“Ah, finally we can talk in private, just you and me.”
Daaren carefully kept his face blank. Counting two guards and three servants in the room with them, who did not seem about to leave, he concluded the Baron must be completely insane. Better not to irritate him.
The Stepsister Scheme is a novel based on fairy tales.
Shortly after her honeymoon, Danielle – also known as Cinderella – is attacked by one of her stepsisters, who tells her that her Prince Charming is gone. She insist on accompanying Talia (Sleeping Beauty) and Snow (White) to find and rescue him from his kidnappers.
Jim Hines draws on not-Disneyfied versions of the tales, adding his own ideas on top of it. Talia received among other things the fairy gift of grace and dance – and considers fighting a dance. She also is well-informed about goings on in the kingdom, and has more than a bit of criminal energy. Snow is a sorceress adept in mirror magic. Danielle’s main contribution to the team seems to be a certain knack for finding ways to twist fairy “contracts”, though the whole talking-to-animals bit doesn’t hurt, either.
There are only three things that bothered me a bit, but they were rather minor. First, a trend of repeating some words too often in short intervals. Second, the “we don’t care about you, we just want the child you’re pregnant with” stuff – but then, Danielle didn’t exactly play the part of incubator on legs, when she could help it. Third, the strong plot hook left for the sequel – not a real cliffhanger (though I guess it could be if you care more about children than I do), but it’s a practise I dislike.
On the plus side we have a nice adventure plot with mystery elements, friendship in a group of women (rather than the usual “dudes plus one token female/love interest”). I particularly likes easygoing, enthusiastic Snow.
The world as such also feels alive, with Snow and Talia’s background from different countries, and the politics between the (human) kingdom of Lorindar and the fairies.
It’s fun to read and will end up on my bookshelf, and I will probably get the sequel eventually.
Judging by a recent post in Jim Hines’ Livejournal, the announced trilogy (second part to be published this year) has already grown to a tetralogy.
I can’t think of many other fantasy/adventure books focusing on a group of women, in fact, only the Discworld book featuring the Witches. Anyone got any recommendations?
*points at title* That’s a children’s book (9+) by Derek Landy, a sequel of one I liked a lot, so I picked it up when I spotted it on the shelf in a local bookshop.
The backcover blurb reads, “You know how it is – you think you’ve saved the world, and then ANOTHER evil villain turns up with an unbeatable monster and starts breaking things. Oh, yes, and you’ve got a skull for a head. A thirteen-year-old girl for a sidekick. And no clue what to do…”
Now, while the weird prevalence of very nearly every damn book dealing with saving the world is getting on my nerves a bit, the first book’s writing style made up for that. That blurb also suggests that Skulduggery Pleasant is the protagonist, which would have been nice. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
Playing with Fire takes place about one year after its prequel, and Stephanie is a mage in training and the skeleton detective’s junior partner. She is the protagonist, and the title character of the series is a supporting character only.
As to the plot, some evil mage was sprung from prison and now tries to revive some kind of Frankenstein Monster which in turn will call Lovecraft-style elder gods back to our world.
In short, this book lacks everything that made the first one interesting.
The great dialogue that was the reason why I liked the prequel was nearly entirely absent, being genuinely funny in maybe two or three places, and otherwise coming across like annoying bickering rather than amusing banter. Unless dialogue was outright dropped and replaced by action scenes with far, far too many “and”s in them. Top it off with over-the-top gore I thought I didn’t have to endure in children’s books.
Neither was there a mystery, or any surprising plot twists. It was pretty clear what was going on from the start, and when information was needed, it was only a question of going to a particular person who had it, all very linear.
On top of that the more interesting plot threads (I’m thinking particularly of Stephanie’s reflection, a double summoned out of a mirror to take her place at home and school while she’s off adventuring, possibly growing into more than a mere reflection) are left dangling for the sequel(s?). I do not like books that cannot stand on their own, and I really dislike obviously deliberate sequel hooks.
Well, that was money wasted, and I definitely won’t buy the next part.
Skulduggery Pleasant is a fantasy/horror/adventure children’s book.
The setting is modern day, with sorcerers and at least some magic creatures hidden in the corners, and the main characters are Stephanie and Skulduggery Pleasant. She a twelve year old girl who inherits a house and strange business. He is a skeletal-undead, sixgun-toting sorcerer detective. They fight crime. More precisely, they try to find out who murdered Stephanie’s uncle. Occasionally they commit crime, too, but who cares?
The real action starts when Stephanie is almost killed by someone breaking into her late uncle’s house in search for something. Mr Pleasant saves her, and what with him having blown the door off the hinges, she attaches herself to him for protection and curiosity. The case develops from “let’s try to solve a murder” to “we gotta save the world!”, including, super-powerful magic items, ancient evil cultists and whatnot.
It takes some suspension of disbelief, particularly when it comes to “wait, who in their right mind would drag a 12 year old girld into a break-in when the guards are vampires who definitely are NOT pacifist and sparkly?!”, or that one big point in favour of paper-golems may be that they are easily destroyed. On the plus side, at least the book addresses the question of what the parents think of their daughter going off adventuring, by providing a double.
The plot has some nice twists and there are interesting characters to be met – and some of them besides Stephanie are female, too.
What really makes the book enjoyable for me is the dialogue – quite a bit of banter. I forgive a lot of shortcomings, including the few tropes this one employs, if a book is fun to read.
Well, I posted my favourite bit, with the missing front door, already, so have another little sample.
“They’re vampires,” Skulduggery said. “The Vault has vampire security guards.”
Stephanie made a show of poking her head out of the window and looking up at the sky. “The sun’s still out, Skulduggery. It’s still bright.”
“Doesn’t matter to them.”
She frowned. “Doesn’t sunlight kill them? Doesn’t it turn them to dust, or make them burst into flames or something?”
“Nope. Vampires tan, just like you and me. Well, just like you. I tend to bleach.”
Maybe not the best, but pretty short.
All in all, enjoyable entertainment I’ve re-read already.
There is a paragraph from Chris Baty’s book No Plot? No Problem! going round on LJ in meme form.
“Before you sit down to write a novel, you make a list of everything you love to see in novels. When you write your own novel, you should put the stuff from your list in there. Then you should make a second list of everything you hate to see in novels. When you write your own novel, you should make sure none of the stuff from that second list creeps in when you’re tired.”
I’m not immediately planning to write a novel, but anyway…
I realise that the “dislikes” list is way longer than the “likes” list. My impression is that I have more relatively specific “hot buttons” that will annoy me, and mostly wide “likes”.
A small addendum to the “all characters are male, apart from the trophy bride(s)” dislike in the case of movies or comics, rather than prose: Men come in a variety of different shapes and ages, but women are all young, slim, “conventionally attractive”, as if made in the same plastic doll mold.
I have less trouble liking a story without any female characters in it (even though that is likely to cause some annoyance, unless the cast is extremely small) than ignoring cardboard-cutout female “characters”, or women inserted for male readers to drool over, or other nonsense like that.