April 2014 – My Book Report, by Jean Age 20-Something

The True Meaning of Smekday (just started!)

Snippets from The True Meaning of Smekday. Click any of the pictures to enlarge

I’m reading The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex and oh my goodness, this is delightful! There’s so much in it I want to quote or share! The plot is Gratuity Tucci is writing essays about earth after aliens called the Boov invaded. There’s a picture of her in the above gallery.

Gratuity Tucci, the narrator, is really great and with what I know about history, some of this stuff is pretty much dead on, like:

In a ridiculously short amount of time, the Boov determined that humans were unwilling to mix peacefully into their culture. They pointed out all the people who fled instead of welcoming their new neighbours, even those whose home had been taken outright.
   Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind. (He didn’t call us humankind, of course. He called us the Noble Savages of Earth. Apparently we were all still living on Earth at this point.)
   “Noble Savages of Earth,” he said. “Long time have we tried to live together in peace.” (It had been five months.) “Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I must concede that the Boov and humans will to exist as one.
   I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid.
   “And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves–gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.”
   I stared at the tv, mouth agape. “But we were here first,” I said pathetically.
   Pig purred.
   The ceremony went on for some time. The Boov were signing a treaty with the different nations of the world. It all looked strange, and for more than the obvious reasons. Usually big political events are full of men in suits, but the Boov were joined now by totally ordinary-looking people. The woman who signed on behalf of the Czech republic was carrying a baby. the man who signed for Morocco wore a Pepsi T-shirt. When it came time to sign with the United States, our country was represented by some white guy I’d never seen before. It certainly wasn’t the president. Or the vice president. It wasn’t the Speaker of the House or anybody else I’d ever noticed on television or elsewhere. It was just some sad, nervous-looking guy in jeans and a denim shirt. He stooped. He had a thick mustache and glasses. He was wearing a tool belt, for God’s sake, pardon my language. We learned later it was just some random plumber. I think his name was Jeff. It didn’t matter to the Boov.
   So that’s when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There was going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms.

I can’t wait to finish it and give a proper review, but just from where I am right now, I really really like it.

Year of the Griffin

Title: Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones
Scored a: B
Status: Finished

The sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm was a typical Diana Wynne Jones sequel, in that it was just elaborating the world the first one took place in and wasn’t a continuation of the struggle in the first. Definitely not a complaint, that’s part of what I love about her writing.

Now, you’ll notice this has a lower score than the first one but that’s because some of the brutality in the book didn’t seem to mesh with the writing in other sections, so it’s a technical score that lowered it.

This is also, apparently, a book where Everyone Gets Paired Off, Even The Cameos. But since none of the pairings are repellant, I’m not docking points for that.

So! The plot is that Elda, Derk’s youngest daughter and griffin (although not the youngest anymore. Still a griffin) has gone off to wizarding college. She meets up with five other students and becomes fast friends, but each one (except her) has people back home who’d really rather they not be there. By lethal force, if necessary.

On top of that, most of the teachers are incompetent and amoral.

The students are great. I loved them. The dwarf Ruskin and Claudia the marshlady were my faves that weren’t Elda. The teachers were a recurring ‘toxic authority figure’ that shows up in Diana Wynne Jones’ books a lot, but just because I’m used to that doesn’t make them less frustrating to read, because oh boy do I feel for the people they’re being inflicted on.

Like Dark Lord of Derkholm, Year of the Griffin had a more solid, if abrupt, ending than a lot of her books do. So. Huzzah.

And the premise, which was griffin goes to wizarding school, delivered. Oh goodness, did it deliver. The similar premise, ‘wizard raises griffins as own children’ from the first is what grabbed me the first time. I’m running out of Diana Wynne Jones books I haven’t read yet, but the stuff remaining has been real gems.

Oh god I miss Diana Wynne Jones she was such an amazing author.

If I could make a book wish, I’d like for her to have written another book about the adventures the other half of Derk’s family had that got mentioned as a ‘that’s where they are’ when Elda’s relatives would show up. Because it sounded neat. And I wanted to hear more of the continent of griffins. And more about Elda’s new little winged siblings. But I do not get book wishes.

Anyway! The two griffin books are just aces. I totally recommend them.

The Dark Lord Of Derkholm

Title: The Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones
Scored a: A+
Status: Finished

When people asked me what I was reading, I said it was a book about a pair of wizards and their human and griffin children. This seemed like a good blurb! And I was right, people were immediately interested after that.

Sometimes I’d go further, and explain that it was about a magical world that had been enslaved by a man from a world like ours, to perform as a sort of magic theme park for tourists to have ‘magical quests’ and that it was actually pretty dystopic, and this was how the wizards and their children saved everyone.

I really really liked this. I needed this book after something terrible happened. I had actually been reading James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small which, given its plethora of dead animals, was the exact wrong book for me at that moment.

Something I really enjoy in stories is unconventional families, and races that are as smart or smarter than us, but look nothing humanoid, and wizards raising griffins hit that exactly. There is also, if this sweetens the pot, dragons.

Diana Wynne Jones is my favourite author for a lot of reasons, and one of them is that she can write a story with a lot of threads that all tie up tidily as the ending approaches. The ending itself can be hit or miss, but the moment where it all comes together is one of my favourite feelings when reading.

I warn you, if you read this, that there is an upsetting scene that could be read two ways, bad and horrifying, that happens to Shona, the older human daughter during the soldier escorting. I had to put down the book for a few moments after that and I had been expecting it.

I had already purchased and begun the sequel, Year of the Griffin, before getting started writing this review. It’s about one of the griffins going to a wizard school. Yessss.