The Name of the Star

Installment #3 in the Book Reviews for Melanie series.

The Name of the Star (Shades of London #1) by Maureen Johnson
Read: 12/17/11-12/18/11
Click here for my sister Sondy's review

I first heard of Maureen Johnson when I joined twitter and my sister Sondy told me to follow her because she was the funniest person on twitter. She was right.

And yet, for no apparent reason, I've only read one of her books so far. This must be remedied.

The Name of the Star is that one book. A friend gave it to me as an early Christmas present in 2011, for which I am grateful. Melanie, you should read it. It's even on our Kindle account. (I should read the sequel that came out a couple months ago, The Madness Underneath. And, well, her other books, in other series.)

Melanie, you know how when a book starts out in the "normal world" and then shifts to fantasy, the normal world part tends to be kind of boring and annoying, with the exception of The Chronicles of Narnia? Even books that I really really like, like Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy?

Well, The Name of the Star doesn't move from one world to another, but the main character's eyes are opened to a different world underneath the surface of her normal world, so it more or less fits in with the category.

And I'll admit, the weirder it got, the more I liked it. It just got better and better. But boring normal world? Not so much. What saves it here is Maureen Johnson's voice. Of course, having followed her on twitter, I should've known her books would be funny, and the voice would be awesome! How could they not be?

For example, take this quote from the beginning of the book (only a map and the intro come before this):

"If you live around New Orleans and they think a hurricane might be coming, all hell breaks loose. Not among the residents, really, but on the news. The news wants us to worry desperately about hurricanes. In my town, Bénouville, Louisiana (pronounced locally as Ben-ah-VEEL; population 1,700), hurricane preparations generally include buying more beer, and ice to keep that beer cold when the power goes out. We do have a neighbor with a two-man rowboat lashed on top of the porch roof, all ready to go if the water rises--but that's Billy Mack, and he started his own religion in the garage, so he's got a lot more going on than just an extreme concern for personal safety.

"Anyway, Bénouville is an unstable place, built on a swamp. Everyone who lives there accepts that it was a terrible place to build a town, but since it's there, we just go on living in it. Every fifty years or so, everything but the old hotel gets wrecked by a flood or a hurricane--and the same bunch of lunatics comes back and builds new stuff."

Or, another long one... (I'm sorry, I read it again as I was going through my highlights, and I just can't resist!) Um, to understand some of the quotes that follow, you should know that the main character, Rory, leaves Louisiana to study abroad, in England. So.

"I know you're not supposed to judge people when you first meet them--but sometimes they give you lots of material to work with. For example, she kept looking sideways at my uniform. It would have been so easy for her to say, 'Take a second and change,' but she hadn't done that. I guess I could have demanded it, but I was cowed by her head girl status. Also, halfway down the stairs, she told me she was going to apply to Cambridge. Anyone who tells you their fancy college plans before they tell you their last name... these are people to watch out for. I once met a girl in line at Walmart who told me she was going to be on America's Next Top Model. When I next saw that girl, she was crashing a shopping cart into an old lady's car out in the parking lot. Signs. You have to read them.

"I was terrified for a few minutes that they would all be like this, but reassured myself that it probably took a certain type to become head girl. I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death."

And then there's:

"These people didn't seem rich--at least, they weren't a kind of rich I was familiar with. Rich meant stupid cars and a ridiculous house and huge parties with limos to New Orleans on your sixteenth birthday to drink nonalcoholic Hurricanes, which you swap out for real Hurricanes in the bathroom, and then you steal a duck, and then you throw up in a fountain. Okay, I was thinking of someone very specific in that case, but that was the general idea of rich that I currently held."

"'You don't say much, do you?' Jerome asked me.

No one in my entire life had ever said this about me.

'You don't know me yet,' I said.

'Rory was telling me she lives in a swamp,' Charlotte said.

'That's right,' I said, turning up my accent a little. 'These are the first shoes I've ever owned. They sure do pinch my feet.'"

Okay, that's enough of that. I read some more of my highlights, but not all of them. I must not read all of them at this time, or this review will get too long. ("Goodbye, Thing. Your [review] is too long." No, I know it doesn't have quite the same ring to it.)

However, if you scroll back up to the top and click on the link to read Sondy's review (Oh, or wait, here it is again! Where'd that come from?), she does include another quote that I was tempted to use in mine. Two for the price of one! Or something. Overall, she more or less says the same things I do about the book, but in a different way, and better. And a little more of the plotty premise details.

What is the book actually about? Well, it's technically YA, though I generally don't concern myself much with those age categorizations. And it's a mystery involving Jack the Ripper lookalike murders. If you haven't read much about Jack the Ripper, his murders were pretty gruesome. I didn't realize. Um, don't google him, if you don't want to know more. The book seemed sufficient, to me. Anyway. The Name of the Star is also about... weird elements. I'm not going to specify more than that, to avoid giving even a teensy bit of a spoiler. But I really liked how the mechanics of the weird elements were worked out. Good strong worldbuilding.

Dang it, no teensy spoiler means I can't use one of the book review category tags I wanted to use. Oh well.

Have fun!

On the Edge

On the Edge (The Edge #1) by Ilona Andrews
Read: 12/8/09-12/9/09
LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing (I'm currently at the max number of books I can add for free -- the lifetime upgrade doesn't cost much, but still, not doing it yet): Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Rural Fantasy, Romance, Georgia, Atlanta

The most recent of Ilona Andrews' (actually two people, a husband and wife team) books and the first of a new series, I read the first two books in her (agh, I mean their) Kate Daniels series before this, but I'm reviewing this one first because I need to return it to the library.

The first order of business is to explain my "rural fantasy" tag. It's a slightly misremembered term, on my part, from the original "rustic fantasy" the husband in the writing team came up with: "The first hint of trouble came when Gordon edited it and took to calling it 'rustic fantasy' as opposed to urban fantasy." At first I thought this was just silly. I mean, I can tell what the point is, but isn't that ridiculously redundant? And yeah, "urban fantasy" sounds like it should be urban, but in reality the sub-genre is basically defined as our modern contemporary world with fantasy elements -- often with vampires and werewolves, often urban, pretty often with large doses of romance and mystery, but those aren't the defining points. So okay, "rustic" or "rural fantasy" is going to be those, only set somewhere in the country, right?

After reading it, I decided it's an oddly appropriate classification. It's so appropriate, I don't know if anyone else will ever write a book that fits the category as well as this, but oh well. See, even though your standard fantasy fare generally is set in the country, On the Edge feels even more rural than that! How so? It reminded me of things I've heard about the Appalachians, for starters.

In this world, you have the Broken, the Edge, and the Weird. The Broken is our world, complete with Wal-Marts. The Weird is a place where blueblood aristocrats rule. Magical strength is very important in the Weird, and the aristocrats tend to have it. Magic isn't usable in the Broken, making magic users from the Edge or the Weird feel broken, hence the name. The Edge is the long, long, long strip of land between the Broken and the Weird. Most people in the Broken don't know about the Edge or the Weird, wouldn't be able to see the boundary. And for people in the Weird, it's painful to cross to the Edge, and possibly fatal to cross to the Broken. People on the Edge have to have sufficient magic to cross to the Weird. If those from the Weird succeed in crossing to the Broken, there's the danger of losing their magic if they stay long enough, and not being able to cross back.

Edgers -- well, they could easily remind one of white trash, only the main character, Rose, is way way way too likeable for me to ever want to call her that. Their culture makes a lot of sense, given that they're isolated from the rest of the world, with no police force. It's like what I've heard small towns are like, with plenty of people rubbing each other the wrong way, but they have their own ways of dealing with it to avoid blood feuds between their clans. And they're poor, because if you're born on the Edge you don't have a proper Broken birth certificate, and that means you work the same kinds of jobs any illegal alien works.

So, that's your basic world premise. I won't get into the main character's premise, that's another bundle of explanation. Not too much for the book -- the exposition is handled just fine -- but a bit much for one review.

Besides finding the world fascinating, did I like it? Yes, definitely. Some of the situations for the romance were a bit of a stretch, a little silly, but some of the later explanations helped. And I liked the characters. The main character, Rose, takes care of two little brothers I thought were awesome. I'd tell you all about them, long review or no, but I don't want to spoil it. Oh, and the novel's hook was great. A wonderful first page, a wonderful first three pages, and then just try to put it down. There were several places that made me laugh out loud, great lines and scenes. I'll see what I can quote without ruining anything. Hmm. Well, this isn't the best of them, but it had me cracking up. For all you manga fans out there:


“She barely had a chance to taste her first cup of coffee when Georgie wandered out of his room, sleepy eyed, his hair tousled. He ambled over to the window and yawned.

‘Would you like some Mini-Wheats?’ she asked.

He didn’t answer.

‘Georgie?’

Georgie stared out of the window. ‘Lord Sesshomaru.’

The demon brother from their comic book? ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Lord Sesshomaru,’ he repeated, pointing through the window.

Rose came to stand behind him and froze. A tall man stood at the edge of the driveway. A cape of gray wolf fur billowed about him, revealing reinforced-leather armor, lacquered gray to match his cape, and a long elegant sword at his waist. His hair was a dark, rich gold, and it framed his face in a glacial cascade that fell over his left shoulder without a trace of a curl.”


This one amused me, too:
“His gaze snagged on her Clean-n-Bright uniform. ‘Why are you wearing that?’

‘It’s my uniform. Everyone in my company wears it.’

‘It’s hideous.’

Rose felt her hackles rise. The neon green uniform was hideous, but she didn’t appreciate him pointing it out. She opened her mouth.

‘Yet despite it, you look lovely,’ he said.

‘Flattery will get you nowhere,’ she told him.

‘It’s not flattery,’ he said coldly. ‘Flattery requires exaggeration. I’m merely stating a fact. You’re a beautiful woman wearing an ugly sack of unnatural color.’”

Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #1) by Laurell K. Hamilton
Read: 4/22/08-4/27/08
LibraryThing tags: Vampires, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Necromancy, Suspense

Scanning through some of her books a bit at work, they pretty much looked like trashy romance. I'm afraid I picked up this book because one day, I thought I was in the mood for that. I know. I'm sorry. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised by a good book without even any sex scenes. There are some undertones, but no sex scenes. I hear the books get worse later in the series. For now though, I like this world. It has good touches.

Everyone knows about vampires (and assorted creepie-crawlies), the secret's out. Not only that, but in the U.S. they're legal. Killing a vampire without an execution order is considered murder. Work of the liberals. Equal rights for everyone, and all that. Crosses won't work against vampires unless you believe in them; there's a line somewhere (either in a different book in the series or I didn't note down the page number for quoting purposes) about how "nothing's more pitiful than the sight of an atheist waving a cross at a vampire" (probably not exact wording since, well, see above). And the vampires have their own church, based on the promise, easily verifiable, that they offer eternal life.

Although the main character and her sense of humor seem to be very typical of urban fantasy from the little I've read (see Sunshine by Robin McKinley), I like her anyway. It's a good sort of character. In fact, she frequently reminds me of Liz. She acts very much like Liz would, I think, except that Liz would have killed Jean-Claude long ago.

The edition I read (first hardcover) had an afterword by the author. It added a couple amusing insights. Such as, "I did not love Jean-Claude in this book. There were tons of sexy romantic vampires out there. I had no intention of contributing to what I saw as a problem. I mean, they are walking corpses, what the hell is so sexy about that? I just didn't get it. It would take me two more books before I began to understand that I couldn't kill Jean-Claude off, that losing him would hurt both Anita and me. In Guilty Pleasures I was still betting good money, loudly, to anyone who asked, that Jean-Claude was not a romantic lead." Can you say denial? It was very obvious. Too bad, though, since I agree that it's a problem. She also says, "Guilty Pleasures is a hard-boiled detective mystery. It is also a dark fantasy, or a horror novel, because it has vampires, zombies, ghouls, were-wolves, and a few other shapeshifters, I think." I agree, except with the first part. When you say, "detective mystery," I think of things like Agatha Christie novels. Then I think of Guilty Pleasures, and of this scene in Fruits Basket where Tohru "figures out" which animal Kagura is after seeing her change into it. Anita is like that. There's very little to figure out when the villain tries to kill you to your face. Suspense, thriller, yes. Mystery... well, of a kind. Not the Agatha Christie kind, or even the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency kind.

I realized something else sometime around when I read this novel. Vampires, with our current storytelling methods, may come the closest to being a current active mythology for us. Werewolves and all that too, and fantasy in general to some extent, but especially vampires. At least, in certain respects. I'm not saying that there's any kind of widespread belief in them, but there is a sort of cultural agreed upon backstory that each individual storyteller draws upon, changing specific things and retelling to suit their needs. Even in fantasy (the elves, etc. kind) there's more commonly a greater sense of having a responsibility to create one's own world entire, of having to explain who elves are even if you do use them and keep them unchanged. There's not an agreed upon world that each new writer takes from. Not like with vampires. It's a little disturbing. Why do we do it? Why are we drawn to the dark? It's certainly interesting though, seeing similarities in these books even with the Twilight series, when Stephenie Meyer said she made a point of not reading other vampire stories, fearing too much similarity or difference.

Anyway, that's all I've got. Here are some of the fun quotes, to give you that sense of the tone and style, and just because I love quotes, as you all know.


“Everybody underrates bruises. They hurt. They would hurt a lot more after I slept on them. There is nothing like waking up the morning after a good beating. It’s like a hangover that covers your entire body.”


No quote makes me think of Liz more than this one, for whatever reason.
“One dim light bulb gleamed over the threadbare carpeting. In places the off-green walls were patched with white plaster, but it was clean. The smell of pine-scented Lysol was thick and almost nauseating in the small, dark hallway. You could probably have eaten off the carpeting if you had wanted to, but you would have gotten fuzzies in your mouth. No amount of Lysol would get rid of carpet fuzzies.”


This one especially endeared Anita to me.
“I would have to spend the afternoon shopping. I hate to shop. I consider it one of life’s necessary evils, like brussels sprouts and high-heeled shoes. Of course, it beat the heck out of having my life threatened by vampires. But wait; we could go shopping now and be threatened by vampires in the evening. A perfect way to spend a Saturday night.”


On the Church of Eternal Life, the vampire church:
“‘Pretty,’ Ronnie said. She nodded in the building’s direction.

I shrugged. ‘If you say so. Frankly, I never get used to the generic effect.’

‘Generic effect?’ she asked.

‘The stained glass is all abstract color. No scenes of Christ, no saints, no holy symbols. Clean and pure as a wedding gown fresh out of plastic.’

She got out of the car, sunglasses sliding into place. She stared at the church, arms crossed over her stomach. ‘It looks like they just unwrapped it and haven’t put the trimmings on yet.’”