"Wolves of the Beyond" by Kathryn Lasky

Alternate post title: "Wolves of the Beyond: Lone Wolf" by Kathryn Lasky

 

I thought this was a Warrior Cats spinoff, but I was actually wrong. It's a Guardians of Ga'Hoole spinoff. (Tangent: I know it's rooted in the setting lore, but that doesn't change the fact that "Ga'Hoole" is kind of a silly name.)

So on the one hand, Akita (a pseudonymous relative) likes this series quite a bit. On the other hand, Squidkid (another pseudonymous relative) finds it kind of lame. After reading this, I must say that my trust in Squidkid's judgment has not been misplaced. (At least when it comes to books; unlike Squidkid, I'm not a fan of horror games.)

You know how I said that The Last Mapmaker is, but shouldn't be, a challenging-the-conventions-of-your-society story? This has the opposite problem, and kudos and some fake internet points to Squidkid for pointing that out. The main character has a birth defect in a society where wolves with birth defects are treated like eighty-second-class citizens, and he just kinda... accepts that? Which could be excused in this one because he only joins wolf society proper at the very end of the book, but according to Squidkid the next books don't have him realizing that the wolves' societal conventions should be changed. 

Granted, I've only read the first book, so I could be misremembering what Squidkid said and thus be wrong about the above paragraph. You never know.

 

Among other things, wolves, bears, owls, wildcats, and caribou (and presumably many other animals) are sentient in the GoG'H/WotB universe. This has the effect of making the wolves' carnivorous actions seem kind of weird. It also has the bizarre effect of making me want to declare that bees are also sentient (but in an alien, hive-mind-ish sort of way) and write a story about them. Warrior Cats--and The Green Ember, to a much lesser extent--also do that to me, and I don't know why.

(I'm pretty sure that Warrior Cats is actually just called Warriors. However, if I just called it Warriors, only Warrior Cats fans would know what I was talking about.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft T for child abuse, infant abandonment, and violence.

2 stars.

(Endnote: I could have had the cover image be the one from Scholastic with the instantly respect-sapping red border. However, its respect-sapping effect also applies to things featuring it, so I didn't.)

"The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane

This is an essay I wrote for a literature class.

[EDIT: Edited to fix the formatting because originally it didn't play nice with text wrapping.]

[EDIT 2: This was because I wrote the essay while on vacation, during which I didn't have a computer with MS Word, so I used Google Docs instead. You'd think Google Docs would play nicer than Word with Blogger given that Docs and Blogger are both made by Google, but no.]

 

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

 

The Red Badge of Courage is primarily a character study of a young recruit in the American Civil War, showing that courage is something you develop, not necessarily an inborn quality. The author uses different literary techniques in order to more effectively get his point across.

The setting is not important to The Red Badge of Courage; for example, it could just as easily be set in World War II, or the Revolutionary War, without much changing the story. The plot, however, is much more integral to the story, as the main character’s journey exemplifies the point Stephen Crane is making. The main character, Henry Fleming, deserts in his first battle, before later returning to the fight in order to appease his conscience. In the subsequent engagements he performs much better under fire, later discovering to his mild shock and elation that he has, after all, not run from the enemy.

The author uses multiple different techniques to enhance the reader’s immersion in the story. He consistently refers to the main character simply as “the youth,” which serves to make the story feel more like a personal experience and less like an isolated narrative. Exactly which Civil War battle the main character participates in is never stated, preventing a reader’s extraneous historical knowledge from interfering with their experience. In addition, the battle narration expertly captures a muddled, somewhat dreamlike or nightmare-like feeling, which contrasts with the more top-down view of battles in other works; in keeping with its status as essentially a character study, it never pulls back from its focus on Henry Fleming to give a broader narration. While phonetically writing out dialectal speech usually detracts from the reader’s ability to understand the story, that very property works in its favor here, adding to the muddled quality described above by placing another layer of obfuscation between the narration and what’s actually happening.

In my opinion, the point of The Red Badge of Courage is that courage, rather than being an inborn quality, is actually developed over time, and often looks different than we expect. The plot supports this: the main character initially deserts, proving he is not innately courageous, but as the story progresses he does show bravery in subsequent fighting, only realizing it after the fact. It also demonstrates that even flawed human beings can still have fortitude, with the main character as the prime example. During the non-battle portions of the narrative, he constantly oscillates between strong–even foolhardy–belief in his own abilities, and at other times a crippling doubt of his performance. When he eventually does prove his courage, though his ego does assert itself upon recollection, in the moment it is not dwelt upon by him or by the narrative. 

In conclusion, The Red Badge of Courage shows that bravery is something we all have to learn and that it is not as dramatic as it appears from the outside. It uses its focused plot and several different literary methods to effectively make this point.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence (it do be a war book).

4 stars.

(Endnote: For those who don't know, a "red badge" is slang for a bullet wound.)

"Icebreaker" by Lian Tanner

I said I'd probably never read the first book in this series, but behold, I was actually wrong. Now I can fix that incomplete series entry in my series collection page. I won't say that was my primary motive for reading this, but it was definitely my primary motive for reviewing it.

Had I read this before Sunker's Deep and Battlesong, I probably would have understood Sunker's Deep a lot better. If you were thinking of reading the series, I'd honestly recommend reading Icebreaker first, if only because it actually explains most of what's going on. Then, unlike me, you wouldn't have to infer the setting lore from random background material.

I think this book captures its aesthetic quite well. And what I mean by that is it does a very good job of portraying the feeling of being on an ancient, dilapidated, poorly-understood ship that's slowly evolved a society over the years.

Now that I've read this one and gotten to know the characters, I almost want to go back and reread the other two to spend more time with them.

I do have somewhat of a bone to pick with the people who hid the robot dude (as I said in the Sunker's Deep review, he's the MacGuffin of this one): why didn't they make failsafes? All it would take is one angry uber-Luddite taking a hammer to the robot dude, and boom, you're done. (Now, granted, they did make a couple of other places as well; the giant submarines from Sunker's Deep spring to mind.) But still, if I were them, I'd have hid about ten more machine-minds with built-in libraries in various places around the world. Absurdly overengineered and well-hidden bunkers in places like Siberia, Antarctica, Greenland, and Australia. A couple more ships for good measure, and an isolated island or two. One at the bottom of a nuclear isolation facility. Possibly, if we have the technology (we did make a fully functional and sapient android, after all), some sort of self-maintaining factory in some out-of-the-way place like New Guinea, that could periodically make drones to scout things out and drop explanatory leaflets.

Tangent: Has dropping leaflets in war ever worked? Does it have any effect at all on the enemy's morale, or is it just something we do because it makes us feel special?

Anyway. I also would have programmed them to wake themselves up after a certain time, rather than waiting to be woken up. And I would have armed them. I would have armed them to the proverbial teeth. The angry uber-Luddites are using medieval technology, they're not going to be able to easily kill what's essentially a walking tank by bashing its head in with a rock.

And I would program my robots to instantly remember all their tech knowledge, rather than relying on folklore to jog their memories. In case of deterioration over the centuries, I would make backups of their minds. And backups of their bodies. And backups of their facilities. I would be paranoid.

Anyway, aside from that. Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for violence.

4 stars.

(Endnote: I thought this series was the Icebreaker Trilogy, but apparently, according to this one, it's actually the Hidden Trilogy. Note to self, rename that entry when you publish this.)

Mini-Reviews 10: On Top Of Some Covers, All Covered With Snow

Dragon Kingdom of Wrenly: The Coldfire Curse by Jordan Quinn (graphic novel art by Ornella Greco)

This is rather below my general reading level. Let's just leave it at that. It's about dragons and a curse that's making it be winter (and, surprisingly, isn't the White Witch's fault).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for cartoon violence, or possibly on the high side of E.

3 stars. It isn't bad, it's just that I would have loved it if I was about ten, and (spoiler alert) I'm not ten.

Tags for this one: 3-star, adventure, dragons, fantasy, junior fiction, manga/graphic novel, rated E10+

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu

"This is a Hansel and Gretel retelling." You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? But you're actually wrong. It's the Snow Queen.

Now, granted, the title would make a lot more sense if it were a modern-day Hansel and Gretel retelling. But, as I said in the last paragraph, it's actually a modern-day Snow Queen retelling. With a few bits of some other Hans Christian Andersen fairytales thrown in; there's that one about the red dancing shoes, the little match-girl shows up (but, unfortunately, sans |the Death of the Discworld to help|), and there's possibly some Little Red Riding Hood in there as well.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for dangerous bits and violence (among other things, the plot gets kicked off by the main character's best friend getting a shard of glass in his eye). Straightforward enough to be a sort of RPG.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, adventure, fairy tale retelling, magical realism, modern setting, rated E10+

Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie

Apparently this one was written because one of Agatha Christie's nephews (I think) complained that all her murder mysteries were too clean and bloodless, so she wrote this one specifically for him.

 

Yes, it was still Christmastime when I read this.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for mmmuuuuurrrder and discussions of marital infidelity. It's not gory or anything.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    Colonel Johnson, Chief Constable of Middleshire, might be of the opinion that nothing could beat a wood fire, but Hercule Poirot was of the opinion that central heating could and did every time.

    Page 84.

Tags for this one: 4-star, mystery, rated T

(Endnote: The title for this post was originally going to be "Mini-Reviews 10: 10.0x10^0" before I realized that all three of the books I'm reviewing here have snow on the cover.)

"Gemini's Key" by H. Halverstadt

Behold, Christian science fiction. And my first Christian fiction of the new year (actually, my first Christian fiction review of the new year; my backlog at the time of writing is like two months long, so I actually read this back in December 2024). 

Tangent: If Christian fantasy is a thing (albeit not one that, aside from Narnia, I've ever seen really done well), why isn't Christian science fiction more of a thing? I should write some, except I already have like 60 writing projects going on right now. One of which is a Christian urban fantasy 'verse, which will probably never take off.

Okay, back to the actual review. Unless I somehow missed it, we never actually learn what in the universe "Gemini's Key" is, so I'm not sure what's up with the title. I'd say it's a reference to other books in the series, except this is book 1.

When I started reading this, I was like "This is supposed to be Christian fiction, at least according to the multiple places on the cover that say that. So why is everyone being so hostile toward religion?" Then I realized conversion stories were a thing, which made that make a lot more sense. However, Halverstadt has mastered -- or at least understands -- the subtle art of not rushing such things. If you do rush a conversion arc, it just ends up looking like instead of integrating it, you got out your shoehorn.

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

4 stars.

(Endnote: If Earth hadn't been at the center of the society in this one, I'd have thought it a perfect setting to send some Lancer players.)

"The Incredible Space Raiders (From Space!)" by Wesley King

Had this book been simply titled The Incredible Space Raiders, I would probably not have picked it up. The little "From space!" subtitle elevated it from "boring generic title" to "hilarious". TISR sounds like it takes itself seriously (actually, a book titled straight TISR instead of that just being an acronym for The Incredible Space Raiders goes back to being a reasonably cool title again), but TISR(FS!) is more self-aware-ly funny.

(Now, granted, this book is actually the other kind of deconstruction of the "kids on a space adventure!" genre. Instead of the deconstruction-to-hilarity--better known as "parody"--it's the deconstruction-to-this-is-actually-not-such-a-good-idea. But it's a good enough book of the second kind that I didn't mind when it turned out not to be the first kind.)

And (please read this in Galadriel's voice from the LOTR movies) some things happened that the mouse did not expect. </galadrielvoice> Namely some plot twists. My not seeing a plot twist coming in middle-grade fiction is a rare occurrence anymore, so I was pleasantly surprised. Which necessitates my being surprised at all, and again, rare occurrence.

This one falls fairly high on what I'm beginning to call the Sliding Scale of Why We're Trusting Kids With This. |And it does it twice, with the reason you get at the beginning and the real reason|. I may do a post sometime on the SSoWWTKWT, though I don't want to overwhelm the blog's main content (i.e. me rambling about books) with trope reviews.

When I was reading it, this book seemed like it was pasting funny and whimsical over serious story, rather than being (as I expected) funny and whimsical all the way through. |Which I think is actually intentional, as that's what happened in-universe as well in order to keep the kids from getting skeptical and rebelling during the long spaceship journey to who-knows-where.|

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A serious sort of E10+ for fight scenes.

4 stars.

(Endnote: The |fake| plot of the book is about sending a bunch of kids in a spaceship to fight the Entirely Evil Things [yes that's their actual name] that scientists have discovered in space.)

"War on the Frontier: The Trans-Mississippi West" by Alvin M. Josephy Jr.

This is a book about the American Civil War, specifically (as the title says) the parts in the Trans-Mississippi West. I don't actually really have anything to say about it, this review is just to point out the unintentional hilarity of a historical picture featured in the book.

This picture was created in 1862 by John Stevens, a sign painter, which may help explain the strangeness. It's reactionary and anti-Native-American and racist, and it was created for fearmongering purposes, so it wasn't intended to be funny...

I had to scan this, so the image quality might be kinda bad.

What I'm pretty sure is supposed to be going on in this picture: Shirtless Guy, after murdering two of Green Woman's children, is trying to murder a third while Green Woman tries to pull her child away. Meanwhile, Blue Kid throws out his arms in an attempt to protect his family.

What it looks like is going on in this picture: Shirtless Guy and Green Woman are having a tug-of-war over a badly-proportioned small child. Green Woman is attempting to Force-push Shirtless Guy, and Blue Kid is T-posing over two of his siblings (or possibly one sibling with a doll) in the background.

 

It was the T-posing that elevated this from "ok weird" to "this is funny and I should make a blog post on it so other people can see how funny it is". John Stevens's history as a sign painter, coupled with the (lack of) artistic quality of the picture, leads me to believe he never actually had any formal training. And probably didn't understand how to pose people so they look realistic (the T-posing kid strikes again) or to draw children so they don't just look like tiny adults.

 

Yes, I know this picture plays into a lot of the prejudices of its time. I'm not laughing at the racism, I'm laughing at the T-posing kid and the woman in green's attempts to use the Force.

Were this a videogame, its subject matter would get rated: M to AO for graphic violence, like all the war books.

However, the book handles it in a way that's more: T15+ for graphic violence (massacres by Native Americans, and massacres of Native Americans--it went both ways--are not pleasant).

4 stars. Informative.

(Endnote: I reviewed The Dreadnoughts because I like dreadnoughts, and I reviewed this because I thought something in it was funny. There's a vast ocean of other books in these series that I haven't reviewed.)

"Equal Rites" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: A dying wizard leaves his staff to an eighth son of an eighth son (which father is not himself an eighth son of an eighth son, so there's no sourcery going on here), except that eighth son is a daughter instead. Granny Weatherwax sort of takes said daughter under her (supremely grumpy) wing, then sends her off to the Unseen University to become a wizard. And plot ensues.

This is the second-to-last Discworld book in my reading of them. (The last one is, fittingly, The Last Hero, which our library doesn't have.) So if anyone was tired of my constant Discworld reviews, I have good news: this is the last one until I manage to track down a copy of The Last Hero.

It's only Granny Weatherwax who shows up in this one, not the full trio (either of the full trios). Despite this, I still class it as a Witches book (rather than an Unseen University book) because it mostly focuses on Weatherwax, not the University.

We have finally learned, mostly, what is up with the Dungeon Dimensions. They're inhabited by eldritch horrors that want to eat reality because they think it'll make them real, despite the fact that eating reality wouldn't help them one bit. And magic helps them exist more fully. Or something.

This book is also the first mention of the Necrotelicomnicon (phone book of the dead), also known as the Liber Paginarum Fulvarum (Book of Yellow Pages). I still find its existence hilarious. (Actually, I think the first mention of the Necrotelicomnicon was in one of the short stories in A Blink of the Screen, but that wasn't a Discworld story.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for crude humor. I don't seem to recall that much swearing.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    If you invited a hedge wizard to your party he would spend half the evening talking to your potted plant. And he would spend the other half listening.

    Page 143.

    The great doors of Unseen University are made of octiron, a metal so unstable that it can only exist in a universe saturated with raw magic. They are impregnable to all force save magic; no force, no battering ram, no army can breach them.

    Which is why most ordinary visitors to the University use the back door, which is made of perfectly normal wood and doesn't go around terrorizing people, or even stand still terrorizing people. It had a proper knocker and everything.

    Pages 150-151.

(Endnote: The eighth daughter, Eskarina Smith, |also shows up in The Shepherd's Crown. Which probably would have been a "WHOA REALLY?" moment for me had my hold on Equal Rites actually delivered it in a reasonable amount of time, instead of three months after I put it on hold.| But eh, at least I got the one with the cool cover.)

"Lancer" by Miguel Lopez and Tom Bloom

This is a (sort of) D&D-like TTRPG about giant mechs. (Note to readers: TTRPG stands for Table-Top Role-Playing Game. A cursory Internet search for "etymology of ttrpg" doesn't turn up any info on its origins; if it had, I'd have included it.)

Unlike many if not most sci-fi TTRPGs and things (I'm looking at you, Warhammer 40,000), Lancer isn't dystopian. Apparently its creators specifically intended it to hark back to things like Star Trek where humanity is fine and thriving, rather than collapsing or locked in endless war (again, looking at you, Warhammer 40,000) or ruled by evil overlords/cults/AIs/whatnot (still staring accusingly at Warhammer 40,000. That 'verse is not a nice place. It is in fact the verse that inspired the coining of the term "grimdark").

Lancer is both more and less complicated than D&D. On the one hand, it doesn't have the complicated system of combat bonuses and penalties that D&D has; on the other, you get essentially endless freedom to mix and match systems between mechs. On the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth hands (we're piloting the SSC Dusk Wing here), you have Lancer's lack of eleven different classes, Lancer's possession of 29 different mech bases, D&D's arcane XP system, and Lancer's lack of eight thousand different spells.

There are four five main mech producers in this (I always forget about GMS because they have the starting mech and pretty much nothing else): IPS-Northstar (who make normal things), Smith-Shimano Corporation (who make fancy stuff), Harrison Armory (who make strange guns), and HORUS (who make no sense). Also General Massive Systems, who are IPS-Northstar's "make normal things" taken off the mech scene (except for the starting mech, the Everest). 

I think IPS-Northstar is my favorite of them, just because they aren't jerks (HA), incomprehensible (HORUS), or clone manufacturers (SSC). Also their mechs look the most mech-ful and cool (well except the Vlad, but every mech company has their black sheep. SSC with the weird spider-tank Death's Head, for instance, or HORUS with the Goblin, or pretty much everything by Harrison Armory except the Barbarossa and Tokugawa). That's not to say I have no respect for SSC's overly streamlined and humanoid look, but it's just not as cool as IPS-Northstar's aesthetic.

I tagged this with "weapons" because fully half the book space is taken up describing the various mechs and the, you guessed it, weapons that come with them. Most of which you can mix and match between them if you want. And when I say "fully half the book space" -- this is not a small book, at 426 pages long and measuring more than a foot on its long edge.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for robot violence when playing it (at least if the guy running the game doesn't add random stuff that would drive the content level up), T15+ for the book (there's a section called "On Content, Discomfort, and Lancer" in the GM guide section which deals with... well, you can guess, and is one of the book's two places--the other, strangely enough, is the index--which mentions |the annoying gender ideology things|.)

4 stars. Could have gotten 5, and would have if it had the two bits I mentioned redacted out.

Image gallery (so y'all understand what I was talking about with the stupid-looking mechs):

IPS-N's black sheep

Incomprehensible spidertank

Just looks weird

HA's worst offender

Yup, it has six hands

 

Favorite lines:

    You can't attack normally with this weapon. Instead, 1/round, as a free action during your turn, you can use it to deal 1 Kinetic AP damage to a character within Range and line of sight. This doesn't count as an attack, hits automatically, ignores cover, bypasses Immunity, and its damage can't be reduced or ignored in any way. No rule in this book or any other supersedes this.

    Page 218 (emphasis mine), from the description of the Ushabti Omnigun weapon on the HORUS Pegasus. I find it somewhat hilarious that the #1 rule of Lancer is effectively "The Ushabti Omnigun hits and does 1 damage".

(Endnote: The images would have been much more compact if I could do that without messing up the formatting. [EDIT] Sorta fixed.)