Eldest continues the story begun in Eragon and follows the adventures of Eragon the dragon rider and Saphira the dragon, Roran (Eragon’s cousin) and the Varden (a group of rebels fighting to free the kingdom from the evil dragon rider who rules with an iron fist). These are three separate storylines for the most part. Eragon’s story takes him into the forest to train with the elves, whine about being in pain, and moon over the elf princess. Roran is faced with the destruction of his home, attack on his village and threat to his loved ones. The Varden continue their never-ending battle against the king and poverty. Eventually, of course, this all ends in a massive climactic battle where everything comes together, just like in the first book.

To say that I was not fond of this book would be the biggest understatement I could make. I can’t think of another book that has actively upset me in long time. There are so few books I have hated in my lifetime that I doubt I would need the fingers on one hand to count them, but this book is now among them. I didn’t mind Eragon. I found it vaguely disappointing in it’s writing and unoriginality, but I didn’t dislike it. I just didn’t see the point. Eldest was a whole different experience for me, though.

The majority of the book focuses on what’s happening to Eragon and Saphira. This makes sense, Eragon is supposed to be the hero. Unfortunately, the struggle the book primarilys focuses on throughout his part of the book was with pain. At the end of the first book, Eragon suffered an injury that for whatever reason couldn’t be magically healed and caused him incredible pain whenever he did anything to strain his back at all. The elves’ asked him to train hard every day in such a way that it strained his back regularly, causing him almost constant pain. Eragon and many of the elves as well saw this as a major impediment to success. The clear feeling was that if he was injured this way, he was incapable of being the hero he was supposed to be. He trained anyway, but clearly believed that he was less of a person for being so injured. And no one said otherwise. Ever. And the story never contradicted that feeling. Eventually he is magically healed by the dragons and made stronger than ever, about which he is thrilled, and this signals that he is ready to go on and be a great hero. He is now a whole and complete person.

The message from Eragon’s story is clear: pain, injury or disability make one less of a person and one cannot be a hero until they are healed. The message is further reinforced by the fact that the rider and dragon who teach Eragon are somehow also injured in a way that cannot be healed and thus are useless for anything but teaching. They’ve hidden in the forest for nearly one hundred years waiting for someone to come along and be a hero while the king happily goes along being evil and destroying everything good about the kingdom.

I can not even express how upsetting this message is as someone like me who suffers from chronic pain. I’m sorry, but I can’t see Eragon as a hero. Suffering from pain does not change who you are, does not make you less strong. It makes you more strong, if anything. And while it affects what you can do, it does not make a true hero any less a true hero. Pain is what it is. I don’t think anyone wishes for it, but suffering from it does not diminish a person either. You can still be strong in other ways. And the other disabilities in the book seem even less affecting. The elf rider has lost magical power, but is still stronger in magic than nearly every human alive. But he mopes in the forest and waits for someone to teach instead of fighting to save the country from a madman. His dragon seems to suffer from nothing worse than the loss of a leg. So he’s only got three legs. Big deal! He can fly! And breathe fire! And use magic more than even any elf! And yet… he waits in the woods for someone else to save the kingdom.

This is just the most upsetting, awful, disrespectful, ignorant attitude. I’m sorry, but I can’t get past that part of this book. Roran’s plot was vaguely interesting, but otherwise the book was more of the same. Stereotypes are reinforced to a frightening degree. Apparently having dark colored skin is extremely strange and dwarves have no hope of being as cool as elves or even humans. Not to mention that the girls kind of get left out of most of the fun completely here. I just can’t figure it out.

I will not be reading the rest of this series if I have anything to say about it. I hope never to have to have anything to do with this book, the fantasy world it describes or even anything else by this author ever again. Obviously, I do not recommend this title. I realize many, many people are going to disagree with me on this one, but I hope that why I feel the way I do makes sense. I promise, no one is going to change my mind on this one.

- Publisher’s Description
- The Official Alagaesia Website
- Vroengard Academy

- Buy it from Amazon

Your results:
You are Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman 90% Spider-Man 80% Supergirl 80% Robin 75% Superman 70% Iron Man 55% Green Lantern 50% Hulk 50% Catwoman 45% The Flash 45% Batman 40%

You are a beautiful princess with great strength of character.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

I found the quiz through Kelly from Big A little a. Thanks Kelly!

And check out that expression on her face! She’s determined and smart too! She may not be the strategist in her party, but she’s certainly not just a “tank” either. She’s got brains under that helmet and is clearly someone who weighs in on the advisability of a given course of action and probably the moral implications as well. I could see her being given a definite set of orders, weighing them in her mind and deciding to not follow them because to do so would be against the code that she holds herself, and likely everyone around her, to. This might easily be a holy warrior, but it doesn’t have to be. She could as easily be a fighter with as strong a sense of responsibility to something as a paladin. Maybe she even works for a crown. Or maybe she’s fighting against them. Who knows? Whatever she’s fighting for, she’s decided to do so after careful consideration and possibly a lifetime of lessons. This would be such a great character to play. I don’t think she’s necessarily the leader of her party (although she certainly could be), but she is definitely not merely a follower either. I love seeing fighters with more to them than just muscle and this woman most definitely fits the bill. An image of a male warrior with this same armor and expression would have drawn my attention too, the fact that she’s a woman is icing on the cake! This is a total win!

As a side note - I’m having trouble finding images for this series. There are painfully few great pieces of art featuring women who I would want to play. I’ve done enough of these that it should be clear what I’m looking for (to see all of them, check out the “I Want to Play Her” page). If you know of a piece of art you think might appeal to me, please let me know! It can be from anywhere. I tend to look for gaming art, but art from novels, animation, comic books, anything really is fair game. I don’t care the source as long as it fits the bill! Leave a link in the comments or send me an email at katie at pixiepalace dot com! Thanks!

General knowledge is that we as humans experience the world through five distinct senses - hearing, smell, touch, taste and sight. Ackerman explores each of these senses in her book in varying eclectic ways. She discusses historical, biological, psychological, artistic and any number of other aspects of our sensory experiences. Often she touches on how these five senses overlap and what happens when one or more of them are absent.

This book is full of evocative images and intriguing ideas, but it has very little real focus. Ackerman seems to have a near-unending supply of references and quotes, but she flits from one to another like a butterfly giving the reader little time to really focus on anything. The result is an utterly fascinating collection of facts brought together in a way that is at the same time seemingly organized and infuriatingly without direction. Portions of this book I really enjoyed reading, but I constantly felt like I was being rushed on to the next idea while the previous one was all but forgotten! It was rather frustrating.

I really wanted to love this book and I did find it really interesting - but not as a whole. The truth is that it doesn’t work as a whole, it’s just a collection of disparate pieces fitted together with a tenuous theme. The theme would have worked if it hadn’t been so obvious that portions of the book were pulled from elsewhere and had not been written with the theme in mind while other portions were written simply to complete the thematic picture, but that the author found them wholly uninteresting. It’s never a good sign when you can tell that the author was bored writing something.

I would recommend this book as something read in little pieces, like a bathroom reader. It just doesn’t hold up as a book when read straight through as is. There’s so much interesting stuff here, but it just doesn’t hold together that well, which is really a shame.

- Publisher’s Description

- Diane Ackerman’s Website

- Buy it from Amazon

I wouldn’t have expected it, but the graphic novel format lends itself well to the story of “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” from the Arabian Nights. The tale follows Ali Baba as he discovers the secret lair of a group of thieves and steals from it. Later his brother’s wife discovers that Ali Baba has money and urges her husband to find out the secret, which he does. After hearing it he, of course, goes to the lair as well. He does not fare as well as Ali Baba and is brutally murdered by the thieves. Ali Baba retrieves his brother’s body and the thieves come after him. Luckily, Ali Baba has a servant who is much more clever than him or than the thieves and through various observations and smart moves she repeatedly saves her master’s life.

Croall and Hilinski do a brilliant job telling this story with sequential art. I was particularly impressed at their use of panels without speech bubbles or much action to relay mood and moments of consideration and contemplation. Since this is actually a story without a whole lot of action (part of the story is almost more like a chess game being played between Morgiana and the thieves), those moments are extremely important. I was also impressed with the look of the world they created. I’m so used to illustrations for stories from the Arabian Nights where the girls all look like they just stepped out of a harem and the men are muscle-bound and always armed to the teeth that it was extremely refreshing to find that everyone in here looked like a real person. The women were wrapped up as women actually would have been! Everyone had extremely light skin (Ali Baba is almost as fair as I am), but I guess you can’t have everything. The only piece of art in the book that I actually thought didn’t fit at all was the cover art. It doesn’t represent either the character or the story well at all, and that’s a shame.

This telling of the story highlights one of the major oddnesses of it - the fact that Ali Baba gets all the credit. He really doesn’t do much of anything. Actually, he’s very dubiously moral in stealing from the thieves in the first place, so it’s hard to feel too bad for him when they start to cause him trouble. The real hero of this tale is Morgiana, the servant girl who manages to both outsmart everyone else and get to stick a knife into the bad guy, killing him without help. After reading this, I’m left wondering why she wasn’t on the cover of the book instead of ineffectual Ali Baba.

This was an excellent, dynamic telling of this story and I highly recommend it. Not only would it be great paired with more traditional versions of Arabian Nights stories, but it would be a great heroic story with some unusual twists as well. References from “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” so pervade our popular culture (it seems like every cartoon character ever has said “open sesame” at some point) but few people really seem to know the story anymore. This is such an approachable, well done version that I see no reason why that couldn’t be changed!

- Publisher’s Description

- Buy it from Amazon

Babymouse stares longingly at the trophies in the school trophy case, none of which bear her name, remembering all of her less-than-thrilling “honorable mentions” and wishing that she could get a trophy of her own. Chances for glory come in unexpected places, however. As Babymouse is skating with her friends on a pond one day a famous figure skating coach stops her and invites her to train at the ice rink after school. With dreams of being an ice princess, Babymouse joyfully shows up for practice after practice, only to find out that it isn’t quite what she expected.

Yet again Jennifer and Matthew Holm have woven a delightful Babymouse story. This one is not quite as sharp as some of their previous titles, but for readers who already love this character and her world it will be more than satisfying. The ending is predictable (we don’t actually expect Babymouse to go on to win Olympic gold medals, after all), but the way the story gets there is sometimes surprising.

It’s very nice to see a book for kids where it’s ok for the main character to quit something. So often we end up with book after book after book repeating “I think I can” and showing kids working hard for impossible dreams and succeeding, which is great, but not always realistic. Sometimes you just can’t, or you choose not to, and both of those circumstances are ok. For Babymouse, it was ok. Even her mom said so!

I’m constantly impressed with the art in this series. It never gets repetitive or dull. Every installment is fresh and exploding with energy. The spare color palette (black, white and pink) makes for easy visual transitions between what is real and what is happening in Babymouse’s imagination. Still, I’m not sure I’ve quite figured out how much is real about the weirdnesses in her locker and that’s just fine with me!

While this isn’t the best of the Babymouse books, it’s certainly still a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. Babymouse may not be a skating star, but she is still a blast to read about!

- Publisher’s Description
- The Official Babymouse Website

- Jennifer L. Holm’s Website
- Matthew Holm’s Blog

- Buy it from Amazon

Sisters of the Sword is the first in a series about two sisters, the daughters of a great Samurai leader, who become great samurai themselves. The sisters, Kimi and Hana, watch as their father and older brothers are brutally murdered by their uncle and then the two flee for their lives. They end up at the school where new samurai warriors are trained and, disguised as boys, beg to join it as students. The master says that the school is full, but grants them positions as servants which would allow them to train and learn alongside the students as long as their work got done. In this way, the two girls train in secret forming plans for the future.

The story this book tells is incredibly intriguing. The plot is complicated and many threads are left for the author to pick up in later books. What makes it so interesting is the political intrigue, various codes (bushi, noble and and likely others that are less well defined for us as readers, at least at this point), and the deceptions being overlaid on top of each other in varying ways. While the crime of the murders itself seems fairly straightforward, the fallout from it is anything but. Kimi, our narrator, is focused on the internal goings on of the dojo (the samurai school), but the world outside is clearly still moving and Snow does a great job of making that clear. In the meantime, Kimi and Hana are trying hard to come to terms with what is, for them, a very personal loss and figure out what they are going to do next.

Kimi starts and ends the book with messages from the future, reminding us that she survived all of this. She lays on pretty thick, however, that much was lost along the way (it is unclear if even Hana is still with her). These messages may end up being very meaningful for the series as a whole, but in terms of this book by itself, they seem out of place. Not only do they not make much sense in the context of this book by itself, but they simply seem there to remind you that she is a good warrior. The story shows us that clearly so Snow had no need to tell it to us explicitly. I think that I would have enjoyed Kimi’s journey more if I hadn’t known that she would succeed in becoming a samurai from the outset. Some mystery is a good thing.

I would definitely read a sequel to this book because I did find the plot interesting and I liked Kimi as a character, however I found this book rather frustrating. It very much does not stand alone, which can be annoying. I want some resolution of something at the end of a book, even if this is clearly not the end of the story. This didn’t end in resolution, this ended in a leaping off point. I felt like there was a point about two-thirds of the way through the book that would have made an excellent ending, but obviously more happened after that.

Stories where girls disguise themselves as boys are always interesting to me. It presents a number of interesting issues, but is such a good storytelling technique (and so necessary from a historical point of view sometimes) that it is done frequently in fiction. I felt that this book actually glossed over that element a lot. I kept wondering how the girls looked like boys with their hair up but as soon as it fell out of the topknot it was bound in, they looked immediately liked girls again. Their faces should look the same and the boys, in theory, all had hair just as long. So why the sudden revelation? From a historical standpoint, it seemed odd. If all it took to look like boys was putting their hair up in a boys’ hairstyle, why would their hair falling out suddenly break that illusion? In terms of otherwise pretending to be boys, little else seemed to matter. Occasionally the girls’ deepened their voices when dealing with people who might recognize them, but this largely seemed irrelevant and no other changes or deceptions were mentioned.

For two noblewomen, Kimi and Hana seemed unnaturally comfortable in a school full of men and boys. Perhaps this was because the student politics of the school was surprisingly feminine. The school bully acts very much like a high school queen bee, not like a popular or powerful boy. He bullies by finding out people’s secrets and using them against them, practicing deception, making others look bad to those in authority, putting people down and puffing himself up, but rarely actually physical bullying. That’s a classic girl way of getting and maintaining social power in a school or other similar social environment, but not a typical boy one. The servants gossip and warn each other of potential dangers and risks (even simply risks to personal pride), a very standard female group behavior as well. It’s no wonder two girls fit in perfectly!

While I found a lot to like about this book, I can’t honestly say that I’d really recommend it. Perhaps when the series is completed it will stand as a wonderful set of books, but this one alone just isn’t enough. I’m glad that I got to read it, but I’m certainly not going to run out for the sequel when it comes out either (I might pick it up in paperback, but certainly not in hardcover).

A note on the cover: The cover shown in this post is the one on the book that I received. I’m hoping that it’s the final cover, as opposed to the one on the HarperCollins website (see small image to the right). The girl on mine is much more appropriate - she’s strong and confident, I could believe that she would disguise herself as a boy successfully and train as a warrior. The girl on the website image reminds me of the stereotypical willowy lotus-blossom girls. She’s too delicate and sweetly posed, I’d never believe that she’s Kimi. She doesn’t have the fire that made the character fun to read about. I’d never believe a girl like that could do the things Kimi and Hana did. I’d believe it from the cover I got (see the large image at the top of this post).

- Buy it from Amazon

The last two dolls here are by far my favorites. They represent my character from a past roleplaying game - check out the Shackled City wiki for details on this game and the characters from it - and one of the NPCs we interacted with regularly. In the blue is Verana, my rogue character. She was a great character and dear to my heart. I spent a lot of time on her and am extremely proud of how she turned out. The cleric in white is Jenya, who saved the party more times than I would care to remember! I’m not good at shading white, so she was challenging, but the mace was fun and I generally like how she turned out.

As always, if you click on the dolls they will send you to the sites of their basemakers and they will all be represented on the appropriate doll pages of my website from here on out.

Annabel is the sort of girl who hates confrontation. She is quiet and generally keeps her head down. Her family is full of drama and her social life has fallen apart because her best friend has dropped her because of events from a few months back. At the beginning of the school year she feels incredibly alone. Enter Owen, a boy who is no stranger to confrontation and insists on always telling the truth. He is obsessed with music of all kinds and when he and Annabel begin to be friends, he quickly begins to share his love of music with her. Annabel is thrilled to have such a good friend, but she ultimately has to save herself.

This book is extremely character driven. Very little action occurs throughout the book, but a lot happens. I was initially very put off by the frequent long flashbacks that seemed to drive the book (it felt like the story hadn’t even started until the fifth chapter), but by the end I appreciated all the information. I think that all the flashbacks were necessary, but I think Dessen probably could have spaced them out differently and achieved a slightly more balanced feel to the book. The fact the characters in this book were so strong is really what made it work. I wanted to know more about Owen every time Annabel encountered him, but since the story was from Annabel’s point of view I was restricted to what she knew. Annabel herself was interesting. I can’t say that I always liked her, but I think that’s part of why she worked for this particular story. I would have had a hard time swallowing this story if the main character hadn’t been believable, which was tricky with this plot, but Dessen pulled it off beautifully. I may have been horrified by Annabel’s actions sometimes and just wanted to sit her down and lecture her about what she should have done, but I never disbelieved that she would have acted exactly the way she did.

It’s hard not to see the obvious parallel between the plot of this book and the plot of Speak, but they are fundamentally very different. Both looked at similar situations in believable ways where the characters acted very differently. I wouldn’t say that this is a book I wish every high schooler would read, although I’m tempted to say that about Speak sometimes, because the story here didn’t make it as necessary a story to have read. I do think that it was great, strong story and I could absolutely see it being one that some women find hauntingly close to home, the very fact of which is important for the rest of us to understand. This was well written and well presented, but it just didn’t have the timeless, necessary feel that a required read usually does. Nevertheless, I’m quite glad that someone wrote this story.

This is a powerful, enjoyable book. It deals with several tough topics in a really well-crafted story. I wish the structure had been a little different so that it was easier to get into, but that seems like a small complaint for such a good book. I would absolutely read other books by Sarah Dessen and I would unquestionably recommend this book. It was a good read and told a story that I think needs telling. I hope that it gets the readership that it deserves!

- Publisher’s Description

- Readergirlz issue 14 (March 2008)

- Sarah Dessen’s Website

- Buy it from Amazon

J. L. Bell over at Oz and Ends has a couple of posts starting the day the award was announced.

David Elzey has a great piece over at Fomagrams (and not just because he apparently agrees with me).

If I notice more judge comments from the graphic novel committee I’ll be sure and update this post! If you see more, let me know!