Cinderella's Little Finger

Feeling like a bit of a fairy tale this week so I read Phoenix and Ashes a book in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series.  This book, like the others in this series is a take on a classic fairy tale, in this case Cinderella, combined with the ongoing thread of the Elemental Masters.  This entry was a solid read that did the job for more, read on as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Eleanor Robinson is the only daughter of a factory owner who has been sent to the front during WWI.  Before heading out to war, he brought his daughter a new step-mother in the form of Allison and her daughters Lauralee and Carolyn.  Allison is a very upscale sort of woman and she instantly begins to marginalize Eleanor in favor of her daughters and starts to get the village to do the same thing.  News comes from the front of Eleanor's fathers death.  After learning of this, Allison attacks Eleanor, cutting off her little finger and uses it to bind Eleanor to herself and to the house revealing her to be an Earth Master, albeit one who practices Dark Magic.  The effect of this is that Eleanor must now do whatever Allison requires and can no longer leave her own house.  After a couple years of this Eleanor learns how to "bend" the boundaries of Allison's spells and start to venture out of the house and create a little bit of better conditions for herself.  One day a woman by the name of Sarah, the village midwife who also has a bit of small magic.  Sarah let's Eleanor know that her mother was a Fire Master and it appears that she has inherited the same talent.  Sarah begins to teach her what she can and Eleanor continues to learn on her own, not just about her own Fire element, but about the other three elements as well.  Meanwhile we get glimpses of the absolute horror of the war, including the direct effects it is having on the various populace.  We see the people deal with rationing and trying to run their businesses without any men between 16-50.  We see men coming back from the war wounded and mentally destroyed.  We watch as women and young men take up where the other's left off to try and create some sort of life for themselves.  One of these young men to come home with wounds both physical and mental is Reggie Fenyx, a pilot who is also an Air Master.  He comes home to recover and remembers Eleanor from before the war.  He finds her easy to talk to and quit intelligent.  They meet when they can, but both of them have other obligations.  Allison and her daughters continue with their plans.  We discover that the reason they did not kill Eleanor outright was that she is still the only person on her father's will and if she dies all of his assets go to a random cousin.  Allison devises a plan to make Eleanor go mad so that she can claim guardianship over her and of course all her assets.  Allison also uses her dark Earth powers to try and ensnare Reggie for one of her daughters so that she can continue to climb the social ladder.  Allison also uses her Earth power to unleash sickness and misery to obtain more power for herself.  Everything comes to a head at a ball held at the manor of Reggie and his mother.  Allison and the girls go to try and snag Reggie.  Eleanor, who has finally come into her power goes to obtain the aid of Reggie's god-mother who is a powerful Air Master to assist in her breaking Allison's hold on her.  And Reggie invite's Eleanor 'cause she is about the only person he can actually stand.  Reggie decides he doesn't care about class and rank and asks Eleanor if she would consider marrying him.  Before she can answer, the curse reasserts itself and she can barely manage to choke out that she loves him before she must go home.  She leaves behind a glove with a missing finger.  Reggie goes to find Eleanor, finally figuring out that Allison and her girls are up to no good.  Allison and company do everything in their power to make Eleanor and Reggie go mad so that she can continue with her nefarious plans.  She is eventually defeated after she sucks the life force from everybody, including her daughters.  She loses control of her giant earth elemental who turns on her.  Eleanor finally gets to go to Oxford like she always dreamed and she and Reggie continue to grow in their powers.

World Building - The world is set in an alternative history version of England during WWI.  The world if very very very (sometimes overly) detailed with every bit of everything spelled out for us.  There is a fantasy element with the Elemental Masters and other magics appearing as a normal thing.  The author details every bit of the world, giving us everything from the setting to the machinations of the various things going on.  It actually has the feeling of being over stuffed with description sometimes...so yeah.

Story - The story had it's basis in the fairy tale of Cinderella, but the execution of it was wholly original.  This is a great example of how to take a well known and loved tale and turn it into something completely new and yet familiar enough to know what the source material was.  There were several layers to this book and the stories were both very personal and world sized.  I love it when an author can tell a story that encompasses both views giving us perspective from all sides. My only real complaint about the story is that like the world building, it felt over done.  I love multiple stories, but the author took it to an extreme degree, to the point I just wanted to get back to the story lines I cared about.

Character - This book did a pretty good job with various characters.  For the most part the characters were well developed and did not fall too much into standard tropes, which considering this is a fairy tale retelling is a pretty mean feat.  I especially loved Allison and her girls 'cause let's face it, a well fleshed out bad guy is pretty awesome.  I also liked how the author would use pairs of characters to contrast the strengths, weaknesses and uniqueness of every individual.  Overall pretty good characters.

Editing - I always feel like this author could use somebody who maybe put's a hand on her shoulder and points out that maybe we don't need to describe every single engine configuration of every single plane flown at any point during the war.  The author does this with every aspect of the book, from cooking and cleaning, to flying, to fighting, to the work of the Elemental Masters, to the social hierarchy, to every major and minor action in this book.  I like it when there is a realistic amount of detail that describes the world and I really like when the focus of the book is well thought out, but there is a limit and I think an author needs to focus on what is the interest and focal point of the book.  Other then the overkill of detail, the book was very easy to follow and very readable.  It just needed to be about 150 pages shorter (the book clocked in at a whopping 468 pages).

Cinderella - I thought that the author did a great job incorporating the familiar story of the serving girl turned princess without essentially just telling us the same story.   I especially liked the bit's that hearkened back to the original (and a wee bit gory) story.  For instance instead of a tiny glass slipper, our "Cinderella" had a glove with only three fingers.  To try and trick Reggie into believing it was her instead of Eleanor, Lauralee actually cut off her pinky to "fit" the glove!  This is a direct nod to the step-sisters mutilating their feet to fit into the slipper in the original.  I also enjoyed the fact that both Eleanor and Reggie had "fairy god-mothers"  it added a nice not to the original and a balance to things.   This is how I love my retellings, with direct nod's to the originals, but with new and inventive ideas.

Elements - In this book we got to focus on the dichotomy of the Elements.  We got to see Allison,  an Elemental Master, use her power for evil and we got to see how and why she did it.  The author brought back Maya, and Earth Master from the first book with her healing Earth Magic and we saw how intent and usage can change an Element from one type to it's opposite. I also enjoyed the alternative versions of how certain things may have come about.  For instance, the Spanish Flu, which just added more chaos and death to the already decimated Europe, got a bit of a supernatural treatment when Allison used it to put a dent in the forces to prolong the war for her own purposes.  We got to learn about all of the Elements, their Dark and Light uses, and how they can help or hinder each other thanks to Eleanor and her unique learning process.  I really liked how she purposely learned about all four elements, not just her own Fire element.  This helped her in the long run AND gave us the reader a more well rounded view of the Elements.

Preachy Preachy - So...this book get's really preachy on occasion.  One of the main events is WWI.  I think we can all agree that in general war is bad.  I think we can also agree that WWI had it's won special brand of awfulness.  The tactics that were employed during this war essentially turned soldiers into fodder in an attempt to stop the other guys by any means possible.  The men who came back from this war...if they came back...were broken physically, mentally and emotionally.  We are still dealing with this issues today.  Ok so in one paragraph I have made my views on war and especially WWI fairly clear right?  In this book we essentially get a repeat of this same thing in EVERY CHAPTER!  There are 30 chapters, so that's at least 30 times that the author felt that she had to tell us war is bad, 30 times that she didn't trust the reader to read and understand her the first times she told us.  I understand that this may be a very personal issue for her, and that is understandable, but as a reader I start skipping these parts, not because I disagree, I just already heard what she had to say and want to get back to the story.

Overall Impression - I have mixed feelings about this book.  I felt that it was overly long, overly descriptive and overly preachy.  That being said the story was fresh and original (well as original as a retelling gets), the characters well developed and varied, and the Elemental...well elements were fascinating.  I guess I liked it well enough and would recommend it to anybody who likes this series, fantasy or alternate reality and doesn't mind a couple of extra pages.  I give it 7 out of 10 tarots.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Darwinist Vs Clankers

If this rambling is even more rambly and incoherent then normal, just blame it on the 36 straight hours I just worked...I'm gonna blame a lot of things on that :-).  I did however find time to finish a couple of books, so lets ramble shall we.  Today I will ramble about Goliath by Scott Westerfeld, the last book in the Leviathan trilogy.  This conclusion to our steampunk/alternate history series packed in a lot of stuff so lets get right to it.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

When we left our exiled Austrian Prince Alek and his friend midshipman Dylan Sharp (who is really a girl disguised as a boy by the name of Deryn) they had just gotten back on the Leviathan after helping with the Ottoman revolution.  They are now flying their big beastie across the world on a secret mission.  They end up in Siberia rescuing a Serb scientist and his guards.  The man turns out to be Nikola Tesla, the man behind the Tesla cannons from the last book.  He is convinced that the mass destruction of the Siberian forest they were rescued from was from his new mega weapon that he has dubbed Goliath.  Tesla convinces Alek that just the mere threat of a weapon that can completely destroy a city should end the war.  Alek (who still feels it's his destiny to end the war) decides to back Tesla and the captain of the Leviathan is instructed to assist him.  Along the way Alek (with the help of his perspicacious loris Borvil) finally discovers that Dylan is actually the girl Deryn.  After a bit of a falling out the two reconcile and agree to never have secrets again.  The Leviathan and crew head to America via Japan to bring Tesla back to his Goliath.  While in Japan, Deryn and Alek get to
experience a culture where both fabricated beasties and steam powered machines co-exist in a peaceful harmony.  The Leviathan ends up in California where they are greeted by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper man with Clanker leanings.  We learn that America is another country that has both Clanker and Darwinist factions, but unlike Japan, they are frequently at odds with one another.  Hearst sabotages the Leviathan so that they end up crippled in Mexico.  Pancho Villa, the Mexican leader of a rebel group helps repair it...along with filming it.  Along the way Deryn get's hurt and the obnoxious reporter Eddie Malone discovers she is a girl and intends to reveal it in print when they arrive in New York.  Alek and Deryn discuss the future and how they are sad that they will part ways in New York, Alek staying behind to help Tesla and Deryn either continuing with the Leviathan or being punished for her deception.  Alek disembarks and after surviving an attack by the Clankers, convinces Eddie Malone to write about him being the heir to the throne instead of Deryn.  Alek and his company go with Tesla to perform a test/demonstration of the Goliath to the world to try and prove the vast strength of the weapon and hopefully get the world to end the war.  Aboard the Leviahan Deryn discovers that the Clankers are going to send a weapon machine to destroy Goliath.  Deryn convinces the captain to go back and defend Alek and company.  All sorts of chaos and action occurs and Tesla decides that he needs to actually destroy Berlin to prove his point.  Alek decides that he cannot justify the destruction of a city, along with the loss of countless lives, even if it does stop the war.  He and Tesla tussle and Tesla ends up electrocuted.  The Goliath essentially self destructs and a major disaster is averted. America finally enters the war, based on the Clanker attack on home soil.   Deryn finally gets through to Alek that he and his parents are not responsible for the war.  Alek decides to not become "king" of Austria, instead working with Deryn to help as many people as he can.  We end with our intrepid duo planning their next adventure and the fate of the world still undecided.

This book was very very full of everything.  We went all over the world, were introduced to a ton of people, saw beasties and machines everywhere, whew!  Overall I felt this book lacked a bit of focus that the first two had, but I could understand the author was trying to finish everything up as plausibly as possible, which I appreciate.  The author was also trying to impart a bit of flavor from everywhere, showing us how complicated the real WWI era was.  I appreciated the thought, but personally found it a bit excessive.  I could have done without the Poncho Villa part, and he could have probably skipped the California part as well, both parts were well written and added some flavor, but over all

felt a bit excessive.  I also wanted the perspicacious loris's to play a bit of a bigger part as they had been built up so much in the previous books.  I thoroughly enjoyed the crews stop in Japan, it was cool to see a place where technology, science, and life melded so well together, the author once again made a a place I am dying to visit.  Deryn continues to make me happy, she is really a great character, and the author does a great job avoiding some of the triteness of the whole girl dressed as a guy scenerio.  I liked how the "romance" between Deryn and Alek played out.  Deryn has had time to come to grips with her feelings and instead of making hopeless advances, accepts how life is and is content to be Alek's friend.  After the discover of Deryn's girlness, Alek goes through a couple of very realistic reactions, culminating in the two of them valuing their friendship as too important to ruin.  The eventual morphing of the friendship into romance is natural, realistic, an did not make me want to throw things which is awesome.  I liked the open ended conclusion as well, with America entering the war, but no actual resolution to it, just the hope that it will end sooner rather then later. The illustrations as always add just the right feel and very much compliment the series.  Over all this was my least favorite book in the trilogy, but it was still awesome.  The trilogy as a whole feels complete and the world the author created is wonderful and whole.  This is one of those series that has me running to my books and internets to research the real version of this alternate history making the idea of the book last even longer hurrah!  I give the book 6 out of 10 recording frogs and the series as a whole 7 out of 10 fighting bears and recommend it to anybody who likes steampunk, science, alternate history, history, good writing and excellent world building.  Happy Reading Everybody!
Are you a Darwinist or a Clanker?  What era would you like to see an alternate history set in?  Is my writing more or less coherent on no sleep?

That Is One Big Monster

Hello everybody, I hope you are all staying warm and cozy during this cold snap.  Please stay safe and have plenty of books to read when the electricity goes out.  Speaking of electricity I finished the book Behemoth, which is the second book in Scott Westerfeld's, Leviathan series set in an alternate WWI era.  Ok so maybe the two don't have a whole lot to do with each other, but I never said segues were my specialty.  I finished this book on my epic road trip of reading and craziness and am now ready to ramble on about it.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

We start our story a little while after the first book ends. We find our Austrian Prince in hiding Alek attempting to teach his British friend Midshipman Dylan (really a girl named Deryn in disguise) to fence aboard the now hybrid air ship Leviathan.  They soon get into a fight with two German sea ships called ironclads who decide to show off their new weapon, the Tesla Tower, which is essentially a super cool lightning tower!  The Leviathan is disabled, but is able to limp to the Ottoman Empire who at this point is still supposedly neutral in the coming conflict.  At this point we learn that the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire had commissioned Britain to fabricate (I love that term) a ship an its companion creature called the

Osman and Behemoth respectively. Both were produced and both were spectacular and both were kept by the British Empire to help them with the upcoming war.  The government told the Sultan that they were merely "borrowing" them and that they would be given over after the conflict was resolved.  This obviously makes for shaky ground for any British ship landing on Ottoman soil.  News finally gets out about the missing Prince and Alek and his men decide their best bet would be to make a run for it rather then become political prisoners of Britain. Alek is watching the weird eggs that made an appearance in the last book and one hatches right before he tries to escape.  The creature that emerges is a small monkey type creature that can produce incredible sounds.  It keeps screaming until Alek takes it with him, later learning the creature has imprinted on him.  Alek makes good his escape with a few of his men. Deryn goes with Dr. Barlow to present one of the eggs to the Sultan and try and mend the fences as it were.  When they get there it is apparent that the Germans have already made there move and are allied with the Sultan in all but official tidings. The egg is crushed and to prevent the Sultan from making Leviathan  leave, she tells him that they are offering it in place of the Osman.  This gives the Leviathan a few more days in dock to decide what to do about the iron clads with the dreaded Tesla cannons. Alek has met a man named Zaven, his daughter Lilit and Nene, Zaven's mother and the leader of the revolutionists.  The group is trying to figure out how to overthrow the Sultan using the various walkers that guard the different parts of the
city and are under control of the citizens.  The problem being that they are not allowed to be armed and are therefor no match for any of the big mechanical s that the army uses.   Meanwhile Deryn has been given a mission to plant carnivorous metal eating barnacles to massive nets strung across the channel that prevents the Darwinists from using any of their big sea monsters.   Her team is caught while she is underwater (using the coolest, weirdest, ookiest wetsuit ever) and she must find a way to escape.  She swims across the channel into what seems to be a ship yard and is nearly run over by the Orient Express, here complete with a steaming Dragon engine.  She makes good her escape and eventually hooks up with Alek who has found himself some friends in Istanbul.  Deryn makes the suggestion that they use "spice bombs", essentially bags of eye watering spices that can be lobbed into the mechanicals of the opposing side. Being the DIL of a pepper farmer I can tell you that this is quit effective.  The team goes into action, with a kind of twisted yet hilarious love triangle happening, probably the best use of the dreaded love triangle ever!  Seriously go read it, it's funny.  Alek convinces Deryn that by helping the revolution, they are also helping the Leviathan by destroying the Tesla towers to that it can lead the Behemoth in to destroy the iron clads which helps the revolution and may prevent the Ottoman Empire from going to war on either side.  All goes pretty much according to plan, the mech walkers destroy the Tesla towers, the nets dissolve and allow the airships to guide the Behemoth through the channel into the harbor to destroy the iron clads.  Unfortunatly Zaven is killed and one of Alek's men is injured.  Deryn convinces Alek to bring his men aboard the Leviathen and continue his quest to stop the war from there.  The whole ship now knows that Alek is the lost prince and actually treat him with honor and respect.
 The book ends there with the promise of heading to the Far East in the conclusion of the trilogy.

I have to say I really enjoyed this book.  In general I like the Darwinist/beasties side of this world better, but seeing the Clanker/mech side portrayed through the Ottoman Empire definitely gave it some real flavor.  I liked the setting for this book (the author actually went to Istanbul to get an authentic take on it, which I think really came through).  So often we think of WWI being a strictly European conflict, forgetting that the lines of countries and relationships were much different then.  The characters as always are great, I have come to seriously love Dylan/Deryn.  Her practicality and scratchiness (I don't know how else to put it) crack me up all the time.  I thought that the plot was a bit more exciting in this book then the first one, but I did miss some of the beasties (though there was still plenty), I guess since the first book had so much Darwinist stuff, it was only fair to put in more Clanker stuff this book...at least the author did it with flair.  I like how the author

treated his requisite love triangle.  We know from the last book that Deryn is probably in love with Alek, who has no idea that s/he is a girl and just really likes him as a friend he was never allowed to have growing up.  Enter Lilit who instantly causes Deryn to be jealous of her assumed love of Alek...until Alek informs Dylan that Lilit is really in love with him (who is really a her).  At the end Lilit implies that she knows that Dylan is actually a Deryn before whisking away to continue her fathers revolution.  The alternate history is always fun, with enough truth to make it recognizable, and enough fiction to make it enjoyable.  I find this to be less of a steampunk series and more of a alternate history series...which may be what steampunk is, but that is for another post.  The beastie that hatched from the egg is interesting with its ability to perceive much more then most humans, and it's unsettling way of conveying information.  I think that this little guy will possibly play a bigger part in the last book.  I am looking forward to see how this series finishes up and recommend this book at least as much as the first.  Oh yeah and it has the same awesome illustrator Keith Thompson as the last book.  I give this book 7 out of 10 beasties.
What kind of fabrication do you prefer mech or beastie?  Do you like alternate histories or do the inaccuracies drive you crazy?  Do I take way to much glee in twisted triangles?