Mail Order Ninja

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Katy K.

I’ve had this happen a couple of times now…. I read a book with my boy and we both enjoy it. Then I meet the author, rave to him (always a him) about how we loved it… bring my son over to Meet the Author!, and he has no memory of the book. Sigh. This one I went back and re-read with him after the incident, and he begged for the sequel.

Mail Order NinjaMail Order Ninja by Joshua Elder. Illustrated by Erich Owen.

Timmy McAllister has a tough life. He’s bullied on the way to school, rich mean girl Felicity Huntington makes the life of anyone who isn’t willing to be her toady miserable there, and at home, his bratty little sister is determined to make their parents declare her their favorite. What’s a boy to do? He orders famous ninja Yoshida Jiro from the Jacques Co. catalog. (Timmy is familiar with Jiro from reading the manga series about him.) With Jiro backing him up, bullies are no longer a problem, and Timmy is cool enough to defeat Felicity in the race for school president, making the school safe for nerds everywhere! In volume two, though, Felicity orders a whole evil ninja clan from the same catalog and takes over the town. Jiro is defeated, the adults all brainwashed, and it’s up to Timmy (and the bratty sister and his best friend) to save the day. The whole thing is filled with references to things like classic sci-fi that will make adults smile without being inappropriate. It’s illustrated with expressive and perky manga-style drawings. These hilarious, high-action books are perfect for elementary school-aged boys, but it’s safe to say they’d find fans with a much broader audience. Sadly, they are out of print, so check your local library or order your second-hand copy now.

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Habibi

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Katy K.

I should perhaps have mentioned it yesterday, but the Cybils nominations are open. That means that if you are a fan of a children’s or teen book (or book app) that’s come out since last October 15, you can go nominate it now. Or at least check to see if it’s already been nominated. Go take a look!

Craig Thompson (Blankets) coming out with another epic graphic novel was big news, and I waited until the demand at the library died down a little before checking it out.
Habibi
Habibi by Craig Thompson
Habibi tells the story of two lost souls in an Arab world. Dodola was sold to be married as a child by her poverty-stricken father, but is put on the slave market when her husband is murdered. She escapes, taking with her a young African slave baby. She names him Cham and hopes that together, they can make a better life. They start living in a ship abandoned in the desert, Dodola sneaking off to passing caravans to earn food, while Cham is in charge of finding water. Change is always around the corner, and even this early period is interrupted with Cham’s coming puberty and awareness of Dodola, and his horror at finding that she sells herself for their food. Then Dodola is kidnapped and taken to the sultan’s harem while Cham must make his own way. Always, in situations worse and better, Dodola and Cham are trying to find a way back to each other. Although the story at first seems to be set in a distant century, later it seems that it’s just a pocket of the modern world resistant to change. Dodola’s husband had been a scribe, and taught her reading and some of the stories he copied. Pieces of mostly Islamic mythology and folk tale are woven through the book, some told by Dodola to Cham, either in person or in his memory, and some just between sections. These stories, the central symbol of a blessing matrix, and the flowing shapes of Arabic letters play central roles in the book. There’s a lot of violence here, especially sexual violence, and the hopelessness of poverty and harsh reality. This is balanced by the beauty of the flowing lines of Thompson’s drawings, the strength of found family, and the power of love (cue the 80s music) between Cham and Dodola. Obviously for adults or very mature teens; read this when you’re ready to be put through the wringer and come out feeling like a better person.

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Seraphina

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Katy K.

SeraphinaSeraphina by Rachel Hartmann

Decades ago, the Queen of a human kingdom and the King of the dragons worked out a peace treaty, still not completely trusted by anyone. Since then, the dragons (who call themselves saars) have decided that humans can be interesting. They take human form, or sarantras, and come to the city to explore human ways. This is the world that Seraphina has grown up in. She’s recently moved to the city and taken a job as assistant to the court musician, even though her Secret means that she must keep to herself, trusting no one and desperately lonely. A close friend of the family and her teacher, Orma, is a sarantras who has the special scholar’s license not to wear the visible badge. From dealing with him, she has learned to understand how dragons think – a Vulcan-like mindset that prizes scientific calculation and considers emotion dangerous and unreliable. This skill brings her to the attention of Prince Lucian Kiggs, a bastard engaged to Princess Glisselda, granddaughter of the still reigning queen who made the treaty in the first place. Her musical skill, meanwhile, was on display at the funeral for the much-loved prince whose was recently found murdered in dragon-like fashion in the wilderness. The talent lands her a position teaching Princess Glisselda harpsichord, while Kiggs decides that she’s the perfect person to assist in the investigation of the prince’s death. In her personal life, Seraphina’s mind is inhabited with people, some more and some less human in shape, who will take over her mind with visions if she doesn’t carefully visit and talk to the avatars of them in the garden she’s created for them in her mind. She’s always assumed this was her mind just being a little weird on her – until she meets one of them in person.

Seraphina is a character after my own heart. My lonely teen soul had a hard time identifying with any character for whom making friends came easily, and Seraphina’s loneliness brought me right back to that time. Happily for her, by the end of the book she’s found a happier place, one that felt honestly won. There was also a lot about music, and just reading about her playing the oud without her plectrum made me smile in geeky recognition. OK, I’ve never played an oud or used a plectrum, but I loved that Hartmann used real historical instruments, and Seraphina and I had flute, voice and keyboard in common. This is set in a beautifully realistic Renaissance world with a saint-based religion. It’s full of politics, music, personal discovery as well as the dragons, with some romance thrown in for good measure. While there is a villain in the end, for the most part, the sides are drawn in shades of gray, with neither humans nor dragons being the Enemy, and understandable motives on all sides. We have it in teen, and while Seraphina really is going through teen problems, the sex and violence are both low enough to make this fine for advanced younger readers. I would happily recommend this to anyone who identified with Menolly in Dragonsong.

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Cinder

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Katy K.

CinderI picked this up thinking it looked like steampunk. It’s more cyberpunk than steampunk, but still fun a fun fairy tale/sci-fi mashup.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer. Read by Rebecca Soler.

Obviously, we know going into this story that it’s a Cinderella story. But the setting is changed to such a degree that how things are going to play out is much more in question than in a more straightforward fairy-tale novelization. Over a hundred years since the end of WW IV, Earth has consolidated down to a handful of large countries. Cinder, a teenage cyborg, lives in New Beijing, in the Eastern Commonwealth. The man who decided to take the bold step of adopting a despised cyborg died years ago, leaving Cinder in the very un-tender care of his wife. Cinder (trying hard to conceal that she’s a cyborg under her grease-stained cargo pants) supports her step-family by working as a mechanic from a tiny booth in the market square, accompanied by a cute and friendly little droid named Aiko. The very first day that we meet her, she’s visited by Prince Kai, heir to the Emperor’s Throne, who has a faulty tutor droid he wants repaired. Though Cinder’s never been the type to drool over handsome celebrities, she can’t help falling for Kai in person. Then, almost immediately, a vendor across the square screams as the blue spots of deadly letemosis appear on her. She’s airlifted from the spot; everyone visible is tested and evacuated. Back home, stepmother Audrey is busy getting her daughters, Pearl and Peony, ready for the annual ball (still a few weeks off) and insists that Cinder drop everything to fix the family hover so they can take it. Peony is the nice sister here, and she goes off to the dump with Cinder to help her look for the needed parts. Everything goes wrong when Peony shows signs of the plague and is taken away straight from the dump. Audrey is so enraged that Cinder isn’t ill as well that she volunteers her for the ongoing letemosis research program, always done on cyborgs since cyborgs aren’t considered real humans. This is where things get really interesting.

Meanwhile, we’re also hearing about Prince Kai’s point of view. His father, the Emperor, also has letemosis, and while it will still be fatal for him, at least he isn’t quarantined where his family can’t see him. For years, the Emperor has been trying to enter in peace agreements with the Lunar Queen, Lavanna. Lunars used to be humans, but in centuries on Luna developed mind control and the ability to make themselves look beautiful to others, which then increases their powers. Queen Lavanna used ruthless means to come to power, including setting her three-year-old niece’s bedroom on fire some 13 years ago, and doesn’t treat her subjects any better than you’d expect with that kind of attitude towards power. Prince Kai knows that a marriage alliance is Earth’s best hope, but is putting secret resources into seeing if he can find the princess, rumored to have escaped to earth from the burning bedroom. All through these events, Cinder and Kai bump into each other more than one would think normally possible, and have trouble not thinking about each other in between times. Rebecca Soler’s voice does well for Cinder and Dr. Erlund, the letemosis research doctor, but I found it hard to distinguish between Kai and Cinder.

There were some little things that bothered me with Cinder. Kai and Cinder are both impetuous teenagers, getting angry easily and mouthing off inappropriately. I get this in Cinder, who’s had a lifetime of neglect and built up a lot of resentment. I don’t quite buy it in a prince, though teenage readers might not have this same issue with him. The Big Reveal came too close to the end for me, especially since it seemed pretty obvious from much earlier in the story. The lunar powers never worked out quite to my satisfaction. It seems that the deal is you use them, unethically manipulating the people around you, or you don’t use them and go crazy from the suppressed powers. While there ought to be some ethical compromise, I never really felt that this worked out well. The cyborg issue was a little confusing – why would people having an artificial limb or two no longer be considered real people? But, Meyer did well with looking thoughtfully at the issues of prejudice surrounding both cyborgs and Lunars. Fair warning: this is one of those first-in-a-series books that has a perfunctory ending with lots of loose plot ends. Even with all that, I really liked Cinder and Kai and got absorbed with their problems. I can see why this has been a big hit, and will be keeping my eye out for the sequels.

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The Battle of Blood and Ink

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Katy K.

Battle of Blood and INkBattle of Blood and Ink by Jared Axelrod and Steve Walker.
The author’s note for this book says that the two guys were talking together about the craziest story they could come up with, and what they came up with was a floating city. The Floating City is a steampunky place, with distinct neighborhoods for different classes of people. Ashe, however, journalist and publisher of the insanely popular newspaper The Lurker’s Guide to the Floating City, goes wherever she wants. As the story opens, she has her friend and co-conspirator Tolban fly their little glider up close enough to catch the radio waves coming from a ship in distress. Not until the captain promises that he and his crew will go into slavery to the City are they allowed asylum. Once published, this secret is the one that finally determines the Provost of the City to stop the Lurker’s Guide. But Ashe is not without friends – she is not-so-secretly admired by Cardor, son of one of the richest citizens of the city. And for Ashe, being a target is only a reason to find more dark secrets to reveal and more ways to irritate those in power. The art is spare and angular black-and-white ink, which give it a modern feel despite the setting. The dark secrets were a little too dark to make this altogether light reading, and certainly make it most appropriate for adults or older teens, but this is a fun graphic adventure in a pseudo-Victorian, high-tech world.

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The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Katy K.

Image

The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by Christopher Healy

Why is it that the princes from all the fairy tales are simply called Prince Charming?  According to this book, it’s because the bards are more interested in a good story than in getting the facts right.  We start the book by meeting a different Prince Charming, one chapter at a time.  Prince Frederic, a risk-averse dandy, loses bold Ella when she realizes that marrying him wouldn’t be the adventure she was hoping for.   Rapunzel leaves Prince Gustav when she realizes he’s more brawn than either brain or heart.  Handsome and arrogant but kind-hearted Prince Liam is driven out of two kingdoms when he tries to break off his engagement with the shallow and cruel Briar Rose and she in return has a bard make up songs lambasting him.  Loopy Prince Duncan, happily married to Snow White, gets literally lost when she asks for a little space and he wanders off in the woods.  All four of the Princes have ballads written about them in which they are called Prince Charming.  They meet, and get involved in heroics involving stopping the evil witch Zaubera’s multiple evil plans, and dealing with the child robber king Deeb Rauber.  To give a small degree of gender balance, both Ella and Liam’s little sister Lila are on their own heroic missions, which may or may not intersect with those of the Princes Charming. 

The whole thing is written in a slapstick style, with cartoonish illustrations chapter titles like “Prince Charming Defends Some Vegetables” and “Prince Charming Annoys the King”.  The four princes started out so very one-dimensional that it was really hard for me to feel enough sympathy for them to enjoy the story.  At the halfway point, I was still considering giving up on it altogether.  However, soon after that, they begin to come together as a team and experience Personal Growth that makes them both more sympathetic and interesting.  There are just enough plot threads left dangling at the end to expect a sequel.   I still prefer Sondheim’s Into the Woods or the adult graphic novel series Fables for massive fairy tale integration, though both of those are best for adults.  However, middle grade children looking for a light (if lengthy) read will probably like this.  It’s full of action scenes that will appeal to boys – I could see my son eating this up.  Readers could also try the Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley for a modern fairy-tale integration for middle grade readers. 

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Dust Girl

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Katy K.

I’ve been reading Sarah Zettel for over a decade now, and wish that more people knew her wonderful books. Hopefully this book, her first children’s/YA, will help her gain some broader recognition. Standard disclaimer: Sarah Zettel was responsible for my love joining the Society for Creative Anachronism, where I later met him. But I like her books for their own merits.

Dust Girl by Sarah Zettel

Dust Bowl Kansas, 1935.  Callie LaRoux lives with her mother in the Imperial Hotel, which they run.  The town of Slow Run is nearly empty, as the dust and the lack of food and water have caused nearly everyone else to leave.  But Callie’s mother refuses to leave, even when the doctor tells her that Callie is dying of dust pneumonia.  Callie was fathered by a wandering musician who promised to come back.  Callie must keep this secret, hiding behind a pretend Irish last name and staying out of the sun, because her father was a black minstrel.  The doctor’s warning does make Callie’s mother worried enough that she makes Callie play the hotel’s piano, which had not been played since Callie’s father left.  To Callie’s surprise, her untrained fingers bring out rolling chords, followed immediately by a dust storm.  Callie’s mother goes out into it and vanishes, accompanied by the sounds of vicious, triumphant voices.  Callie’s search for her turns up only an old dark-skinned man with eyes full of stars, who shares a vision with Callie. Now the plot ramps up, as what seems to a beautiful family comes to the hotel and eats everything – not just the food, but the draperies and even furniture – later revealing themselves as giant magical locusts.  But while she’s still figuring out what they are, running back and forth to the store for more food, she meets and hires a boy her own age to help her.  Jack has plenty of secrets of his own and, as a travelling homeless boy, tricks up his sleeve and a will to survive.  Callie had always believed that her father was just a no-good bum, but from what both the old man and one of the Hopper girls tell her, he was a prince of Faerie, kept from his human lover against his will.  With the hotel destroyed by the Hoppers, Callie and Jack set out to find her parents.  On the way, Callie meets a couple who give their names as Shimmy and Shake.  While Callie thinks that her parents are in California, Shimmy says that Callie needs to go to Kansas City, to the Fairyland amusement park.  With some people claiming to want to help and others clearly trying to hurt, chased by the Seelie Court and an anti-bum crusader turned zombie, Callie has to figure out who she can trust and where to go.

There’s a whole lot going on in this book.  It’s the first of a trilogy, so it’s got all the plot beginnings for three books.  The traditional Seelie and Unseelie courts are used somewhat differently here.  The Seelie Court appears to be white and the Unseelie black, but neither one of them appears to be what we’d consider good.  Western European faerie traditions are mixed with the reality and mythology of the American West to create a compelling new American.  Callie and Jack have to deal with a lot of prejudice – against blacks, Jews, and bums, which felt real enough to bring it home to kids who might not have considered it before without it turning into a hammer-on-the-head Issue book.  The book is set solidly in the 30s, filled with both the ever-present dust and the rollicking music of the dance marathons popular at the time.  At the same time, Callie and her quest for her own path and identity remain deeply sympathetic and universal. There’s only the hint of possible future romance, and some violence, so appropriate for older middle grade students as well as teens.  But my love and I both enjoyed it lots as well.

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Bitterblue

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Katy K.

I was very excited to win this from Charlotte’s Library several months ago.  Anyone who, like me, read Graceling and Fire, or who heard about the massive competition for the ARCs of this book knows it was a big splash in the teen fantasy realm this summer.  Still, since the book came with a request that I tweet about it and I don’t tweet, so I thought I’d review it. Bitterblue

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

In Cashore’s first book, Graceling, our heroes defeated the sadistic King Leck, whose Grace allowed him to force people to hurt themselves or others and believe that nothing bad was happening.  They rescued his ten-year-old daughter, Bitterblue, and set her on the throne with a team of advisors.  Now Bitterblue is 18 and trying to repair the damage her father did to the kingdom.  We’re talking kidnapping girls from every village in the kingdom just as a start, so this is no small matter.  Her advisors are for the most part men who served her father, as well.  They have decided that what the kingdom needs is forwardthinkingness, so that nothing from Leck’s reign will be discussed or brought up for trial.  All crimes committed during the reign are forgiven, because Leck could have forced any crime.  But Bitterblue feels that she needs to know what her father did and what’s going on with the kingdom now if she is to do her job.  She starts sneaking out at night, finding the hidden pubs where people tell stories, often obliquely related to what happened during Leck’s reign.  The very first night she is out, she befriends two young trouble-makers, Saf and Teddy, giving her name as Sparks to protect her anonymity.  Thus her trying to find out the truth starts out with lies, which always complicate matters.  Katsa and Po make brief visits from time to time, but they are busy trying to topple evil kings in other nearby kingdoms, and so cannot stay.  The more Bitterblue learns, the more she realizes that the problems in the kingdom are deep.  They did not die along with Leck, and she must find out who among her advisors she can trust and who is perpetuating the problems.  Bitterblue journeys through darkness trying to understand her father, comparing remembering and forgetting as paths to healing.  There’s a lot of dealing with ciphers, as Bitterblue’s mother taught her the theories of ciphers in secret, and both her parents used ciphers to keep their secrets.   And while Bitterblue’s darkness is dark indeed, there’s still light to balance it, from the beauty of art and the joy of friendship, with a bit of early romance.  It was very satisfying to see Bitterblue find her way towards a more open justice.  It’s not for reading when one needs unicorns and rainbows (one does, sometimes), but it is a hopeful treatment of a dark subject with a most courageous protagonist.

A note: my teen librarian said she’d been hearing rumors of racism about this book.  I read and read looking out for it, until finally at the very end, I found the passage that I think must have bothered people: a woman with dark skin is described as a monster.  She is in fact Fire, the heroine of the book of the same name, and she is a monster not because of her skin color but because she has “unimaginable beauty and the ability to control minds”, as do other people and animals of various skin colors on the other side of the mountain.  As usual, reading in context is helpful and highly recommended.

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Book of a Thousand Days

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Katy K.

Book of 1000 DaysThis is the only fantasy I’ve ever read set in a version of Mongolia.  My love is so fascinated by Mongolian culture that some of this has rubbed off on me, so that I was delighted recognizing bits of the culture.

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale. Full Cast Audio.

Dashti, our heroine, is a Mucker, part of the native nomadic tribes of the steppes.  As our story begins, she’s relating the story of how she was orphaned, failed to find another family to take her in, and so was forced to go to the city of Titor’s Garden to find work.  Although large port-wine stains on her face and hand would otherwise keep her out of sight of nobility, she knows the Mucker healing songs.  She’s taught to read and write and assigned as a lady’s maid to the fragile and illiterate Lady Saren, daughter of the Lord of the city.  Unfortunately, Dashti has come just as Lady Saren is about to be locked in a tower for seven years.  She is refusing to marry the powerful and land-hungry lord of a nearby city, the evil Lord Khasar, citing a prior engagement to Khan Tegus, lord of another city.  All of Saren’s other maids have run away rather than be locked up, but Dashti is both determined to honor her vow to serve Saren and doesn’t much care if she’s locked up as long as she’s warm and fed.  The book is written as her journal, started when she is first locked in the tower.  At first, things go well.  Dashti is resourceful; they are well-supplied with food and their guards give them fresh milk every morning.  Khan Tegus visits, talking secretly at night through their waste hole.  Saren doesn’t have the courage to talk to him herself and makes Dashti pretend to be her – a hanging offense that Dashti protests but ultimately goes along with.  At this point, I thought we were going to have a classic love triangle a la Cyrano de Bergerac.

Then the evil Lord Khasar arrives, attempting to burn the tower up from inside after telling Saren that even though she’s too scared to reveal his horrible secret, one day she will run to him.  That night, they hear terrible screams from outside the tower, and the giant jaw of a wolf pokes through the flap.  After that, there are no milk deliveries, and the rats run rampant, eating up their supplies.  When they are almost out of food and Lady Saren appears to have lost her mind completely – three or four years after they were originally locked up – Dashti realizes that her duty is now to rescue Lady Saren from the tower, and the story takes yet another sharp turn.

This is a character-driven story, with plenty of adventure and a beautiful setting.  Dashti’s loyalty and Lady Saren’s stubbornness both got a little frustrating, but not enough for me to stop caring about the book.  The Gods – the Nine Ancestors and the Eternal Blue Sky – play important roles.  As in our world, Dashti prays to the gods and feels them telling her to do things, but it’s hard to tell whether things work out because of her faith in the gods or because of her own resourcefulness.  The descriptions of the culture – religion, the gehrs (more commonly called yurts by westerners these days), the clothing and the food make this feel quite authentic, even if it is fantasy and maybe a little Navajo mythology is thrown in, too.  This story felt to me like the reverse of the first Shannon Hale I ever read, Goose Girl.  There a lady is betrayed by her maid pretending to be her, and must find a way to rescue herself.  Here, Lady Saren’s forcing Dashti to pretend to be her causes such massive tangles that I couldn’t tell until it happened how Hale was going to pull it off.  The audio is read full cast, which is mostly Dashti with little bits from other voice actors.  The voice actor for Dashti did a wonderful job, even singing the many healing songs in a rich alto.  This was a book where I rushed to find time to listen to it, and felt a wrench at saying good-bye to the characters at the end.

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The Night Circus

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Katy K.

ImageHappy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!  We celebrated with an author talk and a treasure hunt through downtown at my library this weekend… yay pirate fun!

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  Read by Jim Dale. 

Really, this has been on the bestseller list for so long that there oughtn’t to be any need to review it.  I put off reading it for a very long time because it was so big, though I remember noting the reviews when it first came out.  On the other hand, I loved it so much that I bought it in print and am seriously considering buying it on audio as well. 

The book is the story of two magicians, students of rival magicians.  They have been raised from children to compete against each other in a formally pledged competition whose rules they are never told.  Prospero the Magician, who disguises his real magic onstage as ordinary sleight of hand, trains his daughter Celia through such inhumane methods as slitting her fingertips open so that she will learn to heal them.  Mr. Alexander, on the other hand, takes in an orphan boy and trains him in theoretical, book magic.  It’s Prospero’s idea to make the contest a public one, and he and Mr. Alexander work subtly on one of London’s movers and shakers to create a marvelous circus to be the stage.  What the two older magicians didn’t count on, however, was that for young magicians, friendship with another person like them might become more important than the rivalry they never asked for. 

But, as the title suggests, this is also the story of the circus.  The story of Celia and Marco (as the orphan boy decides to be called) is only one of the three stories that we learn.  Their story is set clearly in the 19th century, but the book actually starts with you, the reader, getting an invitation to the circus, and your journey to and through the circus, presumably in the present day, as well as a lonely boy watching for the circus, somewhen between the present and the beginning of the circus.

And the circus!  Here is a book with a built-in fan club!  Because (aside from my tired parent brain’s shock at the idea of a circus that opens at dark and closes at dawn) the circus is a marvelous thing.  It appears near a town – any town – without warning, all black and white, with wrought iron gates around it. The black-and-white striped tents, filled with wonders, line twisting paths that radiate from the central courtyard where a white bonfire is always burning.  The scents of caramel and cinnamon fill the air.  The people who work at and run the circus are just a vividly drawn – the mysterious contortionist, the fortune teller, the illusionist (who is Celia), the twins born on either side of midnight the very night the circus opened – to name just a few. 

The stories unfold in layers, circling around each other.  You the reader journey further into the circus as in the past; the circus is started and develops; the two magicians come into their own and try to puzzle out the mysteries of the contest; and the lonely boy grows up visiting the circus and finding it more home than where he stays in the intervening years.  It all comes together in a beautiful whole.  The narration by Jim Dale worked very well; he is forever the sound of Harry Potter for me, and this world, with its vividly described characters and scenes, felt a lot like Harry Potter, though it is more adult in the lack of a Voldemort-type character, and the magician’s quest is less world-altering than Harry’s, if no less absorbing.  This is one for my favorites shelf. 

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