Thornspell by Helen Lowe

Ah, fairy tales. This book I picked up on a whim (okay, it was on display at the library, face-out, and the cover drew me in. And the title. And the description on the back..."A forbidden wood, an enchanted castle, a sleeping princess...and the prince destined to break the spell." Ooh!).

So, as you might guess, this is really the story of Sleeping Beauty - or rather, the prince who wakes her up. It begins well before he wakes her, and revolves around the efforts of his caretakers to keep him both alive and free from the control of Margravine zu Malvolin (pretty awesome name, btw). She's the evil witch (really of the Faie) who cast the original spell on Princess Aurora.

Anyway, this book is great. I loved every minute of it. The main character is both believable and flawed, brilliant and, at times, completely idiotic. In short, very human. He's surrounded by a cast of interesting characters, the most significant of which is Balisan, his master-at-arms, who teaches him everything a prince needs to know about defending himself - from understanding who your enemy's family is, to knowing how to swordfight. He's totally awesome.

Of course, fairy tales re-told can be awfully predictable - but this one is fresh and full of little details to keep the reader's interest. I can't wait to read more from this author (this is her first novel).

Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke

I loved Inkheart and Inkspell. Meggie and Farid, Mo and Resa - funnily enough, it is the everyday characters from our world that speak to me the most, despite their being surrounded by the fantastical creatures of the Inkworld. (Okay, okay, so Farid is technically from A Thousand and One Nights, or something, whatever.) This world is breathtaking - Funke is truly a master artist. The world she paints is vivid and shocking, at once beguilingly innocent and treacherously evil. Meggie is just a beautiful character - of course, we see a lot of her point of view; she's just the age of the target audience for this book. And it's really a story about how she grows up in the completely frightening world inside a book. Her father, Mo/Silvertongue/Blujay, has the power of reading aloud and making characters from books appear in our world. And of making things from our world disappear into books - which is what happens numerous times to various characters during this series.

But back to Meggie. I could listen to her thoughts all day. She's strong and brave (quality character traits for a young girl, and she wears them well). She's fiercely loyal and loving. People seem to act differently around her. She's special - I can't seem to put it any other way.

Yes, terrible things happen. Though Meggie is in love with Farid, his feelings are unknown. He clearly likes Meggie a good deal; but then, he doesn't seem to mind kissing the maids terribly much. His motives are beyond my ken. (I love that expression.) I hope to find a happily-ever-after for Meggie and Farid, Mo and Resa, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. The Inkworld is fraught with peril and bloodshed, and I'm a little nervous that not everyone will make it out alive.

Update: Yes, there is a happily-ever-after (of sorts). The resolution with Farid made me sad, but he should have seen it coming. It was really his decisions that led to the outcome.

Funnily enough, though, I can't really see this story as a happily-ever-after that way. I wonder if the author has some more Inkworld tales up her sleeve, perhaps to do with Meggie's little brother...I'd read them.

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

I read Climbing the Stairs this week. The time period is so fascinating - around the time when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, but in British-occupied India. The main character is a girl named Vidya. Her family is progressive and open-minded; her father even tells her he plans to send her to college. But a terrible accident causes her father to become mentally incapacitated. Her family goes to live at the home of the very traditional grandfather and his sons' families. There, the men live upstairs, and the women live downstairs. The women cook and clean and tend to children, while the men work and study and listen to the wireless. Only during festivals do the sexes mingle.

There, Vidya discovers her grandfather's off-limits (to the women) library, and meets a young man named Raman. In a fairly predictable fashion, Vidya pushes her boundaries and receives permission to study in the library, and Raman falls in love with her.

The setting is what is so intriguing and beguiling about this book. The customs and culture of this place - so completely foreign to the world I live in - are so fascinating. I couldn't get enough. The ending is fairly conventional, in terms of coming-of-age stories, but it is the richness of India itself that will remain with me long after the names and circumstances of the characters fade away from my memory.

One caveat: I wanted Raman to be the man Vidya expected him to be, and I was a little disappointed by some of his ideas and expectations. But I loved that he was willing to consider himself in the wrong - that he allowed his ideas to change - based on his friendship with Vidya. It is so rare that a strong female character can have that kind of influence on a male character, especially given the time period.

I'd love to find more interesting books set in India. Got any suggestions?

Howl's Moving Castle

I recently read Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. I very much liked the characters and the setting. Sophie is the eldest daughter of a hatmaker, who dies and leaves the girls - and their mother - without adequate funds to live on. The two younger sisters apprentice out, and Sophie stays at home to make hats for her mother's shop. One day, the Witch of the Waste comes into the shop and turns Sophie into an old woman. Sophie, realizing she can't continue her narrow, confined existence any longer, sets out to make her way in the world. She marches off, and finds a job - actually, forces her way into a job - cleaning castle for Wizard Howl. He may be infamous for eating the hearts of young, beautiful girls, but Sophie thinks she'll be safe with him, since she now has the body of a ninety-year-old woman (and she wasn't much to look on in the first place).

I really dug these characters. Sophie goes from a quiet little mouse of a girl who can only make hats to a strong, determined, fierce woman. Michael, Howl's apprentice, is a hoot. He seems as baffled by his master as Sophie. Calcifer, the fire demon who is bound to serve Howl, is amazingly developed for such a being - he has personality, likes and dislikes, and he definitely has a heart, whatever the story says.

The secondary characters and storylines are also compelling. Lettie and Martha as Sophie's sisters develop from cardboard cutouts into interesting people, and Howl's mysterious past could merit another book. (I'd love to find out about his life in Wales before he became Wizard Howl.) Everything eventually gets woven together into a big, confusing, mysterious story that, ultimately, makes sense together. It's fun to read. Also, there's a hint of romance and some very keen scenes wherein Sophie realizes something very important about herself.

I took a look at the manga based on the novel, and I was disappointed. The characters are all jumbled up, the story line has been muddied with some kind of bizarre modern warfare that completely destroys the bucolic setting of the novel, and it's just weird. Starting and ending at the same place as the novel, but completely going off the rails on a crazy train in the middle. If I get a chance, I'll watch the movie the manga is based on, but I'm not expecting anything much from it.