Sapphique

Fisher, Catherine. Sapphique. New York: Dial Books - Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 2010. Print. Incarceron 2.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/6159635]


If you haven't yet read Incarceron, what are you waiting for? ;) Also, don't read this. It will spoil it for you.


Booktalk:
The Warden's final little stunt destroyed the portal to Incarceron, trapping not only himself but also Keiro and Attia in its depths. As much as Finn would like every waking moment to be spent working on their release, there are bigger things for he, Jared, and Claudia to worry about. Finn's lack of courtly manners and, you know, memory of his life as Prince Giles is really starting to work against them. And when a young man who is indistinguishable from Finn physically but clearly bred to eat from a silver spoon comes to court claiming to be the long-lost Giles, it could be death of them all, in Incarceron or Out.

Review:
It took more self-control than I knew I had not to tear into this book as soon as I got it. I wanted to reread the first book so I could pick up all the little things that I was sure would pop up again in this sequel. I suggest you all do the same. Fisher writes a very intricate story, and it definitely builds on little clues left behind in the first book. Still, I don't think Sapphique quite lived up to its prequel. Or maybe it just didn't live up to all the hype I'd built up for it in my head. I loved the way I was plopped into the middle of all the characters lives again rather than having the book pick up right where the previous one left off. I really liked that there were so many little clues in the text to lead the reader to what is Really Going On Here. I loved that this book, the end of the Incarceron series (pairing?), was still full of twists right up to the very end. I still loved most of the characters (though not necessarily the same ones I loved in the last book, a fact I also loved). But there was just something missing. I didn't stay up until 4 in the morning to finish Sapphique. I took a leisurely week to read it.

Though the narration still switches between life in the Realm and life in Incarceron, a lot of Sapphique follows Claudia, Finn and Jared in the Realm. Which is what I wanted! I know! But life at court rather than at the Wardenry or with the peasants is pretty boring. And Claudia and Finn both annoyed me. A lot. They're both beyond frustrated at Finn's lack of memory and this frustration manifests itself as doubt on Claudia's part and severe moodiness on Finn's. Neither were the strong and/or sure of themselves leaders that we met in Incarceron. The change in them was totally believable; I just didn't love them as much as I used to.

BUT with all the focus on life Outside, Sapphique does treat us to more insight into living life by Protocol, including a short trip to a peasant village:

She [Claudia] shivered. "You should glass the windows. The draft is terrible."

The old man laughed, pouring out thin ale. "But that wouldn't be Protocol, would it? And we must abide by the Protocol, even as it kills us."

"There are ways around it," Finn said softly.

"Not for us." He pushed the pottery cups toward them. "For the Queen maybe, because them that make the rules can break them, but not for the poor. Era is no pretense for us, no playing at the past with all its edges softened. It's real. We have no skinwands, lad, none of the precious electricity or plastiglas. The picturesque squalor the Queen likes to ride past is where we live. You play at history. We endure it."

p.199*

Throughout the book Claudia is served revelations such as this. It also becomes obvious that though she is kind and more educated than she should be considering Protocol in general and her gender class in it, she has no idea how to interact with people outside of the roles of master and servant, and everyone who is not her master is her potential servant. If Finn gained anything from living in Incarceron (besides his BFF Keiro), it's that he knows what it is to go without, to live a meager existence, to just try to survive. Even as Claudia doubts more and more whether Finn is actually Giles, it becomes clear (to me, not necessarily to the characters) that Finn will be a wonderful king if/when they get rid of the witchy Queen.

Speaking of the witchy Queen, one of the characters that I loved the most was her son Casper. I know, he's horrible in Incarceron and he comes nowhere near making the switch to "good guy" in Sapphique, but I still loved him. He seemed so lost a lot of the time. You can tell that he really grew up living in the dual shadows of his Queenly mother and Princely half-brother. When Giles comes back, whether anyone believes Finn is the real Giles or not, Casper is left being the younger prince again. The spare. I felt so bad for him, still hanging around Claudia throughout this book even though it's always been clear she has no interest in him. He kept trying to win her back with promises of power and safety, things Finn/Giles couldn't offer her, but rather than coming off as evil and manipulative, he seemed like an unpopular rich kid who buys everyone in his class presents so they'll come to his birthday party.

And then there's Keiro and Attia still in Incarceron following yet another legend of Sapphique, looking for a way out. I liked their storyline a lot, but there was little to no character development in it. It was like Fisher knew she needed danger and action to keep readers interested in between all the palace intrigue in the Realm, so she foisted it all on the two of them. But it's the two of them who manage to pull everything together in the end (I'm being generous because I LOVE Keiro; Attia's the real smartypants in this volume).

Sapphique is a must-read if you are a lover of Incarceron. It's not the thrill ride that the first book was, but questions are answered, loose ends are tied up, and maybe, just maybe, things are allowed to change.


Sapphique will be out in hardback on the 28th!
You know, before you blow all your hard-earned Christmas money. ;)

Also, I would be a bad blogger if I didn't point out that last week Taylor Lautner (yes, that Taylor Lautner) was announced as The Guy Who Will Play Finn in the movie adaptation. I just hope Hollywood wises up and listens to the FYA ladies when casting the Warden.


Book source: ARC picked up at ALA

*Quotes and page numbers are from an uncorrected proof and may not match the published copy.

Incarceron

Fisher, Catherine. Incarceron. New York: Dial Books - Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2010. Print. Incarceron 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/2998395]

Awards:
Cybils Finalist - Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction (2007)

Booktalk:
Finn lives in an vast and inescapable prison. All the unwanted riff-raff of society, the murders, thieves, predators, and other criminals, were once permanently locked away. This prison was supposed to be a paradise where the lowest of society could start over and make things right. But things did not work out as planned. The prison, Incarceron, is a sentient hell-hole where fear, treachery, and hunger rein. And its boundaries have been breached. The prisoners live on the hope left by the legends of Sapphique, a man who is said to have escaped, and Finn, who is thought to have been born of the prison rather than of its prisoners, remembers bits and pieces of a life Outside. With the help of a Sapient, a learned man, he hopes to escape back to the life he thinks he remembers. He remembers the stars.

The world Claudia lives in is based on some fond remembering of the Victorian Era. Everything has been altered to artificially represent this bygone and romanticized time when things were simpler, safer, and more ordered, at least from the point of view of the rich. Everyone, privileged or not, is left chaffing in a world that society has long since outgrown. But like most things in her world, underneath her image, Claudia is decidedly non-Era. She's smart, educated, and wants to know more than she's allowed. As she hurtles towards her wedding to the heir of the throne, she snoops on her father, the Warden of Incarceron. And she finds a key.


Review:
I devoured this book. Twice. The pacing, the storyline, the characters, it all fell into place for me. A lot of the time I think that two simultaneous story lines (as opposed to alternating viewpoints of the same action) make it easy for either or both stories to get away with being a bit under-developed. That's not the case here. Both Finn and Claudia's stories are complex, and the points where they come together are intense. The difference between Claudia's life and Finn's is so stark. Claudia and Finn's disbelief at discovering the other (and realizing how the other must live) is genuine. It also allows for a lot of explanation without a lot of info-dumping. And Fisher uses the alternating viewpoints to create a million mini-cliffhangers throughout the text.

Finn's whole storyline is so urgent. His only certainty is that whatever unknown is around the corner is probably life-threatening. He can't even be sure that his memories of Outside, which come to him during seizures, are real or really his. But Finn is surrounded by friends, or at least by people who need him, like his oathbrother Keiro. Finn and Keiro's relationship is one of my favorite parts of his world. It's complicated and not always all that honest, but they clearly care about each other a lot. And even though their circumstances are over-the-top horrible, they manage to maintain a normal-ish friendship: the kind where a searing punch to the gut can mean "I forgive you."

The society that Claudia lives in is based on the Victorian Era, but this is no revisionist history. The people who put Protocol and Era in place are trying to recreate, not re-remember, that time. They aren't creating an idealized version so much as trying to return to the way things were. Exactly as they were: no technology, widespread healthcare, or women in pants. No indoor plumbing. But in reality they should be much more advanced in all of these areas than we are now. Because of this, the spread between the haves and the have-nots, already extreme in Victorian times, is even more obscene. The have-nots must live like their 19th century counterparts; they don't have the means to change anything. People like Claudia, on the other hand, can use a myriad of technologies to make their lives easier ranging from washing machines for their fine silks to laser skinwands for their wrinkles. They just have to look like they're living within Protocol; they have to make a pretense of not wanting to get caught. Even though most of the heart-pounding action happens inside Incarceron, it's Claudia's world that fascinated me. Hopefully the next book, Sapphique (which I'll review next week), will delve deeper into the technology (and lack thereof) and culture of her world.

Incarceron is deeper and more complicated than I expected (and less steampunk-y than the cover would suggest). I highly recommend it!


Also, Incarceron is already being developed as a movie (2013 projected release) and the sequel is coming out at the end of this month.



Book source: I bought it.

Because of Winn-Dixie

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

DiCamillo, Kate. Because of Winn-Dixie. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press, 2000. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/1577]

Awards:
BCCB Blue Ribbon Book (2000)
New York Time Notable Books - Children's Books (2000)
Parents' Choice Awards - Fiction (2000)
School Library Journal Best Books (2000)
ALA Notable Children's Book (2001)
Josette Frank Award (2001)
Newberry Honor (2001)
SEBA Book Award - Children's (2001)
As well as a slew of state awards and a mention in 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up

Booktalk:

My daddy is a good preacher and a nice man, but sometimes it's hard for me to think about him as my daddy, because he spends so much time preaching or thinking about preaching or getting ready to preach. And so, in my mind, I think of him as "the preacher."

p.13

Opal knows her daddy, the preacher, loves her, but she also knows his new church is the reason she's spending a lonely summer in a new town. Until the preacher sends her out for a box of mac n'cheese. When she gets to the Winn-Dixie, she finds the happiest dog she's ever seen frolicking and wreaking havoc in the produce section. To keep that happy dog from the pound, Opal gives him the only name she can think of in a hurry, Winn-Dixie, and takes him on home. With a dog who has a tendency to smile so big that it makes him sneeze, Opal has the courage to talk to people, including the preacher, and make some new friends.

Review:
Oh, Winn-Dixie. Anyone who's ever had a really friendly dog, especially a really friendly ugly mutt, will tell you that every outlandish and wonderful thing that happens in the book is totally possible. Well, maybe not, but having a good dog is great and Winn-Dixie is just who Opal needs to kick-start her new life in a new town. The preacher is too busy with his new church to be Opal's best friend until school starts in the fall, and Opal's mother is gone and has been for a while. The preacher doesn't like to talk about her or why she left. But once she has Winn-Dixie, Opal isn't alone anymore. She tries out her ideas on him, tells him what she wants, and pours out her heart to him in ways she probably couldn't with another human being, and Winn-Dixie just gives her his goofy smile and unconditional adoration in the way that good dogs will do. It gives her the courage to talk to the guy at the pet store (Winn-Dixie does need a collar), the woman at the library (who thinks Winn-Dixie is a bear at first glance), the town "witch" (whose yard Winn-Dixie runs into in search of peanut butter), and various kids from her daddy's church who are drawn to Winn-Dixie or make fun of her about him. And Winn-Dixie gives Opal the courage to talk to the preacher about her mother. When Winn-Dixie is done working his magic, Opal has a whole cadre of people who love her.

I wouldn't say that religion plays a huge role in Because of Winn-Dixie, at least not explicitly. Opal uses tenets of what her father teaches her both to her advantage and as goals to work towards. She gets to keep Winn-Dixie because he is "an unfortunate," and Christians are supposed to help the unfortunate. On the other hand, she has to be nice to pinch-faced Amanda because she not only goes to the preacher's church, but because something very sad happened to her in the past. And the preacher prays for a mouse that Winn-Dixie catches in the middle of his sermon but does not kill. :) Even though religion does not really factor into the storyline, this book is just as much about how Opal's relationship with the preacher changes as it is about a little girl and her dog. At the beginning of the book, in addition to calling her father "the preacher" in her head, Opal likens him to a turtle. He pulls his head back in his shell when things get hard to protect himself from everything, even his daughter. He's able to do that precisely because he spends so much time "preaching or thinking about preaching or getting ready to preach" (13). Throughout the course of the book, and with Winn-Dixie's help of course, the preacher learns not to shut out Opal but instead to open up to her.

Overall this is a sweet book. There's not a lot of action, but there is a lot of storytelling as Opal gets to know all of her new friends. It can be episodic at times, but it all comes together in the end.


Book source: Holy Spirit Library at Cabrini College
Thanks to Charlotte for reminding me about this book!


For folks who refuse to read dog books: This isn't Old Yeller. There are some tough moments, but nothing compared to classic "dog stories" or, you know, The Knife of Never Letting Go.

The third Harry Potter movie situation and The Time Traveler's Wife

I resisted reading the Harry Potter books for a really long time. I didn't read them, mostly, because everyone said that I should. I didn't do a lot of things when I was in high school, as I was when the HP series was starting out, for this very reason. By the time the movies started coming out I was over the angst, but too busy with college to read the books. I liked the movies though.

Now, the movie of any book is never like the book. I know that. I knew that I was missing stuff, REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF if I listened to the nearest HP fanatic, but I was perfectly happy to just watch the movies and let the books pass me by. Then the third movie came out.

I had no idea what was going on for most of the movie and drove my HP reading friends nuts with all my in-theater questions.

The screenwriter/directer/producer/whoever makes these kinds of decisions had made a movie for book readers. Folks like me who had never cracked open a single book by Ms. Rowling were left in the dust. It was awesome for the reading fans; no time wasted explaining things to newbs like me. It was a waste of $8 for me. Not that the movie wasn't good! It's still my favorite so far, but at the time that I first saw it, I couldn't possibly appreciate it.

Now I try to read books before I see the movie as much as possible. If the movie isn't important enough to warrant taking the time to read the book, then the movie isn't worth the money to see it in theaters. I'll still check it out from the library or get it on Netflix if it gets good reviews, but I will not see a movie in the theaters unless I've read the book it was based on.

This is why I read The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Alex Award, 2004). The book was recommended by a friend whose reading tastes I respect and sometimes mirror, and the movie has Rachel McAdams in it for crying out loud!

A lot of things about this book made me mad. A lot. It felt like there was a lot of imagination put into the concept: this guy Henry goes back in time and meets his wife when she's 6 and all of the butterfly effect goodness that brings. Not as much imagination went into how that was going to play out once they made it through Clare's teens and into their actual real-time marriage.

If you haven't read it yet and feel like you may want to, you may want to stop reading here and just know that I didn't like it.

I feel like I'm giving away the ending here even though the author tells you halfway through the book anyway and you just have to wait another 200 pages or so for it to actually happen, but he dies. Clare's dad, when Clare is 12 or so, shoots her future husband who is traveling back in time from when Clare is in her late 30s. And then, as if that weren't bad enough, Clare finds a note from Henry telling her how bad he feels that she's spent so much of her life waiting for him and that he doesn't want her to do that anymore. BUT he is going to travel into the future from his past and see her when she's old. So what does she do? She lives the rest of her life, the next 40 years, waiting for him to show up, just like she spent the first 40. Real uplifting ending. I was so mad.

Moral of the story (my story, not The Time Traveler's Wife): Don't read a book that you thought would be too sappy for your taste just so you can justify going to see a movie with Rachel McAdams in it.

She did star in The Notebook afterall.



Book source: I bought it and kind of can't wait to get it out of my house. Let me know if you're interested.


Image credits: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Prisoner_of_Azkaban_(film)
http://wallpapers.free-review.net/36__Harry_Potter_and_the_Prisoner_of_Azkaban%2C_2004.htm
http://www.librarything.com/work/3067/covers/48599111
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/time_travelers_wife/pictures/7.php#highlighted_picture