Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales by Tamora Pierce

The world and people continue beyond the book.  Some of these simply take place in the world of Tortall in familiar places or with familiar circumstances like the Shang warriors.  One takes place as a result of events in one of the novels, another was a future story about main characters.  There are some modern stories which are quite a change from what we are used to.  Some of them even overlap with each other.  I’m going to try to do this one story by story…

“Student of Ostriches” This one I had already read in Young Warriors: Stories of Strength but I was still excited to read it.  The Shang warriors are such an interesting part of the world of Tortall and it’s neighbors, but there is not much about them.  In this story a young girl learns to fight from watching the animals and she changes her fate.

“Elder Brother” In Wolf-Speaker, Numair turns an enemy into an apple tree.  In this story half a world a way it caused an apple tree to become a man.  The tree must learn how to be a man but it is no easy task.  Numair plays only a small role.

“The Hidden Girl” This story connects to the one before.  Two of the characters meet just briefly but it is part of what begins the change in the life of a young woman.  She has helped her father teach the hidden religion but his health is not well.  She cannot abandon their cause but she is only a woman.

“Nawat” After Trickster’s Queen we left Nawat and Aly in love, now we see the birth of their children.  Nawat struggles with the balance between man and crow.  He must decide where his true loyalty lies and every option has high costs.

“The Dragon’s Tale” After the events of The Realms of the Gods Kitten continues to live and travel with her adopted parents Daine and Numair.  She is fiercely independent but must be careful around strangers who fear her.  She finds a human that needs her help but can she succeed when it is so hard for her to communicate?

“Lost” Darkings were first introduced in The Realms of the Gods but they have appeared in the Trickster series as well as the Immortals series.  Here one appears in Tusaine in the company of a young girl who is gifted at math but her hard father stands in the way of her dreams.  A friendly little black dot named Lost is determined to change her lot.

“Time of Proving” I am honestly not sure if this one is in the Tortall universe.  It feels like it could be but none of the places click.  I don’t think it is.  A young woman of the Wind People finds one of the bull people, a scholar who has been harmed by the people of the Merchant City and he can barely take care of himself.  Her people do not believe in helping without trade but can she leave him to die?

“Plain Magic” This is another that I don’t think is in the Tortall universe.  A valley is being attacked by a dragon.  Village after village burns.  The village think they must make a terrible sacrifice to be saved but a traveling trader shows them the truth and the power of just plain magic.

“Mimic” I know this isn’t Tortall because of the dragon rules.  In a valley where the birds aid the farmers and the herders a girl with a penchant for healing animals finds a wounded creature that is neither bird nor lizard.  She calls it mimic because it makes the sounds of the other animals.  Both the dragon and the girl are resisting growing up, but what will make them take the leap.

Okay so I gush about Tamora Pierce.  I can honestly say I absolutely loved all of these stories.  I think about the fact that most writers probably have a stash of finished or just ideas of things that happen on the side lines in their universe or in similar places.  These next two were different.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t like them it just means that they’re a bit of a quick change of gears from the others.

“Huntress” A high school girl, raised in a world of goddess worship, gets a fresh start when she gets a track scholarship to the elite private school.  She tries hard to fit in, but it doesn’t work as well as she thinks it does and the team that she admires so much is not what they appear to be.  In some ways this is scary because the bad guys are made like real people.  The magic is not what is bad, rather the supernatural is what saves us.  Eerie is probably the best word for how this story made me feel.

“Testing” This was interesting because even though it is only partially pulled from reality it gives you some insight into Pierce herself.  It talks about her time after college as a house mother for teenage girls.  She prefaces it with information on the first incarnation of Alanna’s story and how those girls helped her write it.  This is a far cry from what I was used to from her, it was 100% realistic.  I always loved that Pierce could have such harsh moments with such light moments and here with so much reality it is even more so.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

Ben tends to pick on my reading of YA: the double spaced pages, and according to him there are no YA books with complex sentences or big words.  I will admit that many of the things I read are easy to read, though part of it is I enjoy a variety.  Yes I like Tolkien and Jordan, though I have yet to read any of Ben’s Warhammer 40K.  Complex can be good but these things are not definitive parts of good storytelling.  Don’t get me wrong I think Kristin Cashore is an excellent writer, I just love that she can communicate complex feelings and ideas simply.  Honestly I think I might have loved Fire even more than Graceling and I am beginning to rank my preference for her up with Tamora Pierce even though I am only on book 2 and she herself is only on book 3.

This takes place before before the events of Graceling across the impassable mountains to the west of the seven kingdoms in a kingdom called Dell.  There is one familiar face, but it is not one that you will be glad to see.  There are monsters, they are colorful and beautiful and can control the minds of people.  The rarest of all is the human monster; there is only one left and her name is Fire.  People hate and fear her for her power over them but she is very afraid of herself.  Her father almost destroyed the country and now it is up to her to put it back together.

I love Fire, so strong and so vulnerable at the same time.  At first the descriptions of her hair with shades of pink and yellow and orange and red was almost too much for me.  She seemed almost too alien but I suppose that was the point to make me fall for her just as the others did.  I feel like the romance aspect in these books is realistic.  Your first love is not necessarily your true love.  There were times where I was sobbing while laughing.  I would squeal and giggle and read things out loud to Ben who would roll his eyes.  I read it in one sitting.  I started when I got off work and read past my bed time.  I couldn’t put it own, that is the best recommendation I think that can be given.

Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

I’ve obviously gotten a bit behind on my reading.

We left the Folchart family happily living with Elinor, but of course things do not stay that way.  Basta and the Magpie are still loose in the world; Dustfinger still wants to get home and Meggie and Mo are not the only ones with the magical voice.  One after another the majority of the heroes from the last book end up in Inkworld whether they want to be there or not.  We forget that the story and lives continue after the book itself ends and the story within Inkheart has taken surprising turns.  Dustfinger is in danger but he isn’t the only one.

I alternated being very frustrated and being interested.  Honestly I feel like Inkheart stood almost too well on it’s own to have a sequel.  It took quite some time before I really felt drawn in by the stakes of this book.  I don’t know if they ever drew me in really.  I kept reading because I already cared about the cast: Farid and Meggie, Mo and Resa, Dustfinger…  I could have used some more Elinor.  There was romance and death, well obviously the next book is Inkdeath but I feel like it is going to be even more forced.  I still love Cornelia Funke’s words, her lyrical descriptions, the worlds that she can create, but I think part of it is I read Inkheart so long ago that it has been finished for me for quite some time.  It’s still a good story and I still love Cornelia Funke but I probably won’t ever reread this series.  I need some easy reading now.

This is the second book in the Inkheart trilogy.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke

Reading Reckless made me realize, duh I should be finally finishing this trilogy!  Yes I’ve read it before, in the dark days before I blogged.  Mom and I both devoured it.  I feel a little silly giving a summary of a book that I feel like most have heard of, it is a movie as well.

Meggie’s dad repairs old books but his relationship with the written word goes much farther.  If he reads aloud sometimes things come out and that is what happened years ago when an evil man named Capricorn appeared in their living room years ago.  Meggie is thrust into the kind of adventure that we prefer to experience from the safety of a nice reading chair and it is up to her to change the course of this story.

It’s a book about stories coming to life… I’d have a hard time not loving it even if it weren’t written by the fantastic Cornelia Funke.  Meggie is the perfect protagonist, at 12 she is young enough that the younger readers will be drawn into the book but she is precocious enough that everybody loves her.  Around the time I read this the first go round I was pretty convinced that I was going to end up a lot like Elinor, now the only difference is that Ben is around so that if I ever do get lost in a giant house full of books he’ll come looking for me.  The “real world” characters are very much like real people: sometimes you love them, they make you laugh, sometimes you want to bop them on the head, sometimes you hate them.  Mo, Elinor, Meggie, and Fengolio are very real.  Dustfinger I would say is on par with them.  Farid has the beginnings of being real.  Then there is Capricorn.  He is as he was written, pitiless and cold hearted.  Funke writes such gorgeous imagery, and then of course there are the literary references which make me want to read even more books…  Yes I love it absolutely.

I’m not big on books I love being made into movies.  Even if I like the movie then their vision is now in my brain preventing me from using my full imagination.  Luckily it had been long enough since I saw the movie that the only thing I remembered was that the people brought out by Darius had words on them, which I thought was kind of cool and a good way to show flaw without overdoing it on the face makeup.  So I looked up the movie after I finished like a bad girl and suddenly remembered that Paul Bettany was Dustfinger.  I love Paul Bettany, partially because he is good at characters you have a love hate relationship with like Dustfinger.   Anyway… like many book series the film set didn’t make it past number 1 but I am off to read number 2!

This is the first book of the Inkheart trilogy.

The Appreciative Advising Revolution by Jennifer L. Bloom, Bryant L. Hutson, and Ye He

I know that the like 5 people who read this probably get super excited when I read things for school and work but hey they are in fact things I read and some of them can be interesting.  This one ended up being borrowed from someone at work because UNCG’s library for some bizarre reason doesn’t own a copy.  I was worried it was going to be way over my head but not too bad actually.  My educational psychology course helped with most of the terminology though the counseling was unfamiliar but most of it was explained in context enough that I was left with just my usual curiosity to know more rather than actual confusion.  Actually probably one of the most disorienting thing was that I am currently in the office that runs the programs outlined here but a few things have changed so I had to keep them separate in my mind.

Appreciative Advising is a framework for college advising, whether it be faculty advising or recovery programs for students returning from suspension or whatever else you want to apply it to.  At the core it is a strengths based approach, focusing on past successes and dreams rather than on focusing on failures which leads to a negative attitude.  The system has six phases: Disarm, Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver, Don’t Settle.  I promise not to get more technical than that.

I think one of the most important things that they emphasize is that this is not about hard and fast rules.  It’s about providing a skeleton for each advisor to create a unique relationship with each student.  You still accomplish things like planning next semesters schedule, but it’s a much more personalized process than prescriptive advising.  To me you can see developmental advising in the roots but appreciative advising adds more of a dynamic focused on the students history as well as their future.  The inherent flexibility is one of the things that really appeals to me.  The idea that you are constantly reflecting and that the plan can change.

Well, here is to me getting my feet wet.  I’m thinking about reading Faculty Advising Examined edited by Gary L. Kramer next, but I’m wondering if I need to do some reading in counseling first to broaden my vocabulary…

Reckless by Cornelia Funke

I’ll start out with an interesting cover note, the one pictured here is the paperback copy that I have.  Featured on the cover is Jacob as distinguished by the fact that his eyes are green, not blue or gold.  Though the green swirlies made me unsure at first.  The original cover the black with the frame and the green face, that is Will.  Now a making fun of myself moment: notice those names?  Jacob and Will… hmm that rings a bell… Jacob and Wilhelm… okay so yes they have the Grimm brothers name.  The shame is that is was over of a quarter of the way through a book filled with fairy tales made real before I realized the Reckless brothers were named after the Grimm brothers. Cue facepalm.

So so far you know that we have a fairy tale land and two brothers.  Their father disappeared when they were young.  They’re mother recently died of cancer.  For years older brother Jacob has been disappearing for huge chunks of time, but in some ways he never left their father’s study.  In the room that they all avoid is a mirror that is a door into another world.  A world that Jacob prefers over reality.  Then Will stumbles in after him and is cursed and Jacob must find a way to save him.

This is not a happy fairyland.  The bad guys are worse and the happy endings aren’t necessarily true.  Jacob’s best friend is Fox, a vixen who is actually a girl he once saved.  Jacob Reckless has made a name for himself as a treasure hunter, finding legendary magic items.  Then there is Will who trusts his brother absolutely even though he left so often.  There are other interesting people to the cast but I don’t want to spoil anything.  Jacob feels like a gallant hero, but you also see the vulnerable young man underneath.

I started this not realizing there was going to be a second book but honestly I began to seriously suspect about halfway through.  I’ve been avoiding series because they’re a reason for me to want to buy more books but well it’s Cornelia Funke, it’s fairly assured I’m going to buy what she puts out anyway.  I love her characters and the worlds she creates.  They always feel so complete to me.  Complete immersion.  I also love her writing, everything about it, and I suppose translator Oliver Latsch probably gets some credit for that, but I know I love everything she has written and not all of it was translated by him.

This is definitely a book that could be read easily by a male or a female I think and it is a great crossover that is adult but would definitely be enjoyed by young adults as well.  Sometimes I have issues writing when part of my gut is to just say: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE… READ IT!

This is the first book of the Mirrorworld series.