The Bitch, Pilar Quintana

0 stars

First Sentence: “I found her there this morning, paws up,” said Doña Elodia pointing to the spot on the beach where trash brought in or churned up by the sea collected: branches, plastic bags, bottles.

Thoughts: Oh my God. Y’all. Y’ALL. It is still June and already I have three candidates for Worst of the Year on my review spreadsheet. I have a feeling this one is going to win because any other book is going to have to suck harder than a supermassive black hole to beat this UTTER DRECK.

First of all, as the cover indicates, the titular bitch is (in theory) a female dog. And, yes, the dog does die. Horribly. That is why I flung this waste of paper across the room when I finished. When I think of all the rolls of toilet paper that could have been instead of this book….

In fact, the whole thing begins with a dead dog. Cheerful! The paws-up pooch in the first sentence left a litter of puppies behind. Doña Elodia gives one of the puppies, the only female, to Damaris, who takes it home and hand-feeds it until it gets big enough for solid food. Damaris loves the dog immediately, seeing it as the surrogate for the child she has not and will not have. She keeps claiming that she’s forty and “dried up” but I would suspect the fact she and her husband a) have not had sex in years and b) do not have access to modern fertility treatments and c) her husband is resistant to what fertility treatments are available due to his excess machismo would be the reason, but what do I know. I’m just some arrogant American living in a country where women are rapidly losing their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

I want to note that Damaris carries the puppy, Chirli, around in her bra. Now I am not a flat-chested woman, but I have a hard time figuring out how I would carry a whole-ass puppy around in my bra. It’s kind of full already. There’s no room for dogs in there. Seriously. I just looked inside my shirt and even with a sports bra there’s no place to put a puppy. Not without painful scratches in a place I don’t really want to be scratched.

But then Damaris is the kind of person who pays for things with bra money so that tells you all you need to know about her as a person right there.

Damaris loves the puppy at first. Her husband, Rogelio, isn’t quite as entranced, but he puts up with it. Then Chirli runs away to the jungle. She doesn’t come back for a little over a month. During that time, Damaris and Rogelio rekindle their relationship, but it ends when he yells at her for dropping a mug. Y’all, I think I found the real reason why they don’t have kids.

When Chirli comes back, she’s pregnant. Rogelio has to point this out to Damaris who immediately hates the dog. This is supposed to be some kind of statement on the dog as representative of Damaris and all she can’t be, but it falls flat. I Google Translated some of the Spanish reviews of the book on Goodreads, and it appears it’s as obscure in the original language as it is in English.

The puppies are born and Chirli immediately eats one. The rest of them she barely tolerates. Ah, I see the Chirli-Damaris connection now. Damaris sets about finding homes for the puppies. One woman, Ximena, wants a female puppy. She wanted one from the original litter Chirli came from, but Damaris got it first. There was one female in the litter, so Damaris sets it aside for Ximena. After a week Ximena hasn’t shown up, so Damaris gives the puppy to a tourist. Ximena shows up wanting her bitch so Damaris gives her Chirli, the dog she loved SO MUCH up until the point she got pregnant.

Ximena takes Chirli back to her drug den house. Chirli runs away. Damaris takes her back. Chirli runs away again. Damaris ties a rope around her neck and straight up strangles her. Then she sees Ximena coming up to the house. Damaris goes into a crisis, wondering if she should jump off a cliff or run away into the jungle to be eaten by whatever large predator is passing by. Sadly, she does not. I spent the last three pages wanting her to die and she didn’t and I wish she had. That’s why I threw the book across the room.

I’m leaving out a whole subplot about the people who owned the estate Damaris and Rogelio lived on and Damaris’ relatives who didn’t like her because she’s a horrible person and a little boy who was swept away by a wave when Damaris was little because they were all pointless and had no bearing on anything. Seriously, folks, this book is effing awful and no one should ever read it. If you have even the slightest positive feeling towards Canis lupus familiaris, do not touch this book with your hands, eyes, or any other sense-transmitting organs.

The Violet Fairy Book, Andrew Lang

5 stars

First Sentence: The Editor takes this opportunity to repeat what he has often said before, that he is not the author of the stories in the Fairy Books; that he did not invent them ‘out of his own head.’

Thoughts: And so we reach the end of the Rainbow Fairy Books. This isn’t the last one chronologically, but it is the last one I acquired. Now we’ve traveled through all the colors. We’re better people for it.

There were a few strange themes in this collection. Like endangering children. In “The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars.” The titular beggars stayed in the loft of Mark the Rich one night. Mark’s daughter snuck upstairs and overheard them prophesying that the peasant Ivan had just had his seventh son. The boy would be named Vassili and would inherit all Mark’s wealth. She told her father what the beggars said, so Mark went to stand godfather to Vassili. He offered to adopt the child from Ivan, who gratefully accepted because he was having a hard time providing for his other children. Mark took the baby and tossed him off the first convenient cliff. Like you do.

There were fairies at the bottom of this cliff, so they saved Vassili. The next day some merchants who owed Mark money found the baby and brought him back. Mark put the baby in a barrel and tossed him into the sea. The barrel washed ashore by a monastery. The monks did not try to kill Vassili because they were better people. Vassili grew up to get his revenge on Mark the Jerk, fulfilling the beggars’ prophecy.

In “The Boys with the Golden Stars,” an emperor marries a peasant girl who promises she would bear him the titular sons. However, the emperor came with a wicked stepmother who took the babies as soon as they were born and replaced them in the cradle with puppies. She buried the babies in the garden.

Then two aspen trees grew up from the graves and started talking. She had the aspen trees cut down and made into a bed. When the bed started talking, she had it burned and threw the ashes into the sea. The ashes became two fish who were caught and then transformed back into boys. Like Vassili, they got their revenge on the person who tried to kill them.

Not all of the babies in the collection were victims of attempted murder. In “Stan Bolovan,” Stan’s wife wishes for children. Stan comes home to find her wish came true. A little too true.

Stan found himself father to one hundred children. He had to complete quite a few adventures to be able to provide for all of them. He managed to do it, though, with a combination of trickery and quick wit.

Some of the illustrations got downright saucy, like this one from “The Story of a Gazelle.”

The story began when a beggar found a coin and bought himself a gazelle. Turns out it was a talking gazelle. It told its master that begging wasn’t going to provide them any kind of a life and went out to begin a Puss in Boots-style tale. The beggar pretended to be a prince and married a princess. Instead of being grateful to the gazelle, he began ignoring it. The gazelle died cursing his name. And so the prince became a beggar again.

In less depressing tales, we have “The Underground Workers.” Hans son of Long Hans went on a journey between Christmas and New Years when the magic happens. He met a stranger along the way who gave him food and a warm place to sleep. Hans woke up to find a group of little men working at a forge.

The story points out that they just wore leather aprons and nothing else. Me, I’d at least want a pair of pants as well if I’m going to be working with molten metal. But then I’m not a blacksmith for the Lord of the Underworld, which is what these guys were. The Lord of the Underworld explained to Hans that the little men were hiding all the precious metals and gems in the earth so that people wouldn’t get too lazy. The next morning Hans woke up to find that the ashes of his fire were silver and the unburnt wood was gold. He took them home and lived out the rest of his days as a wealthy man. The end.

Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

5 stars

First Sentence: “I see…” said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.

Thoughts: With this book, the Brooding Vampire Genre came into being. Anne Rice’s vampire series was great until she went off the deep end. I actually read all of them up until the one where she combined her witch series and vampire series. That’s when I realized she had completely lost the plot. Now I choose to remember only the high points of the series, which is this, the first book.

It begins in San Francisco. A young man met a stranger in a bar and asked to interview him. The young man did that, wandered around collecting stories of the common man like a proto-Story Corps or Humans of New York. This time, however, the man he wanted to interview turned out to be a vampire. The vampire didn’t want to feed on the man…yet. He wanted to tell his life story. The interviewer put a fresh cassette into his tape recorder and they began.

It began in the late 1700s in Louisiana with a man named Louis de Pointe du Lac. He had a plantation and a family, but when his younger brother died in mysterious circumstances, Louis went downhill. He began drinking and courting death. Death came to him in the form of a vampire. It didn’t kill him, though. The vampire, Lestat, wanted Louis’ plantation so he could keep his elderly father there. Oh, and he could make Louis a vampire if he wanted. Louis did want so, after viewing his last sunrise, he shared blood with Lestat. And so Louis became the Broodingest Vampire of Them All.

Lestat and his father moved into Pointe du Lac where he and Louis began a life of subterfuge. Louis insists throughout the book that he couldn’t stand Lestat, but he never really tried to break off their relationship. He claimed it was because he knew Lestat knew more about vampires than he did, but was it? Was it really, Louis?

Eventually they move (or are driven) off the plantation and move into a townhouse in New Orleans. Louis, on one of his midnight walks, found a little girl clinging to her dead mother. He fed on the little girl, but left when Lestat started laughing at him. The next night Lestat brings the little girl back to Louis and they make her a vampire. They treat her as their daughter, although Louis’ relationship becomes creepier as she grows up. Mentally, not phyisically. She turns into a woman in the body of a four-year-old child. As you might expect, she does not like this. She blames Lestat because she doesn’t sleep with him. She tries twice to kill him and then runs off with Louis to take a tour of Europe.

They try to find vampires in eastern Europe but only find monsters. They head to Paris where the other vampires meet them. Specifically Santiago who hates Claudia at first sight and Armand who loves Louis at first sight. And vice versa for both. Claudia realizes Louis is going to leave her for Armand, so she begs him for one last favor: give her another adult vampire to protect her. She’s gone one picked out already!

Then Lestat shows up. Oops.

The Scarecrow of Oz, L. Frank Baum

6 stars

First Sentence: “Seems to me,” said Cap’n Bill, as he sat beside Trot under the big acacia tree, looking out over the blue ocean, “seems to me, Trot, as how the more we know, the more we find we don’t know.”

Thoughts: In the introduction, Baum’s great-grandson mentioned that this was Baum’s favorite Oz book. It actually was supposed to be the second movie made by Baum’s Hollywood studio, but after the studio went bankrupt he turned it into his next Oz novel instead. That explains why it’s more cinematic than the others, especially in the second half.

It begins with Trot and Cap’n Bill getting ready to sail off the California coast. They had been in two previous Baum novels (which I haven’t read) and he decided they were ready to come to Oz. Like most Americans brought to fairyland, it happened through a natural disaster. They got caught in a huge whirlpool that spat them out into an underground cavern. They decided (wisely) to get a good night’s sleep before trying to find their way out. When they woke up the next morning another creature caught by the whirlpool popped up out of the water. It was an Ork and his name was Flipper. What is an Ork, you ask? It’s hard to describe, so here’s a picture

The three of them made it out of the caverns only to find themselves on a mostly-deserted island. Mostly-deserted because there was only one person there, a man named Pessim who had been put there by his neighbors for being such a downer. He told the three adventurers about some strange berries found only on the island. The light purple ones make you grow small, the dark purple ones make you big.

The adventurers use the berries to get away from Pessim’s negativity. First stop is the Land of Mo where it rains lemonade and snows popcorn. They stay the night with the Bumpy Man who is the Mountain Ear. The next morning they find Button-Bright buried in a popcorn drift along with three crows having a snack. Button-Bright decides he wants to come with them since he lost his magic umbrella, but the Ork can’t carry all of them. Cap’n Bill feeds the last of the dark purple berries to the crows, builds swings for the humans to ride on, and they all fly off over the Deadly Desert.

The crows set Our Heroes down in Jinxland, which is technically part of the Quadling Country of Oz, but since it’s surrounded by high mountains and deep ravines is pretty much its own kingdom. There they meet Pon the Gardener’s boy who is having a very bad day. He just got slapped for daring to kiss the Princess Gloria. Pon defends his right to kiss her. They love each other and, besides, he wasn’t always a gardener’s boy. His father was King Phearse who ruled Jinxland before the current king, Krewl. Krewl had been Phearse’s advisor until the day he pushed the king into a pond and dumped rocks on him so he couldn’t come out.

I know that people don’t die in the Land of Oz and that’s supposed to be a good thing, but it leads to things like this which are worse.

It kind of served Phearse right, though. He had taken the place of King Kynd, Gloria’s father, who fell (or was pushed) into a bottomless ravine. Trot points out this means Gloria’s the only one with a real claim to the throne, but no one listens to her because she’s a girl.

King Krewl is planning to marry Gloria to his advisor Googly-Goo who’s as attractive as his name suggests. Gloria refuses because she loves Pon. Googly-Goo tells Krewl that he knows a witch, Blinkie, who can freeze Gloria’s heart so she won’t love Pon anymore. But first she needs to take care of that meddling Cap’n Bill. She does so by turning him into a grasshopper and then freezes Gloria’s heart.

Meanwhile, in another part of Quadling Land, Glinda is reading about all this in her Magic Book. She sends the Scarecrow down to straighten things out in the kingdom of Jinxland and remind them who’s the true empress of Oz. The Scarecrow crosses the dangerous ravines and mountains only to find himself face-to-face with his only foe: fire.

Arranging the Buffet Supper

Today’s Saturday Short is “Arranging the Buffet Supper” from the Keeping Up Appearances collection. It’s about the buffet supper and how to arrange it.

It begins with June calling her grandma. She wants to know what the correct etiquette is for a buffet supper. What foods should she serve and what arrangements should she make…oh wait, this isn’t a buffet supper. It’s a boofay supper. I guess she’s also called the Bucket residence and invited the lady of the house. Better get out the Royal Doulton china with the hand-painted periwinkles.

Now it’s the afternoon of the party. Grandma comes over to help June properly arrange her boofay supper. It’s different from a buffet supper because it’s served later in the evening when people only want a late meal, a pre-Taco Bell fourth meal if you will. Chairs will not be needed since no one will be crass enough to sit down at a boofay table. Just to make sure none of the socially less fortunate make such a faux pas, Grandma and June put the chairs along the walls.

Now for the tablecloth. A plain linen tablecloth is appropriate for a boofay. However, it must be laid smoothly with the edges hanging evenly. Even the least hint of asymmetry will ruin the entire party, so get your yardstick out and make sure those edges are perfect!

Next up are the proper decoration. June wants candles, but since this isn’t a candlelight supper she can’t use the good candlesticks. In fact, it’s best not to have candles on the table at all. How about a centerpiece of fruit piled on a plate? That’s fine, but make sure it’s in the exact center of the table. Use surveying equipment to make sure it’s not even a smidge off center. And for the love of all that is holy, do NOT shift the tablecloth when you’re placing the centerpiece! Are those edges still even?

Now the dinnerware. It needs to be placed so that guests can serve themselves easily, so put everything in the order in which it will be used. Lay out the forks stagger fashion for easy pickup. A boofay is a simple meal to be served simply, but the layout of the plates and utensils is anything but simple. Put the dinner plates next to the forks since they will be picked up next. Is the centerpiece still in the exact center of the table?

The main dish is a Mystery in a Casserole Dish. All we know is that it’s hot. It could be a meat pie, mac and cheese, Schrödinger’s cat, whatever you want it to be. There is also a cold dish to balance the hot dish. Unlike the hot dish, it is not a mystery but tomatoes stuffed with cottage cheese. (Ew.) June calls this a salad.

They really stretched the definition of “salad” to its ultimate limits in the postwar years, didn’t they?

The sides can be placed between the hot and cold dishes. One side is a silver basket of pre-buttered rolls in a napkin. The napkin is cloth which is both classy and difficult to remove grease stains from. The other side is the “relish” or hors d’oeuvres or crudites or, if you’re truly socially inept, a veggie tray. Those calling it a veggie tray will be sent out of the boofay in utter disgrace. You didn’t shift the tablecloth putting those dishes down, did you? Check them with the laser level just to be absolutely sure.

Dessert is a cake which requires new forks, plates, and a cake knife. Once the dessert forks have been properly staggered, the boofay table is complete. Just one more check to make sure the centerpiece is still in the mathematical center of the table and the edges are perfectly even all around. Done!

Not done! What about the drinks? Milk and punch are ready on the buffet next to the boofay table. If this were an adult party, there would be coffee or tea instead. (The liquor is in the bathtub.)

Now they’re done! June and Grandma admire their work. The exact obsessive positioning of every object on the table reflects the soul of etiquette. If the tablecloth is even one millimeter longer on one side than the other, if the centerpiece is only a fraction of a slice of a measurement off true center, you will be rightly shunned by all and your family will be cast out of town, never to be spoken of again.

Enjoy the meal, everyone!

The House of the Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky

4 stars

First Sentence: Among the mountains and impenetrable forests of the Siberian desert one comes from time to time across little towns of a thousand or two inhabitants.

Thoughts: Recently Salman Rushdie went on the late night talk show circuit to promote his new memoir Knife about when he was almost killed at the Chautauqua lectures in 2022. One of the hosts, I think it was Stephen Colbert, asked why Rushdie wrote about the attack. “Because,” Rushdie said, “I couldn’t write about anything else.”

Makes sense. A traumatic experience like that, a storyteller has to write it down to process it completely and move past it to the next story.

And that’s why Dostoevsky wrote The House of the Dead. He had been imprisoned in Siberia for ten years, so when he came back to St. Petersburg he had to write about it before he could move on to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

He didn’t do it as a novel or a memoir, though. He used a frame story about a young man living in a charming Siberian town. One of the local tutors was a man who had spent some time in a prison camp. Not unusual in Siberia, but this man kept very much to himself, to the point where he was offended if anyone tried to visit him or hold a conversation. He was known to sit up late at night scribbling. After he died, the young man got hold of his writings and discovered that some of them were his memories of his life in prison. That’s the rest of the book.

Our Dostoevsky stand-in gave his readers a complete description of what life was like in a Siberian prison camp: their clothes, how their heads were shaved, how the chains were put on, how the barracks were arranged, what their beds were like, the other prisoners and how they acted, how they were classed by the authorities, what they did between dinner and going to bed, and the food.

The editor’s introduction in the version I read made a point of mentioning Dostoevsky made the food sound better than it was. This was because he knew the Russian authorities were going to be reading his book and his future life as an author depended on not making Siberian prison camps look better than the lowest level of Hell. Although he did mention that the worst part of prison was the fact that for ten years he was never alone, waking or sleeping. That, to me, is lower than the lowest level of Dante’s Inferno.

They weren’t doing forced labor all the time. They had some recreation, mainly smuggling vodka into the prison, watering it down, and selling it to the other inmates. Around Christmas they got some actual time off. This was when they made their annual trip to the local bathhouse. It wasn’t that great, though, because there were at least fifty men crammed into the sauna at the same time so it wasn’t very relaxing or cleansing.

Although there was that year some of the prisoners got together and put on a play. Everyone liked that, even the prison officials.

The authorial stand-in also spent some time in the prison hospital. He was actually sick, but there were some who pretended to be so they could get some time off. The doctors went along with it until the prisoner was fully rested and then they released him. Others, though, were really sick and did not go gentle into that good night. There were also a few madmen who went raging through the wards, so it wasn’t any more relaxing than the bathhouse.

I can understand the insanity part. Hell, as Camus, said, is other people, and not being able to get away from anyone to have one single solitary second to myself would make me nuttier than an outhouse rat in short order.

The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum

6 stars

First Sentence: There could be no doubt of the fact: Princess Ozma, the lovely girl ruler of the Fairyland of Oz, was lost.

Thoughts: In case you ever wondered what my favorite book in the Oz series is, this is it. It’s a truly delightful story filled with mystery, intrigue, and a truly wicked person.

It begins when Dorothy goes into Ozma’s bedroom one morning. She’s the only person allowed to come in first thing in the morning and the two girls usually have a chat after they get up. This morning, however, Ozma isn’t there. Maybe she went out early? No, she’s not anywhere in the palace. Is she on the grounds? Nope, not their either. Has anyone seen her since last night? Negative. The only person up the night before who might have seen anything was Scraps the Patchwork Girl, but her button eyes fell off and she only had Aunt Em sew them back on this morning.

Then Dorothy and the other girls in the palace, Betsy Bobby and Trot, discover the Magic Picture is missing as well. Something’s rotten in the City of Emerald.

Down south in the Quadling Country, Glinda wakes up to find out that she, too, has been robbed. All her magic tools are gone including her Magic Book that Records Everything That Happens in the World. The Wizard comes by a few hours later and reveals that his magic paraphernalia has also been stolen. Glinda goes back to the Emerald City with the Wizard and calls a meeting. She divides everyone into four groups to search each of the four countries in Oz. The one we follow is the Winkie Search Party, consisting of Dorothy, Toto, the Wizard, the Sawhorse (at least part of the way), Betsy Bobbin, Trot, and Button-Bright.

But first let’s go to the far southeastern corner of the land of the Winkies. There’s a tall tableland there that is part of Oz in geography only. It’s where the Yips live. The same morning that Ozma disappeared, one of the Yips, Cayke the Cookie Cook, discovers that her golden diamond-studded dishpan is gone. She goes to the Frogman, the leader of the Yips, to determine her next steps. Those steps take her and the Frogman down off the tableland and into the wider Winkie country to find the dishpan. After all, none of the Yips had it.

Both parties immediately meet with obstacles. The Emerald City group encounter the Merry-Go-Round Mountains which are nigh impossible to cross. The Yip party discovers that no one off the tableland think the Frogman is as wise as he thinks he is. They offend everyone they meet until the Frogman accidentally swims in the Truth Pond and has to admit he’s not that smart. Things go better for him after that.

Meanwhile the Emerald City group gets past the mountains and find themselves in my favorite part of Oz: The Great Orchard. Every kind of fruit and nut tree grows there, and they’re blossoming and fruiting at the same time like in a tropical country or a fairyland. You’ve got your oranges, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, lemons, limes, apples, pears, pecans, quinces, cherries, plums, and one single solitary peach tree.

I would like to visit this orchard.

Eventually the two search parties meet up and, with the help of the Little Pink Bear, learn the identity of the thief. Now they just have to get him.

The Master, Louise Cooper

5 stars

First Sentence: At this early season, the dense forests that covered most of the western half of Chaun Province provided scant shelter for any traveller.

Thoughts: After jumping into yet another warp storm, Cyllan is once again flung halfway across the continent. After recovering both her wits and her horse, she makes her way to a village inn for the night. There she finds out words of her actions in the previous book have already been disseminated across the land thanks to Keridil’s new messenger pigeons. She finds some herbs to dye her distinctive white-blonde hair and goes on the run.

Tarod, meanwhile, has flung himself into the middle of another province. He finds his initiate pin in his pocket, so he uses that along with some face-changing magic to hide his own identity while he searches for Cyllan.

As for Keridil, he’s in a bad place. Drachea’s parents have come to the Star Peninsula to see their son’s triumph only to find him dead thanks to Cyllan. They insist that Keridil Do Something About This. He sends word to the High Margrave and the Lady Matriarch, informing them of his recent battles against the powers of Chaos. They send a message back to convene a Conclave of the Three. Keridil packs his bags for a trip to the Whit Isle. Once the other two get there, they’ll open the Casket of Aeoris when who knows what will happen.

All the main characters head southeast towards the White Isle, crossing a land in panic. Everyone freaked out when they got Keridil’s wanted posters, especially since he mentioned that both Cyllan and Tarod were in league with Chaos. All the blonde women and black-haired men in the country are immediately suspect. Most of them are arrested. Some of them are tortured. Others are killed. Thanks Keridil! Your tact is breathtaking!

When Our Heroes and Our Villains arrive at the Opening of the Casket we find out the real twist to the story. It’s not a shocking twist because it’s been growing more and more obvious as the story progresses. Chaos is not evil and Order is not good. They’re merely two halves of a whole. And the good and evil aren’t where they appear to be on the surface.

Think about it: Tarod was an incarnation of Chaos but he never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it. Well, except his cousin in the first book, but that was an accidental discharge of magic he didn’t know he had. Cyllan may have murdered Drachea, but we can all agree that little so-and-so had it coming. The only really bad thing about them was that questionable sexytime in the tower when time stopped, but they handwaved that away.

And what has Order done? Caused a panic that killed who knows how many innocents. When Aeoris pops up out of his casket, we find out just how hidebound and short-sighted Order has become in the eons since Chaos was defeated. The entire war against Chaos was a mistake in the first place. Without Chaos there is no Order and vice versa. They need to exist together to keep the universe in balance.

It all wraps up with an awesome battle between the gods of both sides while the humans watch. The ones you want to be rewarded are and the ones you want punished are. Does that mean that heifer Sashka gets her comeuppance? Yes it does. Louise Cooper truly understood what it meant to give her readers what they want.

Side note: One reason I like my series to match is because of neat effects like this:

The covers don’t 100% line up, but they’re close enough to satisfy me.

Children of Dune, Frank Herbert

5 stars

First Sentence: A spot of light appeared on the deep red rug which covered the raw rock of the cave floor.

Thoughts: Nine years have passed since Paul Atreides was blinded and went into the desert. His twins, Leto and Ghanima, have grown up to very weird pre-teens. Like Alia, they were both “pre-born” due to their mother’s spice overdose while pregnant so they’re only children in size. Unlike Alia, they have not yet become Abomination. Instead they’re trying to figure out how not to fall into that trap.

How did Alia fall into it? She had a mental crisis some time back, getting lost in all the voices in her head. She was trapped in the clamor of her past lives until one voice offered to help keep the others back. For a price: she had to let that ancestor have access to her consciousness occasionally. Desperate, Alia agreed without considering who was making that deal. It was her grandfather, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, who has found a way to get revenge on her for killing him.

Side note: Alia is my second favorite character in the Dune universe* and I hate how she always gets a raw deal. Nothing ever goes right for her. Even in Dune Part Two she gets the shaft by not even being there! Seriously Villenueve? You couldn’t follow the book’s four year time jump? Maybe if you had split the movies in the same place as the book you wouldn’t have this problem! At least David Lynch followed the time line. And, since he only made a movie of the first book, he figured out how to give Alia a happy(ish) ending.

And that’s why I love David Lynch.

Anyway, as with all the Dune novels, there are plots within plots. Jessica returns to Arrakis, ostensibly to visit her grandchildren but actually to test them to find out if they’ve become Abomination. She doesn’t realize Alia already has until a fateful Judgement Day when the Baron let his mask slip. Jessica, like a proper Bene Gesserit, set another wheel within wheels in motion. She goes along with the plot to kidnap her and Duncan Idaho so she can get to Salusa Secundus, the home of the remnants of House Corrino. There she trains the Corrino heir in the ways of the Bene Gesserit. Duncan, meanwhile, has a crisis from which he will not recover.

Duncan is also put through the wringer but {SPOILER DELETED}.

There was also an element of revenge in Jessica’s training. House Corrino had recently set a pair of Laza tigers loose on Arrakis and Leto was killed. Except he wasn’t. He and Ghani had faked his death so he can set his own plans in motion. He goes into the deep desert to Jacurutu, the cursed sietch of legend, while Ghani erased her memories of Leto’s escape and hid them under a layer of false memories of his death.

While all this is going on, The Preacher is stirring up unrest on Dune. The Preacher is a blind man who knows more than he should. This leads people to wonder if he’s actually Paul come back from the desert. No spoilers because it’s obvious: it is Paul. His plan, however, is still a mystery.

*Norma Cenva will always be my number one.

The Pink Fairy Book, Andrew Lang

5 stars

First Sentence: All the people in the world tell nursery tales to their children.

Thoughts: Another colorful collection of tales from around the world, this time mainly from Japan, Serbia, Denmark, Sweden, and Catalonia.

We begin with the Japanese stories. There are two tales of tanuki here! How cu…

What in the name of Super Mario is that? That is not a raccoon dog! Mr. H.J. Ford, I suggest you consult a live model for your illustrations because that…thing…is nothing close to Japan’s most adorable creature.

Fortunately there are also tales of Japanese cats, which are something that Ford can draw.

What a good kitty Gon is. Who’s an adorable little murderer? You are!

There are a couple of stories where witches get so angry they burst into flints. Not flames, flints. One story features an illustration of the witch throwing a tantrum at the hero and heroine while her pets watch.

She may be a horrible witch to the humans in the story, but her pets seem to like her.

One of these heroes who faces a witch is a young prince looking for a wife, as most of them are. He visits Princess Diaphana, but quickly realizes she’s not The One. Mainly because she’s so light the slightest breeze will throw her around. She forgot to tie herself down before a thunderstorm and ended up blown against a haystack.

Perhaps the iron shoes from the original version of “Snow White” would be of use here?

Finally, we get a story about a striga, although she’s not called that. She’s pretty much the same thing, though. A princess dies but comes back as a monster haunting the local church. A soldier stays in the church three nights to break the spell and win the resurrected princess as his bride. It’s not quite as exciting as the intro to the first Witcher game, but it has a happier ending.