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Perchance to Dream – A Review

Posted on August 22nd, 2012 by Anna in Books, Reviews - Staff
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Perchance to Dream by Lisa Mantchev (book #2 of the Theater Illuminata series)

Read by: Anna/Copley Teen Room

This is the second book in the Theatre Illuminata series (The first book is entitled Eyes Like Stars.) and is a continuation of Bertie Shakespeare Smith’s story started in the first book. She’s on the hunt for her lost love, Nate, a pirate from the Little Mermaid play who was stolen by the Sea Goddess Sedna. She is also looking for the father she’s never known. She promised her mother, Ophelia, she would bring him back to the Theatre with her, where every character from every play that’s ever been written is trapped by magic. The only way to leave the Theatre is to tear out the entrance page of a character. This is how she and the air spirit, Ariel, from William Shakespeare’s A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream leave to find Nate and her father.  Accompanying them on their trip are the four abnoxious fairies, also from A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream. These four have nothing on their mind except eating pie and causing trouble, be it on their own mini traveling stage, or crashing a wedding party and falling in love with the sugar-made groom on top of the once beautiful wedding cake.

I love this series! And I think the main reason why I love it is because of the four fairies: Peaseblossom, Moth, Cobweb, and Mustardseed. They are so hilarious I was laughing so hard I cried. I just can’t get enough of their antics. The other thing I like about this series is it’s uniqueness. It’s a magical realm in the land of the theater with characters that most people know from Shakespeare. She brings a new light to his (and other) plays, so that the reader can enjoy these charactera and will perhaps want to go back and reread Shakespeare’s work. There were only two things I didn’t like about this particular book. The first was that some of the magic and the reasons why Bertie had to do what she did, didn’t make much sense, though I’m hoping this will be cleared up in the next book. And the other was that I missed the four fairies as Bertie left them behind for awhile in her quest to find Nate. So in those two senses, the first book was even better than the second, but don’t at all let that dissuade you from reading this one too. I still enjoyed it very much and am looking forward to reading the final book in the trilogy, So Silver Bright.

Lost in Shangri-La – A Review

Posted on August 22nd, 2012 by Anna in Books, Reviews - Staff
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And so, my Summer Reading has come to an end. I have to say I had a lot of fun picking out books from the list and reading them over the three month span of June, July, and August. However, next year I would lower the number of books I chose to no more than six, two per month so I don’t feel like I’m in a rush to get through them all before the end of August.

With that, here is my final book review for my Summer Reading books. (Rest assured, my book reviews won’t stop, there just won’t be quite so many in each month.)

Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

Read by: Anna/Copley Teen Room

This is the story of a sight-seeing army plane that was taking several soldiers and Women in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) over a newly discovered vally in Dutch New Guinea in May of 1945 near the end of World War II. This was uncharted territory, and very hard to fly through because of sharp winds, lots of clouds, and very high mountains that appeared out of nowhere like monsters. The plane crashed, essentially in the middle of nowhere, and only three people survived. But life was not easy for them. They were undercover of a dense forest, where no search plane could see them, and two of the survivors were severely wounded, most of their skin burned off and disease setting in. They were forced to hike to a clearing, and to face the natives, whom it was thought at the time, were cannibals. No one in the Army knew how to get them out of their location. Planes couldn’t fly in, and a hike would be roughly 150 miles of dangerous terrain that no one had ever hiked through before.  This book chronicles the plight of the three survivors, two men and one woman, along with those who risked their lives to get them out. It is also the story of how the natives came to meet the outside world for the first time. These people didn’t know what a radio was. They didn’t even know what a wheel was. They had their own way of life, and had been living it for thousands of years before a plane crash changed everything for them.

What an experience. I can’t imagine what this must have been like for those who survived the crash and for those natives who believed these white people who fell from the sky were spirits. But though Zuckoff’s book, I was able to get a glimpse of things, to see how they surivived, and to see the amazing rescue effort that almost didn’t happen on many occassions. This was a fantastic read and one I would highly recommend to anyone interested in flying or surviving in the jungle. Once I got into this book, I couldn’t put it down!

Arrows of the Queen – A Review

Posted on August 14th, 2012 by Anna in Books, Reviews - Staff
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Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey

Read by: Anna/Copley Teen Room

This is the story of thirteen-year-old Talia who is given an ultimatum by her people: either give her life to the Goddess and become a cloistered young woman, or get married and produce as many children as she can to keep the population going in their rough environment. Talia wants neither one. What she wants is to become a Herald, someone with magical gifts, who helps the people of the land in all matters that are important. Because her people dislike Heralds, Talia doesn’t understand what it means when Companion Rolan chooses her to become his Herald. (A Companion is a horse with special powers that bind them to their Heralds.) However, once Rolan takes her to the Collegium, she learns a lot more about herself than she ever knew possible. She also discovers people who aren’t abusive like her own family, and begins to trust others and herself, until bullies trying to keep her from becoming the Queen’s Advisor, called Queen’s Own.

This is the first book in a trilogy and I have to say I read this faster than almost any of the others on my summer reading list. The first three quarters of the book fly by like nothing. It keeps you engaged and wondering what will happen next with each turn of the page. The last quarter of the book I felt was a simple summary of her second two years of schooling, where the author told us what was happening rather than showed, using the characters actions. I can’t speak for the second and third books in the series yet, but I’m hoping that they will make up for the rushed ending of this first book.

Once I read the next two books, I’ll be sure to review them all for those of you who might be interested. The second book is called Arrow’s Flight and the third book is called Arrow’s Fall.

Doomwyte – A Review

Posted on August 10th, 2012 by Anna in Books, Reviews - Staff
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Doomwyte by Brian Jacques

Read by: Anna/Copley Teen Room

This is the story of the woodland creatures of Redwall Abby who live by the code of honor and friendship to all. A riddle is found that was written by Gonff the Prince of Mousethieves many seasons ago, detailing the whereabouts of the Doomwyte Eyes. These are four precious jewels Gonff stole from the Wytes, a murderous band of birds and their snakes, who still harbor a hatred toward any creature they can kill and eat. Not only is there one riddle to start off the search for the jewels, there are several more along the way. Not only are there riddles, there are plenty of songs, feasts, fights, bad guys, good guys, laughter, love, and lots of fun.

I just finished this wickedly awesome fantasy adventure novel this afternoon and completely loved every minute of it. Some of the Redwall books seem to be the same as the others, but this one provided a fresh story with new creatures and very different adventures that made it fun to read Brian Jacques all over again. I was constantly wondering where the book would end up because at no point was the ending obvious. I especially loved the character of Umphrey Spikkle who showed that one doesn’t need to know how to read and write in order to do good work, have fun, and save the day. He also shows that it’s never to late to learn what all those squiggles on the page actually mean.

A note about Redwall as a series: Brian Jacques (pronounced Jakes) wrote the series to be read in any order. Each novel makes for a good stand alone story. However, I highly recommend reading Redwall and Mossflower first, as they explain the story of Martin the Warrior, the eventual spirit guide who appears in later novels, and the beginnings of Redwall Abby.  I also highly recommend Mossflower because it’s the prequel to Redwall, and is by far, my favorite of all the Redwall books.

 

Black Hawk Down – A Review

Posted on July 31st, 2012 by Anna in Books, Reviews - Staff
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Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden

Read by: Anna/Copley Teen Room

This is the true story of what happened when an elite group of soldiers went into the city of Mogadishu, Somalia in order to capture an enemy. The capture was only supposed to take an hour. Instead, the American troops were surprised by the retaliation of Somalian people unwilling to let their leader go. The American soldiers were trapped, pinned down in several different areas of the city while a ground transport convoy wandered, lost, and getting torn to shreds trying to find them. Meanwhile, two Black Hawk helecopters were downed by RPGs, and no one in the air command could help ground troops get to them in time. 

At times this mission seemed like a black comedy when nothing was going right. In the middle of the night, many hours after the mission was supposed to have ended, the ground forces were trying to meet up. Yet, they couldn’t find each other, feeling like each group were miles away even though they were actually sometimes only as far away as a few feet, separated by a simple concrete wall. This was a fantastic read, that had me riveted all the way though. I shook my head at the black comedy, frustrated that nothing was going right. Bowden made sure you felt each death as if these men in uniform were your own best friends. He writes in an afterword, published in 2010, that he meant to write the book as if it were the men themselves telling the story. He wanted to take himself out of the picture entirely, and I think he did a fantastic job. It was the right way to tell the story of these guys. But, not only does he tell the American side, he also went to Mogadishu and interviewed several locals to get their side of the story.

All I can really say is… wow. What a terrifying, comedic, brutal, truthful book. All I can say is, if you like reading about the military, or you’re thinking of joining, definitely read this book first. This does not diminish the truth of war by any stretch of the imagination.   

Just an update on my personal summer reading list, these are the three books I have left to read in August:

Doomwyte by Brian Jacques

Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey

Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

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