A dystopian young adult novel and R.I.P.

The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins

Last week I finally got round to reading The Hunger Games, a disturbing dystopia tale set in a world of persecution and exploitation, where reality television is carried to its frightening and entirely logical conclusion.  In this world, what was once North America has been transformed into an exploitative dictatorship where the society is divided into districts based on what they produce, those districts are then forced each year to send two of their young residents to participate in what is the society's equivalent of gladiatorial games.  A ritual designed to maintain fear and control in a subjugated society. 

The main character, Katniss volunteers to take her younger sister's place when she is selected as one of district twelve's two tributes.  The idea of young tributes selected and sent to appease the capital's appetite for violence is very reminiscent of the classical Greek tale of the Minotaur, where Athens is forced to send tributes to Crete to appease the blood lust of the monster but even by classical standards this is a bloody and violent tale.  This is a world where each district must send two tributes each, a boy and a girl, chosen from amongst their youngest and most vulnerable members to be transported to a unique arena to literally fight to the death, forced to kill each other not only in order survive themselves but also in order to ensure the safety of their communities and families back home, and all of this dramatic violence is televised for the entertainment of the capital and the society at large, a  kind of Logan's Run for this generation, or a televised Lord of the Flies, Survivor with real consequences.

This is a dark and dramatic, if essentially simple tale, Collins throws in some romance in a love story, sub plot between the two adolescents from district twelve but even this romance is something the capital essentially seeks to exploit for entertainment.  Mutation and genetic engineering also feature within this dystopian mythology.  The big brother themantics of 1984 are also a feature of this dark thriller.  Certainly this is a very pacy narrative, one that grabs the reader and demands their continued attention until the very end, the end of this book is, however, not the end, as the story continues into two more titles making up a trilogy, I must admit I am intrigued to know how Collings will resolve this dark drama.  Will the districts rebel and ultimately overthrow the capital or will the story continue at the merely personal level?  This is an interesting young adult title, interesting for the dark nature of the story line as much for the gripping quality of the narrative.  Collings effectively draws the reader into Katniss'world making this a very diverting novel, compelling and hard to escape.

I have not yet read my second R.I.P.  novel and while I have a couple of books  on the shelves that might satisfy the criteria, I think I could safely count The Hunger Games as a R.I.P. title, certainly it is a thriller and a kind of dark fantasy set as it is a disturbing dystopian future where the state forces children to kill while it also engineers monsters to add to the bloody drama of their conflicts.

A quick catch up on the week's reading

A.C. Swinburne: A Poet's Life
by Ricky Rooksby

A relatively brief and disciplined biography.  The book makes liberal reference to Swinburne's own creative output and thus gives insight into not only the life of the poet but importantly into his work. A unique and eccentric figure his life makes for interesting reading.  Swinburne's involvement with other leading figures of the age such as the Pre-Raphaelite circle, Monckton Milnes and Richard Francis Burton means this book offers insight into the avant-garde culture of the time.  If this book has a  flaw it is in its heavy dependence on biographical criticism making it perhaps to academic for the merely curious reader.  This book has fuelled my curiosity about Swinburne and his work.

The Apothecary
by Maile Meloy

This was another school/work related read.  I do try to keep up with new young adult fiction and I must admit to being drawn to the cover of this title.  Essentially the premise of the novel revolves around Janie an American girl having to move to London with her parents who have left the McCarthy fuelled hysteria of cold war America.  Once in London Janie discovers magic and mystery in unexpected places as well as friendship in face of threat and challenge.  Much of the story involves an ancient and magical book the Pharmacopoeia, a book that contains the means to achieve some magical results including the ability to turn into birds.  This book certainly sounded and looked as if it would be a great read but  I must admit that while it was a diverting enough read it has not proved particularly memorable.  Certainly the setting of 1950s post war, cold war Britain was novel but not particularly convincing or compelling.   I suspect this novel would have had greater appeal to a younger reader, it was well executed and the historical setting may have been more convincing and more interesting for a younger reader.

YA reading, a romance and the path to discernment.

Wings
by Aprilynne Pike

Again this is just a quick update my recent reading post.  Wings is a young adult paranormal romance novel a couple of the kids at school had me read, not a novel I would have chosen for myself, I can however, see why it appeals to them.  It has drama and romance, an easy accessible prose style and magic, lots and lots of magic, not always plausible but with big teenage girl appeal.  The main character has recently moved to a new school and seems to be developing an unusual problem, she is sprouting leaves.  Is she becoming a plant or something all together more magical?  Fairies and trolls feature, a relationship with a boy at school and an another encounter with an apparently fairy boy, complicate the plot, while primarily the main character has to thwart the evil plans of trolls.  Overall this is a pretty mediocre book to say the least, the prose is pedestrian at best, the plot is silly  and the characterisation is simplistic and predictable.   
I don't want to sound like too much of a snob about this book, but to put it briefly, it is just a Twilight clone that replaces vampires with fairies, literature it is not.  Is it a bad book?  Well it certainly is not a good book but then, it is what it is.  If it entertains a teenager and keeps them reading, stimulates their imagination and curiosity then it is a good thing, it becomes merely a step in their reading development, a building block to discernment and reading maturity, such books are necessary, how else will kids learn to appreciate truly great books if they do not have the privilege of reading many and varied books on their reading journey, at least this is a book that makes them want to read and keeps them turning pages.

A catch up post and great young adult reading with no vampires or werewolves!

Marrying Ameera
by Rosanne Hawke

This was a great read, a compelling plot from start to finish and a main character who was not only plausible but who the reader could identify with and care about.  Ameera takes the reader into a world that for many Australian teenagers would seem totally alien and yet the experience the novel recounts is for some a frightening reality.

Ameera is a 17 year old Australian high school senior, her mother is Anglo Australian and her dad is Pakistani Australian, raised as a Muslim, Ameera is at an age when western culture begins to conflict with her father's aspirations for her and circumstances see him send her to Pakistan on a flimsy pretext, while in reality he has organised a forced marriage, much of the novel deals with Ameera's entrapment in a land in which she is controlled by family and draconian gender politics.  She is cut off from her mother and also from the Australian Pakistani boy with whom she was beginning to form a friendship in Australia.  This is a compelling story and Hawke beautifully evokes Ameera's environment both in Australia and in Pakistan, dealing with a sensitive cultural issue in the subject of forced arranged marriage and family honour, crafting a novel that is adventure, thriller and to an extent romance.  This really is a great young adult read.
 

Climbing the Stairs
by Padma Venkatraman

After Marrying Ameera this title in the library caught my eye, another story about a young woman struggling to build an independent identity in an environment that presents extra challenges for women, where the cultural expectation is that marriage will come before education and independence.
Set in British occupied India during the second world war, the novel tells the story of Vidya a fifteen year old girl living in a liberal Hindu household. Tragedy strikes and the family are forced to return to living in a shared, extended, traditional household, where men and women live in separate areas of the house and the expectations are that women will follow traditional paths of marriage and family.  Vidya finds those expectations impossible to accept and life is complicated further when her brother seeks to enlist in the army despite the family's strict Hindu beliefs.  The position of women is one theme, but violence and non violence are also themes explored in the novel.

The stairs in the title refer to the stairs to the higher levels of the house where the men live and where Vidya's grandfather keeps his library.  The library becomes Vidya's precious sanctuary in what is a hostile environment, it is also here in the library that Vidya meets a boy, who has the potential to offer her an escape at least from the cruel family circumstances in which she is living.  I loved the library and the way Vidya explored it's contents and celebrated the power of books and words, this was another great YA read, again a compelling book that I read very quickly.

 White Crow
by Marcus Sedwick

An amazing book, I could not put this down once I started it, a masterfully crafted thriller, this book is unsettling and haunting.  Again a YA novel this time dealing with the friendship between two teenage girls but the novel is more than just a tale about intense friendship in the here and now, it also presents a terrifying story from the past and the lengths a person will go to find an answer to the unanswerable.  This was a frightening and compelling story, one that can't easily be put down or forgotten. Good and evil, friendship and loneliness, and fear are all explored. When you die who will come for you, will it be angels or devils?  Not a book for the feint hearted, this is a dark and disturbing book, not for every reader but the craftsmanship must be admired.

 Skulduggery Pleasant
by Derek Landy

Now this was a book on a much lighter note!  A tale of magic and drama, action and adventure and perhaps most importantly humour, for all its sinister appearance Skulduggery Pleasant is essentially a humorous book, where  a plot about good and evil is driven forward by high octane adventure. This was not the first time I have read Skulduggery but the first time I got to finish it, in the past no sooner would I start to read it than someone would want to borrow it, so I found my reading of this title was endlessly interrupted, which in itself says much for the books popularity.  This is a fun book, well crafted and entertaining, great characters and I loved the names like, Ghastly Bespoke.  I also enjoyed the portrayal of Stephanie's extended family and her ghastly relatives. 

 The book of Unicorns
by Jackie French

Short stories about unicorns, bringing magic into the everyday and mundane.  A great young read, that illustrates why Jackie French has proven such a successful author.   A student suggested I read this one and I enjoyed the journey into what are gentle and well crafted stories with a real sense of magic.  This one reminds me of the now classic novel by Peter Beagle, The Last Unicorn, a book I am also intending to re-read at some point soon. 
These have been very brief summations of some of my recent reading and I do feel a bit guilty for not giving more detail and doing more justice to what have proved to be highly diverting reads.

“All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true’'

The Last Continent
by Terry Pratchett
“All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true’'.(p.10)
This is a book that messes with the tribal myths of my own culture and while Disc world is an independent fantasy world, there  is no denying that it is very much a ‘mirror of worlds’ and in the case of 'The Last Continent the world that it is mirroring is Australia.  The result could so easily have been a truly cringe worthy parody but in the hands of a great writer with an observant eye and a natural affection for his subject matter this is another wise and entertaining satire, that explores not just the traditional dreaming of indigenous culture but the dreaming of my own relatively recent, Anglo-Saxon migrant culture.  Australian cultural icons abound in this text, from movies like Mad Max and Priscilla Queen of the Desert to the archetypal stories that seem to define Australian identity like The Man From Snowy River, waltzing matilda and the bushranger legend. 
A Rincewind novel, this story sees the bumbling wizard invent our iconic vegemite in the form of a kind of ‘beer soup’ that goes well spread on bread, while trying to save the continent from the interminable dry spell that is threatening it’s very existence.   In building a story around our climatic extremes Pratchett taps into what is at the very heart of our identity: environment.  
The best elements of this novel however do not revolve around Rincewind’s exploits but around the misadventures of the UU faculty after they become trapped on a primitive island in the company of their female housekeeper.  While Rincewind is not one of my favourite characters, Archchancellor Ridcully  and the orang-utan UU librarian are very definitely amongst my favourite Discworld characters.  This section of the novel allows Pratchett to play with the logical challenges of time travel and creation myths while allowing the wizards to spark off each other in a highly entertaining interlude.  I think perhaps I will leave this post here with a favourite line:  "Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. "
The Last Continent also provides the name for the Australian Discworld convention, “Nullus Anxietas”, (no worries) and provides the visual narrative that appears on the convention t shirt which I have added to my collection of literary t shirts, ( click on image to follow link to where the shirt can be purchased), or here: http://ausdwcon.org/pages/merchandise

On Sir Terry’s recent visit to Australia he also appeared at the Sydney Opera House where he appeared in conversation with the Australian fantasy author Garth Nix, below is the link to where you can see the video of this chat at the round worlds version of the Disc’s “Buggerup opera house”:                          
 http://play.sydneyoperahouse.com/index.php/media/1372-Terry-Pratchett-Conversation.html

Maskerade, an escape to the Disc

Maskerade
by Terry Pratchett.

When life really sucks the best thing to do is to escape. And there is no better escape than to leave this drab round world of ours and to journey to the Disc, where problems are recognisable but surmountable and the journey is inevitably entertaining.  Pratchett seems to be a regular antidote to reading doldrums for me, when all else fails a Discworld novel will usually provide some relief and this was the case with Maskerade.

I have over recent years read many of Sir Terry Pratchett's witty and wise novels but I also have some gaps in my reading.  I came to the Disc late in my reading life, only discovering the full merit of his work in recent years, unlike my daughter who has grown up reading Pratchett, or my partner who has been a dedicated fan since the 80s.  It was in order to overcome some of these gaps that I recently picked up Maskerade.  While a satire on opera, musicals and celebrity culture, this novel is also a convincing mystery and something of a coming of age tale.

One of the Disc novels to feature the Lancre witches, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, this instalment sees them travelling to Ank-Morpok on a dual mission; one to sort out an unscrupulous publisher who has taken advantage of Nanny in the publishing of her infamous cookbook, and secondly to track down and, hopefully fetch home young Agnes Nitt, who Nanny sees as a potential third member of their coven.  Things are getting a little strained since Magrat traded in the  broomstick to be a queen: "You need at least three witches for a coven. Two witches was just an argument."(p22). The venal Greebo, Nanny's evil tom cat gets his moment in the spotlight.  I have a great fondness for Greebo, living with three  cats I have a great appreciation for Pratchett's feline descriptions: "...the most vicious and cunning a pile of fur that ever had the intelligence to sit on a bird table with its mouth open and a piece of toast balanced on its nose..." (p.22), or elsewhere; "To Nanny Ogg he was merely a larger version of the little fluffy kitten he had once been.  To everyone else he was a scarred ball of inventive malignancy", a quote I also have on a coffee cup with a Paul Kidby illustration:

(That cup and others can be found here: http://www.paulkidby.com/mugs/index.html , a great discworld site from which our family has purchased a number of great gifts for Pratchett fans.)

Essentially a re-telling, and a send up of the Phantom of the Opera, Maskerade lets Pratchett flex his muscles in the sphere of the mystery/crime novel without ever losing sight of his characteristic humour in face of human absurdity.  Granny's telling query about what a person would take from a burning house tells us as much about ourselves as it does about the characters in the book.

Pratchett does write the most amazing women, well rounded, believable, admirable and inspiring women, perhaps his female characters have reached a pinnacle in the creation of Tiffany Aching or Glenda from the night kitchen at UU but Maskerade also offers an entertaining ride in the company of some truly wonderful women, the witches of Lancre are not to be underestimated.  A great book. Oh an possibly my favourite line:

"Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed to even think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to Nanny as altruism comes to a cat."

It has been more than a month since I read this one, so I will keep my comments short.  One of the reasons for picking up this previously unenjoyed novel was the recent Discworld convention in Sydney, Nullus Anxietas, http://ausdwcon.org/ .  I had never been to such an event before this one but I am really glad that we did go, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and one that we are keen to repeat.  As a result of the convention I decided to catch up on another gap in my discworld experience and finally read The Last Continent, how could I attend Nullus Anxietas and not have read The Last Continent.