Posts
Showing posts with label Series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Series. Show all posts
I've avoided reading series recently because I really don't like having to wait for a next release in order to find out how a story continues. Especially after reading George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows several years ago, I thought I was done with reading series forever (that weird apologetic note at the end? What even was that?).
However I've started a couple middle grade series recently that are winning me back to the opinion that series can be good. It's great to read a book and already know the characters and world they're set in and be able to get down to the plot right away.
Two new favorites are Robin Stevens' Murder Most Unladylike series (aka Wells and Wong Mysteries in the US) and Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood & Co. books.
The Murder Most Unladylike series are very fun murder mysteries set in the 1930s. Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are students at Deepdean boarding school for young ladies. After forming a secret detective society they find that the murders almost seem to follow them around.
There are four book published so far in the UK and two in the US with the release date for #5 (UK) set for later this year.
Here's the official blurb for the first book, Murder Most Unladylike (in the US, Murder is Bad Manners):
When Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong set up their very own deadly secret detective agency at Deepdean School for Girls, they struggle to find any truly exciting mysteries to investigate. (Unless you count the case of Lavinia’s missing tie. Which they don’t, really.)I really love the setting both in time and place. Boarding schools hold a fascination for me as something both very foreign and very old-fashioned; although I know they still exist today (in the US as well as the UK!), I can't help imagining even today's boarding school students in 1920s clothes. Not all the books take place at the boarding school, but the other settings lend themselves well to mystery and Stevens provides helpful maps in each book to better imagine where and how the murders take places. As a big fan of Poirot--particularly on-screen (I love you David Suchet!)--the 1930s seems a perfect decade for mysteries.
But then Hazel discovers the Science Mistress, Miss Bell, lying dead in the Gym. She thinks it must all have been a terrible accident – but when she and Daisy return five minutes later, the body has disappeared.
Now the girls know a murder must have taken place . . . and there’s more than one person at Deepdean with a motive. Now Hazel and Daisy not only have a murder to solve: they have to prove a murder happened in the first place. Determined to get to the bottom of the crime before the killer strikes again (and before the police can get there first, naturally), Hazel and Daisy must hunt for evidence, spy on their suspects and use all the cunning, scheming and intuition they can muster. But will they succeed? And can their friendship stand the test?
The books are written from Hazel's perspective as she records the details of each case. The girls seem to have a sort of Sherlock and Watson relationship on the surface, but the reader quickly learns that far from simply recording Daisy's deductions, Hazel is actually the more thoughtful of the two and without the deductions of both girls the mysteries would not be solved. Both Hazel and Daisy are truly memorable characters and while they seem a bit over the top in their individual characteristics at first, they develop well over time and become more fleshed out as the books go on.
If I have one issue with this book it's that "Deepdean" is very difficult to say.
I definitely recommend these to anyone who likes an enjoyable and easy-to-read mystery with a good sense of humor.
As a side note, the buzz on Goodreads seems to indicate that the US versions have been unnecessarily "translated" for the American audience, but I have been reading the UK versions, so can't comment directly. As an American I found the UK versions completely comprehensible except that I had to look up how old the girls were as I'm not familiar with the school year system in the UK.
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two by Catherynne M. Valente
0 comments Posted by Ashley at Wednesday, July 02, 2014
I am back, and that is all, and I will endeavor to be a good
blogger and not forget about my blog again.
I have just finished reading (listening to) The Man
Upstairs, and Other Stories by P.G. Wodehouse. I won’t review it other than to say that the stories
were good in a classic Wodehouse way. If you don’t know what that way is, I
recommend reading at least one Wodehouse in your life. The plots tend to be
similar but that doesn't matter because the brilliance of Wodehouse is in his
descriptions. He can turn a humorous phrase like no other.
But that’s not what I am reviewing, I am reviewing another
book I recently finished – The Girl who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon
in Two by Catherynne M. Valente.
I have been a fan of Valente ever since my husband bought me
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (the titles
are a mouthful) for Valentine’s Day in place of flowers because, well, books
are made of paper, and paper comes from trees, so it’s really basically the
same thing as flowers…. ?
The Fairyland books follow the adventures of a young girl,
September, as she travels through fairyland finding a new adventure each time
she visits. TGWSOFACTMIT (the abbreviation isn't any better, is it?) is the
third in the series and just as with the other two does not disappoint in the
area of fantastical landscapes, vibrant descriptions and creatures of all
sorts. September’s character development is great to see – she does not remain
the same girl we met in book 1 but continues to learn and develop and in this
particular book, even start to become adult (oh no!).
One of the things that first attracted me to Valente’s
writing is the way she almost poetically weaves in statements of truth –
sometimes profound, and sometimes just very well put. I constantly find myself
reading along, and suddenly stopping and going back to reread a section. I
almost wish I had a notebook with me sometimes to write down some of these
bits.
"It's saying no. That's your first hint that something's alive. It says no. That's how you know a baby is starting to turn into a person. They run around saying no all day, throwing their aliveness at everything to see what it'll stick to. You can't say no if you don't have desires and opinions and wants of your own. You wouldn't even want to. No is the heart of thinking."
I do feel that in book 3 some of the characters and landscapes are
thrown in just because Valente liked the idea of them rather than because they
were important to the plot. When more text is spent describing a character than
on their actual involvement in the plot, things become a little unbalanced. I
found myself more than once having to flip back because I couldn't remember how
a scene ended or *why* they met the people made of paper, or how September
ended up in a new place when I’d just got my head around the previous location.
The Fairyland books are Alice in Wonderland-style adventures where the plot is
moved along by each new location or character, but I felt that book three was a
little too fragmented and may have been improved by a little more plot and a
little less description.
All-in-all it was still a great read and I do look forward
to the next book. I’m also currently reading Valente’s short story collection
The Bread We Eat In Dreams and enjoying it very much.
You can buy The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut theMoon in Two from Barnes and Noble, or, preferably your local independent bookstore.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)