Mini-Reviews 12: The Day Has Come

...when I run out of things to reference in the titles of these posts.

The Castle in the Mist by Amy Ephron

This is one of those books that doesn't actually explain what's going on within it; basically, they show you what's happening to the characters, but don't actually provide the worldbuilding behind that. It crops up a lot in horror and magical realism, and sometimes fantasy.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft E10+ for spookiness. Could be an OK visual novel.

3 stars. The ending was too trippy and strange for my taste.

Tags for this one: 3-star, magical realism, modern setting, rated E10+

Thirteens by Kate Alice Marshall

Behold, the first book of the series in which Brackenbeast is book 2. This one is definitely a lot spookier and less fairy-tale-gone-wrong.

Overall, I liked Brackenbeast better.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A stern T for {T-ish pulling a casual homosexuality mention}. yeesh. That said, a videogame of Thirteens would possibly be fun, if you like spooky things.

And 3 stars as well, for the same reason.

 

Tags for this one: 3-star, horror, modern setting, rated T, series component

"The Secret Garden" by G. K. Chesterton

No, this isn't the same thing as The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This one is a murder mystery.

It's also one of the rare ones where I don't even suspect the murderer until they're revealed. (The only other one of those within the last couple years is Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.) In the case of "The Secret Garden," it's because |the murderer showed up in a previous mystery, wherein he was firmly on the side of good|.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for |decapitation| and violence in general. Doesn't have a very videogameifiable plot, though.

4 stars.

Favorite lines:

    “Well, doctor,” said the priest, looking up blinking, “|can a man cut off his own head? I don’t know|.”

    Page ??? (this is a short story). It's Father Brown, doing a reveal.

Tags for this one: 4-star, fiction but historical, mystery, rated E10+, short stories

(Endnote: I'm not saying I reviewed "The Secret Garden" solely because it could get mistaken for a more famous work with the same name...)

"Deadman's Castle" by Iain Lawrence

This is an appropriately tense book.

It's about a kid whose family moves around a lot, because they're in witness protection after the dad informed on a crime. Except that this informing happened when the kid was like five, so the details of it are muddled by "the Lizard Man" (le badguy who has a prominent lizard tattoo, hence the name) and "the Protectors" (the people organizing the witness protection).

Also the dad is rather paranoid, and everyone (except the annoying five-year-old sister) is stressed by it. Plus the kid is thirteen for most of the book, and getting increasingly frustrated and rebellious about the dad's paranoid rules. Granted, [ENDING SPOILERS] |the rules legitimately are for his protection, because the Lizard Man is actually after him, not the dad. But he doesn't know that until shortly before the end|.

Partway through the book, the protagonist starts to wonder whether or not the Lizard Man actually exists, and if his dad is just making the whole thing up or having paranoid delusions. And because he's questioning it, readers (i.e. me) start to wonder if he's actually right and there's no such thing as the Lizard Man. |As it turns out, there is such a thing as the Lizard Man.|

According to the author note / postlude / acknowledgements, the depiction of the witness protection service in this book is actually fairly unrealistic (as in, the real one works a lot better and is also run by the U.S. Marshals instead of spooky FBI-ish people).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft T for scariness and being tense. 

4 stars.

(Endnote: I've been thinking about making a separate type of spoiler tags for the big major spoilers, and coloring them red or something. Like |spoiler| versus |major spoiler|. The problem is that I don't think anyone will remember why some spoiler tags are red, and also it might look silly.)

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

I am proud to announce that, after ten years of ignorance, I finally know who Boo Radley is. 

Okay, obscure inside jokes aside, this is actually a really good book. As in, I was reading it for school, and then just didn't stop and ended up reading the entire thing in two days. Even The Scarlet Pimpernel didn't do that to me, and I was also reading that for school.

It took me about twenty pages to confirm from context that the narrator was indeed a girl. I can kind of tell whether a book's narrator is a boy or a girl just based on their style of narration, and Scout's narration felt like female narration to me, but I couldn't actually confirm my suspicion until like twenty pages in.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: ...T? I guess? For |an accusation of rape being one of the plot points|? Scout (the main character) is nine for most of the book, which makes me reluctant to rate it T, but if she were older I'd have no problem giving To Kill a Mockingbird T, so...

And after some deliberation, I've also decided on a star rating: 5. This deserves it.

(Endnote: Anyone who's read the book, I have a musing/question for you. [Anyone who hasn't read the book, this is one of those "no but i really mean it though this has actual big spoilers inside of it" spoiler tags.] Anyway, the musing/question is this: |How did Harper Lee manage to make me feel instinctively affectionate toward and sorry for Boo Radley despite the fact that he is literally never seen until the very end of the story? Not to mention the fact that the characters--and by extension the you--know practically nothing about him except various strange rumors?|)

"The Scarlet Pimpernel" by Baroness Orczy

Behold, an essay I wrote for a literature class. Star rating and videogame rating on the end, as normal.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

 Baroness Orczy’s novel The Scarlet Pimpernel is a book about a complete idiot who is secretly the daring Scarlet Pimpernel, a mysterious person who rescues aristocrats from France during the French Revolution. Its character of the Scarlet Pimpernel was one of the first secret alter egos in fiction. The title character’s game of wits with the antagonist Chauvelin emphasizes the point of the book, that bravery is to be valued over pragmatism.

The plot of The Scarlet Pimpernel is told through the perspective of Marguerite St. Just (also known as Marguerite Blakeney), the wife of Sir Percy Blakeney, a ridiculous fop. A French official named Chauvelin blackmails her into helping him discover the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who turns out to be none other than Sir Percy. A match of wits ensues between Chauvelin and the Scarlet Pimpernel, which is witnessed by Marguerite, who has followed Chauvelin to France in hopes of stopping him from arresting Sir Percy. The story being told from Marguerite’s point of view allows the author to make reveals and build tension that would be impossible were the Scarlet Pimpernel himself the protagonist.

The juxtaposition of the unassuming Percy Blakeney and his daring alter ego the Scarlet Pimpernel may bring to mind other characters such as Zorro, Captain America, or Batman. In fact, the Scarlet Pimpernel was the first character to be a seemingly ordinary person with a heroic secret identity. He, along with several historical and legendary figures, was the inspiration for Zorro, who in turn inspired many of the masked heroes that came after him. Both the Scarlet Pimpernel and Sir Percy Blakeney typify their respective roles: Sir Percy is so dull, foppish, and silly that nobody would suspect him of secretly being a daring hero, while the Scarlet Pimpernel is courageous, dramatic, and almost reckless in his rescues of condemned French aristocrats. These set the mold for the following characters in the archetype.

The message of The Scarlet Pimpernel is that bravery is worth more than pragmatism. The titular Scarlet Pimpernel is dashing and courageous, while the antagonist Chauvelin—who also serves as a foil for the Scarlet Pimpernel—is cold and almost emotionless in his dogged pursuit of his adversary. Notably, the Scarlet Pimpernel’s bravery is extolled and commented on by multiple characters within the narrative, while Chauvelin’s ruthless determination is part of what makes him villainous. Marguerite, too, exhibits bravery when she travels to France in the attempt to stop Chauvelin. Her character arc takes her from willingness to sell out a stranger to save her brother, to a determination to save that very stranger—even before she knows the true identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

In conclusion, because The Scarlet Pimpernel’s plot is told from a viewpoint other than that of the title character, it works better than it would if the Scarlet Pimpernel himself were the protagonist. Said character was one of the first secret identities in fiction, and helped to inspire most of the others. The book’s point is that courage is better than self-serving rationality. Together, these elements create a fast-paced and enjoyable narrative.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for violence. It would be a hilarious videogame, probably.

 

4 stars.

 

(Endnote: "Orczy" is pronouced "or-TZY". Not "ORC-see".)

"A Stroke of the Pen" by Terry Pratchett

This is a collection of short stories Terry Pratchett wrote pseudonymously for various newspapers. Sadly, most of them are... not up to his usual standard. Some of them are also later reprinted in collections of his short stories for kids (most notably Dragons at Crumbling Castle), wherein he spruced them up quite a bit.

My two particular favorites were "The Haunted Steamroller" (about a haunted steamroller) and "Pilgarlic Towers" (about a bunch of ghosts who move into a government building and cause chaos because the government is trying to tear down the old castle they usually live in.)

Now, full disclosure: I didn't actually fully read like half the stories in this. They're from before he really started being a writer, so they're not exactly peak Pratchett, and as mentioned before, about a quarter of them have been published in other places. And I don't exactly want to see the less-than-stellar original story of Dragons at Crumbling Castle. (Well, had I not read the spiffed-up edited version Pratchett put in the anthology of the same name, I'd probably have happily read it. But eh, I have the actual anthology, which I should review at some point.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ to T for rude humor, probably. These were stories for children, published in newspapers, so they're not going to have the same content level as the main-series Discworld books or his short stories for adults.

2 stars. This would probably be a fairly okay anthology by anyone else, but it somewhat pales in comparison to Terry Pratchett's normal writing, which made me not like it as much.

(Endnote: Sadly, our library system is missing several of Terry Pratchett's books, notably The Dark Side of the Sun and The Last Hero. I've been looking out for a copy of either of those, but haven't found them yet.)

"Minecraft: Builders & Biomes"

This is basically Minecraft: The Game.

I'm joking. Minecraft is already a game. This is more like Minecraft: The Tabletop Game.

As with any adaptation of a non-tabletop game into a tabletop game (or anything else into a tabletop game), this differs somewhat from the source material. However, it's definitely the most fun Minecraft game I've played that isn't actual Minecraft. (Not counting Minecraft Dungeons Arcade, because that's a videogame.)

 

Gameplay revolves around two main trees: collecting weapons to fight mobs, and collecting blocks to build structures. There are three rounds of scoring (biomes, structure materials, and structure types), and a board consisting of a 4x4 grid of square cards (mobs to fight and structures to build) with weapon tokens around the edge. 

You collect blocks from a 3D big cube of blocks. It is literally named "the big cube".

I like how unlike many games seem inordinately complicated and then are inordinately complicated to play, this one seems inordinately complicated and turns out to actually be pretty straightforward. It's one of those games that you have to play to understand.

 

Since this is manufactured by Ravensburger, every piece is extremely sturdy. It says a lot about a company that you can just look at one of their products and be like "well they made this, it's obviously good quality."

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E. You could play it with eight-year-olds if you could explain it to them.

4 stars.

(Endnote: I have decided that this blog doesn't strictly have to be solely a book blog. However, that doesn't mean it is no longer primarily a book blog; what it means is I can sometimes review things that aren't books. Like this game.)

"Five Elements: The Emerald Tablet" by Dan Jolley

The first four elements in this are fire, water, earth, and air, like normal (or like Greece). Now, place your bets on what Element #5 is!

-Quintessence

-Heart

-The Element of Surprise 

-Grimbo (E)

-Magic

-Boron

-Lifeforce

-Green

-Cold

-Metal

-Aether

-Wood

-Space

-Lightning

-Babies

-Awesomesauce

-Oregano

-Magick (with a K)

It's the last one, and their spelling annoyed me. The only books I've ever seen call it "magick" (with a K) and pull it off are The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes and its two sequels, and it works for them because they have the right vibe for it. This doesn't.

Actually, when you consider that calling it magick (with a K) was invented by none other than Aleister Crowley the popularizer of the occult, this book absolutely does have the right vibe for that... though not the right vibe for me to take it in stride.

Which, yeah, this had too much occult stuff and magick (with a K) for me to enjoy. So I'm rating it 2 stars for that. The sole reason I finished this was that I wanted to know what Element #5 was.

And were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A stern T for occult, blood magic, blood in general, and violence.

By the way, the evil eyeless dragon thing on the cover (it does actually look pretty cool, which is why I picked the book up; yes, I judged a book by its cover and discovered that wasn't such a great idea) is called a null draak. I, even I, have come up with better names for evil dragons than that. Maybe the whole magick (with a K) thing is just Dan Jolley having bad naming sense.

This review barely conforms at all to my usual format, but if it did, all the trains of thought would suddenly have giant gaps. The review is enough of a mess as it is.

Also, apparently there was an actual thing called the Emerald Tablet, which had something to do with alchemy. Or something. There's also a pseudohistorical (i.e. someone made it up) book about lizardmen and Atlantis by the same name. 

(Endnote: In addition to it making me pine for Adventurer's Guide, after having played Undertale I also couldn't read "magick" (with a K) without thinking of the character Madjick. [EDITED 2/3/2026 to change link to the non-Fandom wiki])

"Theodore Boone: The Abduction" by John Grisham

If you were wondering "Has John Grisham written any middle-grade fiction?" then yes, yes he has. And this is one of them. There's like eight books in the Theodore Boone series, which I might end up searching out and reading at some point.

(If you weren't wondering "Has John Grisham written any middle-grade fiction?" then that doesn't change the fact that he has.)

 

This one is about a kid named Theodore Boone, whose best friend April Finnemore is abducted offscreen at the beginning of the book. The plot is mostly him trying to figure out who abducted her and why, and where she is (and, tangentially, how they did it; we already know what happened and when). These guys are, drumroll please, thirteen, which means they don't trip my overused-twelve-year-old alarms.

As mentioned above, this is a light thriller. It's not particularly tense, but in parts it was difficult for me to resist the urge to skip ahead to the end and see if everything turned out okay. Technically, this is the first thriller I've ever read. And the first John Grisham book.

It's also the first book I've ever tagged with "thriller" on my blog. That doesn't mean you have to start singing a Michael Jackson song.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for criiiiiiiiime and a corpse.

4 stars.

(Endnote: There's an alternative cover that makes it look like the title of this one is Theodore "The Abduction" Boone.)

Mini-Reviews 11: March Forth

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

My mom reviewed this one. Go there if you want an actual review. I mostly just did this one to showcase a couple of lines.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for marital infidelity and some alcohol use.

4 stars.

Favorite lines: 

    "Moving on," [the teacher] continued, not hearing me, "I've been instructed to tell you again that you are not to touch the wet paint outside the cafeteria. Most people would know this without being told, but apparently some of you are not like most people."

    Page 49.

    "Oh, yeah," she said. "My mom always makes too much anyway."

    "You can never have too much fried chicken," Dave told her.

    "She made fried chicken last time," Heather said, still studying her screen. "I remember, because Dave ate two breasts, two legs, and two wings. Which was actually..."

    "An entire chicken," Dave finished for her, sighing. "A personal best for me."

    Pages 282-283.

Tags for this one: 4-star, a kissing book, modern setting, rated T, romance, YA

 

 

 

Brackenbeast by Kate Alice Marshall

 

The titular brackenbeasts are actually made of mud, not bracken. In-universe, they used to be made of bracken, until some evil guy turned them into mud. |And mushrooms.|

The villains in this are the sort of folklore-ish "super dangerous but also very rule-bound and if you beat them at their own game you'll be fine" villains that show up a lot in, you guessed it, folklore. 

 

I picked this up thinking it was another horror entry into my Allan County mythos ([EXPLANATORY EDIT, 4/23/2026: it was a story I was writing about the concept of "what if horror protagonists were competent people and had actual good weapons"]). And it could have made a good horror story if the author had played the story for scariness instead of somewhat fairytale-esque magical realism. Instead it makes a good somewhat fairytale-esque magical realism story.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for spookiness and violence (if you don't read the afterword, which is... T-ish.)

4 stars.

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

 

 

 

Paper Dragons: The Fight for the Hidden Realm by Siobhan McDermott

 

This is an Asian-flavored take on the "magic school" genre. It's set in a fantasy world.

The magic schoolchildren are learning to become a type of immortal called the Cyo B'Ahon. |Now imagine you have a thick accent, and pronounce "Siobhan" phonetically|. 

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for general violence and some evil spirit creatures .

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, fantasy, rated E10+

(Endnote: What Happened to Goodbye has the honor of being the first book to which I've given the tag "romance".)

"Snowhawk" by Deborah Koren

I actually proofread this book back in mid-December, but only got around to reviewing it in mid-January. And then published the review in March because I have veritable truckloads of posts backed up. (Not that I'm complaining; it's better than long absences.)

Overall, this is a satisfying and sense-making conclusion to the Dark Throne duology.

So I have this (mostly tongue-in-cheek) theory that |Kora Snowhawk, the title source,| is actually |a Sourcerer.| [link which may spoil you] |This is supported by many factors: both Kora Snowhawk and Coin the Sourcerer A) are described as a "source of magic", B) are self-centered and somewhat insane, and C) are absurdly overpowered. However, my theory is also pretty much debunked by the fact that the Dark Throne duology isn't set in Discworld.|

My theory is also debunked by the ending of the book, but eh, it was fun while it lasted. Maybe sometime I'll write some fanfiction where |those two meet each other|.

 

Count Lenzky (aka the BBEG's former second-in-command) (aka my favorite character from Balefire) continues to be my favorite character in this. But because Orin can't be without a second command, he picks a new one: a properly evil person named Simon Voschart.

My mom reviewed this.

Anyway, were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for graphic violence (thank you for existing, Voschart).

4 stars.

(Endnote: It's a testament to the writing in this that, despite the fact that I was supposed to be proofreading it, I never actually managed to give very good feedback on the ending because I kept getting too caught up in it.)