REVIEW: Prophecy of the Sisters

Hi friends! I apologize for my sporadic posting as of late – graduate school is killing me by inches. Of course, Shel is a ridiculous example of how someone can both rock at school and at blogging, but I, alas, am not quite that skilled.
But exams are almost over, and then I promise, I will be so attentive to you lovely people that you’ll start to feel a little stalked.
Anyway, on to today’s review!

Zink, M. Prophecy of the Sisters
343 pages – 9780316027427

Thirty second summary: After the death of their father, orphaned twin sisters Lia and Alice stumble upon the discovery that they are destined to be enemies – for one girl is prophesied to unleash evil into the world, and the other to defend all that is good.

I almost hate to review this book, friends, because it’s the kind of novel that I know I should love. It has everything I like, up to and including a creepy child who knows too much, a massive library, and ponies. (The dust jacket apparently likes listing details as much as I do -- Prophecy of the Sisters also contains “a tattoo-like mark, their parents’ deaths, a boy, a book, and a lifetime of secrets.” Ooh.) So I almost hate to review it, because I… really did not enjoy this book all that much.

I can’t put my finger on exactly what the problem is, either.

Part of it might be the writing:

“Sonia and I don’t speak on our way up the hill to the cliff overlooking the water,” Lia thinks to herself. “In the vacuum of the words we do not say, I focus on the sky, an endless sapphire that goes on and on” (68).

Dang, you’ll say. That’s ridiculously poetic! Then you realize that the entire book is written that way. It doesn’t matter what’s happening – girls gossiping at school, psychic wanderings, crazy sibling murders (oops, is that a spoiler?) – Lia relates everything in a distant and detached fashion. It’s well-written, and it’s beautiful to read, but you don’t even really feel that she cares about anything, for all that she insists that she does.

Part of it might be the amped-up drama with very little follow-through. Alice is *so* evil (you’ll love the scene where she’s staring off into the distance and yanking the fur out of her pet cat) that you expect her to do something about it. Instead she just lurks around the edges. Granted, she works some major bad in the last scene, but she ruins it by pretending like she didn’t mean to! Alice, you have to embrace your role in this book. No one likes a half-hearted villain.

And part of it (probably the biggest part, for me) is that when you finally do reach the end of the book, you realize that this was just the first in a series. Nay, just the prequel in a series. No wonder there was no feeling of closure! I secretly loathe books like this. It’s not that I don’t love books that are part of a series, but I like each one to be vaguely stand-alone-ish. Prophecy of the Sisters is not – it serves solely as a set-up for the next book. It’s exasperating!

The novel isn’t all bad, obviously. There’s something very viscerally satisfying about a sisters-at-war book. Neither girl seems particularly comfortable with the roles that have been forced upon them, and you’ll appreciate the frustration each feels as they chafe at the boundaries of the prophecy. Lia is an interesting heroine – you’re not quite sure that you love her, but you cringe alongside her as disaster after disaster occurs. And as an added bonus, I really do like the cover. Oh, creepy headstone-esque girl statues. How you rock.

I can’t give this book my full endorsement. I found the writing style too foofy (even given the time period the novel takes place in) and the drama too overdone. However, I also recognize that it has the potential to be wildly popular, so don’t let me keep you from checking it out!

Quotes of note:

Once, I would have taken offense. I would have sided with my sister. But I cannot refute Luisa’s perception of Alice, and deciphering the prophecy and my place in it is suddenly more important than loyalty to a sister I am becoming more and more certain I hardly know. (p. 109)

“What of the world that is left when the Beast reigns? What good is our safety if those we love are left to live in a world of darkness?” (p. 229)

I bring my gaze to the ice, slipping as I see the figure frozen beneath it. I stifle a scream, the sudden movement causing me to slip, arms and legs flailing as I fall. I scramble on hands and knees, slipping and sliding to get away from the person entombed in the ice directly under me, though there is no reason why I should be afraid of her. The face is colorless, but perfectly preserved within the ice. Even her hair is frozen, stretched out in the ice behind her.
When she speaks, her lips move almost imperceptibly. “Help me. They… are… coming.” (p. 277)

Tasty Rating: !!!

If you thought this was delicious, try:

The Hollow by Jessica Verday.

This is a book that could also be described using the words “a boy, a book, and a lifetime of secrets.” Add in some angst and a funeral, and you’ve got a fun (and only slightly trashy) read.

REVIEW: Sunshine

McKinley, R. (2003) Sunshine
389 pages – 0425191788

Thirty Second Summary: Rae “Sunshine” Seddon, working as a baker at her family’s restaurant, knows that out of all the demons and creatures that plague the world, vampires are the worst. But when she finds herself trapped with Constantine, a powerful but imprisoned vampire, she must choose – allow Con to die, or risk her own life to save him?

Robin McKinley has the honor of being one of only two authors whose book my mother forbade me to read. (Apparently she objected to her nine-year-old daughter reading Deerskin. Evil rapist fathers what?) She has the second, and perhaps even more impressive, honor of being the only author whose book I stealthily checked out and read, secretly under the covers, despite not being permitted to by my mother. Oh, Robin McKinley. How I love you.

But anyway! On to the review! Of the book!

I want to throw in a bit of a warning right off the bat for anyone under the age of fourteen – there’s some sex in Sunshine (but not too graphic) and a modest amount of crazy, vampire-squishing violence. Oh, and a scene where an emergency magical medical session goes *so* wiggy and blood-splattered that Rae is forced to shriek that “this cannot be healing.” End warning.

I thought Sunshine was a ridiculously enjoyable read – and not just because of my aforementioned love o’ the author. The sense of “place” grabs you right off the bat. The characters inhabit a futuristic post-apocalyptic America which never existed, filled with zombies and incubi and wizards, where people tattoo themselves with protective charms and hang wards from the rear view mirrors of their cars. It’s the sort of world you’d want to visit, as long as you could get home safely afterward.

“You are not afraid of everything,” he said.
“Nearly,” I said. “I am afraid of you. I am afraid of me.” (P. 373)
This pretty much sums up Rae’s attitude throughout the book. There is never a moment when she is not completely and utterly aware of the danger she’s facing. Unlike some OMG VAMPIRE novels, she’s not blissfully unconcerned about Constantine and his eating habits. She recognizes him for the killer he is. Constantine, for his part, makes no attempt to cover up his own nature. Heck, he flat out tells her he’s going to eat her, the day they meet. “It is not hunger that will break me. It is the daylight. The daylight is driving me mad. Some sunset soon I will no longer be myself.” To be fair, he’d rather not, but you never know how far that willingness to not devour Rae is going to last.

As an unrelated aside, if you ignore the Vampires Eating People details, this book was *yummy*! I blame a decade of Redwall for embedding in me a mad love of food porn – curse you, page-long soliloquies of summer nut ale and giant wheels of cheddar cheeses – and Sunshine doesn’t disappoint, with its wild descriptions of chocolate chip hazelnut cookies, butterscotch brownies, Jamdandies, butter-soaked maple cornbread, muffins… I mean, listen to this! “I’d made my special cream-cheese sauce to go with the triple-ginger gingerbread. I’d long felt that gingerbread, while excellent in itself, was still essentially an excuse to eat the sauce, so I’d always made twice as much per portion as the original recipe called for. Then it turned out that some of our customers were even more crazed than I was, so I’d started making three times as much, and we served it in little sauceboats.” Honestly, friends, I never wanted a cinnamon roll more in my life than when I finished reading Sunshine.

Although a highly enjoyable and well-written read, it is the kind of novel that’s just screaming out for a sequel to explain the few but fairly important plot holes. Who, exactly, was Onyx Blaise? Why is Con so much younger-seeming than the rest of his vampirey brethren? The final few pages, however, are so enjoyable that I suppose it’s better if the story ends as it ends.

…

ROBIN MCKINLEY PLEASE WRITE A SEQUEL!!!

Love, Monica

Quotes of Note:

June Yanovsky had tangled with the school board because she chose to teach a section of classic vampire literature to her junior elective. She said that denying kids the opportunity to discuss Dracula and Carmilla and Immortal Death was in the same category of muddleheaded misguided protectiveness that left them to believe that they couldn’t get pregnant if they did it standing up with their shoes on. She won her case. (p. 39)

I didn’t think there was a word for a human so sicko as to rescue a vampire, so he could go on being a vampire, because no one had ever done it. Before. (p. 97)

The reason why, when you were thirteen or fourteen, you outgrew our fascination with the idea that a vampire couldn’t do you unless you let him is that you began to take in the fact that shortly after you said “Come and get me big boy,” you died. (p. 243)

”There are different ways of being what we are....” Something to talk to the academics about. Variability of Aging Among Vampires. Usage of Certain Words Pertaining to Daylight by Aged Vampires. Maybe I could get my pass into the Other Museum’s library after all. No, wait. I was about to die. (p. 332)

Tasty Rating: !!!!!

If you thought this was delicious, try:

Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce.
It’s all the delicious Moody Guy Who Can Kill You drama, with half the graphic violence!

REVIEW: The Face in the Frost

Bellairs, J. (1969) The Face in the Frost. New York: MacMillan.

Thirty second summary: Prospero the wizard and his friend Roger Bacon must make a perilous journey to locate and defeat Melichus, a villain of unparalleled evil who plans on destroying Prospero and summoning a perpetual winter.

Several centuries (or so) ago, in a country whose name doesn’t matter, there was a tall, skinny, straggly-bearded old wizard named Prospero, and not the one you are thinking of, either. So begins The Face in the Frost, one of John Bellairs’ first novels, but in my opinion one of his best.

The book is chock-full of some of the most perfectly imaginative ideas ever, from miniature sailing ships making their way through underground rivers, to a king with a clockwork galaxy in his castle tower, to a grumpy and tune-deaf magic mirror that accompanies its singing with even more out-of-tune bagpipes. (“O-over-head the moon is SCREEEEAMING...”) When Roger Bacon tells Prospero that “one should not attribute a very high degree of reality to [his] house,” you’ll completely agree.

Keep in mind, though, that there’s a reason this book, originally aimed at children, has more and more found itself described as an adult fantasy novel. There is true evil in Face -- not the “omg Edward is such a brooding and potentially dark vampire” kind, but rather a shifting, creeping, shadowy evil that vanishes when you look too closely and reappears when you’re not expecting it. Some people die, and some come back to life, and some may never have existed in the first place.

His hand was on the latch when he heard another voice---not the whispering leaf voice but a little girl’s weak cry.
“Help me! I can’t get out!”
He turned and ran to where he saw a small white blur under a willow tree. But when he clasped the child to him, her head crunched under his hand and the whole body turned to crackling fluttering paper. In the air someone was laughing, and the laughter was more horrible because it was a child’s---wet, gulping, and somehow harsh (p. 83).

Now, don’t let the Scary put you off – I was telling the truth when I said this was one of my favorites of Bellairs’. It’s witty and hysterical and dripping with magic. There an almost regrettable last-minute deus ex machina ending, which I felt stole something from Prospero and Roger’s quest (I won’t give it away, but keep an eye out for a dealer in used back doors), but since they never cast themselves as “questing” in the first place, it’s not as disappointing an issue as it might otherwise have been.

The illustrations are brilliant, although not, unfortunately, particularly compelling as a cover image. Call me snooty, but I require more in a cover than black-over-brown line drawings. Thankfully, that was remedied in later editions.

The biggest problem with Face in the Frost is locating a copy! It was (thank goodness) reprinted within the last few years through Olmstead Press, but even those copies seem few and far between. Luckily, there should still be some lurking around your local school or small-town library. Trust me, the hunt is well worth it.

Quotes of Note:

Prospero bent to set the candle down, and then, straightening up suddenly, he walked to where the slumping figure stood. Grasping her shoulders, he shook her violently. There was a clatter on the floor at his feet, and when he looked down he saw a long, slightly curved butcher knife. He looked up at the women again and stepped back with a gasp. His hand went to his face and his staff fell to the floor. The woman’s eyes were gone. In her slowly rising head were two black holes. Prospero saw in his mind a doll that had terrified him when he was a child. The eyes had rattled in the china skull. Now the woman’s voice, mechanical and heavy: “Why don’t you sleep? Go to sleep.” Her mouth opened wide, impossibly wide, and then the whole face stretched and writhed and yawned in the faint light (p. 94).

”Hum,” said Prospero. I do hope no one is out fishing on the lake. I’m not sure what I’d do if I saw a wee little ship scooting past my rowboat, but I think I might be tempted to smack it with an oar” (p. 44).

”But I can’t ride a horse!” said Prospero. “You know that. I was frightened of ponies when I was a child” (p. 120).

Hungry Readers Exclamatory Rating: !!!!!

If you thought this was delicious, try:
Mister Monday by Garth Nix
With a main character who is every bit as confused as Prospero, and a big to-do about a key, you'll think you're reading the same book! Almost. Only with completely different plots....