These Last Few Months

It's been a crazy few months, what with births (new baby cousin!), midterms, finals and college applications. I have been getting some reading done, but it's slow-going and I haven't really been able to update the blog. One does not simply rush through The Silmarillion and The Once and Future King. I have, however, updated the website! You may have noticed some changes. Our current Young Adult recommendations list and book summaries are complete, so we'll be adding on to that in the future. Our About, Contact, Book Ninja, and Home pages have also gone through some reconstruction. That would be me, battling the slow internet we have out in the sticks and procrastinating on writing another college application essay. Here's the quick rundown of what we've been reading the past couple of months, what each book is about and how we liked it. A few warnings, a few excited spiels. Here it is, rapid-fire.

Wool, by Hugh Howey

I read the first book in the Wool series in 2016, and I really enjoyed it. Wool is set in a futuristic world where the air is toxic and what remains of humanity lives in silos underground. It was unique, well-written and slightly science-y. I wasn't able to get my hands on the next two books (Shift and Dust) till recently, so I reread the first book and dove back into the world of Wool. I was less impressed with the sequels. Shift, a choppy prequel, was tedious and depressing. The depression escalated with Dust, causing me to sit back and ponder what I disliked so much about the second and third books. Sure, there was some nasty language and some uncalled-for mature content. But it was more than that. It came down to this: morals. Right and wrong and a striving for goodness are hardwired into our heads. A lot of modern composers try to dissect music and break all the rules, but what they end up with is something completely unpleasant to listen to (cough cough, Rite of Spring, cough). Some modern writers are trying to do the same thing, but with stories. It's why I didn't like Doctor Strange; the filmmakers were trying to blur the lines between good and evil, attempting to show that the very essence of evil can be used to achieve good purposes. What they ended up with was an incredibly confusing theme and a bitter aftertaste, because that just isn't reality. With Wool, Hugh Howey robbed all his main characters of their morals. They had no sense of right or wrong, merely of survival and necessity. Okay, I can acknowledge that in life-and-death situations, people sometimes make really bad choices. But the second and third books were riddled with unnecessary and mindless murders by people we've grown to trust, immoral decisions, and a thoroughly depressing view of the world. Nasty aftertaste.

The Wizards of Once, by Cressida Cowell

Cressida Cowell, author of the How to Train Your Dragon series, returns with a new series of books set in the ancient British Isles with Wizards and Warriors, evil Witches and magical spoons. It's always interesting to see a well-known author start a new series, when their original books got so much hype. Is it going to be a copy of their previous success? I wasn't disappointed. While the writing and world-building are reminiscent of How to Train Your Dragon, the story and main characters are drastically different. It's a whimsical and humorous story and I look forward to the sequel. That being said, I didn't like it as much as the How to Train Your Dragon series (which is hard to compete with). Maybe that will change once I read the whole series. But there wasn't nearly as much detail concerning the actual setting of the story, which made some parts confusing as I lacked a complete mental image.

Boys of Blur, by N.D. Wilson

I often rave about N.D. Wilson's books, and it's true that I've never read a bad one. But this one was definitely my least-favorite. While it's an interesting idea (boys chasing rabbits through the muck and sugar cane fields of Florida, swamp monsters, ect.), it just wasn't nearly long enough. The first half of the book felt like the introduction, and the actual conflict and antagonist were introduced very late in the book, along with a wealth of confusing backstory. Boys of Blur had some good, evident themes (family, self-sacrifice), but they would have been better highlighted if the book had been twice as long. It felt like a lot of story crammed into a very short amount of time. Additionally, I would recommend it for a higher age group than The Legend of Sam Miracle and 100 Cupboards. The main character, Charlie, has memories of his mom hiding him in the top of the closet when his father came home. His mom has scars from domestic abuse. While she is remarried to a good and kind man who is a wonderful stepfather to Charlie (he kind of reminds me of Rupert Greeves), Charlie's dad is out of prison and he is present throughout the book, kind of in the background. We later find out that he had another son with a girl he was not married to, before he married Charlie's mom. So there's some intense family stuff, but overall, there are good themes and the setting has got a nice, classic feel to it.

The Door Before, by N.D. Wilson

I think I went over this briefly in another review, but this year N.D. Wilson published a prequel to the 100 Cupboards series, combining the worlds of Faeren and Westmores with the Ashtown Burials. We see the initial imprisonment of the witch-queen Nimiane by the hands of Mordecai and Caleb and learn where the cupboards in Kansas came from. It was a thrilling read. Short but sweet. Very N.D. Wilson. I'd just finished reading the Ashtown Burials books for the first time, so this was like revisiting old friends and getting a peek into their earlier lives. Hyacinth Smith is the older sister of Lawrence Smith, who is the father of Ashtown's Cyrus and Antigone. Hyacinth, however, was whisked away to a world where she married Mordecai Westmore and had Henry York. I can't help wondering whether this prequel is heralding the fourth Ashtown Burials book, and whether we'll see more of Henry. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who has read the 100 Cupboards series, though it would be better appreciated if you've also read the Ashtown Burials series.