Review: "Sunshine" by Robin McKinley

Rae "Sunshine" Seddon only went to the lake for some time to reflect. Her need to escape becomes far more literal and urgent when she is kidnapped by a vampire gang and locked in abandoned house, meant to be prey to another of their kind. But within three days, both Sunshine and her fellow prisoner are free in broad daylight, confounding their captors.

Sunshine's attempt to resume her ordinary life as a baker is doomed to fail. Now she has supernatural detectives questioning her survival, a wound that won't heal, and a vampire with a life debt hanging around her house. Not to mention the very old, very angry bloodsucker whose vengeance she unknowingly thwarted.

*** 

1.5 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Mexican Eskimo" by Anker Frankoni

This review appears before your eyes, dear reader, only after a lengthy ethical dilemma on the part of your resident grump.  Namely: is it wrong to accept a free book for promotion purposes, and then utterly trash it in a review? Or is it more wrong to withhold my thoughts on the book, and spare someone else the unpleasant experience of reading it?

My wise friend, Mac, pointed out that if accepting promotional copies of books means that one must only give them good reviews, then all an author would have to do to prevent bad press is to send a promotional copy to every reviewer. ("Ha!  You cannot give me an honest review now! Mwahahahahaha!”)

As the book in question--Mexican Eskimo by Anker Frankoni--is a new release by a debut author, reviews are thin on the ground. None of them so far mention the issues I had with the book. (Whether Mexican Eskimo is fiction or memoir adds an additional complication to reviewing it. Certain criticisms can be leveled at fiction, which cannot be handed out the same way when it is the author's own life being analyzed. Ask me sometime what happened at the beginning of my third writing course.)

In the end, I feel obliged to warn readers that the way that the book is described is... not technically false, but seriously misleading. As much as I empathize with Frankoni, as someone who hopes to publish her own books down the road, I write reviews for readers, not for authors.

And this is "Book Grumps," after all. It would be a betrayal of the crankiness promised in the domain name if I were to pander to terrible fiction at this point.

That's enough of a preface, I suppose.

*** 

1 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ransom Riggs

As a child, Jacob loved his grandfather's stories about the magical island off of Wales where he and other children waited out the devastation of World War II. When he grew up, he recognized them for the fairy tales they were--until the day he finds his grandfather dying in the woods behind his house, and lays eyes on the monster which killed him.

Jacob is haunted by nightmares of what he saw. The peculiar photographs his grandfather entrusted to him make the impossible old stories seem real. With the encouragement of his worried psychologist, Jacob and his father travel to Wales. His father hopes that Jacob will see how ordinary the island is and realize that his grandfather's stories were only imaginary. Jacob hopes to find proof that the peculiar children from the photographs really existed. He finds far more than he ever dreamed.

***

1 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Howl's Moving Castle" by Diana Wynne Jones (plus notes on "Howl's Moving Castle" by Hayao Miyazaki)

As the oldest daughter of three, Sophie Hatter knows that adventures are not in her future. While her younger sisters seek their fortune, she slaves away in the family hat shop.

But fate has its eye on Sophie, for better or for worse. When a chance meeting with the dreaded Witch of the Waste leaves Sophie cursed with old age, she flees to the dubious shelter of a magical castle, owned by the equally dreaded Wizard Howl. Howl is rumored to eat the souls--or was it the hearts?--of beautiful young maidens. Surely old Sophie has nothing to fear. 

Howl's fire demon refuses refuses to help Sophie return to normal until she breaks his own curse. Will the fact that Howl and Sophie have a common enemy in the Witch of the Waste be enough? Or will Howl's heartless ways drive Sophie out to find her own magic?

*** 

1.5 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Review: "Wither" by Lauren DeStefano

Sixteen-year-old Rhine lives under a death sentence. By the age of 20, she and every other woman in her generation will die, thanks to the effects of genetic experimentation. But Rhine's life expectancy may be even shorter than that. Like so many other girls, she is kidnapped, sold to wealthy men eager for children before their own lives come to an end.

Imprisoned in Governor Linden's mansion with his three other young "wives," Rhine plots to gain his favor, but also her own freedom. Neither will be easy to achieve. And the horrors of her abduction is nothing compared to the eerie power held by Linden's scientist father. 

*** 

1 out of 5 stars

(grump + breakdown below the cut)

***

Three-For-One Review: The "Symphony of Ages" Trilogy by Elizabeth Haydon

Rhapsody, a gifted singer and Namer, is on the run from the demons of her past. A far more literal demon pursues the two half-monster warriors Grunthor and Achmed. When Rhapsody’s power of Naming Naming frees Achmed from his curse, the monstrous pair drag the singer along on a desperate race to outrun the coming apocalypse.

The escape leads the three on a surreal journey through the fires at the center of the earth. They emerge into a transformed world, separated from the one they knew by hundreds of years. But not all has been destroyed. Amid the wonders and mysteries of their new world, familiar nightmares survive to haunt and to hunt them--as well as sweeter dreams long since given up for lost.

*** Fantasy Adventure: 4 out of 5 stars
Romance: 1 out of 5 stars
(grump below the cut) ***