12: Themes of My Life

Dec12

These are the twelve themes or ideas or motifs that God has placed in my heart, and consequently the 12 Big Ideas that appear most often here on Semicolon.

1. Books. I have a houseful of books I read lots and lots of books, probably over 100 per year. I love books; I live inside books. I write about books here at Semicolon a lot. Some of my favorite booklists (may be helpful for last minute Christmas gifts?):
Reading Out Loud: 55 Favorite Read Aloud Books from the Semicolon Homeschool.
History and Heroes: 55 Recommended Books of Biography, Autobiography, Memoir,and History
Giving Books: Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.
Giving Books: FOr the nieces and other girls in your life.
Nine Series for Nine Year Old Boys.
Narnia Aslant: A Narnia-Inspired Reading List.
Books for Giving (to kids who want to grow up to be . . .)
Best Spine-Tinglers
Best Journeys
Best Laughs
Best Crimes

2. Family, particularly large families. I have eight children. Five are grown-ups, and three are still growing. Actually, we’re all still growing. I don’t write as much about my children as I do about my books, privacy and all that jazz. But having a large family and seeing God through the joys and difficulties of large family life is one of the major themes of my life.

3. Community. Through family, yes, but also through the church, the neighborhood in which I live, and even through the blog-world, the experience of community is very important to me. I’m interested in community as an ideal, and I’m also interested in little communities that form around hobbies, intellectual pursuits, ethnic identities, and other kinds of people-glue. I want to know how a subculture develops around a shared interest like bicycling or collecting butterflies or playing Scrabble (Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis) or any other random interest, how those communities work and how they coalesce, what the rules are and how they resolve conflict.

4. The Bible. God’s Word has been a part of my life since I was a preschooler, and my mother read to me from the book of Genesis. I still remember how exciting and suspenseful the story of Joseph was, and how I wanted to know what would happen next. I have read the Bible numerous times, studied it alone and in groups, and still I find treasure, hope, reassurance, and life in the words of history, prophecy, poetry, gospel, and letters in the Bible. The Bible is the central book in my life, by which standard all the many, many other stories that I read stand and fall.

5. Prayer. God is still working out this theme in my life. I’m 55 years old, and I still long to know what it means to really, really pray. If God knows and has preordained everything that happens, why pray? I think part of what it means is to communicate the desires and depths of my heart in language, that God-given means of communication and organization. If I can put my inchoate feelings and thoughts into words and tell them to a God who really, really cares, then I participate in the creation of meaning somehow. I participate in God’s work on earth through prayer.

6. Language. We create community through language. God communicates with us and we with Him, mediated by language. The Word became flesh. What does that mean? We are creatures who speak a language, and that means something. One of my life’s quests is find out what it means to be a language-using creation and how to use those words to communicate truth.

7. Story-telling. One theme leads to another: from books to the Bible, to prayer, to language, to storytelling. Maybe they are all one grand motif that defines how God is working in my life.

8. History. I love family history, especially my family history, but others, too, if they have stories to tell. History is the story of how God created, how He creates in the events of our lives, and what it all means.

9. Singing and Poetry. Music, in general is nice, but singing, alone or with other people, is what I most love, what makes me feel alive. That’s why I did the 100 Hymns series: I love songs with words and poetry put to music. This theme ties into my fascination with language and words, but the melody adds another dimension.

10. Homeschooling. Education in general is a theme in my family and in my life. I pray that I will be always learning, always educating myself and others about the wonderful world where God has placed us. I believe that as a family we were called to homeschool, not because homeschooling ensures God’s blessing or favor nor because homeschooling is always better than any other way of educating young people into adulthood, but rather because it fits with the other themes and concerns of my life: the community in family, the immersion in language and story-telling, the transmission of God’s truth to another generation.

11. Evangelism and missions. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, in GA’s and Acteens, two SBC missions organizations for girls. I am still immersed in the idea of how the gospel is spread to other people and cultures and active in supporting missions and missionaries.

12. Jesus. Last, not because he is the least of my life themes, but rather because He is the foundation. If I wrote a book, Jesus would be the underlying theme, perhaps unnamed as in the Book of Esther, but always present, always at work, always the Rock upon which everything else rests. In Him, we live and move and have our being.

You can see these themes embodied in this list of 52 things that fascinate me. Now it’s your turn. What are the themes of your life? Where has God led you to focus your energies and talents? What is it that wakes you up in the morning, draws you into study and/or action, makes you who you are?

Beauty and the Beast: The Only One Who Didn’t Run Away by Wendy Mass

Dec11

Do you know that game where you sit in a circle and tell a story, each person breaking off at a critical moment to let the next person add to the story? This book felt like that kind of round robin story, only incorporating two stories in alternating chapters instead of just one. Maybe imagine two concentric circles and the story-telling, of two separate stories, goes around the circles in opposite directions–nah, that’s too confusing.

Wendy Mass wrote 11 Birthdays and Finally, two books I really liked. And she’s written some other fairy tale take-offs in the Twice Upon a Time series that includes this version of Beauty and the Beast. I haven’t read the others in the series, but I just couldn’t enjoy this one very much. I kept wondering when the “Beauty” chapters and the “Beast” chapters were going to converge, and then when they finally did about three-fourths of the way through the book, I just didn’t believe.

SPOILER, I guess. We have a wicked witch in this story who turns people into insects (and other animals). The insects, an ant and a grasshopper, then live for many, many years. I looked it up. Ants and grasshoppers don’t live that long, although I suppose enchanted insects could be different.

Tag line: The story of Beauty and the Beast like you’ve never heard it before.

That’s a true statement, but my problem is that I liked the way I heard it before better.
There’s Beauty or Rose Daughter both by Robin McKinley or Beast by Donna Jo Napoli or even the Disney movie of the story. This version just feels impromptu and implausible.

Other voices:
It didn’t work for Charlotte either.
Angie at Bibliophile Support Group was bored.
I didn’t find any other reviews. If you have a different take, please let us know in the comments.

Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities by Mike Jung

Dec10

Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities is a parody of super-hero comics and books and movies. In Copperplate City, Captain Stupendous is a fact of life, a very helpful and convenient fact of life. He’s the reason there haven’t been any abductions in Copperplate City in the last twenty-some odd years.
Captain Stupendous always, always shows up whenever any Super-Villain tries to take over the world or wreak havoc in the streets. And as president of the real Captain Stupendous Fan Club, Vincent Wu is the person who knows more about Captain Stupendous than anyone else in Copperplate City.

Several things annoyed me about this tale of a geeky super-hero fan club and the super hero they are sworn to adulate:

First of all, the boys in the fan club and other characters in the book have a tendency to YELL A LOT, INDICATED BY DIALOG WRITTEN IN ALL-CAPS. This typographical convention is not something I want to encourage in the writing and publishing of children’s books.

Secondly, there is a fair amount of barfing and burping and farting and freaking and sucking going on in the pages of this super-hero obsessed story, and since I’m not an eleven year old boy I could have done without all of that nonsense. I mean, you know, the book didn’t totally suck or make me barf or freak me out. It just felt as if the author said to himself, “Boys like to talk about barfing and farting, so I’ll put lots of that in here.” Yuck.

Third, I found the boys in the story–Vincent , Max, and George–just generally annoying. They picked at each other a lot, and I hear enough of that around my house with three teenagers in the family. Putdowns and insults ceased to make me laugh long ago. And Polly, the main girl character, wasn’t much better. She’s very concerned that the boys all realize that she knows karate and can kick bu– with the best of them. Again yuck.

Maybe it just wasn’t the right time, or I wasn’t in the right mood for the geeky, slangy kind of humor.

I liked the Oxford comma in the title.

Deadly Pink by Vivian Vande Velde

Dec9

Deadly Pink is a book about sisters and virtual reality games and forgiveness and persistence in doing what’s right. I kept thinking of Winston Churchill’s famous dictum: â€œNever, never, never, never give up.â€

Grace Pizzelli is the traditional average younger sister. Her sister, Emily, who works as an intern for Rasmussem Games is the brilliant, talented one. And mostly Grace is OK with that because in addition to being intelligent and gifted, Emily is also kind and helpful to her younger sister. In fact, Emily is almost perfect, as older sisters sometimes tend to be.

That’s why it’s such a surprise when the officials at Rasmussem come to Grace’s school to get her to help Emily. It seems that Emily has been beta-testing a virtual reality game for young girls called Land of the Golden Butterflies, and she refuses to come out of the game. Unfortunately, the games are only made for thirty minutes of game play at a time, not for living in the game world forever, and no one knows what will happen to Emily’s body and mind if she doesn’t come out of the game. Grace must persuade her older sister to leave the fantasy world before her time runs out.

I was anxious to turn the pages in this virtual reality story to see what would happen next, why Emily is determined to stay in game land, and how Grace will save the day and rescue both Emily and herself from death by virtual reality game. The suicide theme may be a little heavy for some middle school readers, but I didn’t find it overwrought or too distressing.

The relationship between the two sisters is what makes the story really shine. Grace is annoyed and irritated by the way Emily treats her when Grace comes into the virtual reality world to save Emily. Emily basically tells Grace to get lost. But Grace doesn’t give up on her sister. I’m not explaining too well, but these are real sisters who love each other in spite of imperfections and mistakes on the part of each of them. Here, let me give you a few quotes to illustrate:

“A cranky part of my brain kept repeating that we were in this bad situation because of Emily, and it was hard not to let my irritation spill over. The last thing I needed was Emily feeling sorry for herself. It infringed on my feeling sorry for myself.”

“That was it. My patience snapped. I wanted to shake some sense into her, some sibling loyalty. I settled for grabbing her arm to get her to stop dancing.”

“Mean? Mean was eating all the chocolate Easter eggs and leaving the stale Peeps. Mean was making fun of a bad hairstyle. Mean was letting someone else take the blame after you tracked mud onto the clean floor. Mean didn’t begin to cover what Emily had put me through.
But she was rocking me, making gentle comforting noises as though I were once again the six-year-old who’d fallen off our backyard swing trying to fly too high. ‘Everything will be okay.'”

I also liked this book because it was a contrast to all the kids-save-the-world books that I’ve been reading for the Cybils Middle Grade Fantasy judging. In Deadly Pink, one girl, Grace, tries to save her sister, Emily, and it’s hard and suspenseful and engaging. But we’re not asked to believe that a group of twelve year olds or one thirteen year old is the only possible resource to rescue the entire world from imminent destruction. What a relief!

Grace and Emily Pizzelli, the Pizzelli Sisters, are some wonderful sisters to get to know. And their story is suspenseful and funny, both. From the author blurb, I learned that Ms. Vande Velde has written two other books about virtual reality games created by the (fictional) Rasmussem Corporation, Heir Apparent and User Friendly. Has anyone read either of them? I’m not fan of video games, but I liked this book well enough that I’m willing to go find the two other books set in the same fictional world and try them out –especially if I can get a recommendation. Anyone?

In the meantime, Deadly Pink is worth your reading time, especially if any of the motifs in the opening sentence of this review pique your interest.

Christmas in Kobe, Japan, 1912

Dec8

Lottie Moon was born into a comfortable life on an antebellum plantation in Virginia. She died on Christmas Eve, 1912, on board a ship off the coast of Japan, some say of sickness due to malnutrition, after a life of ministering to and suffering with the Chinese people she loved. Between her birth and death, she met the power and love of Jesus Christ who forgave her, redeemed her, and sent her to teach the people of China about Jesus and the “great tidings of great joy.”

From her letters:

“Here I am working alone in a city of many thousand inhabitants. It is grievous to think of these human souls going down to death without even one opportunity of hearing the name of Jesus. How many can I reach? The needs of these people press upon my soul, and I cannot be silent.”

“Our hearts were made glad last Sabbath by the baptism of an individual who has interested us by his firm stand under the persecutions of his … family. They fastened him in a room without food or water, and endeavored to starve him into submission. Providentially, they did not take away his Christian books. He studied these more closely than ever. The pangs of hunger he satisfied by eating some raw beans he found in the room, and when he wanted water he commenced to dig a well in the room in which he was confined. Chinese houses are built on the ground and do not have plank floors as with us. When the family discovered the well-digging they yielded. They had no wish to ruin their dwelling. The man has shown that he is made of stern stuff, and we hope he will be very useful as a Christian.”

“Recently, on a Sunday which I was spending in a village near Pingtu city, two men came to me with the request that I would conduct the general services. They wished me to read and explain, to a mixed audience of men and women, the parable of the prodigal son. I replied that no one should undertake to speak without preparation, and that I had made none. (I had been busy all the morning teaching the women and girls.) After awhile they came again to know my decision. I said, “It is not the custom of the Ancient church that women preach to men.” I could not, however, hinder their calling upon me to lead in prayer. Need I say that, as I tried to lead their devotions, it was hard to keep back the tears of pity for those sheep not having a shepherd. Men asking to be taught and no one to teach them.” February 9, 1889.

“How many there are … who imagine that because Jesus paid it all, they need pay nothing, forgetting that the prime object of their salvation was that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in bringing back a lost world to God.” September 15, 1887.

“Is not the festive season when families and friends exchange gifts in memory of The Gift laid on the altar of the world for the redemption of the human race, the most appropriate time to consecrate a portion from abounding riches and scant poverty to send forth the good tidings of great joy into all the earth?” September 15, 1887.

You’ll find these quotes and many more from Lottie Moon’s letters in Send the Light: Lottie Moon’s Letters and Other Writings, edited by Keith Harper, published by Mercer University Press.

“When Moon returned from her second furlough in 1904, she was deeply struck by the suffering of the people who were literally starving to death all around her. She pleaded for more money and more resources, but the mission board was heavily in debt and could send nothing. Mission salaries were voluntarily cut. Unknown to her fellow missionaries, Moon shared her personal finances and food with anyone in need around her, severely affecting both her physical and mental health. In 1912, she only weighed 50 pounds. Alarmed, fellow missionaries arranged for her to be sent back home to the United States with a missionary companion. However, Moon died on route, at the age of 72, on December 24, 1912, in the harbor of Kobe, Japan.” Wikipedia, Lottie Moon

Freakling by Lana Krumwiede

Dec8

Taemon’s brother, Yens, calls him “freakling”, a not-so-affectionate term that expresses Yens’s jealousy and cruelty. So the story begins as a Cain and Abel tale in which the older brother and the younger compete for their parents’ affection and for the attention of others.

Then, the story morphs into a dystopian novel about a society in which everyone uses “psi”, the psychic ability to manipulate objects, to do the most mundane of daily tasks. In Taemon’s city of Deliverance psi is necessary for everything, to feed oneself, to open doors, to work and to play psiball. Because Taemon is afraid of misusing his psi, he loses his psychokinetic abilities completely. Then, he must cover up his inability to use psi because the “powerless” in this society are scorned and sent into exile.

The premise of this middle grade novel is well-conceived and well-executed. The characters are not as developed as I might have liked, but Taemon and the people he meets along the way are likable enough. I especially liked Taemon’s friend Moke. Taemon himself is very much a “Special Chosen Child” who of course doesn’t realize his own specialness, but even though that’s an overused trope, the setting and world were intriguing enough to bring me along to accept the coming of age by realizing that you are the Chosen One theme. The ending was somewhat obvious to me, but it might not be as predictable for younger readers.

Overall, it’s a good debut novel that will appeal to boys and girls who enjoy dystopia, hero tales, and stories about psychic abilities.

If you want to check it out for yourself, you can read the first three chapters of Freakling on you Kindle for free.

Saturday Review of Books: December 8, 2012

Dec7

â€œThe organized soul has one book beside his bed. The glutton sleeps with a New York skyline lurching an inch from the bed.â€ ~Charlotte Gray

1. Barbara H. (At Home in Mitford)
2. Barbara H. (The Christmas Dog)
3. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin)
4. JoAnne @ The Fairytale Nerd (The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin)
5. Donovan @ Where Pen Meets Paper (Confessions of a Pagan Nun)
6. Donovan @ Where Pen Meets Paper (Tulips & Chimneys)
7. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Fer de Lance)
8. Becky’s Book Reviews (3 Board Books)
9. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Stumptown Vol. 1)
10. Becky’s Book Reviews (Who Gets the Drumstick)
11. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Eggsecutive Orders)
12. Becky’s Book Reviews (Here There Be Dragons)
13. Becky’s Book Reviews (The Search for the Red Dragon)
14. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Her Royal Spyness)
15. Becky’s Book Reviews (The Indigo King)

16. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Death of a Gossip)
17. Becky’s Book Reviews (The Shadow Dragons)
18. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (Torn)
19. SmallWorld Reads (The Rebel Wife)
20. SmallWorld Reads (Girlchild)
21. Hope (Return of the King)
22. Lucybird’s Book Blog (Six Dinner Sid)
23. Lucybird’s Book Blog The Complication of Sisters)
24. Lucybird’s Book Blog (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
25. Janet (The Willoughbys)
26. Glynn (Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World)
27. Lazygal (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore)
28. Lazygal (The Obsidian Mirror)
29. Lazygal (The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand)
30. Annie Kate (Children in Church)

31. Lazygal (The Gates of Ivory)
32. Lazygal (The Different Girl)
33. Lazygal (The Brides of Rollrock Island)
34. Lazygal (Prince Puggley of Spud and the Kingdom of Spiff)
35. Reading World (The Passing Bells)
36. Colleen @Books in the City (Solace)
37. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Christmas Pony)
38. Beckie @ ByTheBook (A Wreath of Snow)
39. Beckie @ ByTheBook (The Bridge)
40. Aloi @ Guiltless Reading (Colin Fischer by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz)
41. Aloi @ Guiltless Reading (Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks)
42. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Home Front Girl)
43. Anna @ Diary of an Eccentric (Darcy Goes to War)
44. Maggie Lyons

The Savage Fortress by Sarwat Chadda

Dec5

Not exactly my kind of book. The Savage Fortress was inspired, writes the author, “by the real Savage Fortress–a maharajah’s palace near Varanasi, India–as well as his life long fascination with the goddess Kali.”

So, this Hindu goddess:

'Goddesses' photo (c) 2008, LASZLO ILYES - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

And this rather medieval looking maharajah’s palace:

'India - Varanasi - 010 - one of the Maharaja palaces' photo (c) 2007, McKay Savage - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

And the tag line is: Heroes aren’t made. They’re reborn.

If you’re interested in a reincarnation story in which an British teen of Indian ancestry must fight to keep Ravanna the evil god of the rakshasas (demons) in his place of exile so that Ravanna won’t take over the world and make it into a place of (more) chaos and suffering on a grand scale, then The Savage Fortress is your book. To me, it just felt evil and confusing, although I will admit to a certain train-wreck fascination. The writing certainly ranged from adequate to good, but I’m just repelled and bewildered by Hindu mythology. If everybody is going to come back after death and fight the same battles all over again, what’s the use?

Then there’s the Kali motif that I found deeply disconcerting in this story for middle grade readers:

“KÄli is the Goddess of Time and Change. Although sometimes presented as dark and violent, her earliest incarnation as a figure of annihilator of evil forces still has some influence. . . The figure of KÄli conveys death, destruction, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a “forbidden thing”, or even death itself.

Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone?
Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?
Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.
You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.
It matters not how much I call you “Mother, Mother.” You hear me, but you will not listen. From a poet named RÄmprasÄd Sen in Wikipedia article on Kali.

And our hero, Ash, ends up defeating Ravanna with the power of Kali, the goddess of Darkness and Death. Ewwww. (I’m not too fond of zombies or vampires, either.)