Where the Kids Hunt for the Malamander

Malamander by Thomas Taylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought this book fell far short of its promise. It sounds very cool, very imaginative, but it was headed for a 2-star review from me until it was rescued slightly by the final act.

Young Herbert works in a weird hotel near the ocean for some reason (running the lost and found department, which apparently is a full-time job), and he helps his new friend Violet try to figure out the truth of the Malamander, along with the answer to her parents' disappearance years before. Lots of oddball people know a little about strange mysteries in that strange town, a place that apparently exists on the edge of our real world, but nobody gives them anything very helpful. That's pretty much the whole plot until the last part.

*I* don't much recommend it, though it has a high rating on GR, and it has many sequels that might or might not be better.

It sounded better than this, though. It's a MG magical adventure set in an off-kilter England (I guess?) that feels a little like a Roald Dahl story, where impossible stuff exists alongside an otherwise normal world. (Monsters and magic and curses and the like are real, but most people don't believe in them.) The characters are quirky and mysterious with goofy names, and it feels like there's a lot going on behind the scenes. But most of that quirkiness is just window dressing; it seldom affects the plot in any way. The whole book had the feel of something written on the fly without any plan other than introducing lots of weird people. Almost no loose ends are tied up. Questions are answered half-way at best.

To be fair, I am not the intended audience for this book. But I also am *not* NOT the audience. I have always read kids books for several reasons (including just for fun) and I'm always on the lookout for cool series for MG or YA readers. The blurb for this sounds like a perfect fit for kids who want a kind of magical setting with odd characters and supernatural creatures, which is what I hoped to find. But 3/4 of the book is plodding, aimless meandering that never quite does anything interesting. And the dangerous-ish bad guys that I believed to be like the harmless antagonists you might find in a Scooby Doo cartoon turn out in the end to be violent and deadly in a Voldemort way, giving the whole thing a strange mismatched feel and the reader a bit of whiplash.

Of course, that last bit was the only stuff that was good, as it finally has excellent action, with the characters engaging directly with the bad guys as well as the titular monster for real stakes. If the sequels continue that, I bet they're pretty good. If, however, they follow the pacing of this first book, I can't see why anyone continued reading them. I don't think I'm gonna investigate them, myself.

Recommendation? NO harm in trying it, getting the first book for a reader who seems right for this type of book--with lots of quick chapters and good illustrations. Give it a shot. If they do like it, great, you can line the sequels up for them.

If they don't like it--well, they can't all be winners.

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Where Beowulf Gets a MG Makeover

Beowulf: Dragon Slayer by Rosemary Sutcliff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rosemary Sutcliff is known for her historical novels and retellings aimed mostly at young readers (we would probably call most of them MG, but you could argue YA for them, too). And she was very successful at this. Here is the retelling of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, and I thought it was excellent. Not perfect, IMO, but definitely well done and very entertaining.

This is still a slim book--she hasn't made Beowulf into a long novel. More like a novelette, actually, and with the fine drawings it reads very fast. She has embellished the story somewhat, adding sensory details and some exposition that wasn't in the original, and I love it all. The land around Heorot seems like a place people live instead of a fairytale village. The hall itself is finally kind of visible to me. The battle with Grendel seems more plausible and real. And there are a lot of such details, none of which do damage (as always, IMO) to the original story.

She has removed a couple of digressions, and I think that's wise. They don't really work for a modern audience, especially young readers, and they only slow down the narrative. Otherwise, the whole story is here. The only thing I felt it lacked was a bit more added in; every ounce of world-building she includes improves the story, and I feel there was room for about twice as much as she did. In fact, the story rolls along almost too fast (here and in the original) and could have used a little more breathing space. It could have been 20% or 30% longer without doing the pacing any harm at all.

But what she did really works. The language is still stately and feels old fashioned, but it's nicely comprehensible for average to good readers of a young age. I found it entertaining as an old man who already knows the story, so I'm pretty sure this would work with a lot of kids.

Of course, the only reason I even know of this 1962 book is because it was put on the discard rack at the school where I taught and I picked it up. I think most of the other copies of this book have met a similar fate. Like so many books, I suspect a new edition with a modern cover could be successful again, but there's little chance of that.

Alas.

Recommended for MG (especially) or YA readers who like historical adventures with a touch of supernatural. Or for readers of any age, honestly. I liked it.

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Another New-to-Me Old Timey Writer

Windsor Castle by William Harrison Ainsworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn't know what to expect with this novel. I was hoping for something like Sir Walter Scott, and was pleased to find a lot of that, but it's also something of a fantasy or Gothic novel, and I liked the injection of supernatural. I thought it was a lot of fun.

The plot is a little unconventional; it's sort of the story of Anne Boleyn, but just what happened at Windsor Castle. It starts with her arrival in a big parade, before her marriage to Henry VIII, and ends with her at the block at the Tower (told from the King's perspective, out hunting near Windsor Castle, waiting for the cannons to fire, indicating her death). (Oh, yeah, spoiler--Anne Boleyn gets her head chopped off. Hope I'm not breaking news here.) There's also a section in the middle describing the castle throughout history, much like Hugo does with Notre Dame in Hunchback. It's purely non-fiction, the author talking to his readers, but as a digression it doesn't go on too long. It is odd though.

In between those points, there are several subplots, most of them centering on courtiers and their interactions with a demon or ghost--Herne the Hunter--who has some power in the land around the castle, and uses it to lead ambitious people astray. Anyone who accepts his help is doomed. In a way, his character helps makes sense of the chaos surrounding King Henry, connecting them all in a web of secrets and betrayals.

The ending makes sense, but I would have liked a few threads gathered up. I was hoping the supernatural Herne the Hunter would be destroyed or exorcised or something, but he's untouched at the end of the novel. And some of the subplots are tidied up so early--like 75% of the way through--that I was wondering again by the end how they were doing, if they were happy, if they had kids. A few happy endings near the finale would have eased the pain of the beheadings and other sad outcomes we end with. Still, somehow, even without an HEA it didn't seem like tragedy, though it pretty much was. I guess it feels like Anne had earned her fate, and the dead Catharine was getting her just revenge. So, yay, I guess?

I dunno. It worked for me.

There probably isn't a genre called Historical Gothic, but there should be, because this would fit squarely in it. The writing is clear and forceful, the action is brisk, and most of the plot is realistic, but it is paired with magic and the supernatural, giving it a fantasy feel. I like it.

This novel is not for everybody. I see most readers scored this 3 and under. But I liked it more than that. TBH, I almost gave this 5 stars instead of 4. If there were half points, I'd definitely have gone 4.5. I have several other novels by the author waiting to go that I'm straight up looking forward to reading, with high hopes.

Recommended for readers of Scott and Dumas and the like.

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Think Hellboy as Kolchak in Ohio

Uncanny Collateral by Brian McClellan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was good fun from start to finish.

A novella lives and dies on pacing, IMO--if it's gonna be short, it better be punchy--and I think he's nailed it. Brian McClellan has a knack for breakneck pacing, and it makes this book a fast, fun read.

I like the main character, Alek. He's tough but limited, in some ways. He's brave but not stupid. He's loyal but not blind. Sorta like Hellboy as private eye. And he has some friends and acquaintances that I look forward to seeing again.

The story here works, and shows there's a ton of room for similar tales. Maybe he'll write a bunch (there's one sequel already) and publish them in a big fat paperback, which is my preferred way to get books. For now, ebook is the best choice.

Lots of fun. Imps and shapeshifters and wizards in Ohio. Ya gotta love that!

Well, I did.

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Comedic supernatural mystery. Is that a thing?

A Study in Brimstone by G.S. Denning
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like the premise of this novel. I like most iterations of the Holmes character, anyway, and I'm also a fantasy reader, so it's a natural fit.

I had some misgivings, though. For one, it seemed like Holmes was unsympathetic--at first. I changed my mind later, and enjoyed the role, and started to care about him, but I'm still a little unsure if it really works. (I'm 4/5 sure. 80% sure.)

I am also a little ambivalent about the way it is organized into a series of lightly connected short stories. The overall arc continues through the book, to a degree, but there are several discrete stories here. I kept waiting for characters to return to events from a previous story--such as Groggson's difficult love affair--but I guess when one story's done it's done. Unless book two shows me something else.

Also, slight spoiler--it ends with a cliffhanger. Sort of. I'm opposed to cliffhangers in general; I prefer a book to be self-contained. However, the missing resolution doesn't detract too much for me. Overall, it's a quick read and actually quite fun throughout, and I'm content to look up the next book and keep the story going.

The parodying of Sherlock tropes and titles and plot lines is well done and clever. It reminds me of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (PPZ) and a few others in that vein in the way it combines classic stories with the supernatural, but the tone here is both lighter and more believable. I think that is because Watson is an ordinary person who is not used to vampires and warlocks and trolls any more than we are IRL, and he helps us navigate the extraordinary events. (I liked PPZ, but I prefer the way Watson keeps us grounded.) It's also pretty funny, which I do not usually look for in fantasy, but I liked it here.

In sum--I did have a rather uneven response to the book, especially in the beginning, but I enjoyed it more and more as I went on. It's fun and fast and clever enough that I will go find the next one, and I recommend the series to anyone intrigued by the premise the way I was.

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