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The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter

Oct5

Dashes of Dahl. Snippets of Snicket. Heaps of Horvath. Those are the comparisons on the back of the ARC of this rather gothic middle grade adventure novel that I read breathlessly to the end in one day.

I would add: A modicum of Monty Python. Pinches of The Princess Bride (without the kissing). Even a bit of Joan Aiken’s Wolves of WIlloughby Chase.

So I’m not as good with the alliteration as the blurb writer. I do have three questions after reading about the strange and abnormal Hardscrabble children, Otto, Lucia, and Max, and their adventure in Snoring-by-the-Sea:

1. What is lurgy?

2. Will Otto ever talk?

3. Do British children really hate peanut butter and jelly (jam, not jello) sandwiches, and if so, what do they eat when there’s no food in the house except for PBJ?

If you can answer these questions and if you’ve already read The Kneebone Boy, you probably figured out the ending to the story long before I did –especially since I didn’t figure it out until the end when our helpful narrator who shall remain unnamed told us exactly what was what and who was who. I loved the chapter titles, such as:
In which the Hardscrabbles worry about the title of this book and other things.

In which something awful happens but I can’t say what it is.

In which Max’s educated guess had better be right or else Lucia and Otto are going to throttle him.

However, it must be said that those sorts of titles don’t really give away much about what’s going to happen in any particular chapter, much less how the book is going to end. Anyway, it also won’t hurt to tell that The Kneebone Boy has no vampires, no magic, only one very small ghost, one large castle and one small play castle, lots of adventure, many oddities, and a few crazies. Also, there’s not much blood, and lots of stuff happens at night . . . in the dark . . . in a spooky forest.Oh, and there’s a dungeon and a secret passageway.

If all that doesn’t convince you to pick a copy of The Kneebone Boy and start reading now, you obviously aren’t like Lucia who “wished something interesting would happen” and read lots of novels. Nor are you the Max-type, Max being the youngest Hardscrabble “who always thought he knew better” and thought “deeply and importantly.” You might be like Otto, the oddest of the Hardscrabble children. Otto, who never spoke out loud, only communicated with his own special sign language, and generally wanted to go home to Little Tunks instead of continuing on a dangerous and exciting adventure.

Now if that paragraph didn’t get you, nothing will.

Finding My Place by Traci L. Jones

Oct4

I graduated high school in 1975, the year in which this story takes place. So I loved all the cultural references to TV shows like Barney Miller and Sanford and Son, to songs like Monster Mash and Stairway to Heaven, and to political and social events and entities like the Black Panthers and maxi skirts and hippie communes. But the characters themselves eventually felt flat and unconvincing in spite of all the time period references and slang-sprinkled dialog.

Tiphanie Jayne Baker is the one who’s “finding her place” in a nearly all-white high school in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. Her parents have made it in the business world–dad’s a banker and mom’s a real estate broker–so they are moving into the house to match the income, out of the predominantly black part of town and into the ritzy white suburbs. Tiphanie has to transfer to a new high school where there’s only one other black student, a boy named Bradley. At first, no one even speaks to Tiphanie or acknowledges her presence, but that situation changes as she makes friends with social outcast, Jackie Sue Webster, and then eventually others in the school begin to notice that Tiphanie is a real person and not just the token black girl.

Unfortunately, it’s at the point that Tiphanie is finally beginning to feel somewhat accepted by the kids at school, except for a couple of garden variety racist idiots, that the story of the friendship between Tiphanie and Jackie Sue takes a turn for the oversimplified and stereotypical. Stop here if you’re not in the mood for spoilers. Jackie Sue’s mom is a former beauty queen, unwed mother, dumb blonde, now alcoholic and abusive mess. Could one possibly impose any more poor white trash stereotypes onto one character? Oh, yeah, Jackie Sue and her mom live in a trailer park, of course.

At the beginning of the story Jackie Sue with her impressive vocabulary and her observational skills was an interesting character. Then she somehow turned into a cliche. Tiphanie, although she’s smart and witty, hovers on the edge of stereotype with her parents lecturing her about upholding the good image of the Afro-American race and her friends accusing her of becoming too white, an Oreo. But whereas Tiphanie feels almost real, and her parents kind of snooty but also believable, Jackie Sue and especially her mom are just a plot device for Tiphanie to learn from and for the reader to get the message that some white people have poverty-stricken, dysfunctional lives that are worse than the lives of upwardly mobile blacks.

Read for a taste of the seventies, if you want one, but not for the realistic characterization.

Other views:
The HappyNappyBookseller: “I really enjoyed Finding My Place. It was a quick, fun and entertaining read. Jones knows how to write a good story and great dialogue.”

The Fourth Musketeer: “In this novel, Traci Jones examines serious issues of prejudice with a terrific sense of humor–I laughed out loud at numerous places in the novel. She explores overt prejudice against blacks . . . but also more subtle types of prejudice.”

Bookish Blather: “As her friendship with Jackie Sue grows, Tiphanie finds herself wrestling with her values, and the values of her family. I loved reading about Tiphanie. She’s smart, funny and witty, and a compassionate person.”

And, again, I am in the minority. Try it if you’re interested and see what you think.

Jump by Elisa Carbone

Oct1

On belay?
Belay on.
Climbing.
Climb on.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Imagine it perfect.

Jump is my introduction to the sport of rock-climbing. Apparently, there are rock-climbing gyms and climbing shops where you buy gear with esoteric names and rocks and cliffs and routes to climb that have ratings and their own weird names (Swing Shift? Midnight Lightning?). Who knew such a world existed?

Anyway, our two protagonists, Critter, escapee from a mental hospital, and P.K., a runaway who just wants to avoid being sent to boarding school, find themselves hitchhiking across country to Nevada and then to California to find a place where they can share their mutual passion–rock-climbing. In the process, they, of course, discover another passion for each other, but there are issues that must be resolved. And the cops are chasing both Critter and P.K., seeking to return Critter to his drugged life in the hospital and P.K. into the arms of her parents-who-don’t-understand-me.

I’m making the book sound a bit trite and predictable, but it’s really anything but. Critter isn’t really crazy, or is he? He does read people’s emotions by the colored auras he sees surrounding them, and he makes things happen by visualizing them. And P.K. is a strong, independent, rock-climbing, kick you-know-what female, or maybe she’s just a girl who wants her daddy to listen to her and her mom to let her stay home. The parents of both young people were rather flat characters, not very comprehensible. But this story isn’t really about kids and parents; it’s about P.K. and Critter and their relationship and about trust and most of all about living in the present. Critter tells P.K. over and over that the present moment is all that’s real. The past can’t be changed; it’s subject to what Critter calls “the Law of Inevitability.” The future isn’t here, and most of the things we worry about happening in the future, won’t. So Now is all there is.

That’s the philosophy part of the book. The story part is your basic boy meets girl, problems, resolution. But it’s a good climb with some quirky, lovable characters.

The Reinvention of Edison Thomas by Jacqueline Houtman

Sep28

According to the author blurb, author Jacqueline Houtman “most enjoys writing sciency fiction for kids, where real science is integral to the story.” The Reinvention of Edison Thomas is certainly “sciency” in lots of ways. If you have kid who likes inventions and inventors, who is maybe a little geeky (in a good way, of course), who would enjoy reading about taking things apart and doing science to solve practical problems, Edison Thomas is the book.

Brief summary: Edison Thomas, Eddy, can understand lasers and eddy coils, but he doesn’t understand the actions and emotions of his fellow classmates in middle school. Eddy’s thought patterns and his limited abilities in social interaction are sometimes difficult and disconcerting to read about, but even when he is being bullied by the guy he thinks is his best friend, Eddy never loses sight of what is really important. He finds ways to make real friends and ways to use his talents in science and organization to help the community and to improve himself in the areas where he’s challenged.

I am somewhat fascinated by books that feature characters who are on the autism spectrum, but the real key to this book is the science. Eddy uses a lot of science principles to solve problems and help people. He’s quite an inventor, but reading people is hard for him. I was trying to think of other middle grade fiction books that feature science (not science fiction), but I’m coming up nearly blank.

There are the Einstein Anderson books by Seymour Simon, but all of those books are about ten or fifteen years old and probably dated.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly from last year was full of biology and nature study.

Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass had a lot of astronomy.

Lots of other books feature kids who like science, but there’s not much real science included as an integral part of the story.

What am I forgetting?

Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson

Sep24

Talk about mixed feelings—and mixed messages. Seventeen year old Joshua Wynn, the narrator of Saving Maddie, is a PK (preacher’s kid). He sings in the church choir, visits old folks in the nursing home, and presides over the church youth group. But he doesn’t really know what he believes or why he believes it. He knows the he shouldn’t use foul language, and he doesn’t, but why not? Joshua couldn’t tell you. He knows he should go to church and obey his parents. But he can’t say anything to support those beliefs, except quote you a Bible verse. He knows that premarital sex is wrong, but why? Joshua hasn’t a clue.

It’s not surprising, then, that when Joshua sets out to help his old friend Maddie “see the light” and come back to the faith, Joshua is the one who is most influenced and changed and pulled away from the shell of a moral code that he had at the beginning of the story. Joshua says at several points in the story that he thinks he can save Maddie. So his first mistake is that he thinks he is capable of “saving” someone; salvation in the Christian sense of the word is strictly God’s province. I don’t recall Joshua praying at all in the course of the story, although bad girl Maddie does pray before meals and say that she’s “spiritual but not religious.” Joshua is obviously a mixed up Pharisee with no moral core to his churchiness and no real relationship with Jesus Christ. He’s a good kid with no real reason to stay good. He and Maddie need authentic Christianity modeled for them, Christ made flesh in the lives of Christians, but all they get are platitudes, goodness for the sake of appearances, judgment, and confusing theology from their parents and other adults in their lives. And of course, all the kids they know are either “doing it” or at the very least see no reason why any sane person would remain sexually abstinent until marriage. So nowhere in the entire book does anyone give any coherent rationale for sexual purity.

That said, Joshua is a pretty good example of what our churches and Christian homes are turning out. I’m not sure my own teenagers could give a reasoned Biblical argument for sexual purity or articulate their own Christian beliefs in a way that would make sense to others with differing beliefs. (I’m not talking about converting others, but rather just knowing what you believe.) Sadly enough, I’m finding that you can lead a horse to water . . . Perhaps author Varian Johnson made his protagonist, Joshua, so clueless and ignorant because he saw that many if not most Christian young people from strong, faith-filled homes are in the same place as Joshua. If anyone is talking to them about not only what the Bible teaches but also why they should obey its strictures, they’re not buying. And many, many who have professed faith in Christ have never come to an intimate relationship with Jesus that makes them eager to please him and reluctant to disobey His words in Scripture. That relationship and faith walk are the only things that are sufficient to enable a young person (or an old person) to resist sexual temptation or any other kind of temptation.

So Saving Maddie is a picture of how the world is, without any pointers to how it could be or why it should be better. Maddie is a tragic figure who does need saving. So is Joshua. But by the end of the book they’re both still drowning. One could call this story of teenage confusion authentic, or perhaps it’s just sad.

Sidenote: I don’t want to start another cover controversy, but I really couldn’t figure out whether the characters in this novel were black or or not. Mr. Johnson is black. Certain things—the pastor’s name, the name of Joshua’s church, other minor details—led me to believe that the characters in the book were black. And Joshua mentioned Maddie’s “brown skin” at least a couple of times in the book. However, the girl on the cover of the book doesn’t look black or brown to me; she looks like a white model with some shadow on her skin. However, I found this interview where author Varian Johnson discusses this very issue, and as he says, I don’t suppose it really matters what skin color the characters have.

Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm

Sep24

Readalikes: Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Soup by Robert Newton Peck, The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald, Flush by Carl Hiaassen.

Related Movies: The Goonies, Little Rascals, Annie, (NOT Shirley Temple).

Song: Mississippi Squirrel Revival

Key West, Florida, June, 1935.

Take one eleven year girl named Turtle with eyes as “gray as soot” who sees things exactly as they are. Plunk her down in Key West, Florida with her Aunt Minnie the Diaper Gang and a bunch of Conch (adj. native or resident of the Florida Keys) relatives and Conch cousins with nicknames like Pork Chop and Too Bad and Slow Poke. Leave her starry-eyed mama back in New Jersey keeping house for Mrs. Budnick who doesn’t like children and dreaming of being married to Archie, the encyclopedia salesman. Add in an ornery grandmother that Turtle didn’t know she had and a cat named Smokey and a dog named Termite.

All of that put together by author Jennifer L. Holm makes a story that reminded me of the above movies and and books and song but at the same time had its own feel and flavor. Turtle is a great little anti-Pollyanna who hates Shirley Temple and knows that “kids are rotten,” especially boys. The Diaper Gang is the Conch version of Our Gang with a wagon for babysitting bad babies and a secret formula for curing diaper rash. And if you’re a fan of the movie The Goonies, you should enjoy Turtle in Paradise, and vice-versa.

I leave you with a recipe from the book that gives you yet another comparative flavor and indication of the appeal of this story:

“After we finish swimming, we have a cut-up. A cut-up is something these Conch kids do every chance they get. Each kid brings whatever they can find lying around or hanging on a tree–sugar apple, banana, mango, pineapple, alligator pear, guava, cooed potatoes, and even raw onions. They cut it all up and season it with Old Sour which is made from key lime juice, salt and hot peppers. Then they pass it around with a fork, and everyone takes a bite. It’s the strangest fruit salad I’ve ever had, but it’s tasty.”

1776 and Forge: Serendipitous Reading

Sep21

1776 by David McCullough.

Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson. Sequel to Chains by the same author. Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Amy at Hope Is the Word.

I really didn’t plan it this way, but what a fortuitous sequence of reading events.

1. I am teaching U.S. History at our homeschool co-op. We’ve been reading about Jamestown, the Pilgrims and colonial life in general. We’ll be studying the American Revolution in about a week, or maybe two.

2. I finally read David McCullough’s 1776 about the beginning of the Revolution and all of the characters and events of the year 1776. I really fell for Nathaniel Greene, General Washington’s young Quaker-born protege, and Henry Knox, the stout young former bookseller turned artillery expert. McCullough writes vivid, informative history, and he makes the people of history especially full of life and approachable. I wanted to meet General Green and Colonel Knox. I cheered for them when things went well and felt sorry for them when they made mistakes which ended in tragedy. I did copy a few passages into my notebook as I read:

Washington to the army defending New York, August 23 1776: “Remember officers and soldiers that you are free men, fighting for the blessings of liberty—that slavery will be your portion and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men.”

New York, August 1776, on the lack of uniforms in the Continental Army: “In the absence of uniforms, every man was to put a sprig of green in his hat as identification.” I thought this brief sentence was so evocative of the David and Goliath nature of the fight, backwoods, country Americans, in their worn, homespun work clothes going up against the best-trained, best-equipped army in the world in their scarlet uniforms. And only a spring of greenery to identify friend from foe.

British General Grant after a British victory in the same battle of New York: “If a good bleeding can bring those Bible-faced Yankees to their senses, the fever of independency should soon abate.” It didn’t bring them to their senses, and the fever did not abate.

McCullough on General George Washington: “He was not a brilliant strategist or tactician, not a gifted orator, not an intellectual. At several crucial moments, he had shown marked indecisiveness. He had made serious mistakes in judgment. But experience had been his great teacher, and in this his greatest test, he learned steadily from experience. Above all, Washington never forgot what was at stake, and he never gave up.”

3. Immediately after I finished 1776, I started Laurie Halse Anderson’s Forge, a sequel to the award-winning Chains. These books are set during the American Revolution, a fact I knew since I read Chains last year, but I had forgotten that Chains ends in 1776 with the British in control of New York and our two protagonists, Isabel and Curzon, escaping from slavery and from a British prison into the wilderness of upstate(?) New York. Forge covers the time period of the winter and subsequent spring at Valley Forge 1777-78 where General Washington and his ragtag army spent a miserable time trying to survive and recover from their defeats and victories at the hands of the British army.

There are a few flashbacks that tell the reader what happened to Isabel and Curzon between their escape from New York and October, 1777 when the book actually picks up the story. Suffice it to say the two friends have not remained together, and Curzon is now on his own with no idea where Isabel is. This book evokes and enumerates all of the hardships experienced by the common soldiers at Valley Forge from the viewpoint of the lowest of the low, an escaped slave and enlisted man in the Continental Army. Curzon experiences prejudice, misunderstanding, persecution, deprivation, and near starvation, sometimes because of his skin color and also as a result of the deficiency of supplies and organization in the army as a whole.

My friend General Nathaniel Greene reappears in fictional form in this book. and the men are glad to see him! It seems, according to Halse Anderson’s telling of the story, that General Greene saved the day at Valley Forge and finally got the men there some food and clothing and arms. Greene’s wife, Caty doesn’t come off too well in the book, but I didn’t have a crush on her anyway.

So, friends, I would suggest that if you’re interested in the American Revolution and historical fiction set in that time period that you read the following books in the following order, by plan rather than by happenstance:

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. This classic Newbery award-winning novel set in pre-revolutionary Boston gives a fantastic picture of the causes of the warand its effect on the people of Boston.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 1, The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson. Semicolon review here.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume 2, Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson.

1776 by David McCullough.

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. Semicolon review here.

Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Only one word of warning: Anderson’s story still isn’t complete. I read an ARC of Forge, and it won’t be out according to Amazon until mid-October. If you want the entire story you’ll have to wait and read all three volumes together when the third book comes out, whenever that is. By the way, I see that Laurie Halse Anderson will be at the Texas Book Festival in Austin in October. That would be fun to attend, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it this year.

BBAW: Unexpected Treasure

Sep15

We invite you to share with us a book or genre you tried due to the influence of another blogger. What made you cave in to try something new and what was the experience like?

I’d like to go in a bit of a different direction with this question. I’ve always read children’s books and children’s fiction. I used to be an elementary school librarian. I’ve read most of the classics, most of the Newbery Medalists, some of them more than once. However, it was my participation in the Cybils Award process for the past four years that gave me the opportunity to read and appreciate lots and lots of the new books that are being published for children. And, wow did I find some unexpected treasures.


My first year (2006) as a Cybils judge I read Kiki Strike by Kirsten Miller, and I fell in love with this tale of underground New York and the weirdly powerful girls who save the city from disaster. Even better, Brown Bear Daughter, who was then eleven years old old, loved the book, too.

My second year with Cybils, I was a first round panelist which meant lots more books to read and lots more favorites. A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban, Cracker: The Best Dog in Vietnam by Cynthia Kadohata, Leap of Faith by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and Leepike Ridge by N.D. Wilson were all wonderful discoveries. However, my personal favorite from 2007 didn’t even make the finalist list, and I might not have read it had it not been for the Cybils judging: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Stewart. Great and unexpected treasure.

In 2008 and 2009, I was again honored to be a panelist for Middle Grade Fiction. In 2008 I discovered Alvin Ho, a neurotic seven year old from Cambridge MA, fictional creation of author Lenore Look, and The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd, about a young detective and a mysterious disappearance from the famous Wheel in London. Last year Heart of a Shepherd by Roseanne Parry stole my heart, and Leaving the Bellweathers by Kristin Clark Venuti made me and my son laugh together.

I don’t know if I’ll be judging for the Cybils this year or not, but I’m so hooked that I’ll be there on October 1 to nominate my favorites, and I’ll be reading as many of the nominated titles as I can find whether I’m judging or not. Cybils is great place to dig for unexpected treasure.

Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone

Sep7

This is a great book about a small boy who will face sickness, starvation, indians, and many other adventures. On his way to help found the colony of Jamestown, young Samuel Collier is apprenticed to Captain John Smith after a fight with another boy in the orphanage. Though at first Samuel sees it as a bad thing, this apprenticeship will turn out to be the very thing that keeps him alive. When Indians are attacking, when the colonists are being abandoned, through starvation and pain, Captain John Smith will help him. Samuel will learn what it is like to be dependent on others, something he never learned in England. He will make friends, lose friends, and even live with his enemies. During his life in the new world he will come face to face will death and sickness, as well as happiness and feasting.

I loved this book because it had so much adventure and excitement, easily balanced by sadness and even death. It’s a great read for anyone with a great imagination and an urge for learning as well. Many of the occurrences in this book actually happened, save some of the details. I read this book by my choice, and I am very glad I did. This is the kind of book you will want to read again and again. Between the action, the great story, and the thrills of the colonists lives, you will be stuck on this book.

KarateKid

Two Novels of Twelfth Night

Sep7

As I have said in another post, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is not my favorite of his comedies, although it has its moments. The sword fight between Sir Andre Aguecheek and an inexperienced Viola disguised as a boy is quite hilarious. However, I always feel sorry for Malvolio, a character who is not really malevolent as much as he is misguided and inadequate. SInce I often feel misguided and inadequate myself, and since I don’t like practical jokes that take advantage of my or others’ weaknesses, Twelfth Night generally leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m laughing at Malvolio, and even poor Sir Andrew, in spite of my better instincts.

Nevertheless, this month and last seem to be the appointed time for me to gain a better appreciation of Shakespeare’s play. First I saw a production of Twelfth Night at Winedale in August. Then, I came home to find a copy of The Fool’s Girl by Celia Rees waiting on my TBR shelf. Of course, I had to read it as a follow-up to the play. And in fact, Ms. Rees’s novel is a sort of sequel to Twelfth Night. The main character, Violetta, is the daughter of Count Orsino and the Lady Viola, and as our story opens, Violetta is a refugee from her native country, Illyria. Her city has been conquered and sacked by the Venetians, and Feste, the jester, is Violetta’s only friend and protector as she wanders the streets of Elizabethan London. Violetta and Feste happen to meet Master Shakespeare and ask for his help in reclaiming Violetta’s rightful inheritance and righting old wrongs, and the story continues from there.

In an afterword, Celia Rees says that Twelfth Night is her favorite Shakespearean comedy. “While I was watching, I began to wonder: What happens next? What happens after the end of the play? The play walks a knife’s edge between tragedy and comedy. It is perfectly balanced, but one false move and it could all go horribly wrong.” In Rees’s sequel, it does all go horribly wrong. People go insane and betray one another. Sir Toby and Maria become flawed but sympathetic characters, while the wronged Malvolio becomes perfectly evil and completely unsympathetic. The world of Illyria is turned upside down, and it’s up to Violetta, Feste, and Master Shakespeare to set things right.

I enjoyed Ms. Rees’s sequel even though it did partake of the darkness and the equivocal nature of Shakepeare’s play. Ms. Rees writes, “The Fool’s Girl wasn’t always called that. For a long time it was called Illyria.” The idea of a mystical (and rather dark) place named Illyria captured the imagination of more than one Young Adult novelist this year. In Elizabeth Hand’s brief novel, Illyria, cousins Rogan and Madeline inhabit a mystical world of the mind with a physical location in the attic of Rogan’s home. They also participate in a high school production of Twelfth Night, Madeline starring as Viola and Rogan as the wise fool Feste. Rogan and Madeline are fascinating characters, but the book as a whole was not as successful in making me feel things or think thoughts as either Shakespeare’s play or Celia Rees’s historical fiction. Mostly, Illyria made me uncomfortable, not because Rogan and Madeline are “incestuous” first cousins, but rather because they have a strange and unfathomable relationship that seems based on physical attraction but also attempts to transcend the physical without ever quite being able to do so. It was weird and creepy, and the fact that the two cousins are engaging in an illicit sexual relationship only makes the story more awkward and fraught with tension. Rogan is talented but self-destructive, and Madeline ends up a thwarted and unloved second tier actress. The characters and their actions are realistic, but I failed to understand what their lives meant or what I felt about their choices, except that as I said before, I felt uncomfortable. That feeling may have been the author’s main intent.

Bottom line: I would recommend Rees’s The Fool’s Girl to anyone interested in Twelfth Night and Shakespearean fiction and ideas. The book is somewhat dark and dances along the edges of dismal and black magic, but the ending is bittersweet with an emphasis on the sweet and comedic. Illyria by Elizabeth Hand is a bit more problematic, and I didn’t enjoy it very much although I did try. Maybe Colleen’s thoughts on Illyria at Chasing Ray would be more helpful if you are trying to decide whether to read this one or not. She loved it; I’d give it a pass if I were choosing again.