The Squire’s Tale by Gerald Morris

(Cover picture courtesy of Tower.)

“What is your name?”  Morgause whispered fiercely, almost desperately.  “You are no ordinary magician.”

“I am a squire,” Terence said.

But he is no ordinary squire, either.  Abandoned as a baby at the door of Trevisant the Hermit, young Terence never expects he will be more than the hermit’s servant.  Until one day when a stranger shows up—Gawain, a young man destined to become of the most famous knights of King Arthur’s Round Table.  As Gawain’s squire, Terence journeys with him to Camelot and what begins as an adventure soon turns into nothing less than a quest to uncover the secrets of his past.

I have loved the legend of King Arthur ever since my English teacher introduced it to me in grade 5.  Everyone has heard different versions of the same story, but that’s the beauty of the Arthurian legends: they grow and change with time, as they were meant to.  In The Squire’s Tale Gerald Morris takes an interesting approach, as he states in his author’s note.  He is “trying to restore the reputation of this most honored of all knights on earth.”  It’s not Lancelot, but Gawain, The Maiden’s Knight.

It is not Gawain, but Terence, his squire who tells his story.  Terence himself is a great character: the son of unknown parents with the ability to see faeries.  He doesn’t seem all that remarkable in the beginning, but Terence goes through a wonderful character arc as he embarks with Gawain upon his quests.  To me it is Gawain who steals the show because Gerald Morris’ version of him is similar to that of Rosemary Sutcliff’s (an author I have always admired).  However, Terence is the one that readers will most likely sympathize with because this book is aimed at younger teens and tweens and he is very much the voice of adolescent uncertainty.

The plot of The Squire’s Tale moves along quite a bit faster than I’m used to in books incorporating the Arthurian legends, but it suits Gerald Morris’ writing style.  There are really no places where the plot sags, not even in the beginning when we are introduced to Terence.  The characters are quirky and memorable and there’s plenty of humour to offset some of the serious elements.  Overall, a fitting retelling of the Arthurian legends, except for the ending.  Gerald Morris kind of stuck Morgause in there at the last minute and I felt that the ending scene was rushed, but it does at least make sense.  This is one series I will be continuing.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble

Kushiel’s Chosen by Jacqueline Carey

(Cover picture courtesy of Lusty Reader.)

The land of Terre d’Ange is a place of unsurpassed beauty and grace.  The inhabiting race rose from the seed of angels and men, and they live by one simple rule: Love as thou wilt.

Phèdre nó Delaunay was sold into indentured servitude as a child.  Her bond was purchased by a nobelman, the first to recognize that she is one pricked by Kushiel’s Dart, chosen to forever experience pain and pleasure as one.  He trained Phèdre in the courtly arts and the talents of the bedchamber—and, above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze.

When she stumbled upon a plot that threatened the very foundations of her homeland, she gave up almost everything she held dear to save it.  She survived, and lived to have others tell her story, and if they embellished the tale with fabric of mythical splendor, they weren’t far off the mark.

The hands of the gods weigh heavily upon Phèdre’s brow, and they are not finished with her.  While the young queen who sits upon the throne is well loved by the people, there are those who believe another should wear the crown…and those who escaped the wrath of the mighty are not yet done with their schemes for power and revenge.

While it may disappoint some readers, Kushiel’s Chosen has much less sex and far more political intrigue than Kushiel’s Dart did, which suits me just fine.  But hey, each to their own.

The thing I most admire about Jacqueline Carey’s novels is how she weaves mythology and history together to establish Terre d’Ange and all the lands around it.  As I mentioned in my review of Kushiel’s Dart, Jacqueline Carey draws on real historical events and combines them with the tale of Elua and his Companions to create an alternate Medieval Europe.  To truly appreciate the scope of her world-building it helps to have a background in ancient history, particularly that of ancient Rome.  It’s not necessary to understand the books, but it really does enhance your reading experience.

There were a few times I was annoyed at Phèdre for being a Mary Sue, but then I realized something: she is a rarity, the first anguisette in three generations and was the ambassador to Alba for the Queen Ysandre.  Of course she’s going to be revered and looked on with curiosity by people.  That’s what happens when people achieve legendary status within their own lifetime.  Phèdre also goes through a lot more character development, particularly when she’s in Kriti.  She’s a lot more aware of her actions and how they affect people and by the end of the novel she’s a better person for it.

The plot of Kushiel’s Chosen is much faster than that of the first book, mainly because we don’t have to go through Phèdre’s childhood again.  Instead, we can skip right to the action where she’s trying to figure out where Melisande escaped to and why she sent the sangoire cloak back.  The search for Melisande is, of course, more complicated than it seems at first but it really is amazing what Phèdre goes through in order to find her.  Hint: Melisande is not hiding where you would expect her to be.  In hindsight I probably should have guessed where she was hiding, but I had no idea until the dramatic reveal.  In the hands of most authors, a reveal like that would be very cliché, but Jacqueline Carey definitely pulled it off.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble

Why Books Should be Rated on a Logarithmic Scale

This is a guest post by Margaret of Steam Trains and Ghosts.  Do you think books should be rated on a logarithmic scale?  Do you think they should be rated at all?

I don’t like giving books numerical ratings when I review them.  There is something unsatisfying about the 1-5 star ratings you can find on Amazon and Goodreads, and I think the problem is that five stars don’t begin to capture the range of literary greatness that is out there.  The best book ever is only five times better than the worst book ever?  Really?  Even rating books on a 1 to 10 scale doesn’t seem like enough.

I think a better way to do things would be to take a lesson from earthquake-prone California.  I grew up there, so I learned about earthquake magnitudes along with my ABC’s and how to tie my shoes.  Scientists measure earthquakes on a logarithmic scale that goes from 0 to roughly 9.5.  “Logarithmic” means that a 5 on this scale is actually 105, a 6 is 106, ten times bigger than a 5, and a 7 is 100 times bigger than a 5, and so on.  The scale’s useful because it gives you a big range – from 0 to 1,000,000,000.

Tiny earthquakes happen literally all the time.  Every few minutes.  We can’t even feel them and we only know they exist because of seismographs.  Once an earthquake gets up to about a 4.0 on the scale, it’s starting to rattle dishes in the cabinets.  A 6.7 is going to be something like the Northridge earthquake of 1994, which tore up streets in the L.A. area, damaged a lot of houses, and people are still talking about it today.  The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, which caused most of the city to burn down, was an 8.0.  The largest earthquake ever recorded was a 9.5 in Valdivia, Chile in 1960.

Books are like earthquakes.  Hundreds of thousands of little ones pass by without anybody’s notice all the time.  Every year or so, a book makes you sit up and go, “What was that?”  And every once in a great while, a book knocks you over, rips your socks off, and burns your house down.  Well, hopefully not that last part.  But anyway, I think that the best books are thousands of times better than the worst books.

So here’s my proposal for a better book rating scale:

1-3)  Poorly written.  One has the sneaking sense that the author does not have a firm grasp on grammar or punctuation.  Plot?  What plot?  This is a first draft that isn’t ready to show to people yet, but unfortunately, you find these on the Internet all the time.

4-5)  Mass-produced stuff.  Like those pulpy mystery novels you find sometimes where the author has written 32 other titles.  These have a plot and characters but they’re forgettable.

6)  This is an okay book.  It’s got a decent story, comes to a satisfying ending, and maybe even makes you think about the conventions of the genre.  A good example would be Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton.  Makes you looks at dragons differently after you read it.

7)  The good stuff.  These are bestsellers or at the very least extremely strong sellers.  Compelling characters, vivid worlds, storylines that challenge the reader.  Ursula le Guin and Phillip Pullman belong here.

8)  Classic literature.  The stuff they make you read in English class.  The book may have defined a genre (Tolkien), captured the essence of a way of life (Steinbeck), or added new phrases to the English language (Dickens).

9)  Paradise Lost.  Seriously.  This story tells the story of the history of the entire universe, has the entire population of Heaven, Hell, and Earth as its cast of characters, and pulls the whole thing off in iambic pentameter.  And John Milton was blind when he wrote it.  Read it and just try to think about Satan the same way ever again.

Giveaway: Puppet Parade by Zeinab Alayan

After I read Puppet Parade and absolutely loved it, I asked Zeinab Alayan if she would like to do a giveaway with me.  Obviously she said yes, but she went the extra mile and came up with a great question that relates to the whole premise of her novel.

RULES:

1.  You must answer the question below and provide an explanation for your answer.

2.  It can be as creative/thoughtful/serious/whatever as you like.  Truly, there is no wrong answer.

3.  You may only enter once.

PRIZES:

1.  Two Smashwords coupons.  Zeinab will pick one winner and I will pick the other based on their answer.

Now here is the question you must answer and it’s one that Zeinab herself answers in Puppet Parade:

You broke free after being locked inside a single room for years, what would you do?

This giveaway begins today, November 12, 2012 and will end on November 19, 2012.  I will be announcing winners on November 20 at 12:01am and Zeinab will contact them via email, so be sure to have a valid email address connected to your account!  If one or both winners do not respond within 7 days of being contacted, new winners will be announced.

My Interview with Zeinab Alayan

The following is my interview with Zeinab Alayan, author of Puppet Parade.  Read on to see us discuss talking puppets, self-publishing and Andrew the Annoying Ass.

1.  Walking, talking puppets aren’t something you would normally see in fantasy.  Where did the idea for Puppet Parade come from? 
I always feel a little awkward answering that question, because I actually have no idea where it came from. I just wanted to write something for NaNoWriMo, and I started out with the idea of a girl who’d never seen her face, and then suddenly Oliver and his puppets appeared and I liked the direction in which the story was going, so I continued with it. I never plan my story ahead of time, so almost all the events in the story were just a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing.

2.  Why did you decide to self-publish?  Would you recommend self-publishing to any other aspiring writers?
I queried some agents before I went with self-publishing, but I kept receiving the “This is not what we’re looking for” response. I guess Puppet Parade is pretty unconventional and nobody wanted to place their bets on it. However, it still remains the first book I completed and I wanted others to read it, so I figured self-publishing would be my best bet. I do recommend it though to those who are willing to put every bit of effort into it; self-publishing offers you a lot of freedom, and the community is great! Continue reading →