"Redwall" by Brian Jacques

After putting it off for so long, I've finally read Redwall. My putting it off was almost assuredly related to people having told me I'd love it; therefore (see my review of Shadow Magic) I was predisposed not to read it.

But I finally did! Aaaaaand... didn't love it. It was still a solid book, though! (Not like all those liquid and gaseous books I've been reading lately, or that one plasma book). I can see where The Mice of Camelot (which I haven't reviewed) got its inspiration: The Mice of Camelot is a book about talking mice and other talking small animals in medieval times, and Redwall is a book about talking mice and other talking small animals in medieval times.

Le badguy is an evil rat named Cluny (the Scourge!), who wants to destroy the Redwall mouse monastery for no discernable reason. He also goes through lieutenants like paper towels, and is surprisingly good at basic tactics for a children's book villain. However, he is defeated multiple times by people dropping stuff on his army.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E to a soft E10+ for scenes of peril and fantasy violence.

4 stars, like I rate everything. (Well, not everything. But almost everything.) I found it a tad bit too cheesy to give 5.

(Endnote: Yeah, short review. Claudia [another relative of mine; not the actual name] loves this. I didn't really.)

"Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code" by Eoin Colfer

Yup. I read book 3 of Artemis Fowl. Imagine a heist movie, as a book.

Basically, Artemis cobbles together a computer from various stolen bits of fairy technology. Then he uses it in shady business dealings with an American electronics tycoon. Unfortunately, this goes sideways, and the tycoon guy's henchmen end up stealing the computer. Since it's made out of stolen fairy tech, the fairies want it. So does Artemis. Basically, the computer is a MacGuffin.

Artemis gets enough character development in this one to become someone you could actually like in real life. He even |seriously considers not being a criminal mastermind, and going legitimate like his father wants|.

Mulch Diggums seems to be unable to come up with good pseudonyms. I mean, really? Mo Diggens? (He had a similar bad pseudonym in the last one, but I can't remember it.) Of course, since we're pulling off a heist, he gets brought along, since he can go into human dwellings without permission (due to him not actually caring if he loses his magic or not, since he already lost it). The protagonists pull some extremely clever tricks to get Holly around the "fairies-can't-enter-human-buildings-without-losing-their-magic" thing.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T, probably. It'd be hard to make a book about a single heist into an entire game, though. 

I'm going to give this one 4 stars, like the last one.

Favorite lines:

    The sarcasm made a slight whistling noise as it flew over Loafers' head. 

    Page 131.

(Endnote: I laughed so hard over that ending. |Artemis got his memories erased by the fairies, who are absolutely positive that the good influence of his newly-reformed father and his never-evil mother will stop him from becoming a criminal mastermind again. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Artemis decides to become a criminal mastermind again, discovers safeguards he'd planted so he could get his memories back, thinks he's the victim of a conspiracy, and declares his past self to be his enemy. I seriously hope he gets the memories back in book 4, because I liked Artemis-with-character-development better than Artemis-with-all-his-character-development-erased.| Sorry for the uber-spoiler-tag, but I wanted to say that and it's a huuuuuuge spoiler. Hey, my endnote was about the ending!)

"Alone" by Megan E. Freeman

Huh.

For one thing, I wasn't expecting this to be in verse. For another, I was expecting some form of a supernatural/magical occurrence. (There isn't.) 

Once I got used to the verse format, though, I was pretty much fine with it. And the lack of magic in the book made all the danger and confusing-ness more real, somehow.

I saw quite a few parallels to Out of Range in this book, mostly in the dangers that the main character (in our case, Maddie) has to face. And I mean... the antagonist in both books is really just nature. At its most basic, nature really only has a couple things it can throw at you: wild animals (check), |wildfire| (check), rivers/floods/flooded rivers (check), gravity (Out of Range has gravity-induced danger but Alone doesn't), and extreme temperatures (it becomes winter in Alone but not in Out of Range). 

(This isn't counting any rarer, more esoteric dangers; you can have things like earthquakes and tornadoes and gross parasites and lightning and toxic plants and other stuff I'm forgetting, but that's just the most common, pressing danger you get in you're-alone-in-[envirnonment]-now-trying-to-survive books.) (Actually, |Alone does have a tornado.|)

(Spoiler-tagged musing here: |Of the four elements, the only one that nature didn't find some way to attack Maddie with was earth. She had fire (lightning-induced wildfire), water (flash flood), and air (tornado), but the author never saw fit to throw an earthquake at her|.)

Basically, Maddie plans for a secret sleepover, unbeknownst to either of her divorced parents. Then something happens, there is apparently an "imminent threat" to the western U.S., and Maddie gets left behind in the haste to evacuate everyone because both her parents thought she was with the other one. Pretty much, she's alone in the city now, trying to survive. (And by "alone", I don't mean that her parents are gone, but other people are still in the city. Literally everyone but her is gone.)

The book has a lot of parallels to Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell. Maddie discovers Chekov's book report (on Island of the Blue Dolphins) and starts comparing herself to Karana, from that. It puts her ordeal in perspective for her; at least she can scavenge canned food, and |only has to survive two years instead of eighteen|. According to the author's afterword-thing, this was intentional. 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A hard T or softish T15+, mostly for swearing. Also, I'd play a videogame of Alone. Probably a survival game, maybe like Scrap Mechanic but without the angry robots or friendly robots or being-a-mechanic aspect.

...dang, now I want Alone to be a videogame so I can play it.

4 stars. The front quote was right; this is a tense book. I actually got book hangover from it, albeit a different type of it from normal. Instead of pining after being in the book's universe still, like normal, I just kept having the tense feelings that the book gave me while I was reading it. I think I'm finally over them now, writing this.

EDIT: Actually, 3 stars, owing to the fact that whenever I see the book, I get Alone flashbacks. It didn't seem that stressful while I was reading it, but after the fact it appears to have stressed me out more than I thought.

(Endnote: Y'know the "imminent threat"? It's actually |just a giant property scam perpetrated by corrupt government officials. That| 🎵plooot twiiiist🎵 |made a lot of sense when I got to thinking about it after I finished the book. It only showed up at the very end, though|.)

"Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident" by Eoin Colfer

Ayep, book 2 of Artemis Fowl, and all the major characters from Book 1 are back.

We have Artemis Fowl, the now-thirteen-year-old evil genius. We have his butler, Butler. We have Captain Holly Short, the fairy Artemis kidnapped in Book 1. We have Commander Root, a grumpy fairy police guy. We have Foaly, a centaur tech guy who wears a literal tinfoil hat. And last but not least or maybe least, we have Mulch Diggums, a kleptomaniac dwarf who's basically a walking fart joke.

(I don't particularly like Mulch Diggums.)

Anyway, this installment is about Artemis trying to get his kidnapped father back from the Russian mafia. And also about the assorted fairies having assorted problems with battery smuggling. (Apparently fairies don't do batteries, or something.)

The fairies think Artemis is behind this, so they arrest him. Artemis is not behind it. However, he gets shanghaied into figuring out who's smuggling batteries. Then he shanghais the various fairies (really just Root and Holly) into helping him get his dad back.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T again, for violence (mild and fantasy, again), |Holly's finger getting cut off (don't worry, it gets reattached)|, maybe some swearing (don't remember), and some crude humor (mostly Mulch Diggums-related).

I'm giving this one 4 stars. It didn't grab me like Book 1 did.

 

Favorite lines:

    Artemis avoided other teenagers and resented being sent to school, preferring to spend his time plotting his next crime.

   So, even though his involvement with the goblin uprising during this year was to be traumatic, terrifying, and dangerous, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. At least he spent some time outdoors, and got to meet some new people.

    It's a pity most of them were trying to kill him.

    Page -1.

(Endnote: On the actual cover, Holly does have pupils and irises, but for some reason they don't show up terribly well in the image. Also, Artemis has a cool scarf.)

"Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer

This book's authentication as not inappropriate came with a large side of warnings about "but it's about the bad guy!" and "he's so annoying!". However, I'm partial to a spot of villain protagonist once in a while, and Artemis didn't annoy me. I suspect he would be completely insufferable in real life, but he's quite fun to read about.

Yes, Artemis Fowl is an evil genius who hatches a plan to kidnap a fairy and hold them for ransom. However, only the broad strokes of his plan really work out. The book is mostly about him trying to hold on to the fairy for any appreciable time, trying to ransom the fairy, and trying to hold on to the ransom money for any appreciable time. Doesn't help him much that the entirety of the fairy police is trying to get their person back.

 

Basically, Artemis Fowl is Professor Moriarty if Professor Moriarty were twelve, didn't have his network of criminals, lived in the modern day, and didn't live in London.

As it turns out, I like books with smart protagonists. If the bad guys are lame enough that your protagonist has to also be lame in order to give you any tension (I'm looking at you, Dungeon Academy: No Humans Allowed), someone is doing something wrong.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for some swearing and crude humor, and also mild violence and fantasy violence. I feel like it could be a fun videogame in the right hands, something chapter-based but not a visual novel, like how (I think) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has its different mission/quest/things.

We haven't had one of these since Five Worlds back in January. One of what? Books rated 5 stars.

 

(Endnote: Artemis' plans are like clockwork. They go off perfectly and on time, unless you have a bunch of people determinedly throwing monkey wrenches at them.)

"The In-Between" by Rebecca K.S. Ansari

That was itself.

Ayep, tautology. It's kind of hard to describe; however, one character summed most of it up in one sentence (see the "favorite lines" below). Parts of it were... well, not scary exactly, but unsettling in a sort of "what-the-heck-is-going-on-here" way. If an author can do that to me, more power to them.

Basically, a silent, kind of creepy girl moves in next door and watches the main character's house. (Note: The main character is a perpetually angry 13-year-old. His name is Cooper. I told you that so I didn't have to refer to him as "the main character" forever). Cooper's sister Jess discovers an unsolved mystery about a kid who died in a train crash (in fact, this train crash). The kid had the top half of an unidentified crest thing on his jacket; the lower half was destroyed.

Why is this important? Well, because that same crest is on someone else's jacket. Someone else, in this case, being the silent girl who moved in next door.

|The main characters discover, digging through endless disaster articles, that the unidentified crest thing has showed up at two more disasters, one of which is...| this one. And as it turns out, |only three people can see the mysterious girl across the street: Cooper, Jess, and a kid named Gus who Cooper met at school. I'm not spoiling the rest of the book, as I believe the various plot twists are best discovered yourself.|

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: Hard E10+, relatively soft T, for the aforementioned unsettling-ness and also some other stuff.

4 stars. I rate a lot of things 4 stars, yeah, but that's because a lot of things are in that enjoyment range.

Favorite lines:

    "So... you're telling me there's an invisible dead girl who lives in a shape-shifting house across your alley, and you think she's connected to three deadly accidents that happened decades ago, all over the world?"

    Page 170.

(Endnote: |Not just three|.)

"The Cat of Bubastes" by G.A. Henty

I read this for school; it's not a book I would have picked up otherwise.

Basically, it's historical fiction about the prince of the Rebu people, whose capital gets conquered by Egypt. The main character (Amuba) and his steward are dragged off to Egypt as slaves, where they're bought by Ameres (my favorite character!), the high pries of Osiris. Ameres has a son, Chebron, who's around Amuba's age.

The titular cat doesn't show up until about halfway through the book, when it |is accidentally shot and killed by Chebron|. He |freaks out about this. So does his dad. So does the populace, when they learn about it. Someone should have made| conciliatory potato soup or something, then it would have all been fine. As I remarked to my mom, |"I'm halfway through the book. The cat just showed up and immediately died."|

The first half of the book was frankly quite boring. Later on, once the Great Central Event happened and everyone started |fleeing for their lives|, it got a lot better.

 

I do have rather a fair quibble with this, though. (Warning: some unobfuscated spoilers ahead.) In the book, it's stated that the Egyptian high priesthood knew about God, and that they constructed the Egyptian pantheon as a way of compartmentalizing His aspects so the common people could wrap their heads around it. That... struck me as implausible.

But anyway, Ameres (Chebron's dad) was my favorite character. He's one of those eminently sane adults who I like so much in fiction. Actually, pretty much all the characters here are adults.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for violence; it's not really described much, just like "yeah we shot those guys" or "if we hadn't had shields, we would have gotten stabbed".

I had a hard time deciding whether to give this 3 or 4 stars. Eventually, I decided on 3, because if I hadn't been reading 30 pages a day of this for school, I would have been bored to death by the first half or so.

(Endnote: If you couldn't tell, this thing is set in ancient Egypt.)