"Ember Falls" by S. D. Smith

I'm going to have to get the third book of this out of the library, because as the back cover said, Ember Falls is basically the Empire Strikes Back of The Green Ember. As such, it ended on a cliffhanger. (Note: For those who don't know. this series is about talking rabbits, who are having a war with talking wolves and birds of prey. They all have medieval weapons.)

I spent much of the "war" sequences yelling at the rabbits for doing the honorable thing, attacking their enemies (literal wolves) in pitched battles, and then dying in droves because, again, they're rabbits (with swords) fighting wolves (with bigger swords). And they have exploding catapult ammunition, which... if you're smart enough to make A) exploding shells and B) big heavy metal things, you can make these weird things known as "cannons". And "blunderbusses". And "land mines".

 

And even if you don't build gunpowder weapons, you can still use stealth tactics better than you do. Rabbits are good at hiding, but I don't even once see them using the novel technique of "ambushes". Or any guerrilla tactics at all, really. You have enough chemistry to make healing elixirs, you have enough chemistry to make birdlime and spread it on random perches the enemy birds will land on. You have enough digging power to carve out citadels inside mountains, you have enough digging power to make Punji pits. (Okay, I get that those are forbidden by the Geneva convention, but the principle stands.)

Basically, I was mad at the rabbits for not cheating enough. According to Shy Guy (a relative), it's because "they're the good guys" (not an exact quote); however, that shouldn't prevent them from employing any of the many inventive ways medieval people came up with to kill their enemies.

Anyway! Picket is more mature in this book than he was in the last one, for which I am thankful. Heather got less optimistic, though. 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A hard E10+ for fantasy violence. It could be a decent videogame, although I feel like it would turn out as an RTS and a visual novel rolled into one.

4 stars. It was good, despite the rabbits' bad tactics.

(Endnote: Yes, I do understand that narratively, most of the things I'm suggesting are a path to the Dark Side a "we've become just as bad as the enemy" moment. However, from a purely military standpoint, they make sense.)

"The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett writes some unique books. (Now, granted, the only other things of his that I've read are The Carpet People and various short stories, but within that, the pattern stands.)

I had a very inaccurate concept of what this book is about. According to my impression, The Amazing Maurice was some sort of stage magician and His Educated Rodents were a bunch of rodents who did vaudeville shows and stuff.

Which is not at all how this book goes. The Amazing Maurice is a cat, His Educated Rodents are a bunch of rats who accidentally gain sentience, and they're accompanied by a random kid with a pipe.

You can probably see where this is going. The Educated Rodents pretend to be a rat infestation, the random kid pretends to be a Pied Piper, and they scam random towns out of money because Maurice is basically a con artist. But as a cat.

Except then they try to scam a town where something very weird is going on. And against everyone's better judgement, they investigate to try to find out what's going on.

And then things happen ("someone new comes to town and everything changes" plot for ya), and Maurice might even be a better person (cat?) by the end.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft T for general creepiness. It would be an okay-ish videogame, but not one that I'd play.

4 stars.

(Endnote: Apparently, as I learned by reading the afterword / author's note / addendum / postlude / whatever, this is set in Discworld. Which made me kind of want to read Discworld, but I'm awaiting official recognition of whether or not that series is Inappropriate For People My Age™.)

"Edge of Extinction: The Ark Plan" by Laura Martin

What if this wasn't Jurassic Park? 

What if we resurrected dinosaurs anyway?

What if dinosaurs were actually super huge?

What if they killed almost everyone when they escaped captivity?

What if dinosaurs were now the dominant species?

What if everyone lived underground now?

What if your leaders were secretly evil?

 

What if you left the underground city?

 

What if you were terrible at surviving aboveground?

 

What if some people actually didn't live underground?

 

What if your former leaders wanted to recapture you?

What if you eluded them?

What if this were a videogame? What if I rated it E10+ for violence?

What if I gave this book 4 stars?

(What if I had an endnote? What if I wrote this entire post in what-ifs?)

"Enchanted Glass" by Diana Wynne Jones

This is one of Diana Wynne Jones' better books. It's set in a version-of-the-real-world-but-there's-also-magic, except nobody's taking great pains to hide it from all the muggles like in most books. Which was honestly a breath of fresh air, and didn't strain my credulity as much as most of those do.

Actually, I can't really think of many where the magic isn't all hidden. The vast majority (Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, Keeper of the Lost Cities, SCP, et cetera...) have it be that way, which I admit strains my credulity a bit. I know most of those have memory-erasing things (not sure on SCP), but all it would take is one person posting a video on the Internet and poof. Instant not-a-secret.

But anyway. Well-written as always, because this is Diana Wynne Jones. I don't really have much to say about this.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T. It would be kind of hard to make into a game, though.

4 stars.

(Endnote: Insert humorous endnote here.)

"This Is Not A Drill" by K. A. Holt

Of course it's not. It's a hammer.

No, I'm kidding. The book is about a lockdown (not the Coronavirus lockdowns, don't worry) at a middle school, because there's an intruder in the building. Nobody thinks it's real at first, but it is. Hence this not being a drill.

This is told entirely in texts (well, and phone notifications, and app comments). And the main character's phone is constantly dying, so various characters keep freaking out because texting is apparently their only form of communication. (One wonders why they don't use their phones as telephones and not high-tech telegraphs.)

It's a fairly tense book. However, I |do wish they'd played the ending straight [ENDING SPOILERS] and had the intruder actually be malicious instead of just some teacher's well-meaning-but-kind-of-dumb ex-husband. It ruined the mood.|

There are a couple of running gags that help alleviate the tension. One of them is a developing news story about escaped therapy llamas, which never actually interact with the story in any meaningful way but show up whenever you run into a "phone notifications" page. The other one, which was funnier to me, is people describing things as "that's like the second rule of lockdown". Which amused me.

(Actually, there's a lot of running gags in this.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+. I think it would be funniest if you made it an old-school-style text adventure, but with a phone-shaped interface so your text adventure had texting.

4 stars, as well.

(Endnote: Every time I encounter something that says "this is not a drill", my mind immediately prompts me to joke about it being some other kind of tool.)

"Out To Get You" by Josh Allen

This is a collection of short horror stories, none of which are particularly horrific. I wouldn't have reviewed it, except I had a great time coming up with semi-sarcastic news headline titles for all the stories and wanted to share them. So without further ado, here they are.

"Local Boy Retconned Out Of Existence After Making Up Story About Beings That Retcon You Out Of Existence"

"Local Girl Attacked By Pack Of Angry Cats"

"Local Girls Eaten By Stain On Cafeteria Floor"

"Local Boy Becomes Literally Satan"

"Local Girl Accidentally Creates Living Drawing Of Ivy, Kills By Not Bathing For Two Months"

"In Turn Of Events That Shocks Absolutely Nobody, Genie Twists Wish Into Something Nobody Actually Wants"

"Local Boy Wins Race, Subsequently Trapped In School-Crossing Sign"

"Local Teacher Who Is Secretly Witch Yells At Students, Inviting Wrath Of Student Who Is Secretly Witch"

"Local Boy Threatened By Paper Towel Dispenser, Expelled From School"

"Local Man Eaten By Couch"

"Local Boy Dissects Frog, Gives Self Heart Disease Due To Mysterious Curse From Annoyed Classmate"

"Local Girl Crushed To Death In Tragic Roof Collapse After Losing Staring Contest With Magical House"

"Local Boy Attempts To Get Out Of Book Report, Accidentally Curses Self To Be Murdered By Own Shadow"

None of these are actually particularly scary, honestly. I mean, maybe they would be if you were easily scared; like, I wouldn't recommend it to a ten-year-old who hasn't already shown a fondness for light horror. So were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for being horror.

3 stars. Didn't love this one, but it's not terrible. If you like not-particularly-horrific horror.

(Endnote: Leafless trees still look kinda creepy in monochrome stark white.)

"The Giver" by Lois Lowry

I have come to a realization: Trees look creepy in monochrome stark white. Well, many things look creepy in monochrome stark white, but trees more than most. They look like blood vessels. Or lightning. Or like you've shattered something and glued it back together.

Also, can't we have a utopia that's actually utopian for once? They're pretty much all rotting on the inside. The only utopias I can think of that actually fit the bill are Valinor (from The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien) and Fredtown (from Children of Exile, by Margaret Peterson Haddix). The others are all either secretly dystopian or falling apart.

And while we're at it... can we have a dystopia that's not being a dire warning about the loss of individuality and blind obedience to your superiors? I want to see a dystopia that's dystopian because everyone's being too individualistic and it turned into anarchy. Or a byzantine backstabbing-filled politics nightmare.

 

(Edit: Just remembered Mad Max. So there's one, at least.) 

(Edit 2: Also BioShock, at least the first two games.)

All right, now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about the book! As you may have gathered from what I just said, it's dystopian. It's not the entire world that's dystopian here, just this one City-State Of Indeterminate Size. We know it's not the entire world because |they find other people at the end|. And also because from what we do see of the City-State Of Indeterminate Size, it's big enough to have an airport (they have airplanes, and you have to have somewhere to launch airplanes from), but I'm pretty sure they don't have any skyscrapers.

The dystopia here comes from the fact that |they've eliminated strife by eliminating want|. Which doesn't sound so bad, until you realize their method of |eliminating want| is just basically to |get rid of anything that could make someone want something|. Like |strong emotions|. Or |unpleasant bits of history|. Or |the ability to see color|. Or, in extreme cases, |being alive|.

(Also, they |lethal-injection people for breaking the rules bad enough. Or just for having birth defects. Because hey, if you imprison people, they'd want to get out, and want causes strife! Better to just de-exist them, right?|)

Like Communism, this society is one of those things that might seem like a good idea, but actually isn't. As the main character discovers, when he becomes |the new Receiver of Memory| and gets |ALL the history memories|. Well, enough of them, anyway. (The |Receiver of Memory| is the one person in the City-State Of Indeterminate Size who |remembers anything other than what you're supposed to know| when you live in the City-State Of Indeterminate Size. He helps the council make decisions.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for being dystopian. It would make an okay videogame.

4 stars.

(Endnote: There's a plot point fairly early on that involves an apple somehow looking wrong for a second. It's actually |the protagonist developing the ability to see the color red|, but with my modern fiction experience I honestly thought it was them living in a simulation and the simulation starting to glitch.)

Mini-Reviews 4: Never and Forever

The title is because the first three books in Cressida Crowell's Wizards of Once series all have ordinal-number-themed names (Wizards of Once, Twice Magic, and Knock Three Times) but the fourth one is called Never and Forever, which broke the chain. So when it came time to do the fourth mini-review collection, I named it this. There. Now you know.

 

Dead in the Water by Chris Lynch

This do be historical fiction, about a crewman on the U.S.S. Yorktown during World War II. We all know how well that ended. This dude |does survive, though|. 

The historical stuff is interspersed with baseball (because this was the 1940s and if you were in the States then everything was tangentially related to baseball) (please note that the previous statement is not entirely factually accurate) and a minor dealing-with-racism side plot (courtesy of the main character's friend, who gets hit with it a lot). (Also this paragraph is full of parentheses.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence and discussion of racism. Dead in the Water would make a reasonably good videogame in the right hands, although unless you let players change the story, it wouldn't have much replayability.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, airplanes, historical fiction, military, rated T, WWII

 

 

 

All Summer Long by Hope Larson

I didn't like this one. The art wasn't really good (for me, art quality is an important factor in how much I like a graphic novel; it's like use of language in a print book), and I didn't love the storyline either. Plus it did a |casual homosexuality mention|, which I strongly dislike. If you're going to have that in your book, be overt about it so I can avoid you.

Anyway, T15+ for sexual references. 1 star. Lame.

Tags for this one: 1-star, lame, manga/graphic novel, modern setting, rated T15+, school drama

 

 

 

Truesight by David Stahler Jr.

 

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king illegal. |But also king.|

Basically, this is science fiction about a community where everyone is genetically engineered to be blind. Because... well, honestly it feels quasi-religious, like one of those weird philosophical religion-but-not-really-but-still-kinda things.

Aaaaaaaand then one guy discovers he can see, that the genetic engineering failed on him, and everything goes to pieces.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for delayed-action creepiness. It would be pretty hard to make into a videogame, but it could be done.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, dystopian, rated E10+, science fiction

(Endnote: These have three very different covers. Dead in the Water is mostly realistic, All Summer Long is only vaguely evocative of the book, and Truesight... honestly looks almost like the cover of a horror movie.)

"The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells

This is an essay I wrote for a literature class.

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

In The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells uses the familiar-to-his-readers setting of England and one of the first alien invasion plots to make the point that despite all our efforts and accomplishments, humans still don’t have everything under our control.

Wells’s plot is relatively simple. Martians launch capsules from Mars to invade Earth; these capsules land in England. The Martian invaders emerge from their capsules in three-legged vehicles and proceed to effectively annihilate resistance in England via the “heat-ray” (which causes anything it’s pointed at to burst into flames) and “black smoke” (basically poison gas). The main character evades the Martians by hiding, and he is present when they are wiped out by plague due to their lack of immune systems. Though foreshadowed by the same thing happening due to the “red weed” plant they brought with them, this may still seem like a deus ex machina; however, as the book’s message involves relying on God for help in times of trouble, it can be more correctly understood as a Deus sans the ex machina. The book’s premise is scientifically implausible from a modern perspective, but a lack of detailed description of the science behind the Martians prevents The War of the Worlds from seeming dated.

The book’s point is that while we can make a difference, much of life is still beyond humanity’s ability to control or change. We must still rely on God’s assistance to help us through troubles which we would otherwise be helpless to avert. This is demonstrated by the fact that while there is resistance to the Martian invasion, and a few of their three-legged “fighting-machines” are destroyed by artillery or warships, for the most part the Martians are unstoppable as they overrun England. Their complete annihilation by disease is representative of God’s assistance with problems that humans, even with our technological prowess, cannot meaningfully affect by ourselves.

The War of the Worlds is set in England, Wells’s home country. Its familiar setting would have made the Martian invasion hit closer to home for the original British readers, emphasizing even further humanity’s helplessness in the face of the Martians. By contrast, if the Martians had landed in the Amazon Jungle, the American West, or the Siberian tundra, much of the original book’s impact would have been lost due to the inherent exoticness of those settings to British readers: it would have had more of the flavor of an adventure story, like Tarzan or The Lost World. Setting the book in England contributes to the story by making it more realistic for its original audience.

In conclusion, The War of the Worlds uses the Martian invasion of England to demonstrate that humanity, for all our scientific achievements, must still rely on God to help us through troubles we cannot overcome on our own.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence.

4 stars.

(Endnote: It's kind of apropos that I'm releasing a review of the first alien invasion story... on Star Wars Day.)

"The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes" by Wade Albert White (again)

This book is still completely hilarious. I hope this time my review will be more coherent than the last time, though. Or at least sound somewhat saner.

For a while, I thought the "fantasy world was once a modern/sci-fi/dystopian world" trope was a bit overdone, but apparently my oversaturation with it (well, "oversaturation" isn't really the right word considering that I can remember maybe three other things with that trope) has ended now. Which means that this, with its ancient robots and computers and such, feels fresh and interesting again.

There are two more books in this series, The Adventurer's Guide to Dragons (And Why They Keep Biting Me) and The Adventurer's Guide to Treasure (And How to Steal It). I might review them here too at some point, just because they're also hilarious.

 

I recapped this last time, and so did my mom, who's better at recaps than I am.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fantasy violence. It could be a pretty good adventure game, honestly, something like Tomb Raider but sans the tombs.

Still 5 stars. Still one of my favorite books.

Favorite lines (because copyright laws prevent me from just reprinting the entire book here):

I have another very long quote at the Very Long Quotes Page, as quote 2.

    "Climb the tower with no door.

    Ask the knight who never lived.

    Take the key you cannot hold.

    Claim the throne without a crown."

    Page 109. It's the "quest riddle", which means it's basically all the clues for the quest. I actually have this memorized, and |used "nodoor" (which, as well as describing the tower as having no door, is the password used to open the tower) as my password for a couple things for a while. I don't anymore, though.|

    Copperhelm pulled out a small slip of paper--the same paper he had given the guard at the front desk. It read:

    DEUS EX MACHINA CARD

    The holder of this card is hereby granted permission to unexpectedly resolve a heretofore impossible-to-solve plot issue using a sudden and/or improbable intervention.

    GOOD FOR ONE USE ONLY.

    Page 311. Just the idea of being licensed to do a deus ex machina is hilarious to me.

(Endnote: The worldbuilding here gets to shine more in the next books, but it's still good in this one.)