Review - Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
Publisher: HarperCollins 1995
Hardcover 406 pages



***Review Coming Soon***

Review - The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card

The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card
Publisher: Tor 2011
Hardcover 384 pages


This newest series by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game) stars a precocious 13 year old Danny North, a descendent of great mages who all live in the backwoods of the Deep South. He grows up in the "Family Compound" an outsider at his apparent lack of magical skills. One fateful day, Danny learns an almost unbelievable truth, he is not only a mage, but one of the most powerful mages, a gatemage. Gatemages are banned in his world though, and his family would kill him on sight if they knew. So Danny must run from his family, while trying to learn a skill that no mage in over a thousand years has had.

This book was great fun, and for older teens and adults who enjoyed the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, this would be a great recommendation for them.

Review - Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Harper Perennial 2006
Paperback 250 pages



Romantic, sweet and highly imaginative, Stardust is that perfect blend of high fantasy, humor and charm with characters that draw you in and make you fall in love. After months of reading history and science books this was the ideal book to break my fast from fantasy fiction.

Tristan Thorn, a boy living in a rural English village that borders the land of Faerie, has lived an ordinary life, in an ordinary village until the day he decides to cross the boundary that separates his village from the magical land beyond to find a fallen star. He sets off upon this quest driven by the desire to win the hand of a beautiful girl from home, only to find a truer love in the adventure and life he finds outside his small town.

At only 250 pages, this story can be read in one very long sitting and is gripping enough that you won't want to put it down until it's last gripping chapter where all of the many side stories... the murderous brothers searching for their crown, the witch seeking to cut the heart from a star and the boy who only wants to go home to his love, are finally brought together into a sweetly satisfying ending.

Review - First Contact by Evan Mandery

First Contact or It's Later Than You Think (parrot sketch excluded) by Evan Mandery
Publisher: Harper Collins 2010
Paperback 267 pages




When it comes to books, I'm a fairly passionate person. I love them, cry over them and obviously covet them. I will readily admit that whenever I read an exceptionally good book I will push that book on all of my friends, family and, considering my profession, complete strangers. And when I say push I mean that I will buy copies of the book and start handing them out to people I know, or have a library copy at hand on the reference desk to put into some unsuspecting persons hand if they dare come within reaching distance. I have been known to carry in my purse used paperback copies of books by Kurt Vonnegut to hand out to random people I meet. In other words, books are my crack and I'm the most dedicated and persistent crack dealer you could ever imagine.

I mention all of this because when I finished reading First Contact by Evan Mandery I immediately started devising a scheme to get this book into every one I know hands. This book is so smart, funny and unbelievably imaginative and entertaining that I will admit that I fell in love with it. It promised a great deal: the back cover of the book claims that it will be "a satirical joyride in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams". I mean really; that is quite a tall order to live up to. Even with that, Mandery failed to disappoint. From the very first page this book had me in hysterics, but this isn't just some pointless satire; Mandery adds the sort of look on the state of humanity and philosophy that one comes to expect from... Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams. It takes a talented author to pull off such a tall order and Mandery is an exceptionally talented one.

The book is about Earth's first contact with an alien species. The current president of the United States is a George Bush like character and immediately assumes that the peace loving aliens are "pains in the ass". As the US decides to declare war on this vastly superior race, the president's aide is falling in love, the alien ambassador's wife is having troubles with the PTA and an insurance schemer is searching for a new world to scheme... namely the Earth! The final conclusion of the book is a little rushed and the story may wander at places, but for his sophomore book Mandery has proven himself to be able to craft a truly intelligent and humorous novel that both entertains and enlightens.

Review - Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Publisher: Ace Books 2001
Hardback 354 pages




Do you like your apocalyptic literature with a healthy dose of laughter? If so, Good Omens is the book for you. This wonderful novel has a whole host of imaginative and well drawn characters including a host of angels and demons, witchhunters and witches, false prophets and one prophet whose prophecies are a little too accurate for her own good and of course the eleven year old Antichrist.

The final battle between Heaven and Hell is drawing near and both sides are gearing up for the war to end all wars (and the Earth too). However there are two beings (an angel from heaven and a demon from hell) that seem a little put out by the upcoming apocalypse. After a few millennia on Earth they have grown rather fond of it and decide to team up together to try to stave off the impending doom of their adoptive home amongst us mortals.

I loved this book because it managed to be both a little slapstick (the four bikers of the apocalypse) and touchingly wise. I know that this book is very popular and honestly, now that I have read it, I'm more interested than ever to read more of Terry Pratchett (another thing that I have put off until now). With all of these books to read I can only hope the apocalypse is still a ways off.

Review - Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon

Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon
Publisher: Three Rivers Press 2009
Paperback 273 pages



Everyone, at one point or another, needs a good fairytale. I'm not talking about a Disneyized washed out Brothers Grimm disaster either. I'm talking a fairytale for adults. One that brings magic into our lives, with just that slight element of something darker lurking under the surface.

In Carolyn Turgeon's Godmother we get the old tale of Cinderella with a twist. What if it wasn't Cinderella at the ball? What if the death of Cinderella's mother and father, instead of making her sing with mice, made her a suicide case waiting to happen? In this delightfully imagined tale we find Cinderella's fairy godmother in present day New York. After failing her duty to Cinderella she is cast out of the fairy realm and made to fend for herself. Working in a small bookstore, the godmother decides that the only way to redeem herself is to bring two people together; her boss, a shy bookstore owner, and a new acquaintance, who is still grieving for a lover that died years before.

The ending is unexpected, but wonderfully bittersweet. While the story can move fast at times, and too slowly in others, in the whole the creativity of the novel makes it worth the effort. Just don't forget your glass slippers!

Review - The Book of Flying by Keith Miller

The Book of Flying by Keith Miller
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Hardback 262 pages



I'll say it. I'm a sucker for books about librarians. Most of the time the books are either cheap romance novels, or contain such a horrible misrepresentation of the stereotypical "mouse-like" library type that I'm immediately turned off. But I was pleasantly surprised by Pico. Born to winged people in a city by the sea, Pico is left to the librarians of the city to care for when he is born wingless. As Pico grows he chances to meet and fall in love with one of the winged people who live with, but apart from the rest of the city. After the girl draws away from him because he can not fly, Pico decides to go on a quest to find a book that he believes will give him wings. This tale is a classic epic quest, with the trials and tribulations one would find in any Greek odyssey. The entire tale was a satisfying journey, with an ending that is bittersweet, but beautiful and unexpected.

Review - Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Publisher: Harper Collins 1994
Paperback 305 pages



What I love about Ursula Le Guin is that she never fails to engage her readers into thinking about larger themes of what it means to be human, while allowing our imaginations to soar to distant worlds. In this collection of four short stories, Le Guin shows us two worlds in a far off galaxy. One civilization is ancient, exploring the universe collecting knowledge or other worlds. One of these worlds is Yeowe, a civilization one the verge of revolution. The world is in chaos as the people try to recover from generations of enslavement, racial inequality, gender inequality and religious turmoil. By using the perspective of an alien observer Le Guin is able to give us a range of viewpoints of this tumultuous uprising. By turns reminiscent of our own troubled history and wholly magical and new, these novellas are four more reasons why Le Guin is one of the premier social writers of our times.