sci-fi – My Book Report, by Jean Age 20-Something

The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones

Cover of Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones

Title: The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones
Scored a: A-
Status: Finished!

The Homeward Bounders! I’ve been wanting to reread this for ages, but was unable to because it was region locked for sale. So during a trip to the USA my billing address magically changed to match my current IP and I got a lot of books I’ve been wanting for a while.

The plot of the book is Jamie sees something he shouldn’t – what appears to be two hooded figures standing over a map of the world in a strange room. As punishment, he is sent into other worlds with the promise that one day he may be allowed ‘back into play’ if he finds his way home. Until then no one can interfere with his journey, but there’s nowhere for him that he can belong. For every time one of the mysterious Them make a move, Jamie is forced into a new world.

Along the way he picks up two very important allies.

I really like this book and my only disappointment is that Adam (he shows up later) is never set on fire.

If I had to compare it to something, I’d say DnD and Sliders.

On the cover I chose, incidentally, the character most prominent is not Jamie. It’s a girl (one of the allies I mentioned) named Helen who has a very special gift and is coded as Pakistani, if that sweetens the pot for any potential readers.

What I really liked is how they managed to fit a preteen and an old man’s world-weary perspective into one character with Jamie. The story ends with the trademark DWJ ‘DONE NOW’ so don’t get your hopes up for anything lingering.

If you’re into fanfic, this book crosses over with anything. Anything.

Its genre is that mix of sci-fantasy that DWJ does sometimes that I’m a big fan of.

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

Title: The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
Scored a: A+
Status: Finished!

I previously posted about this book before I finished it, I loved it so much. And now I’m done it! And I loved it! And it’s also being made into a movie called Home by Dreamworks that has really pretty animation! For some reason they ditched Gratuity’s puff hairdo, but the new one is nice too. It’s just that puffs are possibly the cutest hairdo in the world.

This book is illustrated! And the illustrations are excellent and in the previous post. There’s way more in the book than in the post. Including explanatory comics, to make exposition fun.

This book starts out as Gratuity’s road trip across America to get where the aliens are relocating all the ‘noble savages of Earth’ (Florida) (and she taught herself to drive as good as Nascar. She just has to wear cans tied to her feet to reach the pedals), the alien she reluctantly teams up with, her very catlike cat, and finding her mom again. And then perhaps the world gets saved.

It’s an expository story, told through essays and eventually a diary by Gratuity, and I confess I really enjoy that kind of story. See: Frankenstein.

The book is full of great lines, much of them coming from Gratuity’s brain or mouth, and it managed to make J.Lo, a member of the invading aliens, perfectly sympathetic without making him act like he wasn’t even part of his people.

That said, this book has some good claws in it. If you know anything about First Nations history, you’ll get a good idea of what I mean. Plus the way Gratuity gets perceived by those around her.

Anyway, great book, very funny, smart, and a great heroine. Aces. Good work.

A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones

Title: A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones
Scored a: A
Status: Finished

The other time travel book I described! Through a series of mishaps, a little girl (Vivian) is kidnapped from a train station during WW2 when she’s on her way to the country and brought to a city that exists outside of time itself.

And that city is collapsing in on itself.

She teams up with a pair of boys native to the city (also her kidnappers) to save it.

There’s a lot of ‘oh wait, so THAT’S what that scene meant’ during this book, which is preceded by a lot of guessing about which bit meant which, as things get a little… timey wimey.

Why did I like this book so much? Lots of reasons, but the little details are probably what did it. The dessert that they all have a mad passion for, 42nd century butter-pie which sounds absolutely delicious when described in the book, and the time ghosts. The time ghosts are throughout the city. They’re important things that happened, emotional things that happened, repeated things that happened. And the whole concept was really appealing to me.

Also? There’s an android manservant to the family with atrocious taste and the clothes he helps pick out for Vivian were excellent.

The city itself is a brilliant creation. People from stabilized time periods with time travel (it seems to get discovered and outlawed off and on) come to study in the city, they have tourists, you can apply for citizenship, it’s just a really neat idea. A time country. I love this book.

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

Title: Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
Scored a: A+
Status: Finished

Hexwood was my favourite book for years and years. It didn’t fall out of favour with me so much as The Neverending Story fell into favour, but it’s still dear to me.

Hexwood is a book with a lot going on in it. And when you think you know the plot, it turns out you don’t. And even when I was rereading it with that fact in mind, it still totally side-swiped me, because my memory is terrible and I got caught up in believing the narration.

One of the plots is one day a young girl is very sick and notices that people are going into the Hexwood Farm and not coming out again, and she decides to investigate. In the process she gets caught up in an Arthurian legend. Then there’s all the other plots.

Diana Wynne Jones books have one major flaw, and that’s usually their endings. But in this case the ending is pretty solid and all the threads running around the story tie up together pretty tidily.

A problem with stories with a lot of moving pieces is they can leave you frustrated from the feeling things are being kept from you, but in the case of Hexwood you don’t get that feeling at all, as things aren’t kept from you, but things are added instead as things go on. You think you’ve got a stick figure and then it turns out to be an elaborate oil painting. Like pieces clicking into place.

If you forget things like I do, this book has an excellent reread value.

Just a warning though, later on in the book is some pretty intense child abuse. Like Dogsbody‘s animal abuse it makes sense in context, but it’s fairly shocking. When I got to that part I had to stop and look at the ceiling for a while. I’d managed to totally forget that part.

I’m glad a lot of Diana Wynne Jones’ oeuvre has been made available digitally, as it allows me to revisit my old favourites since my paper books seem to continually shift around the house and into hiding.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Title: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Scored a: A
Status: Finished

One of my hobbies is composing themed lists of movies/books, etc, to suggest to people or just find themes in entertainment. Others do work, but this does what it needs to to keep me entertained.

I’d put When You Reach Me on a list of excellent time travel fiction. I don’t have a very big list of that so far, mind you. Just The Time Machine and A Tale of Time City so far. But I’m sure it’ll grow. The problem is time travel isn’t usually a plot point that makes me go ‘well, hey there little book. Let’s get some reading done.’ Which doesn’t mean I dislike it, I’m just way more likely to go ‘Oh my god! Griffin in wizard school!’

But as I said, When You Reach Me is excellent. The plot is that Miranda Sinclair has three things going on in her life: Her mother is preparing to go on a gameshow, her best friend refuses to speak to her and she doesn’t know why, and she’s getting letters from the future.

Everything ties together just right. The ending is satisfying in a good way, and you get to really see Miranda discover the world around her as she’s forced to leave her comfort zone in the book. It also features a SO for her mom that is not dickish, which is nice to see in fiction because that’s so dang rare.

I’m a little biased on account of getting on pretty good with my stepmom, I admit.

It’s a good book if you like time travel, or if you like books that explore what friendship is.

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.

The City & The City

Title: The City & The City by China Mieville
Scored a: C+
Status: Unfinished due to mishap

The City & The City was a book I was very eager to read, because the concept sounded great. Two cities occupying the same space? And the book delivers on the idea. The bits and pieces I saw of the cities before the Mishap was just what I was hoping for.

Unfortunately, I only saw bits and pieces. Mieville’s characters proceeded to get in the way of the world over and over. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the characters had been fun in some way, or at least interesting, but they were ciphers. Stick figures who kept standing in front of the shot you were trying to take.

And then, of course, I accidentally lost the book and can’t bring myself to buy a new copy to finish it. So I guess I’ll never find out how the murder mystery turned out, which is a shame. I’m also sad I didn’t get to enjoy the cities if Beszel and Ul Qoma as much as I would have liked.

When I was talking about my problem with the book before the Mishap with my friend, she told me she’d had the same problem with other books of his. Great worlds, not so great characters. Another friend assured me Mieville was really nice, but that didn’t quite explain the problem with the book.

So much for making this book 41 on my 100 books of winter.

Currently working on: All Creatures Great And Small by James Herriot, and Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones. Both of which involve a lot of animal care, but I don’t think Herriot gets anything combat worthy from his efforts, unless you count all that cow shit he gets covered in.

Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain

Art by Ann Larimer

Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez was great! The plot: Emperor Mollusk, former Warlord of Terra (he retired after conquering the planet and deciding he didn’t feel like ruling anymore) has been targeted for assassination. Taken into protective custody by the Venusian warrior Zala (she can’t bring him to justice for his crimes against Venus if he’s dead), Mollusk is swept into finding out who wants him dead (in the narrowing down sense), and what to do if for the first time ever, he might not win? Also along for the ride is his pet ultrapede Snarg. Good girl, Snarg.

The Earth in this book’s world is an alternate history of ours, where we’ve been fighting off alien attacks for centuries and there’s even a Viking colony on Ceres (no one knows how they got there). Our narrator and main character is Mollusk, a moral-less little octopus from Neptune, but he doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s friendly and reasonable, without much blood lust. His likeability carries you through some of the weaker parts of the book quite tidily.

My only complaint about this book was that Zala and Kreegah (a Jupitron) are criminally underused. There’s some very interesting characters waiting there to be written, but unfortunately that doesn’t really happen, especially in Kreegah’s case.

A nice, light book. Shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did to read this, but I made the mistake of starting writing again and it’s hard to shift my brain from one gear to the other.

Truckers

To clear the bad taste out of my brain, for book #50 I chose one I knew I’d like: Truckers by Terry Pratchett.

It’s a problem solving book. The Nomes have a problem: their home sucks. So they get on a lorry and see where they end up next, which turns out to be a place full of more nomes. These nomes live in a giant department store and don’t believe in the outside and it’s rather idyllic.

Except it’s going to be demolished.

There’s also a small box from space telling them what to do, and the joy of this book is the solutions the nomes come up to for their problems, in-between their arguing (nomes love to argue).

Masklin, the main character, suffers a bit from the sort of ‘good, but just kinda there’ lead problem that Pratchett’s books sometimes have, but I liked him a lot anyway. But my favourite part of the book was that unlike A Spell for Chameleon, women were suddenly people again.

And just for that, this book makes me so happy. I blew right through it, I was enjoying myself so much. It’s part of a series, the Bromeliad Trilogy, and the next book is Diggers, followed by Wingers.

When You Reach Me and The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Decided to read something by a new author, and went with a kid’s sci-fi book. It’s not terribly sci-fi except for one big part, and takes place in 1978 New York. It follows a young girl named Miranda who has three problems: Her best friend Sal has decided to stop being friends, there’s strange laughing homeless man by her apartment, and she’s getting notes from the future.

It’s a clever book, but what I really liked about it was all the relationships that go on throughout it. Her world really opens up in the few months in the story.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo was a book I had to take a near-month break from. It was the one that made me start crying on a plane, and I’ve been waiting for a nice private moment to see how Edward the porcelain toy rabbit’s journey ends. I cried more. I think Kate DiCamillo has it out for me.

It’s a beautiful book, with great imagery, sweet characters, and a fair bit of injustice but it’s about love. And a toy rabbit that didn’t love or care about anyone at the start. Then shit goes down.

This is the second book by DiCamillo I’ve read and they were both excellent. Looking forward to reading the other books by her I’ve bought.