His Majesty’s Dragon (The Temeraire Series)

Title: His Majesty’s Dragon (the Temeraire series)
Author: Naomi Novik
Publisher: Del Rey (Random House)
ISBN: 9780345481283

Alethea’s Review (at age 19):

Carver, very pale, stepped towards the creature, holding out his hand, which trembled visibly. “Good dragon,” he said; the words sounded rather like a question. “Nice dragon.”

Will Laurence is perfectly happy with his life as a navy captain. He gets to battle Napoleon’s forces with a crew he loves (and stay far away from his estranged father). But when he seizes a rare dragon egg which hatches before he has the chance to foist it off on someone qualified, Laurence and his dragon Temeraire are flung headlong into the chaotic Aerial Corps, where women can be captains, no one addresses him as “sir,” and his vehicle talks back.

The Temeraire series was recommended to me as a light summer read. It is not a light summer read. But Novik’s alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars is a lot of fun nevertheless. Temeraire the dragon is a charming character: smart, unconventional, and a perfect companion for proper, buttoned-down Laurence, who finds his views challenged more and more as the series continues. Although it’s not a comedic book in the truest sense of the word, Novik has perfected the occasional wry humour that makes you twist one corner of your mouth up instead of laughing out loud. His Majesty’s Dragon is written like an old-timey novel, with long sentences, ample semicolons and older words thrown into the mix (“cessation of hostilities,” anyone?). This makes it more convincing as a period novel but also a little difficult to read. The plot meanders sometimes (not only in this book but in the next ones), but you don’t really notice that until you’ve finished the novel, so I don’t think it’s a big deal that sometimes a tangent pops up quietly in the corner. (If you find yourself forgetting what’s happened in previous books, I recommend these Temeraire Rereads.)

I want to mention especially that in this time period, racism and sexism are alive and well, to the point where female captains are hidden from the public and slaves are still being kidnapped and sold. I wouldn’t recommend this book for younger teens because of how deep these prejudices run in 19th century England. Laurence has internalized a lot of these views, to the point of being shocked that young women could be part of the Corps, and it comes across in the narration. It may be difficult for a younger reader to understand that these views should not be internalized or condoned, especially when the protagonist espouses some of them (Laurence and Temeraire are abolitionists, but one of Laurence’s friends is not). Later novels deal more strongly with the slave trade and Temeraire’s battle to gain rights for dragons, and we spend more time with cool female captains like Roland and Harcourt, but the first book is mostly about fighting and therefore glosses over some of these issues.

Here is where I admit that His Majesty’s Dragon is actually not my favourite book of the series. Novik doesn’t really deal with heavier subject matter until Throne of Jade (#2), so the first one comes across as fluffier than the rest of the series. Also, we don’t get diverse recurring characters until Black Powder War (#3), and even then we only really get one. Personally I’m partial to Empire of Ivory (#4), but that might just be because #3 is depressing and I spent the whole of #2 worrying that Novik would be super racist towards Chinese people (she wasn’t, so I worried in vain).

While I’m admitting things, I might as well mention that Laurence is not my favourite ever protagonist, either. He’s a classically stoic, proper English gentleman, which makes sense for the time period (as he’s allowed to go places and be involved in decision-making where a woman or a person of colour wouldn’t). But he’s a bit boring, frankly, when compared to firebrands like bold, straight-talking Captain Jane Roland, or even his dragon Temeraire. His agony over improper behaviour, although it eases after the first book, still affords him many sleepless nights (which gets tedious after a while, when we all know what he ought to do but he’s worried about what society might think). Despite that, the other characters more than make up for it, and Laurence is always just endearing enough for me to forgive him his priggishness.

But let’s be honest here: I’d forgive the Temeraire series a lot because of how cool the premise is. I mean, warrior dragons? Setting up your rifles on dragonback to fire volleys at the enemy crew? Acid-spitters who only let women captain them? Yeah, my gripes are pretty minor. Give it a shot if you like historical fiction, fantasy, alternate history or even just dragons.

Warning (books 1-5 because I haven’t read 6-8 yet): Slavery and brutality towards slaves, war and violence, anti-black racism and sexism, one mention of rape (under the euphemism “outraged”), occasional swearing (f*ck, etc.), occasional mentions of sex (and mating of dragons), illegitimate children.

The Small Rain and A Severed Wasp

Titles: The Small Rain, A Severed Wasp
Author: Madeleine L’Engle
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
ISBNs: 9780374519124, 9780374517830

Alethea’s Review (at age 13)

Warning: This review may or may not be safe for children to read, depending on your definition of “safe”.

Katherine Forrester is a ten-year-old girl who lives with her mother’s best friend, because her mother, a famous concert pianist, was in a car crash three years ago and refuses to see anyone and her father is an absent-minded composer. Sound complicated? It is.

When Katherine has been reunited with her mother for four years, Julie takes it into her head to die. Of a cold. So she does. Leaving Katherine alone—again. (Alright, so I’m being unfair to Julie. But of course she had to go out on a cold, windy day when her cold was at its worst.) Busy with other things, Aunt Manya and Katherine’s dear father decide to send her to boarding school, where she is excluded from her peers because she’s so different. As determined to be a famous pianist as she was four years ago, she spends all of her spare time playing the piano, though her piano teacher is away. And then… (drum roll)… she meets her piano teacher. And she loves him immediately. His name is Justin Michel Vigneras, and he’s a great piano teacher, from whom she can learn as easily as she did from Julie. Which is saying something. Then, after a short sojourn during which everyone thinks she’s lesbian because she’s good friends with this girl named Sarah (yeah. I know), Justin announces that he’s going away. To Paris. Without her.

The rest of the book is about her trying to find her way in the world, you could say. With several questionable scenes of gay bars, deaths, sex (she has sex with this guy she doesn’t love, and then afterwards thinks it’s okay because it was mutually consented to), and other weird stuff (I’ll get into them in the warning below, which will probably be as long or longer than the review itself).

This next part of my review has spoilers for the first book, but if you want to get both books, I strongly suggest you read this.

A Severed Wasp has Katherine suddenly an “old woman”, probably sixty-something years old. I honestly was very, very surprised. But there are flashes back to when she was younger, and had married the man of her dreams (you can probably guess who it is).

Here is when it starts to get questionable. I mean, it started with the one-night-stand with Charlot, of course, but it’s really bad in here. But first, the storyline.

Katherine Forrester Vigneras—you guessed it—returns to the city of her childhood (that is, New York City) to retire from a long and successful career as a concert pianist. Her old friend Felix, once a sensitive young man who hung out with all the wrong people, is now a retired bishop, and he asks her to give a benefit concert for the cathedral he works in. She agrees, and is suddenly plunged into a world of violence, death, and some really, really weird people who accuse her over the phone of being (a) lesbian and (b) Felix’s mistress.

That’s pretty much the main storyline, with other distractions such as a young lady who’s pregnant and married to a bisexual man (she eventually decides to divorce him), and the daughter of one of the cathedral’s deans—she used to be a ballet dancer, but then she got into a car accident and lost her leg, so now she wants to be a pianist/composer.

BUT! Here are some questionable things that I thought I’d go into in greater detail (because y’all are going to love me for this).

As most of the flashbacks took place in France, around the time of WWII, there are several mentions to it—notably, Justin was castrated in Auschwitz, which left him unable to have children. Due to his pride, he is horrified when word starts to leak that he can’t have children. This leads him to give Katherine a suggestion that will forever haunt my nightmares (and so of course, like the nice person I am, I’m going to share it with you)—”Hey Katherine! Why don’t you go sleep with some other man and get pregnant so that everybody will think I am able to have children!”

Yes, here is where you run screaming from the room, covering your ears and shouting, “I’m not listening!!!”

Still here? Good. I have more.

Revolted by his suggestion, Katherine runs to a priest friend of hers, hoping he will counsel her on what to do. He tells her to think it over and do as she thinks best. She thinks it over and comes to the conclusion that she would do anything to make Justin happy. Yep. Going back to Wolfi, she tells him what she has decided. Good, he says—I’ve thought it through too, and I’ve decided (wait for it) that I want to be the father of your child.

Come out from under the bed—I know you’re there, and I’m going to finish this review if it kills me.

She refuses (“But—you’re—you’re—” “A priest? A celibate? Yes.”), and goes and sleeps with another man (who has a wife and two kids) instead. She gets pregnant, and has a boy. But Justin is not satisfied. Oh, no. A few years later, he asks her again, saying he would like another child. This time, she goes to a man without a wife, and they *ahem* make love in the water of a cove…

Let’s get away from this, shall we?

So what do I think of these books? To be honest, I’m not quite sure. But here’s what I think I think about these books—the storyline is great. The characters are believable and three-dimensional, they have believable problems and lives, and L’Engle’s writing never fails to draw in. (Mum said she couldn’t get through the first chapter without crying.) I didn’t really like the first book, because I felt that Katherine was being too much of a baby about everything—complaining and being bratty, being mean to her loving stepmother, etc. However, in the second book, when she’s older and wiser and has had a rich life, I found she was much more relatable (and she didn’t complain about everything). I also liked the element of mystery and intrigue in the second book.

On the other hand, you have all the *ahem* questionable stuff I mentioned earlier, plus others, like stealing, murder, and character death. I found some of the themes quite icky, like premarital sex, homosexuality, black magic, and some others. As a Christian, I found these things very, very, wrong. So, parents, listen up—I think your teens will like this book (if they like books that force you to think about stuff and don’t just contain vampires kissing). BUT! Please read it first, figure out if your child is mature enough to handle these themes, and then choose whether or not to let them read it. I don’t know your child, you do.

As I have no idea what your child’s mental age is, and I don’t know how old exactly the average child should be to read this book, I’m going out on a limb when I say that I recommend this book for mature lower secondary schoolers and higher secondary schoolers.

Warning: Oof. I don’t even know where to start with this one. Um… sex (adultery, fornication, etc), sexuality (accusations of being lesbian, accusations of being gay, bisexuality, etc), black magic practiced by the wife of the bishop (or something like that. I didn’t really get it), black magic practiced by lots of people (who do it in the church…), castration, and generally lots of weird, questionable stuff. Then we have the usual—character death, war, murder, stealing, and probably more less serious stuff I can’t remember and can’t bother to look up. Oh, and the main character’s not Christian, so some of the things she says conflict with the Christian faith. Also, Mum wants to say that if you’re like her, you’re not going to be able to get through the first five chapters without crying. 

The King in the Window

Title: The King in the Window
Author: Adam Gopnik
Illustrator: Omar Rayyan
Publisher: Miramax Books
ISBN: 9780786818624

Alethea’s Review (at age 12)

Oliver Parker, a lonely American boy in France, doesn’t mean to leave the paper crown on his head. Nor does he mean to kick that particular stone home or say, slightly bitterly, that he was the “king in the window.” But he does. And, unfortunately, the Window Wraiths take him at his word.

They draw him into a world of danger and excitement, where you can never know who is your enemy and who your friend, where your life is in danger at every moment. They bring him into a world where mirrors can be evil, where you never know who you are going to meet next—Molière, the Duc de Richelieu, André Le Nôtre—where a fierce battle rages for the world, and all worlds, where your soul can be stolen from you if you just look into a mirror. The Window Wraiths—that is, the good guys—take him, put him inside an adventure, and expect him to save them from the Master of Mirrors—that is, the bad guy—and his evil minions. One thing Oliver knows is that he will never be lonely or bored again.

Now, let me get this straight before I begin nitpicking—the plot is wonderful. It’s a great storyline that I really enjoyed. It’s very original, and it takes a well-known work of fiction and twists it around. I loved the plot.

However, this is where my nitpicking starts. I find that the characters use God’s name waaaay too frivolously. Let me give you an example. There is a passage on page 14 that goes like this: “To anyone looking in from the window, it would have looked like a very solemn coronation, even though Oliver was twelve years old. ‘God, Dad,’ Oliver muttered—but he didn’t say it very loudly.” I think they used it around five times in this book.

Oh, the soul-stealing. That’s right, the Master of Mirrors steals people’s souls. It’s creepy, yes.

And then there’s the blatant disrespect to parents. Oliver most certainly doesn’t like his parents (as you may have divined from the quote given previously), and Neige has absolutely no qualms when talking about her mother, or any mother. Admittedly, Neige doesn’t talk about her mother that much, and her mother is on the side of the Master of Mirrors, but still: “The usual mother-daughter business, really; one utterly evil, one completely good” (chapter 7). Really? Yes, she’s talking about herself as the “completely good” one. Ugh.

Which brings me to the business of Neige. I, frankly, don’t like her (this is my opinion—it ought not to have any bearing on whether you read it). She knows everything before Oliver, she refuses to apologize to him (and actually has him apologize to her), she has the allegiance of and knows all the good guys, she can hide the mirror of Luc Gauric (which Oliver just so happens to need) in her room without her “evil” mother noticing, she wants to become the Master of Mirror’s queen and thinks she can control him, she has this super cool crystal-y thing which the Master of Mirrors wants, she basically doesn’t do anything but refuse to help until she’s begged, and she’s practically perfect. Even the Window Wraiths refer to her as “Infinite Feminine Capacity,” while Charlie Gronek, my favourite character, is referred to as “Comic Irony.” She does have one saving grace, though—she’s not the main character. And, I admit, she does redeem herself slightly at the end: “[… S]till, she’s my mother” (chapter 18). She’s still my least favourite part of the book, though.

I did enjoy the plot, though, and it had some great and funny moments. The Window Wraiths were absolutely marvellous, Charlie Gronek was wonderful, as was Mrs. Pearson. All in all, cautiously recommended for elementary students—just be careful. It is rather dark, and parents may want to read it first.

Warning: Some dark themes (soul-stealing, Master of Mirrors, etc.), all the points I elaborated on above, and will spoil Through the Looking Glass for you. Oh, and evil Humpty-Dumpty thing. 

Moi & Marie Antoinette

Title: Moi & Marie Antoinette
Author: Lynn Cullen
Illustrator: Amy Young
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children’s Books
ISBN: 9781582349589

Timothy’s Review (at age 10)

This story is told from the perspective of Marie Antoinette’s dog Sebastian.  One day in Austria, when Marie Antoinette and Sebastian are playing, they are called to her mother the Empress’ chamber.  The Empress asks Marie Antoinette a few questions, the last one being, “Do you wish for true happiness?”  When she says yes, the Empress says that she is to be married to the Prince of France.  When she realises that she is not happy even then, she says, ” When I am queen, maybe I will be happier.”  But she never does.

I like this book because her dog never fully realises the significance of her becoming queen, and subsequently gets very annoyed about how he is treated.  For example, “Afterward, they sat her at dinner, where any Frenchman in the kingdom could watch her every bite.  Moi?  I was left to gnaw on chair legs and water the statues.”

At the end of the book, there is a short biography on Marie Antoinette, her life and her death.  But it doesn’t say that she was guillotined on charges of treason, only that she was put to death.  This I found out from Wikipedia.  🙂

The Lotus Seed

Title: The Lotus Seed
Author: Sherry Garland
Illustrator: Tatsuro Kiuchi
Publisher: Voyager Books
ISBN: 9780152014834

Nathalie’s Review (at age 8)

This story is set in Vietnam.  It is about this grandmother who saw the Emperor of Vietnam cry because he lost his Dragon Throne.  She wanted something to remember the Emperor by, so she went to the Imperial Garden and plucked a lotus seed and hid it under the family altar in a piece of silk and kept it secret.  But one day, when she was married and had children, there was a war and soldiers were going door to door and bombs were falling everywhere.  Many people went onto boats and fled to a new country.  The grandmother and her relatives worked very hard.  And one day her grandson found the seed and asked many questions.  One night he stole the seed and went out to plant it, but he forgot where he planted it.  The grandmother was very sad, but one day it grew and bloomed and she saw it and when the lotus turned into a pod, she gave each of her grandchildren a seed and she kept one for herself.

In the Author’s Note at the back of the book, it explains how the French ruled Vietnam until the war for independence, then how there was another war between the north and the south.  Many Vietnamese fled to America.

Mummy Angie’s Review

If only all books were this good.  Excellent illustrations, a story simply but powerfully told, a historical context and notes at the end which explain the background and history in more detail if you want to explore the topic further.  Altogether a wonderful book as simply a picture book, or as a living book to start the conversation about Vietnam, French colonisation, the Vietnam war and America’s involvement in it.

Adèle & Simon

Titles: Adèle & Simon, Adèle & Simon in America
Author: Barbara McClintock
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBNs: 9780374380441, 9780374399245

Nathalie’s Review (at age 8)

Adèle has a little brother named Simon who is always losing things.  One day on the way home from school, he loses his mittens, his scarf, his drawing of a cat that he made at school and all the things that he had with him except his shirt, his pants and his boots.  On every page he loses one thing and you are supposed to find it.  It took a long time for me to find all of them because the illustrations are so detailed.  On the cover you can see the Eiffel Tower in the background, so you know that this book is set in Paris.

In Adèle & Simon in America, they visit their Aunt Cecile who lives in New York City and travel with her around America.  Along the way, Simon loses his pocketknife, his vest, his bandana and all that he brought with him.

In each of the books, details of the places where Simon lost his things are given in the last pages of the book so that you can learn more about these places … like the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Cour de Rohan and the Musee du Louvre in Paris and like the Grand Central Station, the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. and the Boston Public Gardens in the United States of America.

Gold Quest: A Treasure Trail Through History

Title: Gold Quest: A Treasure Trail Through History
Author: Meredith Hooper
Illustrator: Stephen Biesty
Publisher: Hodder Children’s Books
ISBN: 9780340788585

Timothy’s Review (at age 10)

The story of a piece of gold as it travels through history.  It all starts with the Big Bang.  As a Christian, I do not believe in the Big Bang Theory, but nonetheless I find this book extremely interesting as it makes you think about how old your jewellery really is.  The story goes like this … There is a big bang and gold is formed, together with a lot of other things.  Then many years later, the Egyptians find it and make it into a mask for their king. Then it is stolen and passed from thief to thief till it finds a home… but not for long. The gold also travels to lots of different places. Egypt and London are just 2.