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end June 2005

So many good books read! First of all, Justine Larbalestier's Magic or Madness, a fantasy YA. It takes place in Boston and Australia, featuring young adults who have been taught that magic is dangerous and leads to madness...but then denying one's magic also leads to madness Meanwhile, the adults who supposedly are watching over them are disturbingly like certain fanged creatures....a wonderful book, but beware, nothing is resolved--this is the first of a three-book storyline.

Next, Holly Black's Valiant, which incidentally has just been bought for making into a film! I met Holly Black while in New York to sign copies of The Emerald Wand of Oz, just out, and what a wonderful person as well as a wonderful writer. I read Valiant traveling back and could not put it down! For those of you who are careful about YA distinctions, be aware that this novel would rate at the adult end of YA, as some of the issues it deals with are drugs and sex. Val is a runaway, having discovered a double betrayal in her own home. She ends up on the streets, and stumbles into the borderland of faerie, which is not all that delightful a place to be. Vivid characters, hard questions, adveture, all related in a straightforward manner by the protagonist, Val, made a riveting novel that is full of humor, adventure, compassion and hard=won insight.

I also read Lois McMaster Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt. I loved this book as I love all her books--the characters are so wonderful. The villain in this one is utterly unexpected, and the story explores kingship, man's relation to the unseen world of the spirit, magic, love--there is something so generous shining through the Bujold-verse, whether the sf or fantasies. And this book exemplifies it beautifully. Oh, it's splendid. Also read Sethra Lavode by Steven Brust, the windup of the Khaavren cycle. It's swashbuckle at its very best, adventurous, Fine touches of humor, and quite poignant. I also went on a Terry Pratchett kick, rereading Jingo along with some others. I adore Pratchett's humor, yet there is so much thought underneath the stories. He is never meanspirited in his humor.

For non-genre reading, I revisited Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters which is an exquisite novel--really, in many ways, one of the best novels of the 19th century. If she had finished it, it would be far better known than it is now, and deservedly so, for its insights, its delightful details of ordinary lives, its skill in delineating passions that can be understood on several levels.

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