Monthly Archives: March 2011

REVIEW: The Bloomswell Diaries by Louis L. Buitendag

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24. The Bloomswell Diaries by Louis L. Buitendag
Publication: Kane/Miller Book Publishers (March 2011), Hardcover, 258pp / ISBN 1935279823
Genre: MG Action/Adventure (with a bit of steampunk)

Rating: Borrow it
Read: February 26-27, 2011

Source: Publisher

Summary from Amazon:

Benjamin Bloomswell is pleased to be staying with his uncle in America while his parents are off on another business trip. But when a series of newspaper articles, telephone calls and mysterious disappearances result in his being sent to – and having to escape from – a sinister orphanage and the criminals who run it, he knows he’s got to find a way back to England. He has to get to his sister’s boarding school before anyone else does. And somehow, he has to find his parents, who are also in trouble. But how?

Review

This is such a cute book. It reminds me a lot of the Pseudonymous Bosch books, A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Mysterious Benedict Society series– by which I mean it’s got great kid protagonists, secret-mysterious things going on, action and adventure, and fun illustrations.

I will say that I do think it fell prey to the “shove as much possible in the first book to make it easier on the subsequent books” syndrome. It started off great! Ben’s brought to New York to live with his mysterious uncle while his parents go off to do something equally mysterious, and Ben has to adjust to living with an uncle he doesn’t really know about. Then things go to pot. His uncle is killed, his parents are dead, and apparently he has no other family who can take him so he has to go to an orphanage. Then he has to run for his life from some Serious Baddies and their Killer Robot (awesome!).

There’s a quick stop-off at an evil children’s orphanage, and here’s where the pacing started to falter. We spend so little time at the orphanage that it’s barely a blip in Ben’s life, and I don’t entirely see the point of even going there except for Ben to make a new friend (who never shows up again in this book). His new friend also just so happens to know how to escape the orphanage with minimal trouble and is happy to show Ben how to do it (what?). This whole sequence moved very quickly, so quickly I was left wondering why it was even in the book at all. I’m assuming either the orphanage or his new friend will have a bigger part in the next book, but really all it did in this one was temporarily frighten Ben and show off how nasty the baddies are.

Then, a chapter or two later, Ben escapes the orphanage and the pacing gets much better. He stows away on a ship bound for England, and just so happens to run into some circus people who not only know his parents but are also ex-spies or something. They start teaching Ben the stuff he needs to know to survive the Baddies and their Killer Robot and it’s a pretty cool part of the plot, actually.

After the ship Ben goes to live with the rest of the circus people, who agree to take him in and, later, help him rescue his sister, who’s stuck in a girls’ boarding school in Switzerland.

I really like Ben’s sister. She’s WONDERFUL and, to be honest, I wish she was the protagonist of the book instead of Ben. Ben’s an okay character; he’s gotsome pizzazz and he’ll no doubt turn out to be an excellent spy or secret agent. But he’s also kind of bland, and his sister was so much cooler. She and her boarding school friends have this whole system worked out to get around the Evil Nuns running their school, and they have escape routes and secret societies and it’s just awesome. I may have a slight prejudice against Ben because of my deep love for boarding schools and the girls who go to them, but I won’t apologize! Ahem.

Anyway, I enjoyed The Bloomswell Diaries, although I wish it had slowed down a bit instead of rushing from one plot point to another. Not that I wanted it to be SO slow that it was another Mysterious Benedict Society, just that I wish some more time had been spent on, like, everything. Especially the worldbuilding, because I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the robots and whatnot. Is it actually steampunk? Is it set in the future or the past? How did the robots come to be? What’s the purpose of them besides just being cool? Are there other steampunk-y things in existence?

The Bloomswell Diaries is a good first book to a fun new kids series, and I think if you like any of the other book series I listed above you’ll like this one. Just be prepared for some bumps along the way.

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Other reviews: Charlotte’s Library

Thursday Tea (Mar. 24): More Than Mortal

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The book: I’ve just started the third book in the Victor Renquist series by Mick Farren. I really like these books, although sometimes the descriptions of what vampires do to their victims make me so uncomfortable I have to skim. It’s still better than having to slog through another urban fantasy book where the vampires are all cuddly and not evil and barely even act like “proper” vampires at all. After reading so many books with cuddly vampires, it’s nice to read one where the vampires would sooner rip my throat out than join me for a tea party.

The Victor Renquist books are interesting not only because the vampires act like monsters in them, but also because Mick Farren still somehow makes you care about them. Yes, they eat people and cause a lot of havoc and they’re basically evil, but nevertheless I still somehow care about whether or not they get staked.

Partly I think this is because Victor himself is the most “human” of the vampires– he still acts like a “proper” vampire, but he has these little bits of humanity in him that make him an actual anti-hero instead of just a villain. For instance, he only eats people that want to die anyway. And he has existential crises! He tends to not be as violent and crude as the other vampires, and he gives great “here is why you should do as I say” speeches. He’s still definitely not a cuddly bunny, but there is a somewhat-maybe-possibly-cuddly side to him. (The balance between villain and hero is really good, is what I think I’m trying to say.)

I’m kind of sad I’ve only got one more book to go in the series before it’s over. Does anyone know of more books with non-cuddly vampires in them? I don’t need it to be a bloodfest or torture porn or anything like that. I just want a proper anti-hero vampire like Victor Renquist. Bloodshot could count, I guess. Any others?

The tea: I seriously just woke up an hour ago, okay. I’m drinking coffee.

Do they go together? As blood gives vampires energy to face the day (or night), so too does coffee give me energy? How’s that?

REVIEW: Human.4 by Mike A. Lancaster

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23. Human.4 by Mike A. Lancaster
Publication: EgmontUSA (March 8, 2011), ARC, 232pp / ISBN 1606840991
Genre: YA Sci-fi

Rating: Buy it
Read: February 24, 2011

Source: Publisher

Summary from Amazon:

Humanity, like computers, can be upgraded. And old versions disappear. . . .

At some unspecified point in the future, when technology is as advanced as possible and we are a race of super beings, some old audio tapes are discovered. On the tapes is the story of fourteen-year-old Kyle Straker.

Hypnotized, Kyle missed the upgrade of humanity to 1.0. He isn’t compatible with our new technology. And through the recording, he narrates what the upgrades really mean. And it’s absolutely terrifying.

Review

If there’s one thing I love it’s a good YA sci-fi novel. Human.4 reads like it could be an episode of The Twilight Zone, one of the super creepy ones that gives you nightmares for a few days after watching it. There’s also maybe a bit of The Blair Witch Project in it, where the frailties of technology occasionally fail and bits of Kyle’s story is lost forever. It’s sort of like a futuristic archaeological project, where only a few important things show up and the rest is left unanswered and unknown.

Unfortunately this is one of those times where I can’t say a lot about the book without massively spoiling everyone, but let me just say that reading the book and letting the horror unspool for yourself would be a really, really good idea.

It’s a short book, but it packs so much into the space it has that it felt longer– which I like. The world-building is done subtly through “editor’s notes” which intersperse Kyle’s transcripts, and it’s SO subtle that sometimes I’d read something and then have to double-check that what I just read was what I thought I’d read.

The editor is an upgraded human, and though Kyle’s experiences with upgraded humans is pretty scary, the things the editor says is even scarier because he relates them so matter-of-factly. The editor’s notes are also sometimes funny– normally when he’s trying to explain something from Kyle’s culture that doesn’t exist in the upgraded world. Coldplay, for instance, or…lips.

One thing I’m wondering about is that, in my copy, the editor says he deliberately chose to release Kyle’s story in paper because it meant the un-upgraded humans could read it and know that they hadn’t been entirely forgotten after all. I wonder– does it say that in the ebook version? It doesn’t even really make sense to have an ebook version, since it entirely negates that aspect of the story. While I support ebooks and love to see publishers putting more out, I do think that sometimes a book’s story can get ruined by being put into electronic format. Kyle and the un-upgraded humans can’t be around (modern) technology, which means they couldn’t read the ebook, which means the upgraded humans’ compassion is voided. It makes the story way less effective, don’t you think?

At any rate, I really enjoyed Human.4. The characters seemed real, the “monsters” seemed real, and it’s just a thoroughly likeable novel. If you like your sci-fi mixed with horror, you should definitely get Human.4!

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Get your own copy @ Amazon or BookDepository.com and support Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog!

Other reviews: The Book Sp(l)ot | Cornucopia of Reviews | Lauren’s Crammed Bookshel

TSS (Mar. 20): BEA Prep & IMM (19)

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The Sunday Salon (March 20)

The Sunday Salon.com It is now about two months until Book Expo America happens! I’m still going, of course, and I’ve started planning and prepping for the trip. I like planning trips– it’s one of my favorite things to do– and since this is my first big trip on my own, I want to do a really good job of planning and preparing so I don’t bring shame down upon my super-organized family.

So far I’ve picked a hostel and reserved a room, I’ve bought my plane ticket, and I’ve made a travel journal for the trip! Next I’m going to put together a binder of Important Information: locations of street carts, which of the tourist places are free, and how to get from my airport to my hostel. I’m tempted to pick out a book for the journey (I’m not bringing my Kindle because, er, I won’t need it. It’s a BOOK convention, duh) and start packing my suitcase, but even I know it’s too early for that.

Are you going to be at BEA? Have you started planning yet?

In other news, I have made some fancy headers for the blog! They rotate whenever you go to a different page (or just refresh the page you’re on), which is pretty nifty.

Books read this week:
26. Bloodshot – Cherie Priest 5 Stars

Books reviewed this week:
22. The Great Perhaps – Joe Meno 5 Stars e

Currently reading:
Still on Madre! Read my Thursday Tea post for more of my thoughts on it. Continue reading »

Thursday Tea (Mar. 17): Madre

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The book: I’m about 25% in Madre by Liza Bakewell now. I actually meant to read this about two-three weeks ago, because the author was doing a discussion/signing here and I wanted to go! But then I, er, forgot. Almost completely forgot, in fact; I only remembered about the event two hours after it had already happened. Whoops.

Nevertheless, I’m enjoying Madre now that I’m actually making an effort to read it. I got a little bit of modern Mexican culture in Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s book Mexican Enough, but that one was more about an American in Mexico both trying to find her heritage and understand how the whole of Mexican culture worked (and how that culture fit into her own worldview). Madre is also about an American in Mexico, but it’s more about trying to understand a specific aspect of Mexican culture rather than the whole thing all at once. Also, Bakewell isn’t worried about being “Mexican enough” or even about whether or not she fits into the local scene. Instead, she’s worried about understanding the concept of madre in the context of Mexican culture, which is a lot harder than it might seem at first.

It’s interesting to compare the two books because while they’re both memoirs I think SEG was more personally invested into her time in Mexico, and she focused more on how Mexican culture affected her and how she fit (or didn’t fit) into it. That’s probably because she was both doing some soul-searching and also because she’s a journalist, so she felt sort of…compelled? to try and understand everything.

Bakewell is an anthropologist rather than a journalist, so I think maybe it was easier for her to think about Mexican culture as pieces of a whole– and to dissect those pieces without worrying overmuch about how she, personally, fit into the whole picture. Rather than using her personal history to connect to Mexico/Mexican culture, she’d finding a way in via looking closely at a a specific aspect and then working out how that aspect fits into the whole. It’s a good way to do it, I think, as Mexican culture is pretty confusing to anyone who didn’t grow up in it.

The tea: No tea today, unfortunately. I’ve run out of Earl Grey and I can’t STAND drinking something else at the moment. I’ve got a cup of coffee, though!

Do they go together? I do think they go together, yes. Not only because I think I read about someone drinking coffee in Madre, but also because Madre feels like a very energetic book to me, and coffee always perks me up.