Eoin Colfer: Warp (Book 1) The Reluctant Assassin

OK, so I'm a huge Artemis Fowl fan. Love the books and many of them are waiting on the boys' shelves for them to read when they are older. There's some of his other books that I really enjoyed as well.

This book was hard to finish. I think it's the most black I have ever read from Colfer. I don't mind a nice helping of black in my books, and I appreciate the kind of black in the Artemis Fowl books. But this was a whole 'nother thing.

I'd say it's written for a much older audience than his other books, and certainly, I wouldn't want to be giving it to someone much younger than 14 or 15. He does that thing of his where the adults and caregivers are shadowy impotent figures, which is a fairly common device in children's literature. I think Colfer is really good at creating real but insubstantial 'caretaker' type of characters. But in the world he creates here, there is real death, cruelty and pain. His main characters have to deal with a psychotic superhuman with unresolved parental issues as they time travel between our time and Victorian England.

He does capture the differences between old and new London well. The stench, the ease of transport, the implications of CCTV as well as speech and physical differences are all covered. And the time travel plot device is well constructed: it isn't without flaws and the kind of flaws that do involve real risk taking and have serious consequences.

The two main characters work together realistically, working out their various issues and discovering who they are and where they belong in the world (and time line).

It's well written and has a full on pace. It's stimulating to read. It's harrowing to read, at the same time. Yes, the world is awful and adults let you down. But when the big bad is a psychotic superhuman with no empathy, and you have to pretend to murder someone just to survive... it's moved to a whole new level.

I don't think it should be avoided for these reasons, just not handed to an avid 10 year old Artemis Fowl fan, as though it is the same thing.

The Flaxfield Quartet: Book 1: Dragonborn by Toby Forward

This book is disorientating because it insists on being whimsical. There is nothing inherently wrong with being whimsical, but it's hard to get a lock on the world here and how it works. You need to keep sticking with the book to get an understanding of how the world works, how magic works and what on earth is going on with the bad guys and even where the good guys might be.  There are ominous characters that don't seem to fit, but add to the bleakness and slightly adversarial tone of the book. They might be developed in subsequent books. Getting a visual image of the world is also hard: it seems like our world, yet utterly unlike it, such that it is hard to follow the imaginings of the author.

I liked it, though. There are some great characters, aside from the main character (Sam), through whose eyes we see a lot of the main action. He is trying to figure out the world, and the people in it, and how he fits and what he should do. It's all coming-of-age type stuff, but on a massive scale, which really captures how it feels at the time. Even trying to figure out the other characters is tough for Sam, whose experience of life is so limited, but like most adolescents, he really needs to understand who others are and whether to trust them. This is really difficult for Sam. So, one of the key characters who dies as the story opens, seems to look like a bully at the beginning, but is by the end of the book much more sympathetic. The opposite also happens: helpful characters are revealed to be dodgy as the book unfolds.

There are a lot of extra characters who feel  like they'll rejoin the story later, but that may also be an attempt to imitate life: people we grow attached to leave and because we are attached to them we expect to see them again, but we don't always.

The big bad is defeated, but again, it's multi-layered and existentially hard to enjoy. And the big bad really is bad: there is torture, to which we are privy, at least for a few pages.

It's really complex, trying to do so much, with so many huge themes.

In terms of plot, I'd be hard-pressed to retell this. It feels like a roller coaster, with a lot happening and the significance of what is happening seems to unravel slowly, so that it's hard to really see the significance of what is taking place as it happens. It isn't a surprise to discover this author is influenced by le Guin, as it has that same 'feel'.

This would take a bit more maturity to read and stick with, and would need a bit of debriefing. It's not a safe, easy world, and is complex and difficult in ways that don't always ring true of this world. That's not necessarily a weakness. It is worth mentioning though as the book is dealing with issues which do make our world a hard place to live. The resolutions, and even the descriptions aren't necessarily a good model to use to think about living in a hard world.

Having said all of that, and it is clear that I did feel frustrated by this book, I would recommend it. It's interesting, compelling, challenging (both as narrative and in terms of some of the issues it tackles) and thought provoking. It isn't gritty as a lot are in this genre, but is more well-rounded, and raises issues in ways that are genuinely thought provoking, rather than the hackney-ed emo type scrawl that gets a bit old. Life is hard, but is also more than just hard, and that is difficult to capture. This book does a good job of that.

Review: The Ranger's Apprentice (Book 1: The Ruins of Gorlan) by John Flanagan

So, I read books most nights to reset my brain to sleep. Nothing else seems to work. But there's a lot of dreary ill-conceived, badly written books out there. And a lot of cool books in the young adult section. So, I'm going to review some books which will also serve as notes for future reference, when our boys graduate from Famous Five and want something more action packed.

Here's the first: The Rangers Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan.

In short: I enjoyed this. There is basically no narrative tension beyond a few pages. Almost everything is resolved quickly and in the best, most honorable way. It's an easy book to read which doesn't require a lot from the reader. The world is accessible and interesting, feeling more like a historical novel in places than fantasy.

The main character (Will) is the normal misfit of the fantasy type genre, with the absent parent motif from much children's literature also well and truly present. He is part of a group of friends whose ways part as they are chosen for different apprenticeships. Their careers are traced loosely throughout the book as it follows Will's development into a ranger, and the significance of the rangers are explored in the context of the world. There's training, conflict, heroism, quest, self-discovery and all in the shadow of strong, benevolent parent type figures, who act as we all wish parents acted with just the right mix of allowing potential and independence to flourish, and yet are there to recognise the development and protect as required.

It's a nice world. There should be unicorns. But it does nurture and explore honour, noble heartedness, endurance and other things which are easily overlooked and ignored in young adult fiction. In real  life these things feel much less heroic and are much harder to choose, and there are not handy parental figure looking over your shoulder congratulating you when you actually manage to do them. But in our dreams they are. And, as a Christian, this isn't too far from the knowledge that God knows our silent, hard choices and is pleased, and that that matters deeply and eternally. So, I don't think it's a useless thing to have the kind of dreamwish that this book generates. I kind of like it. It's only one half of the story, but it's an important half that is often overlooked in a genre that seems to enjoy rolling in the mud for its own sake.