The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Song of the Lioness 3)

The red-headed, purple-eyed knight spends time in the desert with the bedouins.

In the Hand of the Goddess (Song of the Lioness 2)

In this second installment of the Song of the Lioness quartet, Alanna comes into her own in a big way. The second story is more well structured than the first, but in essence it was a continuation of the first story. Alanna meets the Goddess on her way home from an errand she's running from her overlord (Prince Jonathan). The Goddess tells her she has three fears she must overcome, and the rest of the story details how she overcomes those three fears. Her first fear is of the Ordeal that she must undergo in order to become a knight. The second is her fear of love, and the third fear is her fear of Duke Roger. By the end of the story, Alanna has developed a romantic relationship with Prince Jonathan, undergone the Ordeal for Knighthood, and defeated Duke Roger. It wraps up well.

Alanna The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness 1)

What is it about the idea of fantasy education that fascinates me so much? I don't know. All I know is that there are innumerable reasons why I think educators can learn from the fictional schools created in fantasy novels. One thing I have learned overall is that we coddle our students way too much. Students appreciate a business-like manner in the classroom. They enjoy a challenge. From Ms. Tamora Pierce I have learned that theoretical education is best done in the mornings and physical activity in the afternoon. Another lesson that echoes what can be learned in Rowling's series is that a theoretical education, not balanced by practical application is evil. I will explain, but not in this post. I'll save this one for why I enjoyed this first installment in the Song of the Lioness series.

Alanna, one of twins born to a nobleman who loves his books more than his children, decides to switch places with her brother Thom. Thom has always wanted to be a sorcerer and Alanna has always wanted to be a knight. Forging their father's signature, Alanna becomes Alan and heads to palace for page training, and Thom heads to the convent to be trained in magic. Alanna experiences great success in her ardous training as a page. She makes friends with the Prince (Jonathan) and one of her better teachers (Myles). She defeats her childhood nemesis Ralon, heals Jonathan from the sweating sickness that has been sapping all the healers of their strength, and eventually helps Jonathan to defeat the Ysandir of the Black City. Along the way, Alanna makes a much more adult enemy in the form of Duke Roger who wants to replace Jonathan as heir to the thrown of Tortall.

Alanna is a very strong character, but much of her strength lies in her youth and naivte. Her belief that she can do things seems to be enough to get them done. Often confused as to why she succeeds at tasks she sets for herself, Alanna is not proud or overly confident. She just does things without thinking about the possibility of failure. She has to be told that she is likable and doesn't need to try so hard to be like everyone else. By the end of the first novel, however, she seems to have grown in to her abilities to some extent, as she admits to Jonathan that she would make the best squire for him. One of the best features of the series is Alanna's fear of her own magic. She has the Gift, as they call it in the book, and instead of using it to her advantage at every opportunity, she shuns it and has to be forced to use it by extenuating circumstances. What Alanna achieves in this novel, she achieves with her own strength and the sweat of her brow.

Jonathan, Raoul, Gary, and Myles are fun background characters full of honor and a willingness to jump in on the side of the righteous and the weak. Myles is my favorite though because he is a teacher who manages to make History come alive for his students. He is also modest, though he drinks too much for the respectable knight. Duke Roger is an understandable villain with realistic motives, but he has yet to seem really evil. Alanna hates him inexplicably, but she follows her gut and steers clear of him as often as she can. I hope that we will find him to be more evil and less sympathetic in future books.

I look forward to finishing the Song of the Lioness quartet and returning them to Christy before I leave for Greensboro next month.

Fantasy Lover

Okay, so I have to admit the Greek mythology thing was pretty cool. I am not normally a romance novel fan. A few of the conventions in the genre really get under my skin. It's not the predictability that bothers me: as I've been trying to convince my nearest and dearest for ages, there is predictability in every genre, even our coveted "literary fiction." It's just that the predictability in the fantasy genre (namely that it will adhere to the guidelines of the heroic medium) is something I look forward to; whereas, the prediction that somehow the new boyfriend will run into the old boyfriend who mistreated the woman involved and fight him is not something I look forward to. It's a personal preference, but...I digress.

The main plot of Fantasy Lover is that Julian, a Macedonian general son of another general and Aphrodite, is trapped as a love slave for all eternity by his older brother Priapus(?). Grace Alexander and her friend Selena conjure him from his book where he has been imprisoned for over a 100 years. Grace doesn't believe in magic and thinks the whole thing is a joke until Julian actually appears in her house. She is shocked to find the demigod wanting nothing other than to please her, and she rejects him entirely for a bit. A sex therapist by training, Grace insists that Julian tell her about himself. When she realizes how torturous the curse is and how little Julian cares for his lot in life, she can't help but want to help him. The book is the story of their attempt to break Julian's curse in the month he is staying with her. Obviously, they also fall in love.

What did I like about it? I liked the fact that the Greek gods and goddesses we meet were very much like the personalities you find in any other book of mythology. Vain and arrogant, they walk the earth messing with each other and the humans they encounter. It's amusing. I also liked Grace, either because of or despite her ridiculous need to help people and her inexperience in bed (yes, I did say she was a sex therapist). I liked Julian. He was stoic and insanely masculine, but caring and tempered by his imprisonment. I even liked the main plot. The idea that there could possibly be a man sex slave who didn't enjoy it was laughable and yet somehow realistic.

What could I have done without? Rodney Carmichael. One of Grace's temporary patients who stalks her without reason in the middle just to give Julian the chance to act the hero. Peter, or whatever Grace's ex's name was. He was an extraneous feature in a book that should have been about Julian's development.

Would I recommend it? If you like this sort of thing, sure, pick it up. Then get a copy of Jennifer Cruise's Faking It. Now that was a fun romance novel.

Watchmen

Uh, yeah. So NOT interested in the conventional superhero stuff or its demise. I guess the fact that I don't read superhero comics and never have really jarred my reading of Watchmen. I expected a few things I didn't get out of the reading, namely: a happy ending and a character I liked. Bummer for me.

There is nothing basic about this book, so it's unfair to start a sentence with, "The basic premise here is..." or whatever. I'll just tell you what I got out of it, and you'll have to pick it up if you want to know all the things I missed. Edward Blake, The Comedian is brutally murdered in his home. Rorschach believes there is a plot to kill off masked heroes and tells Daniel (Nite Owl), Dr. Manhattan, Laurie (The Silk Spectre), and Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) about it. They are fairly unconcerned. Laurie and Dr. Manhattan (Jon) split up, and Dr. Manhattan leaves earth for Mars. Apparently Dr. Manhattan was the only thing keeping the Russians from beginning World War III, and the war threatens to begin. Laurie hooks up with Daniel. Laurie has issues with her mother and Edward Blake, which she attempts to resolve during the course of the book. Rorschach gets arrested, but Daniel and Laurie free him. Together the three of them uncover an awful plot, but no one is really sure what it's all about. At the end, we discover who's behind the awful plot and what it's all about. Jon returns to earth. There is a horrible moral dilemma. A great evil resolves another great evil. Everyone is left dirty, impotent, and evil. The end.

Obviously I haven't told you who the mastermind was behind the plot. Knowing that would make the book not worth reading, and it is really worth reading. I didn't like it, but it's worth reading. I also have not scraped the surface of the complexities of the book. There is a tremendous amount of philosophy in the book, and it does much to demean the superhero medium in a sadistic, make-you-want-to-shoot-yourself kind of way.

I will concede that it is laudable. If you are looking for stories in the graphic medium that are also literary but aren't interested in intensely disliking every character you meet (with the possible exception of Rorschach), read Sandman!

Unmanned (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1)

I accidentally got sucked into this at my boyfriend's house this weekend. I'm reading Watchmen, but he gave me Hell Boy and this Unmanned (Y: The Last Man) to entertain me as well. Now, my big priority will be getting my grades done with all this interesting stuff to read. :)

I got "some" grades done today, so I thought I would catch up a bit on my blog. When I say I accidentally got sucked into this book, I mean it. I was lying in bed when my boyfriend brought me a few new books to look at. I flipped through Hell Boy (I really like the artwork in Hell Boy) and then I flipped through Unmanned. Only it wasn't like flipping through at all. The next thing I knew I was done with the first trade. I even stopped a couple of times to talk to Wade about what I was reading.

The first page grabbed me. In the final two frames, a female police officer points out that all the men are dead just before putting her gun to her temple. And I really think that's what my reaction would be to such a catastrophe. I'm not sure I could weather the world with only female company, though I've spent my fair share of time around girls. I went to an all-girls school for two years in Hawaii, and after my husband and I split up, the great majority of my time was spent with my two girls, my mother, and my sister. I hope I would try to keep things together for them, but my gut reaction would be to get out...fast.

This series, while illustrated by a woman, is written by a man (Brian K. Vaughan), and at times this male perspective shows through. Yorick, the last man,

Persuasion

Persuasion was harder to get into than Sense and Sensibility, but definitely worth the additional effort. The first few chapters deal entirely with Sir Walter Elliot and his eldest daughter Elizabeth, and they are both horrible, annoying people. I was really quite concerned that Austen's focus on the ridiculousness of societal stratification would weed me interest right out of the reading. However, she eventually in the third or fourth chapter begins to focus on Anne, who is a delightful, if slightly confusing, character.

When I was about halfway through Persuasion, I asked a colleague in the lounge (she looked like a Jane Austen fan) if she had read it. I was right; she was a Jane Austen fan, and Persuasion was perhaps her favorite of Austen's works. I was curious about this because Pride and Prejudice has always been mine, but she pointed out some salient facts. Not the least of which is Anne is twenty-seven. I guess I should have attached myself to that earlier, as I am also twenty-seven, but it sort of slipped through my mind. Also, Anne is a middle child in a family where only the youngest is married. All this is rather unusual for the time period, but it seemed quite normal to me until Ms. Summers pointed it out. She also mentioned that this book was the most autobiographical of Austen's works, and she felt that Austen might have been writing the alternative ending to her life. This is, of course, a simultaneously pleasing and depressing thought. How sad that she lived alone, desiring male company, but how wonderful that she could create a world in which her deepest desires were manifest.

In terms of my unadulterated reaction to the book, I worried about Anne throughout. She seemed to read things into Captain Wentworth's actions that I would never have been so bold as to read there. I guess that's why it always came as a surprise to me when a guy was interested in me, I could never read the signals correctly. Still, I spent a great deal of the novel waiting for Anne's arrogance to be toppled by Wentworth's engagement to someone else. Thankfully, this was not the case, and everything ends up okay at the end. I will give Ms. Austen credit for her creation of another dashing male character. Wentworth is a rival for Darcy, to be sure. :)