Review

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

By J.K. Rowling

Scholastic

ISBN: 0-439-13635-0

5 stars

This is my favorite book in the series, and before I tell you why, there will be spoilers so feel free to look away now if you don’t want to know.

First, the short re-cap: Harry is off to his third year at Hogwarts, and before he gets there, blows up his aunt like a balloon, worries that he might be expelled, takes the Knight Bus to London, learns that a madman named Sirius Black has escaped Azkaban, finds out that Sirius is after him, and that he may not be safe even at Hogwarts.

I love this book for so many reasons.  Aunts blowing up, Knight Buses, werewolves, dementors, boggarts, Quidditch, Firebolts, and Maurader’s Maps, ahh, yes, we’re back at Hogwarts.  Let’s start with a favorite, Professor Lupin.  He, for the first time, teaches the students practical applications in his Defense Against the Dark Arts class and his classes add a lightness to an otherwise gloomy year with dementors and escaped killers running around.  Lupin teachers Harry new skills and gives him hints into his parents’ lives from the perspective of an old friend.  He’s kind and a friend to Harry when he needs one.  The dementors are a dark turn in this book and become, sadly, a way for Harry to connect with his parents.  The attacks on him cause him to grow stronger though and he uses the sadness that he didn’t know existed, to move forward.  Hagrid, now the teacher of the Care of Magical Creatures class, is still finding odd things to harbor.  And it is thanks to Hagrid that we get to meet Buckbeak the Hippogriff, creatures I just adore for some reason.  Hermione is still being her good self in this book and when she causes Harry’s new Firebolt broom to be confiscated for fear that it might be cursed, she makes no friends and even I get annoyed at her.  Does she not know the Quidditch season it right around the corner?  And then there is Sirius.  He’s a dark figure in Harry’s past and one he didn’t even know existed.  He’s Harry godfather, a fact Harry never knew until this book.  One thing that does annoy me — when Sirius explains everything and offers Harry the chance to come and live with him, Harry jumps at it.  He doesn’t know this person and it just shows you how quick he is to make decisions before thinking about anything.  Harry?  Really?  Yes, I know the Dursley’s are awful people but this man just escaped from prison, and while I like him too, give it a second will you.

I realized while reading this book that I remembered the ending from the movie better than the book.  The incident with Hermione’s time turner is much different and I was pleased by this happy little discovery and was trying to figure out where it was going the whole time I was reading.  It’s nice to be surprised by books you’re read before.

I also forgot that Hermione doesn’t get Crookshanks until this book.  For some reason, I just always thought of the cat as there but it’s really not until the third book that he arrives and plays a much larger part than I remembered.  Poor Scabbers though.  While I don’t feel anything nice for Peter Pettigrew, I did feel for Ron having to watch his rat deteriorate.

The Prisoner of Azkaban is where I feel the story begins to take a turn and you know that no one is safe anywhere.  Sirius’s escape is even announced on the muggle news which is a warning that Hogwarts or not, there is no safe place.  The dementors with their soul sucking abilities remind the students that life will not always be filled with joy.

And to end this — Snape, still disliking him greatly.

Dracula in Love

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Dracula in Love

By Karen Essex

Doubleday

ISBN: 978-0-385-52891-7

3 stars

I’ll be upfront, I read a few early reviews and wasn’t so sure this book was for me.  I decided that I still needed to give it a chance though.  After reading it, I decided that it wasn’t the book for me and I like vampire stories and have a very deep affection for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  This book followed the same epistolary style but was told from Mina Murray’s point of view.  Mina is a character that I happen to like from the original and that was the reason for my deciding to give it a go.

Mina Murray is teaching and happily waiting to become Mrs. Jonathan Harker and begin her married life.  Wanting to be prepared for their future together, Jonathan takes a short sojourn working for a foreign count to help their finances and further his career.  While Jonathan is away, Mina visits her friend Lucy Westenra and becomes involved in her friend’s love affairs.  She also starts having odd dreams and feelings that she can’t share with anyone.  When she gets a letter telling her that Jonathan is gravely ill, she rushes to his side to nurse him back to health.  In the coming weeks, Mina’s strange dreams start to become her reality, her husband confesses an affair, her friend dies, and somehow she ends up in an insane asylum.  It is then that her dream lover comes to her rescue.

Several of the reviews I read noted the amount of sex; some found it too much, others didn’t seem to think anything of it.  The story takes place in Victorian England so sex, while deeply thought about, wasn’t much talked about, and yes, that is a big part of the story here as it was in the original as well.  The sex, amount of or lack of depending on how feel about these things, didn’t bother me but the silly references about it were annoying and slightly cumbersome in places.

While most of the same characters appear (Dr. Seward, Arthur Holmwood, Jonathan Harker, Dr.Van Helsing, Lucy Westenra) they have been changed slightly and some have become so maddening that I wanted to slap a few — Seward in particular who seemed to diagnose each and every woman he met with some sex related disease of the mind.  What I found annoying about this was that I felt I was once again being reminded about the Victorian sex mindset and I didn’t need that.

The last 100 pages of this book were much better than the 267 preceding pages.  And though I won’t mention it here, Mina’s character is given a new, life shall we say, that adds an interesting, if somewhat strange twist, to the story.  It didn’t work for me, but as long as you’re not a purist, it probably won’t provide the “really?” moment for you as it did for me.

If you’re looking for a vampire/Dracula story with a little different take, this one might be for you.  I found it a bit sluggish but a relatively fast read for a weekend.

This book was sent to me by the publisher for review.

The House on the Strand

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The House on the Strand

By Daphne Du Maurier

ISBN: 0-8122-1726-8

University of Pennsylvania Press

5 stars

Time travel and the 14th Century…what more can one want in a book?  OK, a lot more, but let’s go with these two as the starter for this one.

Richard Young is staying at his friend Magnus Lane’s home in the English countryside.  Magnus is a chemical researcher at the University of London and has concocted a drink, that when taken, will transport a person to the 14th Century.  The one catch is that the traveler cannot touch any person while on the trip or they will be instantly hurled back to the present rather painfully.  Richard, while waiting for his wife and step-sons to arrive, agrees to take the potion and report back to Magnus with the results.  The potion has the same affect on Richard as Magnus and they compare their trips to the past observing the daily lives of the people who used to live in the same area where Magnus’s house is.  Richard becomes fascinated with the past so much so that he keeps returning to see one particular woman that he has become obsessed with.  His sense of reality takes a turn and he starts to have trouble deciphering the past and the present which frightens him but not enough to stop him from taking what is left of the potion like some madman believing he can change the outcome of the past.  The results of his actions make the present a terrifying place for both Richard and his family.

Time travel in books can sometimes go bad but Du Maurier does something that makes it work — she makes it unbelievable.  That might sound odd but stick with me.  For a good portion of the book, Richard isn’t sure what he’s seeing and he isn’t sure he should believe it.  When he starts to believe, things go off track in his life making him wonder if what he thinks he believes is true.  Even when some historical research proves that the people he saw and observed on his trips were real, he still isn’t sure what to think or believe.  Life becomes difficult for him on so many levels and it seems as if you’re watching a man on the brink of madness.  How Du Maurier does this is fascinating and makes the whole idea of time travel so fantastical and terrifying at the same time.

Richard was not a person I liked at first.  I didn’t dislike him either but he’s a selfish person and one who doesn’t seem to think, or care, much for his family which is truly annoying.  Magnus however was a character I would have liked more of.  His ambiguity makes it work though because you get back to the idea of Richard slowly falling into the depths of madness without Magnus around.

There is so much to like about this book.  The fantasy element is done well, and even though you’re not sure if it truly exists outside of Richard’s mind, it works and is believable.  There are rules and consequences to the time travel and I like that.   A free system wouldn’t work here and Du Maurier creates a system that fits perfectly within the confines of the story.  The characters all have some sort of flaw that makes even the annoying ones likable, to a degree.  You do in the end sympathize with everyone which I wasn’t prepared to do half way through the book.

I will be adding more of Du Maurier’s books to my list.  Her writing is wonderfully descriptive and at the same time sparse, as if she’s giving you time to ingest it all.

Appointment in Samarra

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Appointment in Samarra

By John O’Hara

Vintage Books (Random House, Inc.)

ISBN: 0-375-71920-2

4 stars

My husband read this book a while ago and kept telling me I should read it.  It takes place in the area of Pennsylvania we grew up in, although the town featured in the book is fictitious.  He found it fascinating but I didn’t think I would like it so I put it off.  I felt I needed to be in the mood for it.

The story takes place over a three day period in a town called Gibbsville, PA.  It’s December 1930 and the holiday party season is in full gear.  There are celebrations, dances, late nights, and lots of liquor.  Julian and Caroline English are among the social elite of Gibbsville, the envy of many in town.  At a party one night, Julian, after a lot of alcohol, throws a drink in the face of Harry Reilly and slowly begins his decent toward self-destruction.

This book is all about small town life — the bitter feelings that emerge among family and friends and the small town politics that make the world go around.  O’Hara used Pottsville, PA as the base for the fictional Gibbsville.  I grew up about an hour north of Pottsville so I’m very familiar with small town Pennsylvania life.

For O’Hara, nothing is sacred.  He lambastes everyone and everything in the book.  You can see just how much he really hated living in this place — the politics, the people, and the class distinctions.  Everything in this book is negative and full of vitriol which makes it a hard, and sometimes unpleasant, book to read.  It’s a treatise on society and the time period.  The wastefulness of the lifestyles of these well-to-do people, the sad lives they lead, the wanton spending of money on parties.  Julian English himself is a Cadillac salesman.  Could he have given him a more despised job?  O’Hara doesn’t want you to like anyone here and goes out of his way to make that happen.  You might start to feel sorry for some of the characters and then he switches gears and has you eavesdropping on their lives through the neighbors who are talking badly about them and what they’re really like behind closed doors.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about this book.  Yes, it’s a great read.  It’s caustic, there are small town politics, there are interesting characters, but none of it is likable.  He eviscerates everyone and everything for what I imagine would be an attempt at making himself feel better, and slightly superior, to the people he’s writing about.  Some of it felt childish to me and I had to remind myself to take a step back.  While I might no longer live in that area, I still take offense when people degrade it and that was beginning to happen to me with this book.  Once I took myself out of it, I found it an easier read.

This book, which takes place over the course of three days and ends in a tragedy, feels like a lifetime.  It was hard to read, at least for me, but well worth it.

The Road

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The Road

By Cormac McCarthy

Vintage International (Random House, Inc.)

ISBN: 978-0-307-27792-3

5 stars

The first time I wrote this review, it took me a long time.  Now that I’m writing it a second time*, I wonder, and worry, that it will not have the same impact as the first.

Before I start, there will be spoilers so if you don’t want to know, stop reading now.  My feelings won’t be hurt.

The Road is a scary book and I don’t mean in that creepy kind of way.  It’s a full on terror that makes you want to jam something in the light switch so that it never turns off and then permanently lock yourself in so you never have to face the fears of the outside world.

The story takes place in a post-apocalyptical America.  There is nothing left but a ravaged landscape for the few survivors to pick over to sustain their meager existence.  We meet a father and his son on the road heading south in the hopes of leaving the cold winter behind them.  The only possessions they have are piled in an old shopping cart that is their only company besides the falling ash.  They keep to themselves since they are afraid of coming in contact with the gangs that roam the highways looking for survivors.  The father and son cleave to each other and the little they have.

From that description, the book would sound more sad than scary.  What I left out, and will cover now, are the scary parts.

Not only is the setting, a world scraped clean by some epic and unexplained devastation, a bad place to imagine, but to be running from roving bands of gangs who aim to steal humans to use as a food source is even scarier.  The father and son can trust no one and each time they leave a person alive the father is left wondering if they will come back to kill him and his son at some point.  They are constantly running and always on the edge of starvation.  They lead utterly desolate lives filled with nothing.

The scariest scene in this book is the basement scene.  It actually made me stop reading at one point but only for a short time.  Without any more introduction…I give you the basement scene.  The father and son come upon a house.  It looks like it’s in good condition, and knowing they have no food left, the father decides they must risk it and investigate.  The son is terrified of the indoors and begs his father to leave the moment they enter the house.  The father is determined to find something to feed his son.  He doesn’t find canned goods though but he does find a locked door to a basement.  With the son dragging on his father’s hand or coat sleeve, whichever he can get a hold of, the father begins to hack away at the lock delirious with the idea of finding food.  He gets the door open and what he finds in the basement is this: people chained to walls missing arms, legs, feet, and hands.  He finds a food source, but not the one he and his son survive on.  They run from the house knowing that the owners will be back and they have no desire to become part of the basement fare.  The hide in the woods hoping they will not be found.  The scene is short but will make your heart beat fast in those few pages.

It’s not what is found in the basement, although that in itself is a most disgusting thought, it’s the son’s reaction and his incessant begging of the father to leave.  He keeps saying he has a bad feeling and wants to go but the father, in a rage to find to food, forgets himself and almost gets the two of them killed.  The moments are so intense you can hear your own heart beat in the utter silence that envelopes the father and son in the house.

There is not much dialogue in this book but what sparse words are used only add to the complete and utter sadness of their lives.  They are walking on a road to nowhere, not knowing where it will take them, and if it will lead them to salvation or death.

The writing is hard, short, staccato almost in its brevity.  The two people alone don’t have much to say and that mirrors their plight.  There just isn’t much for them anywhere.  There is nothing of the life the father once knew and he has trouble conveying what that even was to his son.

The father seems to view the son as a Jesus figure of sorts and that’s what drives him to protect him so manically.  His thoughts are always of his son and it’s sad to watch him reason with himself about the best way to protect him.  There’s much more to this issue but I think it comes through better if you read it yourself since it’s very hard to describe adequately here.

McCarthy doesn’t use accepted punctuation styles to make the dialogue stand out so it took me a few minutes of reading to get a feeling for his style.  Once there, he sucks you in.  There were many times that I wanted to put the book down but I couldn’t.

My edition of the book notes that McCarthy is a Pulitzer Prize winner and with good reason — this is easily one of the best books I have ever read.

* Thank you, computer, for eating my first review.

The King of Attolia

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The King of Attolia

By Megan Whalen Turner

Greenwillow Books

ISBN: 0-06-083578-8

4 stars

There will be spoilers so if you’re not interested in knowing how this one turns out, you might want to look away.  It’s the third in a series and I can’t figure out how to write this without giving at least a few tidbits away.  I think this is the best in the series so far and the longer this story goes on, the more I love it.

Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, is now the King of Attolia.  He has what he wanted, the Queen of Attolia as his wife, and something he doesn’t want, the crown of Attolia.  The court hates him, believing him to be a petulant child, and don’t understand why the Queen married him.   Political schemes are hatched, there’s open talk of death threats on the King’s life, and his attendants do all they can to make him appear foolish.  A young, naive guard named Costis, after openly stating his contempt for the King and physically assaulting him, ends up in the center of the political storm, and for the first time, actually seeing and understanding his new King.

In this book you really get to see Gen’s character, and if you play close enough attention, you see the rouse Gen is playing.  It’s a good show and sets up numerous plot lines for the next book.  It was nice to see the relationship between Gen and the Queen develop as well.  These two dance around each other a lot and sometime you do wonder if it’s all for show, and other times, if they actually like each other at all.

I love books full of court intrigue and this one has a lot of it: unhappy barons, scheming courtiers, a King and Queen who seem to loathe each other, a threat of war, and numerous back stabbing people looking to make their fortunes on the fate of others.

I always find it hard to write reviews for books in a series because I have to give something away in order to make it work.  I knew that would be the case with this one especially since Whalen Turner seems to be building up to something.

Each new book in this series has been filled with political schemes and intrigue and it’s only getting deeper and more complex with each book.  Gen’s character has been revealed with each successive book and he’s a character I’ve grown to love.  I’m looking forward to A Conspiracy of Kings.

If you’re interested you can read my reviews of The Thief and the Queen of Attolia.

Howl’s Moving Castle

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Howl’s Moving Castle

By Diana Wynne Jones

Greenwillow Books

ISBN: 0-06-029881-2

4.5 stars

Howl’s Moving Castle has been on my list of books to read for a long time, too long in fact.  I finally got around to reading it and found a lovely story complete with fantasy, magic, and wonderful characters.

Sophie Hatter lives in a small town called Market Chipping in the land of Ingary.  Market Chipping is not far from the land of the Witch of the Waste, a very spiteful and mean witch, and Wizard Howl’s moving castle which roves around the mountainside outside of town.

Sophie is the oldest of three daughters of a well to do family that owns a hat shop.  Sophie knows that as the oldest she will be the one to fail first and is happy to see her sisters seek their fortunes instead of herself.  When their father dies many things change for the small family, and with her sisters set up in safe places where they will be able to find happy futures, Sophie stays to work at the hat shop.  She unknowingly sells a hat to the Witch of the Waste who turns out to be an unhappy customer and returns to turn her into an old woman.  Disgusted with her new situation, she decides to set out and seek her fortune.  As an old lady she figures she has nothing left to worry about.  With Wizard Howl’s castle in her sights, she chases it down and settles in making herself indispensible to Howl, his assistant, and the fire demon that inhabits and powers the castle fireplace.

When I started this book I was a little put off by Sophie who was content to be last and willing to believe that she shouldn’t have a good fortune awaiting her.  She’s down on herself, has no confidence, and while talented when it comes to designing and decorating hats, she thinks nothing will come of it.  Being an old lady makes her drop all inhibitions and she begins to speak her mind, take chances, and look for opportunities.  She becomes infinitely more likable when she’s old.  Howl is also an interesting character and not at all what everyone thinks but the most likable character for me was the fire demon Calcifer who Sophie befriends, mostly by bullying him into doing what she wants.

Howl’s Moving Castle is a great warm-hearted fantasy.  There are characters to get attached to and the story of these people thrown together and tormented by the Witch of the Waste, all for different reasons and all unaware of the others’ problems, is a good tale.  In the end, everything that Sophie thought she could never have because she simply didn’t feel herself worthy, changes for her and she sees herself, her family, and her friends in a whole new way.  Happy endings sometimes are the best.

I’m a repeat reader of authors that I like and Diana Wynn Jones will become one of those authors that I repeatedly re-read.

The Thieves of Manhattan

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The Thieves of Manhattan

By Adam Langer

Spiegel & Grau Trade Paperbacks

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6891-3

4 stars

Ian Minot is an author; an author that works in a coffee shop to pay the rent and stares at a blank computer screen on his writing days.  His girlfriend is a gorgeous, Eastern European woman and a much better writer than he is.  He expects her to dump him at any moment.  He wants to write the truth, but unfortunately for him, his life isn’t the stuff great books are made of.  He struggles looking for inspiration becoming bitter with his chosen career wondering if it might be better for him, and any potential readers he might acquire, to quit now.

When a man named Blade publishes a gritty memoir detailing all the crime, prison time, and retched things he’s done in his life, Ian takes offense telling anyone who will listen than the guy is a liar and the whole book is a fraud.  When his girlfriend gets a book deal, life gets even worse for Ian.  That’s when the confident man walks into his life with a proposition that will change his existence — together, the confident man and Ian, will pass off the confident man’s fiction novel as Ian’s memoir and wait for the cash and critical acclaim to roll in.  With nothing to his name and no coffee shop job left, Ian agrees to the scheme and finds out that the truth is not always what one believes.

The Thieves of Manhattan is a wry look at the publishing industry and the problems inherent in the industry, as well as, the silly stereotypical people and behaviors that inhabit it.  I found the first part of the story a bit slow.  Ian is a complainer and not all that easy to like which seems to be the way he likes it, but once the confident man steps into the picture, it picks up and takes an interesting turn.  You see it coming but Langer writes in such a way that makes it fun to read even when see (or think you see) how it will all end.

Langer makes up a lot of terms and uses industry jargon and includes a glossary in the back of the book.  At first I thought it was amusing, but quickly found it annoying and pretentious.  He uses the terms too freely and too often and they lose their entertainment value early on.  At least this was the case for me, could be different for others.

Overall, it’s a great quick read that lambastes the publishing industry for all its problems and all the crap that it publishes.  The main character doesn’t hold himself up as some honest, wonderful writer, and even though he goes along with the scheme he manages to get himself involved in, he doesn’t ever think of himself as better.  Just someone that broke into the system by fraud and found a way out of using the same corrupt system that got him in.  It’s an interesting read.