Don't Let The Stars Define You

Fate vs. Free Will, Destiny vs Decisions, Luck vs. Hard Work.  These are all themes that are very prevalent in literature across the ages.  It has been the big question through out time, and discussed thoroughly in many a book both fiction and nonfiction.  Did a person get where they were because the stars fated it so, or because he made a certain decision...or did he make that certain decision because he was destined too...or was it all luck?  The book Jepp Who Defied the Stars by Katherine Marsh, is a book that explores these questions in great detail. As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Jepp is a dwarf who was born and lived in the late 16th early 17th century Spanish Netherlands.  He had the good fortune to grow up in the inn of his mother, protected by the villagers from the harshness that he would have experienced almost anywhere else.  He is sheltered, loved, and even taught to read in this little bubble of the village and the inn.  Jepp's only real sorrow is he does not know who his father is and no matter how much he begs nobody will tell him a thing.  One day a noble stranger appears and offers to take Jepp to the court of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain to be a court dwarf.  He promises Jepp all kinds of comforts and books and a new life.  Jepp and his mother both see this as an opportunity and off Jepp goes with the man he calls the Don.  They arrive at the palace and Jepp is placed with the other three court dwarf's, Lia the young, sweet and beautiful dwarf, Maria the older, regal, often drunk dwarf, and Sebastian, the comically important dwarf.  Jepp also meets the giant Robert, and Pim the jester/master of ceremonies and the Infanta's favorite.  Hendrika is introduced as the dwarf's keeper, making sure they are taken care of and on occasion disciplined.  She seems to have a weird reaction to meeting Jepp, but he finds so many things odd that he takes little note of it.  At some point all of the dwarf's get their horoscope drawn for them based on their dates of birth and Jepp is encouraged as his is very well favored.  As Jepp gets used to court life he realizes that he is just there for the amusement of the court, he is well taken care of, but humiliated on a regular basis.  During this time he falls in love with the sweet Lia and does everything he can to be around her.  Pim also takes a not so innocent interest in Lia which results in Lia falling pregnant.  This of course

causes a great stir, especially when Lia refuses to reveal the father to anybody but Jepp who has already figured out that Pim attacked Lia.  Jepp tries to help Lia run away but is taken back to the castle when Lia goes into labor before they can escape the city.  Lia and the baby die and Jepp is packed into a cage and sent away.  Jepp arrives at the island fortress of Tycho Brahe, an eccentric noble who has a thing for the sciences, especially astronomy and astrology.  Jepp is again looked down on as a stupid bit of entertainment, but this soon changes when Tycho's daughter Magdalene catches him in the library after hours and discovers how smart he is.  He is eventually given a position in Tycho's library as a scholar and is finally starting to be happy.  Magdalene is the one who drew up Jepp's horoscope and they have many spirited debates over fate vs free will.  Eventually the two fall in love and wish to be married, but Jepp still has the ghost of his father hanging over his head.  Tycho releases him, telling him to only come back for his daughter if he can find his fortune. Jepp returns to his mothers inn only to learn that she had died a year ago from a fever.  Jepp also learns that the woman who raised him was not his real mother, that the man Jepp calls Don brought him to her to raise.  Jepp goes back to Infanta's castle, determined to find his real parents.  Turns out that Hendrika, the dwarf's keeper, and Don's older brother were Jepp's real parents and that he was sent away as his father was already married to another woman at the time.  Hendrika and Jepp reunite and Jepp heads to visit the Don to see if his father ever acknowledged him.  Jepp's father had left him 3000 gold pieces but Don, who was the executor of the will spent it all, leaving nothing for Jepp.  Jepp heads out to find work, determined to make his own fortune, even if it takes forever.  Luck is with Jepp however in the form of the man who took Jepp to Tycho in the first place, he found a stash of gold in Don's apartments and tracked down Jepp to give it to him.  Magdalene shows up to marry Jepp regardless and they head out to start their life together.

 This was an interesting book on many levels and there was a lot I enjoyed about it.  I think the part I liked the best was the historical context.  The author wrote this piece of fiction around little tidbits of true history.
Tycho Brahe was a real eccentric noble who made minor contributions to science.  Infanta Isabella was a real royal who regularly kept dwarf's for her own entertainment.  All these little tidbits were strung together and filled out by the author to create a compelling story.  This is a YA book...and sometimes it read exactly like a YA book, complete with teenage angst, identity issues and miscommunications, other times it read a little older, with some of the situations being a bit older, such as rape, pregnancy and marriage.  This is not to say it is not appropriate for the teenage crowd and in fact I am encouraged to see books like this featured in the YA section.  It has a bit more heft and substance then a lot of the YA books I have read, it is just

something that for the younger half of the YA crowd, some explanation or guidance might be needed.  I liked the format of the book, the story being told to us by Jepp, who for the first and second parts of the book told us his story as he traveled to then an unknown place, the only problem was sometimes big events where telegraphed which made me by turns anxious and a bit disappointed when the events finally happened.  I really loved visiting Tycho's fortress, the descriptions of the various oddities and little touches of eccentrics were a lot of fun and now I want to go visit. I like the various relationships in this book, and how Jepp fell in love with two completely different type of women.  First the sweet, mysterious,haunted dwarf Lia and then later the bold, smart, forward, "normal" sizeed Magdalene.  The only real complaints I had was sometimes Jepp seemed to be written as a 13 year old girl.  A lot of his moonings and angstyness had a girlish flavor to them that I have never witnessed in a teenage boy, this kind of took me out of the story a bit on occasion.  The other complaint is that on occasion events took on a very convenient turn, especially at the end, like the author just wanted to move on with the story.  Over all though I enjoyed this book and read it pretty quickly.  It was nice to have a story about a different kind of person without adding all the magic and vampires and stuff that usually accompanies it.  I would recommend this for anybody who likes a good story, who remembers what it was like being different as a teenager, has a interest in 17th century Spanish Netherlands, or wants something to read with their teens. I give it 7 out of 10 horoscopes.

Fowl And Fairy

Some days I absolutely love my e-books.  I can get a lot of my beloved books for cheap or free, so not only do I have a wonderful, physical copy on my shelf, but I can also carry a copy on my phone, e-reader, computer etc. so no matter what I want to read at any given moment I usually have access to it in some way shape or form.  This brings me to today's rambling on Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.  I have read this book before, in fact a beautiful gold version of it sits on my shelf, but the other day in the car I got the urge to read it again, and wham, bam downloaded it for 99 cents and was ready to read it in minutes, ahhh got to love technology sometimes.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD

We start by being introduced to a stone-cold business man, complete with his own highly trained, and incredibly capable body guard/assistant.  This person proceeds to torture a being that turns out to be a sprite and bribes her into giving up The Book, which is essentially all the rules and history of The People (or fairies as we humans like to call them).  Much to our surprise it turns out that this ruthless person is none other than a 12 year old boy by the name of Artemis Fowl.  Artemis has procured the The Book as part of a scheme to obtain fairy gold to fund an expedition to find his missing father.  Meanwhile deep underground Holly Short a member of LEPrecon (get it Leprechaun?!? bwahahaha...sorry need to drink my coffee) is trying desperately not to be late to work.  She is the first female fairy to be assigned to the recon squad and has already run into trouble.  As she arrives Commander Root is waiting for her with his usual spate of insults and gruffness, as they are engaging in this oh so common repartee an alert comes for a troll heading towards a human

settlement.  Root asks Holly is she is running hot, if she has recently performed a ritual that replenish her magic.  Holly lies and says that she is and heads of to meet with Foaly, the geeky centaur who is in charge of technology for LEPrecon.  After supplying her with motorized wings and a high tech helmet, he shoots her to the surface of Italy where she is supposed to only observe and report the trolls doings, but when a child cries out for help, Holly takes it as an invitation to intervene.  By the time the chaos is finished, Root has become aware of Holly's lack of magic and sends her to replenish it by picking an acorn from a tree at one of the magic sites and planting it elsewhere.  Unfortunately for Holly, Artemis is also aware that fairies require this ritual and has been staking out the various sites.  He captures Holly, evading every trick she usually uses to distract humans by use of mirrored sunglasses and a tranquilizer dart.  Root and Foaly are made aware of the situation and move in to rescue there fellow agent.  Back at Fowl Manor right outside of Dublin, Artemis is making arrangements of his own, using The Book to gain knowledge of the People he has a plan all set into place.  It starts with putting his mother (who has mentally deteriorated since his fathers disappearance to the point she no longer recognizes her own son) into a deep sleep.  He then has Butler (his bodyguard) and Juliet (Butler's highly trained sister) put Holly in a fresh concrete cell.  Root and his forces arrive on the surface and put the whole manor under a time-stop, which gives them apx 8 hours to work before daylight.  Interesting note that this used to be achieved by eight wizards and could only be maintained until one of them became exhausted...or had to pee, usually only about 8 hours or so.  Foaly was able to mechanize the process, thus giving LEP a reliable time-stop tool.  Artemis uses Holly's helmet to rig up a camera that can see through the shielding of the fairies, thus taking away one of their biggest advantages.  After his knowledge has been demonstrated, Artemis meets with Root to state his demands, a mere ton of fairy gold in small ingots.  Meanwhile Holly has found the acorn she had managed to get from the magic site before her abduction and is busy using her bed to break through the floor and plant her seed, this fills her up with magic and enables her to escape her cell.

Unfortunately Artemis was smart enough to tell her not to leave the house, and since fairy rules state you must obey a human in their own home she is stuck inside.  Back with the LEPrecon team, Root has acquired the services of a rouge dwarf by the name of Mulch.  Mulch has forfieted his magic as he regularly uses his inherent tunneling skills to relieve the Mud People (what fairies call humans) of their possessions.  Mulch tunnels into the Manor and discovers Artemis's copy of The Book, finally giving the recon team piece of the puzzle of how he knew so much about them.  This also leads to a bigger problem of what to do with him as it is forbidden for any Mud People/The People interaction to be known.  They decide that the only way for this to end well is to give Artemis what he wants, rescue Holly and then blue-rinse the Manor.  Blue-rinse is a process that kills all organic life in a very defined radius, but leaves everything else untouched, brutal but effective.  What they don't know is that this plays right into Artemis's hands as he knows a way to beat the time-field.  The gold is brought in and Holly makes an exchange with Artemis for half the gold back and with a heavy heart goes to rejoin her team.  Artemis makes Butler, Juliet and himself go to sleep with the aid of his mothers sleeping pills, which effectively takes them out of the time field and safe from the blue-rinse.  This makes it so Artemis "wins" and by fairy rules he gets to keep the gold and by giving back half to Holly, his mother is healed as well.  Holly, Root and Foaly go back below and they all move on to the sequel.

I love this book for so many happy reasons.  First off it is a pretty quick read, I can usually finish it in a day or two.  The pacing is pretty good, with the action happening a fairly quick clip.  There is wit and humor and even though it is a middle grade book it never feels like it was dumbed down.  I love that the main "bad guy" was a 12 year old boy, who devious as he is, essentially just wants his family whole again.  I think my favorite part is the mix of technology and magic that is employed by The People.  Just like humans they have learned to utilize technology to enhance or replace their natural abilities.  I love that even with these advances they are still bound by their own ancient rules.  Characters in this book are all well plotted with even the random side characters getting some page time.  Pretty much everything is explained in a fairly realistic manner, considering we are dealing with 12 year old geniuses with unlimited funds, 700 year old fairy commanders, super geeky centaurs and a dirt metabolizing dwarf. The only downside to the ebook is that it is missing the cool cipher code that is in the hard copy, this is a fun little extra, but not necessary for the enjoyment of the story.  This is a great book for reluctant readers, or one to read out loud with the family.  There is a lot to talk about and little to no objectionable material.  I would pretty much recommend it to anybody.  I give it 8 out of 10 red gummy bears (those are my favorite).
What do you think of fairy technology?  How awesome would it be to be able to get your hands on The Book?  How would you use your own personal Butler?