"Where the Mountain Meets the Moon" by Grace Lin

Remember how I complained a bit about Tikki Tikki Tembo? This book is like that book if it had some actual depth. And was about a hundred times as long. And also had an entirely different plot. So really they're just both set in ancient China and told like folktales.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is about a girl named Minli, who probably isn't twelve. She and her parents are literally dirt poor, so she embarks upon an Epic Quest to find the Old Man of the Moon and ask him how to change their fortune. She meets various other characters along the way, including a dragon, who's featured on the front cover.

There's also a subplot slash backstory involving a power-hungry magistrate who eventually became a power-mad magistrate, then died |and turned into an evil supernatural tiger|. That backplot was woven into the story with much better execution than the Saga of Phoebe Winterbottom and the Lunatic who Wasn't was in Walk Two Moons. It was almost like this book had one plot that's just kind of tangled and complicated and that gets revealed in a long and slightly fragmented way, rather than two plots that are almost entirely divorced from each other.

I should probably include here the same disclaimer that I did in Tikki Tikki Tembo's review, that being that I don't actually know very much about ancient Chinese culture. So I'm probably not a very good judge of how accurate this is to actual Chinese folktales. However, this does seem pretty similar to the other ones I've read.

[EDIT: Forgot to mention that this review is part of my first completed quest.] 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E. There's a scary bit with |the evil supernatural tiger|, but I think kids would be able to handle that.

4 stars.

(Endnote: There are actually a lot of mountains on the moon. This book is about none of them.)

"A Blink of the Screen" by Terry Pratchett

This is Terry Pratchett's collection of his short stories for adults, including:

"The Hades Business" -- Satan contacts a crooked businessman to renovate Hades into a tourist trap. It works too well. Not my favorite, and by the little author's note at the beginning, Pratchett seems to agree.

"Solution" -- an inspector stows away on a smuggler's plane to confront him about what, exactly, he's smuggling. It's |airplanes|. Short, but decent.

"The Picture" -- a mental patient keeps a horrifyingly wrong picture in his cell. I really liked the twist at the end of this one.

"The Prince and the Partridge" -- a prince meets the demands of his beloved princess's dad by reenacting the 12 Days of Christmas song. I could see what the end was going to be almost as soon as I started reading it.

"Rincemangle, the Gnome of Even Moor" -- the one that eventually became the Bromeliad Trilogy, which I'll read at some point.

"Kindly Breathe in Short, Thick Pants" -- poking fun at pointless governmental statutes with a ministry to counteract pollution by... nobody breathing as much.

"The Glastonbury Tales" -- sort of a retelling of The Canterbury Tales, but with a guy picking up hitchhikers.

"There's No Fool Like an Old Fool Found in an English Queue" -- another poking-fun-at-the-government one, this time being the Minister of Queues getting up on TV and ranting about people who take too long to check out.

"Coo, They've Given Me the Bird" -- Russia trains pigeons to do assembly line jobs in their factories, and one factory's sole remaining human employee--the janitor--writes them a sarcastic letter.

"And Mind the Monoliths" -- living history goes weird.

"The High Meggas" -- the one that became The Long Earth, which I'll also read at some point.

"Twenty Pence, with Envelope and Seasonal Greeting" -- a bunch of travelers get stuck in a Christmas card.

[REDACTED]

"Final Reward" -- a barbarian hero dies and goes to meet his maker. As in, the author who created him. It's an interesting concept.

"Turntables of the Night" -- this one was apparently published in an anthology edited by none other than Diana Wynne Jones. Now I want to read that anthology.

"#ifdefDEBUG + "world/enough" + "time"" -- someone dies in VR, and a repairman is called.

"Hollywood Chickens" -- a bunch of chickens get loose in Hollywood and develop an advanced civilization on one bank of the highway. Especially hilarious because of the reveal at the end.

"The Secret Book of the Dead" -- poem about dead pets.

"Once and Future" -- Merlin is actually Mervin, a time traveler from another world's future, who makes the Sword in the Stone work with... electromagnets.

"FTB" -- Santa Claus visits a bank mainframe because it Believes What It Is Told and someone told it about Santa Claus.

"Sir Joshua Easement: A Biographical Note" -- an extremely tongue-in-cheek biography of an unknown person from a painting.

[And of course, there are the Discworld stories, noted below.]

"Troll Bridge" -- Cohen the Barbarian gets annoyed/sad because the world is running out of adventures for barbarian heroes.

"Theater of Cruelty" -- Captain Carrot discovers a live-action (courtesy of the Discworld having gnomes) Punch and Judy show whose owner has been murdered. 

"The Sea and Little Fishes" -- Granny Weatherwax is told to stop freaking people out by being all spooky, so she decides to freak people out even more by being genuinely nice to them.

"The Ankh-Morpork National Anthem" -- exactly what it says on the tin. Pratchett wrote it because the BBC asked if the Discworld had one. According to the text, it is the only national anthem that "formally has a second verse consisting mainly of embarrassed mumbling."

"Medical Notes" -- about strange mental disorders found on the Discworld. Quite possibly the most hilarious story in this entire collection

"Thud: A Historical Perspective" -- apparently the actual origin of the game of Thud.

"A Few Words from Lord Havelock Vetinari" -- a speech Pratchett wrote for the twinning of Ankh-Morpork with a town in England.

"Death and What Comes Next" -- a philosopher attempts to use quantum uncertainty to convince Death that he's not going to die. It doesn't work.

"A Collegiate Casting-out of Devilish Devices" -- Lord Vetinari sends an inspector to the Unseen University to regulate it. The University faculty ignore him.

 

"Minutes of the Meeting to Form the Proposed Ankh-Morpork Federation of Scouts" -- what happens when you put Captain Carrot, Sergeant Detritus, Bashful Bashfulsson, Chrysoprase the Troll, and Lord Vetinari (among others) in a meeting about creating the Boy Scouts for Ankh-Morpork.

 

"The Ankh-Morpork Football Association Hall of Fame Playing Cards" -- baseball cards for Unseen Academicals.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for language and crude humor.

 

4 stars, for being hilarious. 

Favorite lines (this post wasn't long enough yet):

    It was a series Five, which in my opinion were a big mistake. The Fours were pretty near ideal, so why tinker? It's like saying, hey, we've invented the perfect bicycle so, next thing we'll do, we'll put thirteen more wheels on it--

    Page 121, from "#ifdefDEBUG + "world/enough" + "time""

 

    Annoia, or Paranoia Inversa

    The belief that you are out to get everyone.

    Page 240, from "Medical Notes"

 

    According to the trollish philosopher Plateau, "if you wants to understan' an enemy, you gotta walk a mile in his shoes. Den, if he's still your enemy, at least you're a mile away and he's got no shoes."

    Page 247, from "Thud: A Historical Perspective"

    In his opening remarks, Captain Carrot referred to the current problem of delinquency of young people in the city, which has recently been the subject of many articles in the Times.

    Miss Partleigh interjected that this was because there was nothing for them to do.

    Lord Vetinari observed that in fact there was a vast range of things for them to do, running from petty theft to armed gang warfare, and that therefore the question was one of finding something for them to do that, if at all possible, did not actually involve the death of innocent, or presumably innocent, bystanders.

    Page 264, from "Minutes of the Meeting to Form the Proposed Ankh-Morpork Federation of Scouts"

(Endnote: I'd just reprint the entire of "Medical Notes" in the favorite lines section, but A] it would spoil the enjoyment of anyone reading it for themselves, and B] it would probably also be some form of copyright infringement.)

"Hall of Heroes" anthology

Behold the third (and, so far, longest) one of these collections that I've read!

"Alancia's Dance" by H. L. Burke: A technically-not-matador-but-only-because-this-isn't-Spain woman meets Totally Not Daedalus, then falls in love. The king disapproves. I didn't really like this one.

"The Hero Feat of Hannah Helstrom" by J. Philip Horne: Superheroes, including one whose power is regeneration and literally nothing else. This one is decent.

"In Plain Sight" by Arthur Daigle: A stage magician with animated (non-creepy) dolls |turns out to be a real magician slash mad scientist with animated objects that are a lot more dangerous|. One of the best ones in the collection.

"Finn MacRorie and the River Dragon" by Katy Huth Jones: Ireland/Scotland, [insert year]: A random knight-errant shows up at a village, fixes this one family's problems, and then leaves. It feels like something out of an Irish/Scottish-flavored King Arthur legend.

"Little Victories" by Karin De Havin: Local escaped-pet-whisperer accidentally discovers injured fairy. This one isn't anything terribly special, but it's a solid story.

"And Only the Eyes of Children" by Laura VanArendonk Baugh: Turns out the Fair Folk do not like {T15+ at least child sex trafficking}. Well-executed, if not very appropriate for young readers.

"The Demon Monkeys" by A. R. Silverberry: Medieval non-European-flavored village is terrorized by demon monkeys. |Who are actually just bandits carrying howler monkeys|. Then a wizard(ish person) shows up. This one is okay.

"Superhero Publicist" by Janeen Ippolito: Exactly what it sounds like. A publicist for superheroes/supervillains has to deal with a supervillain who abruptly became a superhero instead due to converting to Christianity. The premise is good. The story is okay.

"Sweet Basil" by Lea Doué: Magic Is Banned™. Our protagonist has magic. You can see where this is going.

"Darkness Follows the Light" by David Millican: I mean, if there were evil child-stealing monsters, they probably would hang around bad neighborhoods. This one is not appropriate for children.

"Presenting... The Steampendous Adventures of Josiah U. Bear and the Rubber Barons" by D. W. Frauenfelder: A vaguely turn-of-the-century-esque story involving a nation of talking bears. Requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.

"River's Edge Ransom" by Julie C. Gilbert: Apparently part of a larger series. Fantasy. It's okay, I guess.

"The Love Talker" by Deanna Fugett: There's an evil monster that goes around breaking girls' hearts for the heck of it. There are also some protagonists. This one is decent, but not my cup of cheese.

"Gem" by RJ Conte: An alternate-universe world is attempting to shake itself to pieces. Except: That world's God has given them psions that can hold it together with their brains. Except: They never actually get to be more than about seven before the world tries to shake itself to pieces again. Less depressing than it sounds.

"Leticia's Song" by Jessica L. Elliott: Sort of like that one fairytale with the guys who get turned into swans. Also somewhat involves Not!Pandora's Box. This one is decent.

"The Wooden Ruler" by David Millican: Turns out if you make sentient gnome dolls, they might get too sentient. And view you as eldritch horrors. This is definitely an interesting read.

"The Tale of Sir Ronan of Camelot" by Frank B. Luke: Strongly Camelot-flavored, with a pronounced secondary taste of allegory. Didn't like it much.

"A Fiery Gift" by A. J. Bakke: Adorable volcano otters! And some point it's trying to make, probably, but I'm just here for the adorable volcano otters.

"The Hero of Emoh: A Parent's Fairytale" by Sarah Ashwood: DNF'd this one because I could just taste the sappiness and the spelling-things-backwards and was not in the mood for that. I'm still not.

"Sacrifice to the Iara" by H. L. Burke: Sort of ancient-South-American-civilization-flavored. It's got the winged and feathered serpents for that, at least. Well-executed.

"Charla Visits Earth" by Diane Astle: Fish-out-of-water where the fish is actually a mermaid, making that phrase both metaphorical and literal for this case. This one is okay.

"Cry of the Cave Lion" by E. Kaiser Writes: Cave lions. And the hunter-gatherers who hunt them.

"Save the Day" by Page Zaplendam: Teenage superheroes. A fairly realistic take on that subgenre, in fact. This is one of the better stories in here.

"Boy of Sand and Sky" by Laura Matthias Bendoly: Ancient France! But with a kid who can do miracles, and who apparently factors into some other stuff this author's written.

"Teamwork" by Laura VanArendonk Baugh: Have you ever heard of the "Choking Doberman" urban legend? It's basically {T a dog starts mysteriously choking, and when taken to the vet, turns out to be choking on some severed human fingers}. This story is just that urban legend in short story form.

"The Ungifted Twin" by Tamie Dearen: Classic "girl with no magic power in universe where everyone has a magic power" story. This one is okay.

"Not Quite a Hero" by Arthur Daigle: The mayor's intrepid daughter and... how do I even begin to describe Sorcerer Lord Jayden? They meet for the first time in this, then fight a giant shapeshifting monster made of dead stuff. This is my favorite story in the entire collection.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for child abuse and sexual references.

On the low side of 4 stars; would have been 3, but "Not Quite a Hero" exists.

(Endnote: Arthur Daigle is fast rising in the ranks of my favorite authors. The nonexistent ranks, because I don't actually have a list.)

"Fantastic Creatures" anthology

This one isn't as good as the other one I reviewed, but I'm reviewing it anyway.

"Three Steaks and a Box of Chocolates" by A. R. Silverberry: Kind of boring, about a country doctor and a mountain man who has a mysterious monster friend. Its time period is somewhat ambiguous.

"Snapdragon" by Lea Doué: Local mom gets wronged by a man, overreacts, curses both daughters so they can technically never be wronged in that way but also their lives are super terrible now because the curses are poorly executed. Also kind of a retelling of Princess and the Frog.

 

"The Golden City Captives" by Julie C. Gilbert: A guy and his girlfriend get enslaved for the arena and then turn out to both be shapeshifters. Ended too abruptly for my taste.

 

"Seekers" by Intisar Khanani: A little girl has a knack for locating hidden things. |Turns out she's a selkie|. My synopsis is bad, but the story is decent.

"Mystery of Asgina Lake" by Caren Rich: Nobody believes the lake monster is real, except the sheriff's twin daughters. Who find the lake monster. It is not friendly. This one was fairly good.

"Skin Deep" by Morgan Smith: The first one that made me go "Welp, this is not as family-friendly as Tales of Ever After." Basically some girl has to get married to the prince, who's a horrific monster because fairies are jerks. And then {T15+ they play Strip Fantasy Dice Game}. There are so many other things that could have happened, my man! (well, woman, actually.) Did not love this one.

"The Last Chronicle of Pete Mersill" by David Millican: Evil life-draining beings have taken over the world and wrecked most of it. One guy murders a bunch of them. Then he dies (would spoiler tag that, but come on, look at the title.) Too bleak for my taste.

"Priscilla, the Magnificent, Flying Giant Squid" by L. Palmer: About a woman who honors her dead colleague by transporting a sentient kraken via dirigible, despite the fact that pretty much everyone else says A) sentient krakens don't exist and B) if they did, you couldn't transport them via dirigible. This one is okay.

"An Adventurer's Heart" by Nicole Zoltack: A vaguely Greek Mythology-flavored one with jewels that do magic stuff. Didn't love it, but it's not bad.

"Destiny's Flight" by Frank B. Luke: Needs more worldbuilding. Has a vaguely Old Testament flavor, but also a vaguely Medieval Crusades flavor. And some evil guys. Apparently written by a pastor, though I can't speak to what kind of pastor. This either needs to be more or less like Narnia.

 

"The Kappa" by Lelia Rose Foreman: Short, relatively pointless story that reads like a Japanese folktale (and may actually be one). It involves a kappa, because of course.

 

"Celebration" by Arthur Daigle: A king dies. Everyone's sad. Then a bunch of goblins steal the corpse, bury it, and celebrate because said king was actually decent to goblins (who aren't evil in this). This guy wrote my favorite story in the other one, and this story is similarly good.

 

"The Nether Lands" by David Millican: Yeesh. The one that involves demon hunting, and also 85% of the inappropriate-for-children content in the whole anthology. Did not like this one.

"Talori and the Shark" by Jessica L. Elliott: Feels like several fairy tales mashed into an unidentifiable paste and then formed back into a story. It's not my favorite, but definitely better than the previous one.

"Reviving the Sword" by Kandi J. Wyatt: A centaur attempts to re-empower her magic sword. Kind of boring.

"Mothers' Night Out" by D. G. Driver: Graphic violence! Basically the new hire at the daycare gets stuck babysitting all the employees' babies at night while their moms go do stuff. |Turns out they're all werewolves|. Did not like this one either.

"The Mage and the Spotted Wyvern" by Craig J. Price Jr.: A solid story, if not one with anything particularly special about it. Its plot is oddly hard to describe.

"The Very Last Dragon" by Katy Huth Jones: Imagine St. George and the Dragon, but told in a somewhat silly and satirical fashion. This one is okay.

 

"The Adventures of Zero: The Quest for Wormsroot" by Vincent Trigili: A kid attempts to go find a rare root so the village doctor/healer/alchemist will take him on as an apprentice. Fairly entertaining.

"Ishka's Garden" by Bokerah Brumley: A princess's fairy friend gets abducted, so the princess goes after her. Has a decent plot twist at the end.

"Absolutely True Facts about the Pacific Tree Octopus" by H. L. Burke: Little girl gets taken in by Internet hoax that turns out not to actually be hoax. Not great, not terrible.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for sexual references (I'm looking at you, The Nether Lands) and graphic violence ("Mothers' Night Out", anyone?)

3 stars, overall. Most of the stories are fairly okay, there's just a couple that are nyehhhhhh. I'm glad this is the first book in the series, as that means it improves as time goes on.

(Endnote: I'm willing to bet some fake internet points that there are very few other blog posts which use nyehhhhhh as a predicate adjective inside a dependent clause.)

"Tales of Ever After" anthology

This is a collection of 16 stories by various people, some of which stories were good and some of which were okay. The stories include:

"Cinders" by Kendra E. Ardnek: Cinderella, but with a person who's actually a cat |who's actually a person|. And a Cool Old Wizard Guy. I liked this one.

"At the Corner of Elm & Main" by H. L. Burke: In which a lamppost becomes sentient. This one was decent.

"Tears of the Sea" by Savannah Jezowski: The Little Mermaid, but not really. I enjoyed the twist that |the main character's human obsession doesn't end in romance|.

"Steelhand" by Ashley Capes: Sleeping Beauty... sorta? But with an evil alchemist and a hero with a mechanical hand. Imaginative.

"King or Beggar" by D. G. Driver: Basically just King Thrushbeard.

"The Girl Who Talked to Birds" by Kristen S. Walker: It's about a girl who talks to birds. Apparently part of a larger series. This one is fairly good.

"The Princess and the Stone-Picker" by Sarah Ashwood: Feels like it could be an obscure fairy tale. I didn't like it much, but that's just because initially stuck-up protagonists annoy me, no matter how much better they get.

"Wake the Moon" by Annie Louise Twitchell: This one was good. It's a fairly well-executed modern one involving personified celestial objects.

"The Greatest Adventure" by J. M. Hackman: Slaying the dragon! And (surprise surprise) the dragon is actually evil.

"Third Princess" by Emily Martha Sorensen: In which the first two royal siblings also succeed. I liked it fairly well.

"A Week After Midnight" by Alex McGilvery: Basically a "what happens next" for Cinderella. Wasn't my favorite, but I didn't dislike it.

"Being Seen" by Gretchen E. K. Engel: In which a girl is invisible for no discernible reason and tries to find love despite the fact nobody can see her. |And then a blind guy shows up.| Decent, I guess?

"The Quest for a Wide-Awake Princess" by Lia London: A prince tries to find a normal princess who doesn't have horrible trouble sleeping (coughPrincessandthePeacough) or horrible trouble not sleeping (coughSleepingBeautycough). This is one of those stories that lightly pokes fun at fairy tale tropes.

"How to Hide a Prince" by E. J. Kitchens: What if, instead of turning him back human, kissing the frog prince turned you into a frog? And what if nefarious people tried to get you to kiss the frog prince? Not great, not terrible, this one.

 

"Believing Fairy Tales" by Arthur Daigle: Sarcastic shrine tender guy has his shrine invaded by Evil Guys who think there's a magic sword hidden inside. Plot twist: |there is a magic sword hidden inside, sealing a terrifying monster|. Further plot twist: |The shrine tender guy is the terrifying monster, bound in human shape by the magic sword|. This is definitely in the top three best stories in this collection, in my opinion.

 

"The Loathly Princess of Edimor" by L. Palmer: Not my favorite. A princess tries to escape marriage by having a witch turn her into a swan. It doesn't go super well.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T overall. There are some stories that fall below that.

4 stars, as an overall rating; I'm not going to bother giving each individual story its own star rating.

(Endnote: Somehow we managed to pick up the seventh one of these first, and incidentally also the cleanest of the ones I've read. Not to say the others weren't good, but their content level is higher. [EDIT: This isn't the seventh one, it's the fourth. I'm not sure where I got "seventh" from.])

"The Samurai and the Seven Fox Spirits" by Valerie Fliss

(If the image is a bit wonky, that's my fault; the Internet doesn't have any pictures of this book's cover, so I had to make one myself by scanning in a physical copy of the book. At least it's better than the one for The Prince and His Ants, though!)

Well, that was pretty much exactly what I was expecting. It's about, *drumroll please*, a samurai. Also, seven fox spirits. It reads like an old folktale, which I'm pretty sure it was meant to.

Basically, a samurai wanders into a town that's been plagued by mysterious disappearances and other strange stuff. A small child convinces him to figure out what's going on, which he does, although it involves climbing a nearby mountain and having a fight with an oni (who |killed the former mountain goddess to become a mountain god himself|.)

(Warning: spoiler-tagged musing ahead, which does contain some ending spoilers.) I kind of liked how |not everything went back to normal at the end. The former mountain goddess is still dead, and the samurai has to take her place to prevent the oni from respawning over and over|.

 

(This post has a lot of parentheses.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fantasy violence and some bits of creepy Japanese folklore (water sprites that try to drown you, odd ghost things, et cetera).

And, as you probably guessed, 4 stars.

(Endnote: There's another one of these, The Tower in the Forest, but I picked only this one up and not the other one because... the other one didn't appeal to me, honestly.)