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.

It's been a long, long time

...since I penned anything on this.

But I have been doing some thinking and would like to meander away at some thoughts as blog posts because they are easier to write. So, maybe, just maybe I'll start posting again. But here first, before I move over to our more public blog.

It all depends on life, which is mostly hard. And health, which is so often not good. And time, which runs through our fingers like sand.

It's good to have words again though. It would be good to say them 'out loud'!

Favourite Toy of the Week: The Fridge

Yes, that's right folks. This is the week that JD discovered the fridge.

This week he not only worked out that the fridge was full of 'toys', evidently placed there for his amusement, but he learned how to open the fridge, close it, dismantle the shelving and open and shut the cheese containers.

Briefly, he also discovered eggs, the way to take the top of the tomato sauce bottom and attempt to suck out the tomato sauce and how to appropriate celery. These explorations were curtailed, due to the totalitarian regime pursued by his unsympathetic mother.

Apart from these small details, he spent most of the week standing inside the fridge, talking to all the bottles and jars and sometimes singing a special fridge song. He took out all the bottles and jars, chased them around the kitchen and sometimes even put them back in (usually in the vegetable crisper), before starting all over again. It worked quite well because he is just the right height to stand inside the fridge, and it is a lot warmer in the fridge than it is outside at the moment.

He's the original 'frund in the frudge'.

My Holiday by JD

I went to the sea-side with my mummy and daddy. Daddy did all the heavy lifting and mummy took lots of photos.


I played in the sand and tried to crawl out to sea. I discovered stones and sand and sea-caps. I wanted to eat the sea-cap but daddy wouldn't let me.

I held daddy's hands and walked in the water, which was really cool. I wanted to keep walking and walking because I really liked the water. Daddy kept pulling me back. I can see there's going to be some issues we'll have to work through.

Then I played in the sand some more and got to at least eat some of that, but sand is more fun if you cover your arms and legs with it, and make patterns in it with your hands.

It was lots of fun and I mean to go back. When I do, I'll ditch the parents and crawl out to sea and then come back and eat all the sea-caps I want.

Domestic Animalia

One of the odd things about having a small child is the constant need to talk about domestic animals with them. True, you could probably avoid it if you were so inclined, but it might have a negative impact on their socialisation.

I realised this during 'Rhyme Time' last month. I sing 'Old MacDonalds Farm' and 'The Farmer in the Dell' to JD along with various other animal based songs. But frankly it was all getting a bit boring and so I introduced another lot of more interesting animals. The echidna, camel, iguana and various other creatures now inhabit Old MacDonalds farm, making it more educational for JD and more interesting for me. Though I still haven't really figured out what noise an echidna makes.

And on one very hot and long afternoon when there were teeth coming, 'The Farmer in the Dell' became a narrative framework for an involved story including the Albatross, his friend the Mongoose and the Mongoose's friend Switch who had a small army of cockroaches in a cardboard box, which he carried about his person. This was unsettling for the Albatross, but due to social constraints he felt unable to protest. However, the army of cockroaches proved its usefulness by forcing Pirate Sam the Man to stand down from his piracy, at least as it related to Albatross, Mongoose and Switch. All ended happily.

The problem is though, that when we were at Rhyme Time, the older children were given the opportunity of choosing an animal from a bag and saying what that animal was for Old MacDonald's farm. One child pulled a duck out of the bag and announced it was a duck. I thought, "How boring. Why does it need to be a duck? Why can't it be an albatross?" Which led me to the realisation that if I keep finding odd and interesting animals on Old MacDonalds Farm, JD will come to expect them. He'll want dolphins, elephant beetles and moles when he calls out his favourite, and that is if we manage to teach him in time that griffins, murlocs and yetis are actually not real.

I came home from Rhyme Time frustrated. Levor said to me, "So what do we learn from this little adventure?" I said, "That Rhyme Time is limited and needs its horizons expanded."

I don't think that the answer I was meant to give...

Corn

I can't smile now. I'm eating corn.

I'm going to look this way. Eating corn requires concentration. Eventually she'll go away.
Nope. Not gonna smile. At all. Eating corn now.

I can outlast you.