Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud

I love fantasy. Always have, always will--from Tolkien and George R.R. Martin right down to Michael Moorcock's freaky Elric saga and pulp novels like the Drizzt Do'Urden books.

But I know that fantasy can sometimes be a little... predictable. Diana Wynne Jones (the author behind Howl's Moving Castle) even wrote a Hugo-winning book called the Tough Guide to Fantasyland that skewers the genre's many cliches in literally alphabetical detail. (For example: Why so many cloaks? Why so much stew? And must every caravan really be ambushed?)

So it's a special treat when an accomplished fantasy author upends the genre and plays with our expectations. Heroes of the Valley does just that, and in a very meta fashion. British author Jonathan Stroud already showed his skills in the popular Bartimaeus trilogy, and that smart storytelling is put to work here in a satisfyingly contrarian way.

The story revolves around the runty, pugnacious Halli, a 14-year-old antihero who is coming to grips with the fables that he's heard growing up and learning whether or not those cultural myths actually have any basis in reality--so not only are readers constantly left guessing as to what will happen next, Halli never knows quite what to expect either. For example, he grows up believing that his noble house was founded by the mightiest of 12 heroes. But as soon as he's exposed to the wider world, he learns that every kid in *every* house is taught that their house's founding hero was the greatest.

That's the sort of eye-opening lesson we learn again and again in real life (usually starting in our early teens, no coincidence there), and Stroud uses that relativism to craft a fun, often funny, and cleverly unconventional fantasy story, all without skimping on the genre's requisite pacing and scrapes with danger.

A great read, even if you're not typically a fantasy fan. Check out the trailer to hear Stroud talk more about it:

Black and White by Paul Volponi

Reviewed by Steven Wolk

Paul Volponi has burst onto the young adult literature scene like a thrilling thunderstorm. His books take place in urban America, and involve race and culture, crime, and sports. Black and White is a dazzling book that brings all of these elements together in a great story of friendship, responsibility, basketball, and the social and personal lines between race and class.

Marcus and Eddie are seniors in high school, best friends, and the stars of their basketball team. In fact, they are so good at the game that scholarships to top college basketball programs are a lock. Marcus is black and Eddie is white, and heir friendship, it appears, is beyond race and culture, and in school they are known as "Black" and "White."

Nearing graduation, Marcus and Eddie spend money needed for school on new basketball shoes. To replace the cash they decide to pull a few "parking lot stickups." There’s an old gun in a shoebox in Eddie’s attic ready for use. It’s a simple plan; rob a few people leaving stores, replace the school money, end of story. But then the gun goes off. Eddie didn’t mean to shoot the man, who happens to be a neighborhood bus driver. But here is a key arc to the story: The bus driver sees Marcus but doesn’t see Eddie. Marcus gets arrested. Eddie doesn’t. What should they do?

Their lives spinning out of control, their friendship slowly being torn apart, Marcus and Eddie don’t know what to do. Should Eddie turn himself in? Should Marcus "rat out" his best friend? Where is the line between friendship and responsibility? And to make things even more complex, Marcus is secretly dating Eddie’s sister, Rose. Told in alternating chapters from the voices of Black and White (and with a different font for each character), the story unfolds like a beautifully executed play on the basketball court. You know where they’re going but you’re not sure exactly how they will get there.

The first tests for any novel are the story, the characters, and the writing. Black and White has them all in abundance. But it has more. The book is brimming with vital questions about our criminal justice system. When Marcus arrives in prison at Rikers, he says, "It’s black people wall to wall. There are Spanish inmates, too. But everyone else is black... I saw plenty of white faces in court. I guess they were innocent or made bail. The only white faces I saw on Rikers belonged to the corrections officers."

There is a scene in Black and White that speaks a powerful truth about crime, race, and class in the U.S., as well as the moral complexity of family. After Marcus is arrested two detectives visit Eddie’s house. Marcus hasn’t turned his friend in, but it doesn’t take much investigating for the police to figure out Eddie’s involvement. But they don’t have any evidence. They question the family. Ask if they own a .38 caliber. His father is outraged, and yells, "We don’t own a gun!" and says the police should be out chasing "real criminals." But later that night Eddie is in bed and hears some creeks from attic. Eddie goes up there. His dad is sitting, holding the closed shoebox. They stare. His dad says, "I don’t ever want to open this box, Eddie. Do I?" Eddie has nothing to say. His father tells him to get back to bed. In the morning the shoebox is gone. Two boys commit a crime. They may be the guilty ones, but so many more are complicit.

Classic Climate Change Fiction

You realize that all this stuff about “save the earth” and “stop destroying the planet” is a bunch of bunk, right? We can pollute the air all we want and it won’t hurt the planet one bit. It would hurt US, of course. The human tragedy could be nearly beyond imagining. But the planet will be just fine.

I said “nearly beyond imagining,” because it has been imagined. Check out this news story about the Revelation-style WOE that is going to fall on us if we screw up the global climate. Temperatures rise, millions migrate, world war erupts, warns Lord Nicholas Stern, a British environmental bigwig. I wonder what Stern was reading back in 1962. Perhaps it was The Long Winter by John Christopher.

There are only a few authors that scare me. I’m frightened of them because they’ve proven that they can rattle me and leave me disturbed for life. (Neil Gaiman - see “Sandman: 24 Hours.” Mervyn Peake - see the original “Captain Slaughterboard.” And John Christopher -- see “The Long Winter” among others.)

Christopher was thinking of a temperature drop, not a rise. But the effects are the same. This civilization we’ve built will crumble into chaos if out thermostat gets out of whack.

There’s also an interesting racial overtone in “The Long Winter.” Basically, he asks what if all the white people had to flee Europe and the U.S. for the tropics. How would they be treated when they showed up as huddled masses desperate for food and shelter.

Imagine, if the climate changed and made Mexico the land of plenty and America unlivable -- would you want to be treated the way that illegal Mexican immigrants are currently treated in the U.S.?

I told you it wasn’t going to be pleasant. If you've got the nerve for this book expect a raw look at race -- but from a different angle than we're used to. (You may also encounter some ethnic terms which are long out of use.)

This book has a place next to 1984 and Brave New World. Perhaps it should even replace them. It shows that our civilization is not an omnipotent Big Brother, but a house of cards that cannot stand a global shock, such as a relatively minor temperature fluctuation.

The great white way

Jenny Davidson linked yesterday to new digitized photos from Robert Scott's tragic Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica in 1910. The photos are now owned by the Scott Polar Research Institute and starting March 4th will be available at Freeze Frame.

There are several books on the Terra Nova trip that I can recommend but a good place to start is Richard Farr's Emperors of the Ice which I reviewed in December for Bookslut:

"While the name Robert Scott might be known to young readers, it is unlikely that they have read about some of the more successful aspects of his fateful 1909 journey to the South Pole. As he explains in the preface to his new book, Emperors of the Ice, author Richard Farr was particularly taken with the “Winter Journey” portion of that expedition. Later recounted by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in his bestselling narrative The Worst Journey in the World, the trip to collect Emperor penguin eggs nearly killed “Cherry,” Dr. Edward Wilson and Lt. Henry Bowers. As it turned out Wilson and Bowers did not survive the race to the Pole with Scott and it was only Cherry who was later able to provide the first person account of Scott’s dedication to science. Unfortunately, Cherry’s book is a bit of a “doorstop” as Farr puts it. A lot of readers might be intimidated by its size (almost 600 pages) or its age. This is most true for teen readers for whom the adventurous aspects of the book would otherwise be very appealing. So Farr wrote about the journey in an easier format. Heavily illustrated with maps and photographs from the expedition, Emperors of the Ice is exactly the sort of book that readers eager for the unknown will adore.

One interesting choice Farr made was to write the book from Cherry’s perspective. Relying primarily on Worst Journey for his text, Farr crafted a book that literally places the reader there with Cherry, Bill Wilson and Birdie Bowers as they struggled against enormous odds (and nearly died) in pursuit of the hidden secrets of bird evolution. While science has proven that Wilson’s thesis about the penguins was incorrect, the larger idea that birds and dinosaurs were related is true. But more amazingly, discovering that polar explorers actually risked their lives in pursuit of ornithological revelations is heartening in the best sort of way. They were brave and superhumanly determined and it was all for science. After so many books about winning it is wonderful to be reminded that Scott was in a race only because it was thrust upon him by circumstance; that his goal was always just to learn more. (Something that Richard Byrd and George Catlin would both understand.) Emperors of the Ice manages then to salute both men of adventure and intellect. There are action movies and video games and then there is what was accomplished at the bottom of the world nearly a century ago. This is thrilling writing and it will hopefully open up a whole world of polar literature to readers looking for something to believe in."

Readers who want to know more about Cherry in particular should then move on to Sara Wheeler's outstanding biography, Cherry. It covers not only the expedition but the difficulty of being one of the men who lived and also lost his two closest friends. (More of my thoughts on that book can be found at a past entry on my site, Chasing Ray.)

[Post pic of geologists Frank Debenham and T Griffith Taylor.]

2009 YA Releases Guys Should Get

So many books, so little time.

I have a humongous list of forthcoming YA books that I would like to read. I update it regularly, whenever I hear about a new book with an interesting plotline or a forthcoming release from a favorite author of mine.

Here are a few not-yet-released books that GuysLitWire readers will totally dig, books that I read in advance and want to bring to your attention.

This is What I Want to Tell You by Heather Duffy Stone (March 2009)
Twins - one boy, one girl - share narrative duties in this story of secrets, lies, and shifting loyalties. This is Stone's debut novel.

After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr (May 2009)
After moving in with his father and step-family, a young man falls for a quiet, troubled girl. From the author of Stay With Me.

Legacy by Tom Sniegoski (October 2009)
A high school dropout learns that his estranged, dying father is a superhero - and expects his son to take up his mantle. Sniegoski always does a great job with reluctant heroes.

Which of these books sounds the most up your alley?

Destroy All Cars

When I used to work as a bookseller, there were a few books that I loved so much that I could sell them like no body's business. Give me a stack of The Lightning Thief or How I Live Now and just stand back and watch me. I used to joke with my co-workers that if someone snatched me and locked me in a room and said, "You have to sell this book to the next 10 people I send in here, or else," I would just laugh and say, "Bring it on." I think Blake Nelson's upcoming release, Destroy All Cars is one such magic title. I have so many good things to say about it that I bet I could sell this to just about anyone. I am crazy about this novel. Allow me to convince you.

James Hoff likes to rant. A lot. His rants are variations on one central theme: America's consumerist culture is the root of all evil. James has a lot to say about the big problems facing the planet, specifically America's role in creating and perpetuating those problems, and he doesn't bother sugar-coating his strong opinions. He'll yell at whoever will listen (and everyone who isn't listening too). He's ready to blame Global Warming on just about everybody from soccer moms to aging hippies to people in their twenties with tattoos. Basically, what it all comes down to for James is the "lameness of people in general," their apathy, and their super-self-absorbed, short-sighted lifestyle choices.



Destroy All Cars follows James as he blasts his point of view all over the place. He is particularly fond of incorporating his worldview into his Junior AP English assignments, which are scattered throughout the novel and make for side-splitting reading. Every paper is followed by a few of his teacher's comments and instructions for revision (too emotional, not supported by facts...) Hilarious. To top everything off, James is kind of distracted by his ex-girlfriend Sadie, a do-gooder type who shares James's philosophy and has a far more measured and practical approach for creating social change. He's not sure how he feels about her these days, which is a bit unsettling for James.

After reading Destroy all Cars, I want to read every single other book Blake Nelson has written. If they're half as clever and entertaining as this one, then I'll be entirely satisfied. James's voice is pitch-perfect. It is utterly convincing, sarcastic and in places, pretty endearing. You might find yourself believing in his point of view, but his approach is so not working because it is way over-the-top. I like how Nelson set that tension up. I thought James's philosophy was right on in places, but I just kept shaking my head at his way-out approach to getting his ideas out there.

This is a book about believing in things, having opinions about big issues, caring a lot but not really knowing how to do anything productive with your ideas. As much as it's hard to take James seriously some of the time, Destroy All Cars should definitely get people talking about the problems James sees with American culture, and maybe inspire readers to care even half as much as James does. You'll laugh, and you'll take a look at your own choices. Oh, and there's a little romance to round it all out too.

Destroy All Cars is the perfect teen guy book - quirky, hilarious, intelligent and just serious enough to make you feel smarter. Read it the second it comes out in May 2009.

Read World Tour!

Recently, I've become interested in African fiction. What sparked it was discovering the phenomenal Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan. This is a stark, amazing collection of stories that explore the atrocities of the last decade that have brutalized Africa from the perspective of children. Gorgeous fiction, but not for the faint of heart.

Anyways, from there I discovered the Caine Prize for African fiction, and such authors as Ben Okri. It got me thinking about all the fiction all over the world we here in the US have such little exposure to. So I thought it would be cool to pick out my favorite authors and books from each continent-- sort of an "around the world in 7 books" kind of thing. Some may be obvious picks, but other I think may be cool discoveries for you like they were for me.



First up, Africa, since we're there already:
The godfather of the African novel is Amos Tutuola. He shares a few traits with the first author I mentioned above, Uwem Akpan: they're both Nigerian, and they both are Jesuit educated (although that where their education similarities end. Akpan is a Jesuit priest with multiple advanced degrees, while Tutuola's education ended after six years). Tutuola's first book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, made a huge splash when it debuted in English back in 1952. But it's his second novel, also written in English, that is my pick for the continent of Africa.

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is about a young child who, on the run from a band of mercenaries, hides in the most remote of forests, the one ihabited by a nation of ghosts. This book is a fantasy unlike any I've seen, inhabited by ghosts immenently more vivid, grotesque, and ornate than any in western literature. In addition, the language is gangly and awkward, like the narrator, and owes much to an oral storytelling tradition.

Next, we'll head north, to Europe:

A year ago or so I came across The Pull of the Ocean, by Jean-Claude Mourlevat, a slim, intriguing novel that has been a big hit in Mourlevat's native France. Based on the fable "Tom o' my Thumb" or "Tom Thumb" as written by the king of the French fairy-tale, Charles Perrault, the plot is fairly straightforward: seven brothers, all twins but the youngest, leave their home in fear of their violent past and head for the coast.

What I love about this book is exactly what makes it so European, and, to many here in the States, maddening. Plot is tenuous; the ending is left vague, open to interpretation, and (to an American reader) unresolved; and the characters can seem remote, even at times inaccessible. But it's fascinating nonetheless. The language is great and the world these characters inhabit is at once dreamlike and real.

Even now, a year since I read it, I don't so much remember the book for the characters or what happened, but more for the intense feelings it left me with--longing, melancholy--which, just thinking about the book, brings back.

Melancholy (the word, not the feeling) brings me to the next book and the next continent, Asia.

Originally, when I was first working on this list, I thought about discussing Hong Kong comics, or ancient chinese mysteries. That was before I came across an advanced reader's copy of Japanese light novel The Melancholy of Harumi Suzumiya
by Nagaru Tanigawa.

This is an insanely popular book in Japan, spawning something like eight sequels, a manga adaptation, an anime adaptation, and translations into several languages, including now English. At first glance, it appears to be something closer to shoujo (or girls') manga, the kind of thing that would appear in Shojo Beat magazine here in the States. But it's actually something quite different:

Kyon is a high school guy, who's long ago given up his hopes of living in an interesting world. You know the world he dreams about: one inhabited by superheroes, aliens, demons, or psychics just like in comics and books. But then he ends up behind peculiar classmate Haruhi Suzumiya, mysterious, beautiful, strong, and seemingly crazy. She ropes Kyon into starting the SOS brigade with her, an after school club devoted to the interest in these fantastic things. Naturally, they discover the world is teeming with them.

What's drawn me to this book, though, isn't the wonderful, wacky plot, but it's narrator. He speaks in a world-weary, eternally idealistic voice in the tradition of other great narrators of fiction: Ishmael, for one (we discover that Kyon is a nickname, and despite hating it, he never tells us his actual name)

Continuing eastward, we end up in the West: South America

As I mentioned above, some of my choices may seem obvious, and I think the no author springs immediately to mind when considering South America than Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. But one of my favorite books by him may not be so obvious, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Looking at my entire list, this may be the only realist novel in the whole bunch, which is ironic considering that Garcia-Marquez is practically synonymous with the phrase "magic realism." But there's more to South American literature (and it's pre-eminent nobel laureate) than magic realism.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a mystery, but very different from most mystery tales. Instead of an investigation progressing from dead body to the discovery of the murderer, this book begins with the murder and murderer known, and burrows backward to explore the motivations and purpose behind the murder. It's brief, a novella, and gripping, all wrapped in Garcia-Marquez's wonderful writing.

Up out of Columbia, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's home country, and into North America.

Last July, Steven Wolk wrote a great review of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. But well before he wrote that YA novel, he made his reputation writing short stories. His first book of shorts, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a great collection, exploring issues of Native American identity and culture. He reworked one of the stories into the film Smoke Signals, which is a great movie.

Oh, and this book has possibly the greatest book title of all time. More good news on the Alexie front: True Diary is out in paperback in a little over a week, and he's already working on another YA novel titled Radioactive Love Song.

The last truly inhabited continent is Australia, and there's lots of great writers from there. My first thought was a favorite author I've mentioned before--Margo Lanagan. But then my head began to riccochet with names: Justine Larbeleister and Marcus Zusak and on and on. Finally, I decided, because this trip around the world has a decidedly fantasy/sf bent, that I should go to the #1 source for great Australian science fiction, Jonathan Strahan. An editor for Locus for years, he puts together great collections of short stories, including The Starry Rift, reviewed by Colleen here back in September.

Included in the volume? A story by Margo Lanagan, among others. And, in a "it's a small world" turn, there's also a story by the great Scott Westerfeld, part-time Australian and full-time husband to Ms. Justine Larbeleister.

Okay, so we've almost made it, but there's still that frozen beast of a continent left, Antartica.

And, while there aren't any native Antarctic writers, there is one book that comes might close in my mind. Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica developed out of a fascination with the continent and it's similarities to the planet Mars, which Robinson did extensive research on when he wrote his Mars trilogy. After he learned that there's a grant for artists to come to Antarctica and develop art explicitly grounded in the experience, Robinson went all-in, and what emerged was this book. I enjoyed it, but maybe it's best read as a bookend to the Mars trilogy.

So there you have it: seven continents (and one red planet thrown in for good measure!). Anybody got some good suggestions for lesser-known or new works and writers from other countries?

Mentioned in this post:
Amos Tutuola My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Jean-Claude Mourlevat The Pull of the Ocean
Nagaru Tanigawa The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Sherman Alexie The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Jonathan Strahan The Starry Rift
Kim Stanley Robinson Antarctica

Why Ennis cries: writing scams and how to avoid them

Sadly, there are more shell games in the publishing world than Cinderella stories. Scam artists like young and inexperienced writers in particular. Teenagers might have more hair than us old folks, but they’re not nearly as good at knowing when something just smells funny.

The hucksters can be hard to keep track of. One sham company might operate under a dozen different names. Some approach high school creative writing teachers, getting them to get their students to submit writing, and add another layer of legitimacy to their bullshit. But here’s a few of their tricks, so you’ll know what to look out for...

The Anthology Scam

A young poet stumbles on an announcement of a poetry contest. The first prize is huge! He submits his latest masterpiece, Ennis the Emo Unicorn (Oh, to stab myself dead/ With this horn afixed my head.)

A few weeks later he gets a letter and Ohmygod! They loved his poem! While it didn’t win first prize, they’ve decided to print it in their up-coming anthology, Really Deep Poems About Way Important Stuff.

And since our young poet is a contributor, he can get his copy of the anthology for only forty five bucks. In fact, if he buys one copy for forty five, they’ll let him buy additional copes for thirty. After all, won’t Grandma and Grampa and all his aunts and uncles want their very own copies?

Here's the thing: Nobody ever wins first prize, but everybody gets published in the anthology. It doesn’t matter if your poem is good or bad, if words are misspelled, or if it even makes sense; everybody gets in the anthology. They sell the book to contributors at an absurd price, pocket the cash, then move on to the next batch of chumps.

Really Deep Poems About Way Important Stuff will never show up in stores or any legitimate review column. Maya Angelo will never read it the plight of Ennis. (If she ever did, though, I’m sure she’d be moved to tears.)

The Author Mill

Despite being burned by the anthology scam, our young writer struggles on. In fact, he expands Ennis the Emo Unicorn into a novel in verse (My woodland friends dance and sing not/ The hunter came, and they’ve been shot.)

He sends it out to publishers and never even hears back from most. But just when his dreams of literary stardom are starting to fade--Oh, happy day!--somebody wants to publish his work!

This publisher doesn’t offer advances, but hey, it’s a foot in the door, right? That’s more than those other publishers have offered him.

Of course there are editing fees, but the publisher assures him these are perfectly normal. And typesetting fees. And a small fee to get the color cover instead of black and white, but it’s totally worth it.

Then Ennis’s big day finally arrives. Except the final book is riddled with just as many typos as it was when our young author sent it off. And the cover art is ugly. And since they can’t return it, most bookstores won’t order copies.

Our young writer had been had again. If he complains, the publisher will try to convince him to throw good money after bad. He’s already made a big investment, they’ll say. He can’t back out now and see it all his dreams go to ruin. And for a very reasonable fee they’ll place an ad for him in the New York Times. That’ll bring customers running!

Author mills have been around for years. They’ve only gotten more prevalent in the age of the internet. Even after our poet finally untangles himself from these lowlifes (and people have spent ten thousand dollars and more before wising up) there’s no point in threatening to sue. Their contracts are iron-clad. They know exactly what to say and how to say it to keep themselves just this side of legal. (For instance the ad will be in the Times. It’ll just be an inch high and crammed with the names of a dozen or more writers.)

The Scam Agent and the Book Doctor

But the muses sing to our young writer. He cannot let the tale of Ennis to go untold. (I’m a magical creature/ A curly horn above my face/Why won’t Katie let me past second base?)

He decides he needs a literary agent to help him navigate the publishing world. He starts sending his manuscript out to agents. Most send back polite rejections, but there’s one nibble. They say he’s got talent, but his manuscript needs polishing. Why doesn’t he send it to a “book doctor,” an editing service that will fix it up for a fee. And hey, they just happen to know a great book doctor at such-and-such address.

What they mention is the kickback for every client they send the good doctor. (Or that they are the doctor with a different P.O. Box.) But if our budding poet does pay for the editing service, then sends it back to the agent, they’ll be happy to represent him (I bet you know where this is going) for a fee.

And just like the scam publishers, once the scam agent’s got him on the hook, they have a fee for everything. Reading fees, representation fees, fees for copying and postage. They'll keep him going until he wises up or goes broke, whichever comes first.

How to not end up a sad, sad unicorn

First, remember this:

Even if an anthology or magazine can’t pay you for your poem (or short story or butter cookie recipe) you should get a free copy.

Real publishers don’t charge fees. They're supposed to pay you. While some may not offer an advance, all of them take on the publishing costs and financial risks. (And most won't accept submissions until you have an agent to represent you, anyway.)

Real agents don’t charge fees. Not to read your stuff and not to represent your stuff. They make their money by selling books and taking a percentage of the profits.

Second, do your research:

The staff of Writers Beware and the forum dwellers at Absolute Write do an excellent job of keeping track of scam artists.

Wind Publicationshas a list of poetry anthology scams. And every year, Winning Writers hosts the Wergle Flomp contest, which awards “the best humor poem that has been sent to a ‘vanity poetry contest’ as a joke.” (Check out the 2008 winners to truly understand how bad you can be and still get accepted.)

Third, remember this too:

Once you realize something is a scam, move on immediately. Delete the email, throw away the letter. These people will promise the world, play off your insecurities and ignorance of publishing, and try to convince you they are your only friend in the industry. They are experts at dangling those dreams just out of reach, making it seem so tempting that you forget common sense.

I know because they got me once. Luckily, I never got in too deep, since I had more experienced writer friends who told me how they operate. (Actually, they told, You stupid little moron, you couldn’t get any stupider if we cut your stupid head off with a chainsaw. But same difference.)

Just as bad as the money I lost was the realization that I’d been rooked. After all the rejection I’d already dealt with as a writer, to get my hopes built up then suddenly smashed... I wanted to quit writing altogether.

It was a horrible feeling and an expensive lesson, and I hope other young writers won’t have to pay it.

Sebastian Darke: Prince of Fools by Philip Caveney

Sebastian Darke needs a job. Since his father passed away, his family is completely broke. The only thing Sebastian can do is travel to Keladon and attempt to continue in the family business by convincing the King to hire him as court jester. Unfortunately, the trip is more treacherous than expected. Sebastian also harbors fears that he will be a terrible jester as his talking, sarcastic buffalope, Max, cringes at all of his owner's jokes. Max is an important part of the story, despite having the personality of Winnie the Pooh's friend Eeyore.

The trio of adventurers is completed when they meet Captain Cornelius Drummel. Though small in stature, Cornelius is a fearsome fighter. The three make quite a team reminding me of a less serious, funnier version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring.

After some bouts with some opportunistic barbarians, Sebastian and his team save Keladon's heir to the throne, Princess Kerin. The princess is a spoiled brat who gets on Sebastian's nerves, but nevertheless earns his allegiance. The plot does descend into standard fare as they strive to protect the princess and some of the characters lack some needed depth. Overall though, the author's wry sense of humor keeps the story moving along quite enjoyably.

I'm excited that more Sebastian Darke books seem to be forthcoming. Sebastian Darke: Prince of Fools is a great new fantasy for teens that recalls Derek Landy's fun and exciting Skulduggery Pleasant series.

Super Hero as History Lesson

It's hard to think of comics as textbooks, I know. But produced monthly as they are, and given that being timely and fresh is one of their selling points, they have proven remarkably evocative and powerful artifacts of the eras they came from. Take the early 1960's, if you would. DC Comics was thick into the Silver Age with "new" interpretations of their classic heroes like Green Lantern and the Flash. They looked different, all right, but tended to act the same as their Golden Age counterparts: they were clean cut, smiling, stern, sterling examples of excellent citizenship. They were still being produced under the influence of fear and conformity born of the commie-hunting 1950's, after all, which tended to put forward a view of morality (and especially morality presented to America's children) as unequivocally black and white.

In direct opposition to DC's heroic interpretation are the earliest adventures of Spider-Man, who typified upstart Marvel’s more approachable, reader-friendly and industry-redefining “human” hero. Marvel’s heroes, exemplified by Peter Parker, were not super-heroes who sometimes pretended to be normal guys; they were normal guys who sometimes got into costumes and fought crime. Reprinted in a welcome trade paperback edition (and considerably cheaper, at that) is Marvel Masterworks: The Spider-Man, Volume 1 (by Lee and Ditko), which encompasses not only the origin of Spider-Man but also the first appearances of some of his most popular villains, including Doctor Octopus, the Sandman, the Lizard, the Vulture and Electro. This edition also includes some of Ditko's recently uncovered original art. Lee’s writing must have seemed like a blast of fresh air at the time, hip, swinging and packed with charm. Ditko’s art is as off-kilter now as it was then, dark, quirky and at times just downright weird, which kept the art incredibly engaging and made Ditko an amazingly daring choice to illustrate super-hero comics at the time. These are considered by many to be the greatest, most genre-defining comics ever produced. So, maybe they’re, you know, worth a look.

It also, incidentally, has plenty to offer as a statement on its era, not only as an early example of the more free-wheeling 1960's outlook, but also in the details of its fashions, its take on technology, and its evolving depictions of women. If all this sounds appealing, don't hesitate to check out Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 7 (by Lee and Romita), too. It features adventures smack in the middle of Spidey's 1960's high point and also includes the story which reveals the dark secret of Peter Parker's parents. History and excitement -- and they say comics can't teach you anything.