Another Negative Review - And I Hate That

You may think, from reading my posts on this blog for the past months, that I am a negative and difficult-to-please reader. I hope that is not the case, and if it is true, it's not something I've been trying to cultivate. It just seems that several of the books I've read lately have some pretty significant problems in terms of what I've come to view as "good" writing, a view that is learned not only from my years as an English major but through following several blogs by successful literary agents and editors over the past few years. And believe me, I'm disappointed, not satisfied, to be noticing these issues.

My latest disappointment is especially sharp, because it comes from a writer with a top-notch reputation. Scott O'Dell is a HUGE figure in historical fiction, the writer of 20 or more books, the winner of the Hans Christian Anderson Award and the Newberry Award. Heck, he even has an award named after him - the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, for the best work of historical fiction for young adults in a given year. I was downright tickled to find a copy of his book The Serpent Never Sleeps at my favorite used bookstore. Colonial America! Jamestown! Pocahontas! What could be better?!

Well....to be honest...this book could be better. The story follows a young woman named Serena Lynn who leaves England to go to the Jamestown settlement with the young man she's madly in love with (even though he has murdered a man and is running from the king). They suffer through a terrible hurricane and spend a very long time stranded on an island in Bermuda before actually making it to Jamestown. Well, Serena makes it - her crushee is lost at sea. Once in Jamestown, Serena takes it on herself to find Pocahontas, since she's the only one who can save the starving colony by convincing her father to give the settlers corn and hold off his attacks. She befriends Pocahontas, survives an attack by unfriendly Indians, and finally marries one of the settlers and stays in the new colony.

Although I might have changed a few things, I'm not arguing with the plot. The story is fine. But the telling of the story seems simply soul-less to me. I honestly didn't care about any of the characters (which I believe to be one of the most fatal flaws a book can make). I found certain plot points (like Serena's first meeting with Pocahontas) to be a little too hard to swallow - the "willing suspension of disbelief" was strained just a bit too far. Even though I finished the book about a day ago and have been mulling it over ever since, I can't identify any overarching theme - the universal truth the readers should be able to take away from the story.

And you know why I think some of these problems plague this book? Once again, it's a matter of "telling" versus "showing." (Yep, here I go again on that!) Here's an example:

(the king's guard has just come on the ship to arrest the man she loves, Anthony Foxcroft) "Anthony and I were standing at the rail, close to the Great Cabin, but someone shut the door and we heard nothing else. It was a terrible moment. If Admiral Somers decided to turn back, Anthony would be given over to the captain of the guards and taken off the ship. Anthony always carried a dagger. He had his hand on it now. But what could he do with it? If the ship turned back, it would be of no use to him. There was no way he could ever withstand a dozen armed guards."

First of all, Anthony Foxcroft has to be the most underdeveloped character in this book. I can't for the life of me understand why Serena is attracted to him. He's a spoiled brat who quarrels with one of the king's favorite young gentlemen and who murders a servant in a fit of rage. There's nothing that explains the attraction Serena feels for him that makes her willing to run away from home and risk a scandal and take on the challenges of an unknown, dangerous life. (Maybe he's just really hot...)

Secondly, don't tell us "It was a terrible moment." Give us details that will make us say, "Gosh, that's a terrible moment" in the back of our minds as we are reading. Now, I don't pretend to be a Newberry-Award-winning writer of prose, but think how much more engaging that scene would be if it had gone something like this:

Anthony edged along the rail toward the Great Cabin, and I followed, keeping my hand on the back of his arm as if he might be pulled away from me just by getting closer to the captain of the guards. Just as we came close enough to hear their raised voices, someone shut the door, and I could no longer make out words, only the sounds of argument. I pressed closer to Anthony. My heart was pounding.

"If Admiral Somers agrees to turn back, you'll be given to the captain of the guard," I whispered. "They'll take you off the ship."

I felt his arm stiffen and saw his hand move toward his belt, where I knew he always kept his dagger.

"I'll not go," he said. "They'll not take me."

That could be improved with editing, I'm sure, but already I think it's more interesting and builds a sense of character and of what's at stake for those characters better than the original does. Why? Because it shows details that let us surmise what's going on in the characters' heads instead of taking all the fun away by simply telling us.

Some arrogance, eh, rewriting for a Newberry winner? Sometimes lately I've thought I'd like to do that with several of these books that have disappointed me - take the plot line and the basic framework of characters and rewrite the book to show instead of tell. I first had that thought about Pioneer Breed. Now it's this one. You can't copyright ideas, right, only the expression of ideas. So what if I wrote my own book showing the way a girl who runs away to follow her lover to Jamestown is changed by the experience......

Sequels Are Hard, I Guess

A lot of times when I'm reading a book with likable characters, I want the story to keep going. And a lot of times an author will oblige me (and other readers) with a sequel. That's the case with Sally Gardner's pair of books The Red Necklace and The Silver Blade. Recently I finished reading The Silver Blade, and unfortunately, I didn't like it as well as I liked The Red Necklace.

The Silver Blade picks up when the Revolution in France has lost its idealism and gone full into the Terror. Yann is using his powers to help people escape death at the guillotine; Sido is living in London with her aunt, who is none too happy about the love letters Yann and Sido are sending to each other across the English Channel. Because Yann is a Gypsy, Sido's aunt believes he would not make a suitable husband for the young heiress. So far, so good.

But then Gardner treks away from historical fiction into the deeply paranormal, by bringing back Count Kalliovski, the villain of the first book who blackmailed Sido's presumed father into signing an agreement that will give Sido - and her considerable inheritance - to Kalliovski. In The Silver Blade, Kalliovski has been rescued from death by the devil and now lives a cursed half-life in a catacomb under the city, able to come above ground only at night. He is determined to obtain Yann's powers for his own, to make himself ultimately powerful. To do that, he has to find and lure Yann to the catacombs where he can kill him and take his powers. Sido now has a new attraction for Kalliovski; she's going to be the bait to get Yann to the catacombs.

I said before, I'm not a huge fan of paranormal stories. However, I can enjoy it at times. But this was not one of those times. Kalliovski's quest for the threads of light seemed awfully familiar, as in Star Wars familiar. The whole "I am your father" bit seemed kind of overdone to me, especially Yann's reaction and the moment that brought him back from his despairing journey. Yann's mother (a ghost) also plays a big role in saving Sido.

Another thing I didn't especially care for was the introduction of a whole slew of new characters. Honestly, it was a little hard to keep up with them all. And I didn't find any of the characters who were introduced to be that compelling. I really didn't like the character of Anselm. I know I wasn't supposed to like him. But I didn't even like him as a villain. I thought he was just tiresome.

I didn't even get much of a thrill out of the romance between Yann and Sido. It had some of the problems I felt afflicted the whole book - a cliche' approach that could have been improved with a bit of revision and re-writing. In some ways, I felt the sequel was rushed to publication before it was really ready.

Different people have different tastes, I know. It's quite likely that someone who's more of a fan of paranormal stories will like Gardner's story. It's just a little let-down to me that the follow-up to a book I really enjoyed turned out to be something I really didn't enjoy that much.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

(Guest post by my daughter)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a great piece of fiction of a teenage boy. This is the seventh story of seven,and I've read it about three times. This book was written by famed writer J.K. Rowling, who is a great writer. Harry was one year old when some thing terrible happened,and he is now on the hunt to find the horcruxes to sever every strand Voldemort has to the world. Can he keep his two friends close, or will an unexpected fight take the whole mission down? In it is a snitch from the past, a weird symbol, a children's book, and a sword. I think you should read this because it is an inviting book of survival, and life and death.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

After finishing The Yearling, I was determined that I would read something very light and fluffy, the mental equivalent of bolting down a bag of potato chips. I even bought a historical romance on my Kindle for that specific purpose. However, since we live in the boondocks where Amazon's Whispernet can't whisper, I wasn't able to actually download the book to the Kindle when I was ready to start reading (I'll have to take the Kindle to town to be able to do that).

As an alternative, I started a YA book I had downloaded once after seeing a review on the Teen Lit Review blog, The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner. It's historical fiction about the French Revolution, and both my daughter and I liked the sample chapters from Amazon.

I've read about five chapters now, and last night as I finished the reading for the evening, I had that unreasonably anxious feeling I get when I know the main characters are going to get into trouble. It's the feeling I had several times while reading the Harry Potter series. I want to just shake the characters and say, "Don't do that! Can't you predict that's going to cause problems down the road?"

What brought on that feeling last night is that Yann, the young boy who is the hero of the story, stole a red necklace from the story's villain when the villain didn't pay Yann and his friends for a theatrical performance. (Actually, the villain did worse than stiff them on the payment; he murdered one of the friends in an "accident.") Even as Yann is picking up the necklace and putting it in his pocket, I'm thinking, "sure, like this incredibly sharp and incredibly vile villain is not going to notice a necklace of red jewels is gone! Come on, Yann!"

OK. I know suspense is one of the things that many people enjoy while reading. But honestly, it seems to lessen my pleasure in a story if I have to constantly be looking around the corner for the characters, waiting for something bad to jump out of the dark. I think it must be a personality thing!

Mission Accomplished - Finally!

Last night I finally finished reading The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnon Rawlings. I'm sort of ashamed to admit it, but it took me about six weeks, mostly because I've just been so busy that I go to bed too late to read (if I plan to be up and alert the next day!).

I'm glad to have read it, but after finishing it, I had the same kind of reaction that I had after reading Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins: "what a bleak book." It's not that Jody had to kill his pet (though I'll admit I knew it was coming and wasn't looking forward to reading it); it's the attitude that ends the book. Basically, Jody has learned, "Life stinks, but if you're a man, you just go on."

Now that's a valuable lesson, truly. But as with Katniss in Mockingjay, Jody doesn't have any sense of hope at the end of the book. Since I wrote at length about that when I finished Mockingjay, I won't rehash it here. Maybe Jody's hopelessness stems from the fact that he's sort of emotionally bruised at that point, and maybe he'll find some hope after a while. But the book ends with the line, "...a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever." That's a downer!

Part of me argues back that more of our kids need to be exposed to that kind of reality so they understand life is not all cherries. Last week, I went to Chicago with my son as his chaperone for a national choir event. It just so happened that we were there while Chicago was having its St. Patrick's Day parade, so my family made me promise to get some pictures. Despite my inherent dislike of large crowds, I went and stood in the mass of people to catch tiny glimpses of the parade through the gaps between people's heads. Anyway, the point of saying that is to say this: for the hour or so that I was standing in that crowd, I was stuck next to this group of 25-ish people who were talking quite loudly and freely the entire time. Listening to them complain about the rude people they encountered in line at Starbucks and about how fast tickets were selling out for Charlie Sheen's show in Chicago, I decided they are totally unprepared to face real problems in life. It's not just that they were complaining; I'm doing that myself right here, ha ha. It was the way they were doing it that told me these people haven't learned the lesson Jody learned in The Yearling. That group of 20-somethings* is still frolicking along in life, playing with their "yearlings." I just wonder what would happen to them if they faced "Ol' Starvation" (or even "Ol Go Without Starbucks for a Day").

Enough of that. Now I get the pleasure of deciding what to read next. I think I'm going to go for something on my Kindle. For one reason or another, I've had the Kindle for nearly 8 months now and have read only one complete book on it. I've got a couple I've downloaded and I think it's time to pick up one of them.

*In all fairness, I'm not saying this about those "darn young people." I know there are people my own age who also have the same outlook.

Guest Post: The Witch Of Blackbird Pond

This is a good book that really gets you where it counts. The story is about Kit, who lost every thing she had back in Barbados, her home island. She finds it's hard to live in America. She wants to find someone like her who loves the sea; instead she gets a jealous cousin, a creepy boy, and an old friend who broke plenty of laws of the town. All she can hope for is a miracle. This book's time period was the Salem witch trials time.

(written by my 12-year-old daughter, Lily)

An Experiment

One of the biggest challenges I've noticed since getting my Kindle has been wading through the hundreds of thousands of books that are available through the Kindle store to find books that might actually interest me. At one point, I thought it would be useful to have some kind of sorting service that was a little more specific than Amazon's broad categories. Nan Hawthorne has such a service for books about the Middle Ages at Medieval Novels.com, and I thought it might be interesting and fun to create a similar listing for my favorite historical fiction. Mostly that will be stories about U.S. history, although I will also have categories for other time periods and cultures, as well.

I've started with one page, which you can see listed just below the banner for this site. This page focuses on historical fiction about the U.S. Revolutionary War (since Johnny Tremain holds such a cherished place in my heart, ha ha), as well as stories about the colonial period and the antebellum period. That's a wide-ranging time period, and I may later need to break it up, but Blogger only allows me 10 pages, so I must be sparing until I settle in on a format for this list. My plan is to list the books alphabetically and in sections for the different time periods. I hope that will make them easy enough to find.

One of the main things I've wished I had to help me sort through the many, many books available on Amazon was some sort of filtering device, so I've attempted to provide one of those in this list. Besides being grouped according to time period, I've included a brief summary of the history covered in the book, a synopsis of the story, and a reading level for each book. Then, because I'm a rhetorical critic and can't help myself, I've given my evaluation of the book (very briefly). I'm not rating the books, but if I think there is something I wish someone had told me going into this book, I'm going to include it as sort of a "warning label."

I will add books to the list as time permits. The semester is in full swing, so my time for pursuits like this is pretty limited. But I think it's going to be fun, and maybe it can help someone find some good historical fiction to read.