Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling

   2007; 784 pages.  Book 7 (out of 7) in the “Harry Potter” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Fantasy; YA; Adventure.  Laurels: Winner – 2007 Newsweek – Best Book; and others.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    It’s showdown time!  A duel to the death between the Boy-Who-Lived and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  Come out fighting and may the best wand win!  Or, for you Muggles out there, a contest of magic between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.

 

    Harry’s definitely the underdog.  Voldemort’s minions have taken over key positions at both Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic.  His Death Eaters are looking high and low for “Undesirable Number One”.  For the moment Harry’s friends are hiding him, but sooner or later his cover will be blown.

 

    Things look bad for the good guys, but Harry’s got one slim hope – destroying the entire set of horcruxes, each of which holds a piece of Voldemort’s soul.  Too bad Harry has no idea where those horcruxes are, what they look like, or how to destroy them even if he does find them.

 

    And we won’t even mention the prophecy.  You know, the one that says the only way Voldemort can be killed is if the Boy-Who-Lived dies also.

 

What’s To Like...

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the seventh, and final, book in J.K. Rowling’s fabulous Harry Potter series, although there are some supplementary screenplays and short story collections for diehard fans.  The overall tone of the series continues to get darker, but that’s not surprising for a “showdown” story.

 

    Once again there are a bunch of riddles and mysteries for Harry and his two closest friends – Ron and Hermione – to solve:  What is “Grindelwald’s Mark”?  What is the Sign of the Deathly Hallows?  Who is the mysterious “R.A.B.”?  Where is the Sword of Godric Gryffindor?  And possibly most important of all, who is the owner of the Silver Doe Patronus?

 

    In addition to the riddle-solving, the horcrux-finding, and the Harry/Voldemort main storyline, there are a gazillion other characters with their own secondary plotlines to be tied up.  J.K. Rowling does an amazing job of this, devoting much of the first half of the book to do so.  You’ll come away with a good idea of what happens to the Dursleys, the ghosts, the house-elves, the centaurs, all the Weasley siblings, and even the owls after the series ends.

 

    I liked the drawings at the beginning of each chapter, as well as the captivating “Tale of the Three Brothers”, from whence comes the book’s title.  There are also plenty of spells and magic gizmos to marvel at; my favorites being the Polyjuice Potion and the Extendable Ears.  And it’s always a treat to have Peeves, Dobby, and Hagrid show up in a scene.

 

    The ending is, as expected, fantastic.  Everything builds to an epic, action-packed, several-chapters-long, final battle.  Most (but not all) of the good guys survive; most (but not all) of the bad guys are vanquished, and the series-long question of whether Snape is a white-hat or a black-hat is finally resolved.  Things close with an Epilogue, which takes place nineteen years later, and which left me misty-eyed.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.9*/5, based on 37,157 ratings and 6,133 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.57*/5, based on 3,288,633 ratings and 75,366 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I couldn’t think what to get you,” she said.

    “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

    She disregarded this too.

    “I didn’t know what would be useful.  Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.”

    He chanced a glance at her.  She was not tearful, that was one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely weepy.  He had sometimes thought that having six brothers must have toughened her up.  (loc. 1522)

 

    “His knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry!  That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend.  Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing.  Nothing.  That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.”  (loc. 8996)

 Kindle Details…

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sells for $9.99 right now, as do the other six books in the series.

“Imagine if something went wrong and we were stuck as specky, scrawny gits forever.”  (loc. 672)

    It’s hard to find nits to pick about anything in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  As usual, there’s a small amount of cussing – I counted eleven in the first 50% of the book – and most of them are variations of the mild “hell” and “damn” invectives.  Oh, and Harry gets kissed once, but he’ll remember it for a long time.

 

    The book screams for a “Cast of Characters” section, but to be fair, in the Kindle version, which is what I read, when you click on someone’s name, even a minor player, it usually sends you to a link with a background about him/her/it.

 

    Finally, for those who loved the Quidditch and Hogwarts classroom antics in the earlier books, it should be noted that this book contains nary a trace of either.

 

    9 Stars.  It’s taken 20 years or so, but I’ve made it through the entire Harry Potter series.  I read them all in order and the first one in French.  This is a great series, one that keeps both YA readers and adults thoroughly entertained.  The Epilogue could possibly be used as the basis for a sequel, but J.K. Rowling hasn’t done so in the intervening fifteen years, and frankly, I think that was the correct decision on her part.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling

   2005; 652 pages.  Book 6 (out of 7) in the “Harry Potter” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Fantasy; YA; Adventure.  Laurels: Winner – 2006 British Book of the Year Award; 2006 Royal Mail Award for Scottish Children’s Books for Ages 8-12; 2005 Quill Award for Best Book of the Year.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    It’s going to be a good year at Hogwarts for Harry Potter.

 

    For starters, he’s entering his sixth year there, and I guess he’s now an upperclassman, since the normal full term for studying there is seven years.  That means he's now eligible to take Apparition lessons, the somewhat dangerous but extremely useful art of disappearing from one spot (“disapparating”) and popping up someplace else (“apparating”).

 

    Harry’s also been appointed to be the Quidditch captain for House Gryffindor.  The upside to that is that those who want to be on the team will be sucking up to him.  The downside is that those who don’t make the team might hold it against him.

 

    Then there’s the rumor flying around Hogwarts that Harry’s “The Chosen One”.  That happens to be true, but it also means everybody’s going to be looking at him like he’s some sort of freak.  Except for Headmaster Dumbledore, who's said he'll be giving Harry one-on-one lessons on the things he needs to know in order to fulfill “the Prophecy”.

 

    Good luck, Harry.  You might not like some of that information that Dumbledore's going to impart.

 

What’s To Like...

    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth, and next-to-last, book in J.K. Rowlings’ ultra-popular fantasy series and for Hogwarts habitués that means the times they are a-changin'.  A lot of background information about Lord Voldemort’s rise to infamy is revealed to Harry, courtesy of Dumbledore’s “Pensieve”, which gets used extensively here.  The final showdown is approaching, and Harry needs to prepare for it as best he can.

 

    At the same time, Harry and his friends are growing up, and feelings of “teen love” are sprouting up all over the place.  Quidditch takes a back seat: Gryffindor’s final and deciding game is missed entirely by both Harry and the reader.  The Order of the Phoenix plays a lesser role than in the previous book, as do Hagrid and the House Elves.  Classes outside of the Apparition lessons and Potions receive less attention, giving way to a frantic research effort to figure out what horcruxes are.  The tone of the book is understandably dark, although some bright spots still shine through, such as Arthur's term -of-endearment, "Mollywobbles".

 

    As always, J.K. Rowling weaves together a bunch of plot threads to keep you turning the pages.  These include: a.) how did Dumbledore injure his hand, b.) what mysterious dark object is Draco trying to get repaired, c.) who poisoned Katie Bell and Ron Weasley, d.) how and why does Draco periodically disappear, e.) who’s side is Snape on and what is his “Unbreakable Vow, f.) what memories is Slughorn hiding, and g.) why is Harry having trouble getting into the Room of Requirement?  But the most important question of all is: who is/was the Half-Blood Prince?  It is a credit to J.K. Rowling’s writing ability that all these threads are addressed and answered.

 

    There are a slew of characters and critters, both new and recurring, to cross paths with.  I thought there was a subtle object lesson in how Fleur was treated.  Anglicized spellings are nicely converted to American-ese, but British phrases remain untouched, including wotcher, wozzgoinon, pip pip, innit, Blimey, taking a shufti, and a dab hand.  Really, fellow Americans, we need to assimilate those into Yank-Speak, especially that last one which I’d never heard of before until encountering it twice in the past two months in books I was reading.

 

    The ending is both somber but satisfying.  None of the main baddies get their comeuppances, but the overarching “good-vs.-evil” conflict is now in the spotlight, and we get a glimpse of what is coming in Book Seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  I for one am looking forward to it.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Shufti (n.) : a look or reconnoiter, especially a quick one (a Britishism).

Others: Prat (British, slang); Satsuma (n.); Tea Cozy (n., phrase).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.9*/5, based on 27,206 ratings and 7,916 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.57*/5, based on 2,500,382 ratings and 44,933 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Harry could not get near the shelves.  He stared around, looking up at the boxes piled to the ceiling: Here were the Skiving Snackboxes that the twins had perfected during their last, unfinished year at Hogwarts; Harry noticed that the Nosebleed Nougat was most popular, with only one battered box left on the shelf.  There were bins full of trick wands, the cheapest merely turning into rubber chickens or pairs of briefs when waved, the most expensive beating the unwary user around the head and neck, and boxes of quills, which came in Self-Inking, Spell-Checking, and Smart-Answer varieties.  (pg. 116)

 

    “I haven’t found one single explanation of what Horcruxes do!” she told him.  “Not a single one!  I’ve been right through the restricted section and even in the most horrible books, where they tell you how to brew the most gruesome potions — nothing!  All I could find was this, in the introduction to Magick Moste Evile — listen — ‘Of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction. . . .’  I mean, why mention it then?”  (pg. 381)

 

“And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”  (pg. 56)

    There’s very little to nitpick about with a megahit like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  It is sometimes labeled a “children’s fantasy” book, but I think “YA fantasy” is more fitting.  The book is incredibly clean – I noted just five instances in the entire book, and those were limited to three “hells” and a pair of “damns”.

 

    One minor plot thread is left unresolved: the identity of the mysterious “R.A.B.” who absconded with a horcrux and left a note for Voldemort.  But I assume this was deliberate, as it also serves as a teaser for the next book.

 

    My last quibble is both the biggest and the shortest: the fox dies. (pg. 20).

 

    9 Stars.  To put things in perspective, Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince set records both for Amazon pre-orders (1.4 million copies) and sales within the first 24 hours after release (9 million copies) on July 16, 2005.  That latter record would last for two years before being shattered by – guess what – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

All Things True - Greg James

   2018; 102 pages.  Book 3 of “The Chronicles of Willow Grey” trilogy.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Young Adult Dark Fantasy Adventure (per the author and sounds good to me); Coming of Age.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    The Voyage of the Pale Ship is over; young Willow Grey has returned to Tirlane!  Or what’s left of it, after the evil Lamia and her unstoppable minions have devastated the fair land, killing anything and every living thing they can find.  Vibrant, green plant life has been reduced to brown-black dead fields, and the corpses of animals, large and small, lie strewn everywhere.

     A few creatures remain alive: mostly those that are fleet of foot and have found handy places to hide from the marauding predators.  Willow hopes to come across some of these, to aid her in her quest, since her beloved mentor, guide, and most of all, friend in this strange world, Henu the Wealdsman, did not make it to the end of the voyage on the Pale Ship.  Now Willow must face her Fate alone.

    Alas, only Doom lies ahead for her.  The Lamia is many times more powerful than Willow, and commands legions of fearsome and merciless beasts to do her evil bidding without question.  Yet it is Willow’s lot to face the Lamia in a battle to the death.

    It’s a struggle that Willow cannot win, and the outcome can only be her death.  Yet the puzzling words uttered by both Henu and the wise old healer Starababa keep echoing in Willow’s mind.

    “Your time with us is nearly over.  Remember, it is not death if you accept it.”

What’s To Like...

    All Things True is the final episode in the trilogy The Chronicles of Willow Grey.  The author labels it a “Young Adult Dark Fantasy Adventure”, and that seems apt to me.  The tension has been building for two books now, and it is time to face the Lamia.

    The storytelling style is the same as in the other two books:  there are lots of critters to meet and greet (most of which are deadly), lots of places to visit, zero slow spots, and lots of magical objects to ooh-&-aah over, including the thule which every creature good and evil covets.

    The amazing thing is that Greg James packs all of this, including the final showdown, into 102 pages, which my Kindle says I should be able to read in just slightly more than one hour.  That makes it a novella, but don’t think of it as a quick read for a book report that’s due tomorrow – this is not a standalone novel, and there isn’t much of a backstory supplied, so you'd have to read the whole trilogy.  Indeed, since the other two books in the series are each less than 200 pages in length, this series screams to be marketed as a bundle.

    There aren’t a lot of characters to keep track of, and since there’s a war-to-the-death going on, the mortality rate is somewhat steep.  Willow finds a couple new companions to aid her in her quest, and the lessons she’s learned during her voyage with Henu have turned her into a formidable mage, at least when confronted with beasts other than the Lamia.

    The book is written in English, not American, which I always enjoy.  So things are meagre, feathers may be moulted, and you might apologise for your lack of armour.  The 102 pages are divided into 17 chapters, and a beautiful poem that serves as the Epilogue.  This is a YA book; I recall only a single cussword: at one point an evil critter calls Willow a “bitchling”.

    There are some neat extras at the back, including a map of Tirlane and a glossary, which comes in quite handy, even for those of us who have read the earlier books.  The Table of Contents is also there, and I can't for the life of me figure out why that wasn’t at the front of the book.

Excerpts...

    “She’s still here then?”

    “She will be until the last trace of life has left Tirlane,” Nastonik said, “which could be any day now.  The Behemoths will not rest until they have consumed everything that draws breath.”

    “D’you think she can help us stop them?”

    “Stop them?  My, my, you are either ambitious, or very stupid,” Nastonik said.

    “You don’t have to be rude.”

    “I am merely blunt.  A Beorhan says what a Beorhan sees.”  (loc. 535)

    “I’m surrounded by nothing but death.  Viril and Nastonik, I fear I will lose them too.”

    “Then, you must lose that fear and let it go.  Fear is a part of life but if we live according to it, that is no life at all.  It is said our time is like a narrow sliver of light, much like this candle’s flame, caught between two kinds of greater darkness; the time before we are born and the time after we are gone.  All we have is this and so often we spend it unwisely.”  (loc. 569)

Kindle Details...

    All Things True currently sells for $2.99 at Amazon, the same price as the other two books in the series, The Door of Dreams and The Voyage of the Pale Ship.  Greg James has a slew of other novels, novellas, and novelettes available, all of them in the $0.99 - $2.99 range.

 “Were you thinking bringing home a two-legged stray would be enough of a good deed to make the rain turn to vittles?”  (loc  113)

    Ah yes, what to say about the ending without lapsing into spoilers?

    It is a satisfying conclusion to everything that’s been building for three books now.  It contains a twist that I can only describe as stunning, yet is, in retrospect, quite logical.  It is powerful and poignant; at the same time both positive and dark.  Chapters 16 and 17, plus the Epilogue poem, left a lump in my throat even as they reconciled all the strange things that have been happening since the first page of Book One.

    Okay.  I’m done gushing now.  You can read the reviews of the first two books in the series here and here.

    9 Stars.  I'm guessing, but I get the feeling that The Chronicles of Willow Grey is a Labor of Love by the author, possibly for one Natalie Kaleva, to whom this book is dedicated.  All Things True particularly resonated with me, as I have recently experienced a similar situation in my life.

    Then again, it all could be just a storyline that Greg James dreamed up, and he’s simply that skilled of a writer.

Dragon Teeth - Michael Crichton

   2017 (1974, actually); 333 pages.  New Author? : Of course not.  Genre : Coming-of-Age; Action; Western Adventure; Archaeology.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    William Johnson has it made.  He’s 18 years old, from a well-to-do family, and a freshman at prestigious Yale University.  Like most freshmen, he is shy around girls, and prone to doing stupid things in his spare time, such as making idle bets with other, equally well-off students.

    Othniel Charles Marsh is a professor at Yale and a leading expert in the new field of paleontology.  Dinosaurs, or to be more exact, dinosaur bones, are a recent discovery and are all the rage in archaeology right now.  Marsh’s hobby during summer break is to fund a trek by a select group of Yale students out into the wild and untamed west in search of dinosaur bones.

     Johnson has no interest in joining in on such an adventure.  His goal for summer break is to lay around the mansion.  But a thousand-dollar bet with a rival classmate over whether he’s too chicken to go along on Marsh’s expedition changes things.  That’s a lot of money, even for a spoiled rich kid.

    Which is why, William Johnson, writing in his journal, remarks that, “I realized that, through no fault of my own, I would now spend the entire summer in some ghastly hot desert in the company of a known lunatic, digging up old bones.”

What’s To Like...

    Dragon Teeth was published in 2017, nine years after Michael Crichton died.  This may seem preposterous, but he actually wrote it in 1974, and it languished as an early effort that he chose not to have published.  Sixteen years after penning this tale, Jurassic Park was published, and I'm pretty sure Crichton forgot all about this manuscript.

    Genre-wise, this is first and foremost a coming-of-age tale.  Johnson starts out as a spoiled brat, and comes back a mature man.  Wikipedia calls it a “forerunner to Jurassic Park”, but if you read it in hopes that velociraptors will go stomping around, chomping on puny humans, you are going to be sore disappointed. Instead, it is a tale of an adventure out West, with some paleontology thrown in as an added bonus.

    This may be a rookie effort, but Michael Crichton’s writing skills are already evident.  You get a nice “feel” for frontier life in the 1870’s, and his descriptions are blended smoothly with his research about the wild West, digging for dinosaur fossils, and boom towns springing up anywhere that gold was found.  The Sioux are still on the warpath, and Custer is about to be made aware of that fact.

    The chapters are short, of James Patterson-ish length.  They are neither numbered nor listed in the front, but each one has a descriptive title to clue you in as to what’s about to occur.  There’s a map at the front of the book, which helped me keep track of where the fossil-hunters were traipsing around, although its resolution is poor.  There are a couple cusswords, but that’s about it for R-rated stuff.  Both Johnson and I enjoyed meeting Emily Williams, or whatever her name really was.

    I really liked the photography sections of the story.  There was no such thing as film, a store nearby that would develop your pictures, or digital cameras.  My father had his own darkroom, and I used to assist him in developing film into slides.  My grandfather had some ancient photographs, on old sepia-colored glass plates, which are referenced here.  This brought back some great memories for me.

    Michael Crichton weaves his insights about some subtle topics into the storyline, most notably some thoughts about Science-vs-Religion (pgs 132-35), and blind faith (pgs 174-5).  And if you're a dyed-in-the-wool anarchist, Deadwood Gulch is your kind of town.  Imagine living in a place where there are no rules, laws, and/or enforcement agencies.  Surely, this is Anarchist Paradise.

    The ending is satisfying, albeit not overly exciting.  Appended to the story are a couple neat extra sections:  a Postscript, in which Crichton tells you what happened to some of the real-life figures encounters in the story; an Author’s Note, where he separates fact from fiction, and a touching Afterword from his widowed wife, giving some background about Michael and this book, and leaving a lump in my throat.

Kewlest New Word ...

Nymphs du pave (n.; phrase) : a streetwalker; a prostitute who solicits in the street.  (French for “nymph of the pavement”)

Excerpts...

    “You are saying this Neander skull is human?” Morton said.

    “I don’t know,” Cope said.  “But I do not see how one can believe that dinosaurs evolved, and reptiles evolved, and mammals such as the horse evolved, but that man sprang fully developed without antecedents.”

    “Aren’t you a Quaker, Professor Cope?” (…)

    “I may not be,” Cope said.  Religion explains what man cannot explain.  But when I see something before my eyes, and my religion hastens to assure me that I am mistaken, that I do not see at all … No, I may no longer be a Quaker, after all.”  (pg. 169)

    “And me?”

    “You’re different,” she said.  “You’re brave, but you are also refined.  I bet you kiss real refined, too.”

    She was waiting.

    “I learned,” Johnson wrote in his journal, “one immediate lesson, which was the unwisdom of kissing aboard a bucking stagecoach.  My lip was deeply bitten and the blood flowed freely, which inhibited, but did not stop, further explorations of this nature.”  (pg. 303)

I still regard three months in the West in much the same way I would three months forced attendance at the German Opera.  (pg. 20 )

    The quibbles are minor.  The thrills and spills don’t really start until about halfway through the book, so after a hundred pages or so, I was beginning to wonder if all we were going to do was ride around the countryside and dig up fossils.  Yet Michael Crichton can make even that interesting, whic is no small feat.

    The pacing is moderate, which is okay for a coming-of-age story.  And a glaring deus ex machina popped up when our protagonist, having lost all his photographic equipment and having no useful skills with which to earn some money in Deadwood Gulch, has the good fortune to learn that a previous resident, also a photographer, had perished in the wilds, but miraculously left all of his equipment behind in the town.  The townspeople, who rob and steal and loan-shark without a second thought, have conveniently left all those photographic plates and chemicals untouched, and now give them to Johnson for fre.

    But I pick at nits.  Dragon Teeth was an extremely quick and easy read, with a catchy plotline and a well-researched setting.  It may not be Crichton at his best (that wouldn’t happen for another 16 years), but it was still a delightful read.

    7½ Stars.  I rarely read Westerns, but if it's written by Michael Crichton, I'll make an exception.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling

   1998; 341 pages.  Book 2 (out of 7) in the Harry Potter series.  New Author? : No; well, yes, if you don’t count reading the French translation of Book 1.  Genre : YA; Adventure; Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    Yippee!  Summer vacation’s almost over, and it’s almost time to go back to school!

   Well, there aren’t many kids that would have such a sentiment, but Harry Potter happens to be one of the few.  That’s because he has to spend his summers with Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and their brat for a son, Dudley.  Harry’s owl is confined to a cage, his wand is locked away, and he’s forbidden to even utter the word M-word (“magic”), let alone practice it.  For a magician like Harry, living among Muggles (those devoid of any magic powers) can be sheer drudgery.

    So it is a welcome relief from the tedium when a magical being comes to visit Harry.  A sprightly little house-elf named Dobby.  Unfortunately, Dobby bears a message for Harry, and it is not the cheeriest one to receive.

    “Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts.  Harry Potter must stay where he is safe.  He is too great, too good, to lose.”

What’s To Like...

    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets chronicles the sophomore year of Harry, Hermione, and Ron at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, hereafter known simply as “Hogwarts”.  There’s a short backstory (pages 2-4) which came in handy for me, since it’s been at least 15 years since I read Book 1.  The book is a quick and easy read, which is the ideal for a YA novel.  The pacing is brisk (for the most part), yet somehow the various characters get nicely developed alongside the constant action.

    Speaking of characters, there are a slew of them.  I think most of them are repeats from the first book – Harry’s family members, the Weasley family, his fellow students, and the professors and employees at Hogwarts.  If you have all those already locked in your memory cells, keeping track of the new ones will be a breeze.  Each of the 18 chapters in my book leads off with a kewl drawing, although your version may or may not have those.

    J.K. Rowling spins a variety of neat fantasy critters into the story, including gnomes, ghouls, pixies, a boarhound, ghosts, a poltergeist, and even a phoenix.  The obligatory quidditch match starts on page 107, and I chuckled at things like floo powder, a red howler, a “Deathday Party”, and the pejorative “Mudbloods”.  There are also rib-tickling puns woven into the text; for instance, a pair shady streets called Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley.

    The storyline thread dealing with the titular Chamber of Secrets doesn't get started until page 138.  The main mysteries for Harry to solve are: a.) who opened it 50 years ago, b.) who just opened it again, c.) what sort of evilness has been unleashed, and d.) where dwelleth that evil?  The threads of this plotline are laid out meticulously, with a bunch of clues for Harry (and the reader) to ponder.  For instance, it becomes obvious at a certain point that a trail of spiders is a vital clue, but what exactly does it mean?

    I liked that not everything is as it seems, and that sometimes Harry and his friends are wrong in their suspicions.  The ending will be exciting for both adult and YA readers.  All the threads get tied up nicely.  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.

Excerpts...

    “You’re making fun of me,” she said, silver tears welling rapidly in her small, see-through eyes.

    “No – honestly – didn’t I just say how nice Myrtle’s looking?” said Hermione, nudging Harry and Ron painfully in the ribs.

    “Oh yeah –“

    “She did –“

     “Don’t lie to me,” Myrtle gasped, tears now flooding down her face, while Peeves chuckled happily over her shoulder.  “D’you think I don’t know what people call me behind my back?  Fat Myrtle!  Ugly Myrtle!  Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!”

    “You’ve forgotten pimply,” Peeves hissed in her ear.  (pg. 134)

    “Are you crazy?” said Ron.  “It could be dangerous.”

    “Dangerous?” said Harry, laughing.  “Come off it, how could it be dangerous?”

    “You’d be surprised,” said Ron, who was looking apprehensively at the book.  “Some of the books the Ministry’s confiscated – Dad’s told me – there was one that burned your eyes out.  And everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives.  And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading!  You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one-handed. And –“

    “All right, I’ve got the point,” said Harry.  (pg. 230)

 “Peskipiksi Pesternomi!”  (pg. 102)

    It’s hard to nitpick a book that has garnered eye-poppingly phenomenal ratings at both Amazon and GoodReads.  But here are a couple:

    It takes a while for the main thread to get going, and that in turn made for a couple mildly slow spots in the early going.  But that also coincided with how far I had read this book in French years ago: up to about page 68.  Once I got to “new” chapters, the slow spots disappeared.  Maybe there’s a lesson there about going back and re-reading books.

    There are several dei ex machina (I had to go look up what the plural of deus ex machina was) in the story, and that may lead to some rolling of the eyes of adult readers.  But methinks YA readers won’t give a Hedwig hoot about those.

    That’s about it.  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets turned out to be a fun-filled read, even though I’m not in the target audience.  It brought back great memories of plowing through the first book in French, which expanded my FSL ("French as a Second Language") vocabulary considerably, and which included some head-scratching translations of non-translatable words, such as “Muggles” which become “Moldus” in French.

    9 Stars.  Some review/rating stats for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:  Amazon: 59,756 reviews.  50,252 5-Star reviews (84%).  Goodreads: 2,022,151 ratings, 37,104 reviews.  1,142,526 5-Star ratings (56%).  Note: The Amazon reviews are weirdly identical with the ratings of 4 or 5 of the other ones in the series.  I’m not sure why it’s that way.

Voyage of the Pale Ship - Greg James

   2017; 89 pages.  Book 2 (out of 2, so far) of “The Chronicles of Willow Grey” series, presumably, soon to be a trilogy.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Young Adult Fantasy Adventure (per the author).  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    Destiny awaits Willow Grey, the Chosen One.  Sooner or later, she has to face the Lamia.  But not just yet.  For she's just a novice when it comes to magic and weapons, and when to use them and when other means of persuasion are a more prudent solution.

    It’s a good thing Henu the Wealdsman is with her.  He knows the land of Tirlane, and he has the magic elixir, stardraught to help him with his spells.  Sad to say, they’re about to leave Tirlane, and journey out into the Bound Sea, and this is new territory for both of them.

    But the Pale Ship awaits them, and it will guide them to the places Fate wants them to go to.  And since the ship steers itself (well, technically, the cerulethe does the steering but let’s not split hairs), the lack of a crew is not a hindrance.  So there’s nothing to do but get on with it, and face whatever lies in store for both of them.

    Even if it is their deaths.

What’s To Like...

    Voyage of the Pale Ship continues the chronicles of Willow Grey, a young girl who has stumbled into a strange, and sometimes brutal, fantasy world.  It is 89 pages long, so it’s really a novella, not a full-length book.  Still, it has plenty of action, and will therefore probably appeal to YA boys as well as girls.

    There’s a very handy glossary, listing both the characters and places in the tale, at the back of the book.  For a change, I was savvy enough to bookmark it before I started reading the story.  There’s also a map back there, but I didn’t use it much; the story is essentially Henu and Willow sailing along to wherever the Pale Ship decides to take them.  It would’ve been nice to have a short “The Story So Far” blurb, as it’s been a year since I read the first book.  But I went back and reread the last section of The Door of Dreams (reviewed here), and that caught me up to speed nicely.

    Willow and Henu cross paths with some kewl beasties along the way, among which are a kraken, a giant, some No Men, harpies, and a couple of blokes that reminded me of the trolls that Bilbo Baggins encounters in The Hobbit.  If curses and magic are your cup of tea, you’ve come to the right tale.

    The main storyline is Willow growing into her new-to-her role.  Besides learning what her magical short sword is capable of, Willow also has a bunch of situational ethics thrown her way, and I always like those.  Sometimes you just have to thwack the baddie, other times a bit of compassion is a much better tactic. 

    The book is written in English, not American, so you run across words like harbour, recognisably, no-one, etc.  I’m quite partial to books written in English.  There is some R-rated stuff: a few cuss words, a couple of attempted sexual assaults, and the subject of cannibalism.  I assume these are all okay for YA readers, but I’d think twice before letting a juvenile read it.

    The ending has a couple of twists that I didn’t see coming, and presumably sets up the showdown with the Lamia in the next book.  This is not a standalone book; you really should read The Door of Dreams first.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Cantrip (n.)  :  a mischievous or playful act; a trick.  (a Scotticism)

Excerpts...

    The woman was about to scream when Willow jumped on her and covered her mouth with both hands.  The sound that came out was a muffled squawk.  “Be quiet,” Willow said, “all we want is your clothes.  We won’t hurt you, I promise, okay?”

    The woman bit into the palm of Willow’s hand.  (loc. 293)

    Bhorak told Willow their story as he sharpened the mottled knives.  “An old wizard made us ages ago.  The perfect warriors, so he thought, because when we get hurt, all we need to do is eat someone else’s bits and we grow back what we lost.  See my eyes, my ears, my teeth?  All belonged to some other bugger once.  We are what we eat.”

    That’s so gross, she thought.

    Tharn laughed.  Yeah, the wizard wasn’t too impressed when we ate him.”  (loc. 654)

Kindle Details...

    Voyage of the Pale Ship sells for $2.99 at Amazon, although I snagged it when it was temporarily discounted to $0.99.  The first book in the series, The Door of Dreams also sells for $2.99.  Greg James has a slew of other e-books available.  Most of the novels are $2.99, but if it’s the first book in a trilogy it’s often free.  He also has several e-novellas available, which are in the 50-120 page range, and go for $1.99.

 “What’s with the cats?”  (loc  183)

    Full disclosure: I am not keen on novellas.  I tend to pass on any book that’s less than 180 pages long, and prefer ones that are 250-450 pages in length.  The only other novella I’ve read is reviewed here.

    The inherent problem with novellas (novellae?) is there are just not enough pages to develop any depth – in plotlines, in characters, in the tension.  For instance, here (if I counted correctly), there are 9 action-packed “trials” for Willow and Henu, but in a book with only 89 pages, each one is over before it has a chance to resonate with the reader.

    When you do the pages-per-action math, there’s simply no time for any tension to develop.  And it has to be said, if you’re a baddie facing a wizard with stardraught and a hero with a magic sword, odds are that your demise will come in a very short period of time.  I pity the fiend who  picks a fight with these two.

    To boot, being OCD, I tend to deliberately slow down my reading sessions when I’m reading a short book.  I’m a firm believer in the adage “Read a book in a day; forget it in a week.  Read a book in a week, remember it for months.”  So I read Voyage of the Pale Ship in 10-to-20-page slices.  In retrospect, I have a feeling I should’ve read it in one sitting.

    7 Stars.  Listen, despite its brevity, I enjoyed this book, and was happy to read the next segment in this series.  Add 1 star if you’re a Young Adult and have a book report due tomorrow.  Voyage of the Pale Ship just might save your bacon.  Add another 1 star if you happen to like novellas. 

Nation - Terry Pratchett

2008; 370 pages.  Genre : YA Fiction; Adventure.  New Author? : No.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    In the 19th-century South Pacific (known here as the "South Pelagic") a huge tsunami inundates an island village, leaving only one boy, Mau, as a survivor.   The killer wave also destroys an English sailing ship, depositing its wreckage on the same island, including a single survivor - a highborn girl, Ermintrude (aka "Daphne").

    Will the two castaways manage to  learn to communicate?  To survive?  To help the other refugees that straggle in?  To deal with the pirates that are prowling the area?

What's To Like...
    Nation is not part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.  It is darker, and deals with more serious and complex issues than are encountered in Ankh-Morpork.  And while there is some Pratchettian humor (most notably a salty-tongued parrot), it is overall less silly in nature.

    The tale plods for a bit as we get through the "Robinson Crusoe" phase, but picks up nicely with the arrival of others, along with Mau and Daphne's exploration of the island.  When the bad guys show up, things really get cooking.  This is also a coming-of-age story, but nothing unseemly.  Indeed, Nation is a YA book, though adults will enjoy it too.

    Pratchett weaves some nice twists into the storyline, and just when you think you've reached the climax, he shows you that isn't what he considers to be the main ending at all.

Kewlest New Word...
Crosier : a staff surmounted with a crook or cross, carried by bishops as a symbol of their office.

Excerpts...
    "She is a lady indeed, although my limited experience of her suggests that she is also a mixture of the warrior queen Boadicea without the chariot, Catherine de'Medici without the poisoned rings, and Attila the Hun without his wonderful sense of fun.  Do not play cards with her, because she cheats like a Mississippi bustout dealer, keep sherry away from her, do everything she says, and we might all live."
    "Sharp tongue, eh?"
    "Razor blade, Captain."  (pg. 9)

    "Why did the wave spare you?  Why did it spare me?  Why did it spare that baby which will die soon enough?  Why does it rain?  How many stars are in the sky?  We cannot know these things!  Just be thankful the gods spared your life!" shouted the old man.
    "I will not!  To thank them for my life means I thank them for the deaths."  (pg. 102)

Magic is just a way of saying "I don't know."  (pg. 157)
    How do you measure "civilization"?  If a country can make warships and cannons, and sail around the earth;  is it more "civilized" than one that uses spears and dugout canoes to live off the land; and can only travel among a chain of islands?

    Are our "western" deities superior to "nature' or "elemental" ones?  Are they more valid?  Where do natural disasters like a tsunami fit in with a supernatural plan?  Can any gods coexist with science?

    What is the balance between personal aspirations and duty to one's country?  Is a monarch freer or more confined by his role than you and I?  Finally, what priority does love have in all this?

    These are all good questions, and all get evenly addressed here, although Pratchett leaves it to you to determine the answers.  Nation is a worthy read for anyone over about 12 years old and will leave you with lots to ponder.  9 Stars.