The Pit Dragon Trilogy, Part 2: The Snatchling

So no sooner do I make that post the other day than I find myself watching You've Got Mail and Meg Ryan's character says this:

When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does. 

It was like the universe knew what I was up to.  But that's no surprise.  It's a tricky one, that universe.

I don't remember this cover of Heart's Blood (Book #2) at ALL.  But this must have been the cover of the copy I read because I read the entire series before the second edition came out (which is the edition I own).  I think because I read Heart's Blood the least out of the original trilogy, I didn't have as much experience with this cover.  What I mean by that is that I've read Books 1 and 3 quite a few times a piece, but Heart's Blood is the one I really slogged through.  Probably because there's the least amount of dragons and and a very large portion of the book is dedicated some political plot that I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND.  Yes, I am 23 years old and very nearly have an advanced degree, and I still don't undersand a plot point in a book written for children.

Cue my earlier point about being able to look past flaws in books you loved as a kid.

So Post #1 was all about my love the series and its place in my life.  But I realize I never explained what the series is about.

The story takes place on Austar IV, a distant planet that started out as a penal colony but has evolved into a society with a form of indentured servitude called bondage.  Most notable about the planet are the existence of dragons (which are trained to fight in the Pits and serve as the primary economic activity of the planet) and Dark-After, a period of 4 hours of extreme coldness in which no human can survive.  The books follow Jakkin Stewart, a teenager stuck in bondage, as he steals and raises a dragon to fight in the Pits.  But then the series takes some sharp twists and turns and politics, freedom fighters, mind-reading, and cave people to deal with.  Also, a real-live Strong Female Character, Akki (see: here).

My annotation for Dragon's Blood is as follows:

Born into slavery, Jakkin's only way out is raising a dragon to fight in the Pits. So when he snatches an uncounted hatchling at the nursery, Jakkin must link with his dragon and teach it to fight if he has any hope of buying his freedom.

So in doing an annotation, the goal is to boil a book down to its core, and distill it down to 35-50 works.  Ostensibly, this sounds easy, but it is SERIOUSLY time consuming.  You have to think a lot about the book and decide what THE most important thing is, because that's probably all you have time to say in the annotation.

As I got to thinking about Dragon's Blood, I realized how...unique of a book series it is part of.  The cover for Dragon's Blood says it's a Fantasy (and so does the bibliographic subject headings on the copyright page), but that's not quite right of a descriptor.

Sure, there's dragons in it, and everyone's like "Dragons! Must be fantasy!" But the more I thought about, there's a LOT of science fiction in this series, too.  Each book begins with an encyclopedia entry for some worldbuilding, and it's very science-fictiony.  Talk of planets, the Federation, and starships.

And then it hit me: the Pit Dragon books are a classic example of genre-bending.  Which is interesting, because the first book was published in 1982, and genre-bending is considered a recent trend.  Not that there hasn't been genre-bending before, it's just becoming more ubiquitous, particularly in "hard" genres like fantasy and sci-fi.

Which makes my love for these books all the more unique for me.  Because I don't read sci-fi.  At all.  I read a lot of dystopian lit, but those aren't true sci-fi (and most people consider dystopia its own genre nowadays).  The only science fiction book I've read and enjoyed was the Across the Universe series, and that was heavy on the dystopia, so it had help.

So why do I love these books?  And the end of the day, it comes down to one thing:

Jakkin and Akki.

I've always read books for relationships.  (This explains why my Romance Fiction and Its Readers class is basically the best class of all time for me) Even if a book wasn't about a relationship
Very rarely do I enjoy books that don't have a love story in them.  The love between the people can be MESSED UP (see: my love for Gone Girl and Gone with the Wind), but there still has to be a romantic component to their relationship.  And part of me used to feel like that was mega-dumb, but now that I've done research into the Romance fiction thing, I have ABSOLUTELY NO SHAME in admitting that.

But I'm getting off track here.

I think the Pit Dragon Trilogy were the first books I read where a serious romantic relationship was a key plot point.  Akki chooses to stay at the nursery to help Jakkin achieve his dream.  Jakkin's motivation in the second book stems entirely from wanting to get back to Akki.  And it's Akki and Jakkin's intense connection to each other that saves them in the third book.

These are two people who are wrapped up in one another, and the things they do for each other just makes my heart melt every. single. time.  And for being a children's book, things get pretty intense between these two (not so much physically, but emotionally).

And it's my love for Jakkin and Akki as a couple that really drives my love for this series.  Which is why, despite the faults of the 4th book, I am able to completely forgive it with a single line on the last page.  Yeah, I root for this couple THAT MUCH.

Had this series been written today, there would have probably been a love triangle thrown in there, but alas, this book is old enough to run for Congress and therefore does not fall prey to the YA pitfalls that happen so often today.  It's just two people, being in love. And their love isn't shallow--they have problems, and they get over them.  Nothing petty gets between them.

Despite the dragons, it's probably one of the most realistic portrayals of a relationship I've come across.

And yeah, it's totally swoon-worthy.

I REGRET NOTHING.

To be continued...

The Pit Dragon Trilogy, Part 1: The Hatchling

Whoa, so this started out as one post, but then that turned into the mega post OF DOOM, so I've split it into three (hopefully) manageable posts.

So the story begins with my final assignment in my Children's Library Materials class, which was a genre bookmark.  My initial reaction was to do Fantasy novels for boys, but I quickly realized I hadn't done enough reading to get 10 annotations, so I switched it to High Fantasy for grades 5-8.  I was able to do eight annotations with books I'd read in the past, and the other two came from graphic novels (because I feel very strongly about encouraging that storytelling format).

Anyways, the point here is that this assignment had me doing an annotation for one of my favorite books.

Dragon's Blood by Jane Yolen
I have included here the original cover of the book because a) it's hilariously awful and b) this is the cover of the copy I originally read.

Dragon's Blood is the first in the Pit Dragon Trilogy (okay, there's actually four books and it's called the Pit Dragon Chronicles now but it was the Pit Dragon Trilogy for most of my life so that's what it'll always be to me even if that doesn't really make sense.).  It's classified as children's literature, but I think if it had been published now, it'd totally be YA, as there are MANY references to drug use and brothels in the course of the series.  This will come up later.

I was first introduced to this book by my oldest brother, Ben.  I was 10 years old and in 5th grade, and I needed a book.  He said "this book was pretty cool," and off I went.  By that point, the whole series (at that point it was just a trilogy) had been published and I just DEVOURED it.  It had everything I wanted in a book--magic, romance, adventure, intrigue.  I must have read those three books at least five  times each.  A Sending of Dragons, the third in the series, was my favorite.

I read more of Jane Yolen's stuff, but to this day, nothing of hers gets me like the Pit Dragon Trilogy.  Anyways, when I was a young lass on the pre-YouTube, pre-Social Network internet, I spent a lot of time looking at author websites. I just liked to know about books (shame I couldn't turn that into a career OH WAIT).  So I looked up Jane Yolen and information about this book series and she always had in the FAQ in her website that she "considered writing a fourth" book to the series.  It was always a big if.

But for about 10 years, I sort of clung to that hope.  After all, my mom waited 12 years for Jean Auel to publish the conclusion of the Earth's Children's series.  I could wait.  And I could wish that there would be that fourth book.

And then Jane Yolen finally wrote it.

The 10-year-old inside of me FREAKED OUT.  I remember tearing through this book in a matter of hours, and until recently, I'd only read it once.

So when I did this annotation for class, I decided to re-read the whole series.  And boy, did I have some thoughts about it, especially reading it as an adult.  I didn't have as many FEELINGS about books 1-3 as I did about book 4 (which Post #3 will be about).

But I think that's because books 1-3 are part of the mythology of my childhood.  I read a LOT as a kid (and part of me regrets not keeping a list of every single book I read) and the Pit Dragon Trilogy was one series I read over and over and over.  So I can't really evaluate them objectively as an adult.  Because I have been to that world and back so many times that I can look past all the faults and plot holes and inconsistencies.

And I think we all have books like that.  Books we read and loved as kids, but when we re-read them as adults, we realized they weren't as great as we thought they were.  But that doesn't bother us, because those books will always be as magical to us as they were when we were kids.  And even if we know their faults, we don't really see them when we read the book.  Because not only does the book take us to a new world, but it takes us back to who we were when we first read them.  Back to being a kid again.

When you have a degree in English, it's easy to be overly critical of a book when you read it.  It's difficult to switch off that critical part of your brain, because for years, that's how you had to read for school.  It's a hazard of the degree.  And that's what makes these childhood books so important.  They take you back to a place where all you did was read for pleasure.  For escape.

Being an adult sucks sometimes.  And books that take you away from that--even if for only 300 pages or so--are always worth overlooking any faults.

Book #4 is not so lucky.

To be continued....

Always Alice

There has always been Alice.

We went to the library a lot when I was a kid.  A lot.  Now that I work up in circulation, I realize that my family was the one the library assistants probably hated.  Baskets upon baskets of books. That was us.  My mom read from the children's section a lot.  She was the one who found Alice.

The Alice McKinley series is a long-running series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.  It follows Alice McKinley from age 8 to 60.  The majority of the series, being written for young people, focuses on age 8-18. There has been one book in the series per year for the past 25 years.

My mom knew I'd like Alice.  I think the time I first read her, Alice was just a few years older than me. Now, I'm older than her, and it's me, not my mom, finding the newest Alice books at the library and checking them out.

I can't remember a time where I went to the library and didn't know about Alice.  At various points in my life I have been both older and younger than Alice.  For the past six or so years, I've been older than Alice.  And the books don't have the same appeal as they once did, but I still like reading them.  After all, I did grow up with her.  I am her.

Next May, Always Alice, the final book in the series, will be published.  It truly is the end of an era for me.

The Alice series was the first series I remember DYING to read.  My mom would read the books before me to make sure they were appropriate, and I remember not being able to read Reluctantly Alice until I was in sixth grade. I couldn't wait to read those books.  And I remember when I got the go-ahead to read the newest Alice book without my mother's permission.  It was Alice on the Outside, and that cover (the original one, with the artwork of Patrick and Alice going in for the kiss) is burned into my brain.

Being able to read Alice on the Outside marks for me, when I was allowed free and full access to the library.  That I was allowed to make whatever reading decisions I wanted.

Alice means a lot to me in the mythology in my life as a reader.  The thought of not having a new book of hers to read for the first time in my entire life?  That's heavy.

I guess, in the end, it comes down to what I wrote in my Reader Profile for my Children's Library Materials class:

Reading Alice made me want to grow up sooner, partially because I thought Alice was just so cool and did such fun things, and partially because there were some books in the series my mom would not let me read until I was older.  At various points in my life, I have been both older and younger than Alice, and it is the one book series from my childhood that has not yet ended. The last book in the series comes out next summer, and that, I think, will mark the end of my childhood.  Not the fact that I am in my twenties and can rent a car—no, Alice finally growing up.  Alice was a friend who was always there—she made me laugh, cry, and no matter how embarrassing I thought my life was, Alice always did something way worse.   More than a small part of me will be sad to let her go next summer.

So I'm Not Going to Make It. Again.

In a turn of events that surprises no one, I'm not going to make 100 books this year either. I thought I had a real good chance, what with the three classes I took this year that were hardcore reading intensive.  And to be fair, if I were counting all the picture books and graphic novels I read this year, I'd have a 100 books easy.  But there's no challenge in that.  Not saying those books aren't worthy or anything, but it doesn't feel like so much of an accomplishment when you can knock out 25 books in a day.

So why did I fall short this year?  Honestly, I think it was that intense reading that did me in.  The fact is (and this I know well), that reading that much that fast really burns you out. Not that I'm turned off reading for good, but when reading is what you have to do, it's not something you choose to do when that obligation is over.  From February to April, I had read at least 3 books a week for school.  Sometimes five.  And every Wednesday (except for one), I had to read an entire book just to stay on top of things.  After all that reading is over with, sometimes you just want to sit and do nothing.

Am I disappointed?  Not really.  I'll still make 80 books easily, which totally shatters my personal best of 63.  And by personal best, I mean since I started keeping track of my reading in May 2008.  And I still cannot fathom how I only read 39 books one year.  I mean, that just doesn't sound like me AT ALL.

I'll be doing it all again next year.  It'll happen for me, someday.  I'll squeeze those 100 books into a single year.  Will it be next year?  Given that I still have at least one more reading-heavy class to go (Romance Fiction and Its Readers, aka THE BEST CLASS EVER), probably not.  But it never hurts to have that goal.

I'll get there.  Someday.

And hey, by then, I may even be better at this whole blogging thing.

59/100: Son by Lois Lowry

So first things first: The Giver is one of my favorite books.  It is, hands down, in my opinion, the best children's book ever written.  It is also probably the best dystopian novel EVER.  It is the standard by which I judge all other dystopian novels.

And I love the other two books in the series, Gathering Blue and Messenger.  And true, Messenger is a little messy at times, but in my mind, it does tie up the series.

But then I found out she wrote a fourth book.  I FREAKED.  In a good way.  Actually I was in my Teen Library Materials class and we were discussing dystopias and of course, The Giver came up.  I mentioned it was one of my favorites and another girl casually mentioned "You know she's coming out with another book, right?"  I SQUEALED with delight, promptly minimized the e-classroom and bought the book on Amazon.  Let's just ignore the fact that I'm a terrible online student, please.

And finally, after six months of waiting, I got to read Son.

First off, I was surprised to find that Son is quite a bit larger than The Giver or any other books in the series; it clocks in at 400 pages, almost twice that of The Giver.  I'm totally okay with that though, I haven't met a Lois Lowry book I don't like.

FANGIRL MOMENT: I think Lois Lowry is possibly the greatest children's book author of the 20th/21st century.  Her range is absolutely astounding.  The Giver breaks my heart every time I read it, and I fall in love with it over and over again each time I read it.  But her Sam Krupnik series is so hilarious there are TEARS OF LAUGHTER streaming down my face every time I read it.  Seriously, the woman has mad skills and I want to be her when I grow up.

Anyways, Son is the story of Claire, a Birthmother from the community featured in the The Giver.  The book covers quite a large span of time (about 15 years), starting with the action running parallel to The Giver, then to Messenger, and finally, seven years after the events of Messenger.  Part 3 also tells the story of Gabe, the baby Jonas takes with him when he leaves the community.  While it was INSANELY hinted at in the previous 2 books that Jonas had survived his escape from the community, in Son Jonas is actually a major character so you know he survived.

I know a lot of people are disappointed that Lowry confirmed that Jonas survived The Giver.  But in mind, Jonas always survived.  Personally, I never thought that ending was all that ambiguous to begin with, especially when you consider what "Elsewhere" really means in the context of the book.  There's about a thousand other things that make The Giver so interesting.  Part of what makes it so fascinating is that you have this EXTREMELY varied world.  On the one hand, the community where Jonas, Gabe, and Claire live is very technologically advanced.  But the villages that Kira and Water Claire come from are rustic, almost medieval.  What the hell happened here? How did these varied societies come into existence?  But we never find that out.  That alone is worth hours of speculation.

Anyways, the end of part 1 of Son takes place the same time that the The Giver ends.  But because Claire loses her memory, all we know about that time is that it's "hazy." We never actually find out what happens to the community. Part of me hates the fact that we're never told what happens to the community.  Or what happens to The Giver himself.  But the other part of me thinks that's part of the beauty of this series.  The most we get is a line in Messenger, where Jonas tells Matty that he was sent all the Giver's books from the community, so he believes things have changed for the better.  But he simply believes.  He doesn't know.  So the reader doesn't know either.  On the one hand, it's maddening, especially since we're given a chance to find out in Son, given the timeline of events in the book.  But on the other hand, it's just absolutely brilliant of Lowry.  She maintains the mystery of The Giver.  So maybe the question is no longer "Did Jonas survive?" but "What happened to the community?" Which, in my mind, was the far more important question.

I guess why I think her dystopias are so amazing are the fact that she doesn't tell you everything.  Most people agree that the beauty of dystopias are that they make you think about the society that you're in, and if our society could become that place.  Recent dystopias often fill in those blanks for you, explaining how society arrived at that state (I'm looking at you, Suzanne Collins).  But Lois Lowry doesn't, and there are many possible conclusions that can be supported by the text.  IT'S FUCKING BRILLIANT, PEOPLE.

I realize that I've talked mostly about The Giver here, but let's face it, I could talk about that book for DAYS.  IT'S AMAZING.  But Son is a nice companion to the series.  It provides answers, sure, but it still leaves many more questions for readers to speculate on.  Do I think it's the end of the series?  Perhaps.  But then again, I thought the same thing about Messenger and was treated to Son eight years later.  I'm sure Lois Lowry is always willing to leave the door open.

52/100: Gone Girl

So school's starting again on Monday (boo).  And, depending on my reading list for Children's Library Materials, I should be able to make my goal of 100 books this year! I hope.  We all know reading-related disasters could happen at any time.

Anyways, I was reflecting tonight over the best book I read over the summer.  And, really, there was no contest for the winner:

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Now, I don't normally read suspense--and indeed, when I had to read a suspense novel for class last semester I wasn't really impressed with the book I chose.  But this book piqued my interest for an entirely different reason: people kept letting it go overdue.  Most people are pretty on top of renewing their library materials, but for some reason, when I told people this book was overdue, they'd say "I know, but I just HAVE to finish it."

Okay, I thought.  This book must be good if people are willing to pay fines to finish it.

So, without knowing anything about the book (I mean, I hadn't even read the synopsis on the jacket), I decided to put it on reserve.  But then I saw there were like 190 reserves on it so I said screw it and decided to wait.

But then! As if the library gods knew, it came through as a donation.  When I saw it on our for sale shelf the next day, I snapped it up.  If it's worth 10 cents a day to read, surely it was worth $3 to own?

OH MAN YES IT WAS.

This book is MESSED UP.  I mean, REALLY MESSED UP.

The story takes place in a fictional town in Missouri, along the Mississippi River.  It follows two people, Amy and Nick Dunne, who are facing some rough waters in the marriage.  On their 5th wedding anniversary, Amy goes missing.  The novel covers the investigation through the alternating perspectives of both Amy and Nick.  I can't really say a whole lot without giving things away.

The main point here is that this book is not what it seems.  And Gillian Flynn does an amazing job at drawing you in.  The book is divided into three parts.  In part one, everything seems pretty status quo for a suspense novel, but something is not quite right about it. You can't really put a finger on why things are off, but you know there's more to this story.  And then part two starts, and I swear to God, I have seriously never hated a fictional character so much in my LIFE.  Every time I turned the page, all I could say was "I hate this person.  I really fucking hate them." And then your rush through part 3 because HOLY CRAP YOU CAN'T BELIEVE THESE THINGS ARE HAPPENING.  You really can't believe the horrible things characters do to each other.

And the whole story is just...disturbing (but in a good-literature sort of way).  After I finished the book I felt the need to put it down and physically walk away from the book.  I was SO unsettled.  Almost in the same way I was mega-depressed after I finished The Bell Jar.  You know, the good kind of literature-empathy, as it were.

As awesome as this book was, though, I have two small complaints.  And these are mostly due to the fact that I grew up in Missouri.
1) Although Flynn uses a fictional town in Missouri, the location she is describing is geographically impossible.  North Carthage (the town in the book) is where Nick grew up, and it's described as being close enough to Hannibal so that Nick could have worked there as a kid, but no more than 45 minutes from St. Louis.  There is no location in Missouri--that borders the Mississippi--in which you are, at most, 30 minutes from Hannibal and 45 minutes from St. Louis.  St. Louis and Hannibal are 2 hours apart.
2) As you are driving towards St. Louis (as Nick does), the Arch does not "creep up the skyline." It is WAY downtown, and therefore you literally don't see it until you are in downtown and it peeks around a building.  (Now, coming from the Illinois side is a different story).

BUT THOSE THINGS ASIDE, this was truly an awesome book.  Totally recommend it, especially now that they're turning it into a movie.  Be ahead of the curve!

Heather Brewer

So tonight I went to the book launch party of Heather Brewer's new book, Soulbound. Now, I'll admit, I've never read a Heather Brewer book before.

I know. It's weird. Why would I go to a book signing for an author I've never read? Well, there were several reasons.

1) I LOVE author events. They have such great energy. As a writer, nothing gets me more motivated to write than to see another author talking about their work. And hearing someone read their own stuff? There's nothing like it. And lately, I've been running low on inspiration in the writing department, so I thought I might as well go to get myself inspired.

2) I'd heard good things about Heather Brewer's books in my Teen Library Materials class, and the last event she did at the library was apparently a great time had by all.

3) I have so very little in my life besides work. Sad but true.

4) Her new book totally sounds like something I'd read, so I was all over that. MOAR YA!!!

Now, the thing about going to a book signing for a YA and/or children's author when you're my age is that you have to be prepared to be the only person from your generation there. No really. The last two YA events I've gone to, I was the oldest person there who didn't have kids. It's basically a bunch of 10-15 year olds, ME, and then all the moms. Yes, I DID feel like a huge creeper, thanks for asking! It doesn't bother me enough to stop going, obviously, but still.


Anyways, I am so glad that I went. I've been to a few author events before and I've always enjoyed them greatly. But Heather Brewer...she's good. She writes YA, but she skews a little young (11-14). And any YA author, when they're talking to kids, won't talk down to them. They talk to kids like their feelings, opinions, and dreams are just as valid and important as any adults'. Which they are, but a lot of times teens aren't given a lot of credit for the depth they can possess.

But I don't know, something about the way she spoke was just...so utterly sincere. Like she really, honestly cared deeply for each and every person who came out to see her. And she was honest (particularly when she revealed her true feelings about Twilight. Haha). She was just so genuine, and I was really touched by that. Not that the other authors I've seen haven't been genuine, but none have been as....earnest as Heather Brewer. It was like she had this deep-seated respect for her readers, and that respect was something she cherished.

So I know I'm heading into sappy territory here, but the whole thing was such a positive experience for me. And of course, it did motivate me to write. What about, I don't know, but as Heather said, butt+chair=book.