Worderella Writes

Book: The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

This is technically two separate stories about two cocky young men who use their wits to get what they want. The thing is, one is a Hungarian folktale about Csucskari, a young gypsy who puts the sun, the moon, and the stars back where they belong. The other story is a contemporary first-person narrative about Greg, a student painter who dropped out of his junior year of college three years ago to work in a studio with four of his artist friends. There aren’t really chapters, just a series of vignettes, and the vignettes switch between the contemporary narrative and the folktale.

Read more...

Book: The Slightest Provocation

In the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, Mary Penley and Kit Stansell of the Regency feuding Penley and Stansell families elope, after nourishing a secret friendship from their early teens. Their first year of marriage is one long honeymoon night, if you get my drift, but when Kit is teased by his club friends for only lusting after his wife (how provincial!!), he dallies with an actress and catches a disease such that he can’t go to bed with Mary for a year. This doesn’t stop him from going to other actresses, however, and to get back at him, Mary allows Kit’s best friend to seduce her. Of course, Kit walks in on them, and that’s just the backstory.

When the book actually starts, Kit and Mary have been separated for nine years, during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon is finally defeated, and Kit and Mary are returning to England, worried by rumors that there is an insurgency threatening their homeland.

Read more...

Book: St. Ursula’s Girls Against the Atomic Bomb

So. This book is interesting. St Ursula’s Girls Against the Atomic Bomb by Valerie Hurley is about Raine Rassaby, a free-spirited high school girl who is determined to be a heroine and save the world from nuclear missiles and other dangerous horrible things like the military. Her mother is a concert violinist and her father is a famous astrologist; her late grandmother converted to Judaism so she thinks she’s Jewish even though both of her parents are Catholic. She’s in love with the Slovakian Jewish gardener, and her Catholic school guidance teacher, who has his own problems, lives next door. The book starts crazy, and it doesn’t seem to come to any sort of real resolution, in the way that a typical romance would, which is why I’ve labeled this book as simply fiction, it almost asks to be literary fiction.

Read more...

Book: A Hole in the Earth

A Hole in the Earth by Robert Bausch is a first-person narrative about “the summer” as described by Henry Porter, the narrator and main character. A middle school history teacher with a penchant for gambling, Porter is a divorce who has not seen his daughter Nicole in five years, which makes her about seventeen. The school year has just ended, and Porter is on his way out the door to the race track to make a couple bucks when Nicole shows up at his door with her friend, Sam. That same day, Porter’s girlfriend of three years Elizabeth begins to act strangely, and she soon reveals that she is pregnant. What starts out as a series of unexpected events leads to the inner-workings of a quiet man; Porter’s narrative tells us everything he cannot or does not say, and how that can make or break his relationships with the people around him.

Read more...

Book: Firebird by Mercedes Lackey

Mercedes Lackey is one of the best fantasy writers out there. Her Elemental Masters quartet is one of MANY reasons to read her. This book, Firebird, is a departure from her usual fantasy series, though. It is a stand-alone novel set in Old Russia, and heavily draws on Russian fairytales and magic. If you’ve read Enchantment by Orson Scott Card, you will feel right at home with this book.

Read more...

Book: Deerskin by Robin McKinley

Deerskin by Robin McKinley is fantasy only in its setting: a generic kingdom with a handsome king and a queen more beautiful than any before, and more beautiful than any queen to come. This is the story of their daughter, Lissa Lissar, largely ignored, and therefore unused to people. It is with the death of her mother that her father finally notices her, and with that notice comes a danger that I, for one, was not expecting.

Read more...

Book: Chasing Shakespeares

If you like any sort of research-based/mystery-type fiction, this book might be for you. Chasing Shakespeares by Sarah Smith is the story about a graduate student from Northeastern University who finds what he thinks is a letter written by THE William Shakespeare. In his search to prove Shakespeare wrote it, Joe Roper gets involved with the Oxfordians, a group of people who believe the Earl of Oxford was the real William Shakespeare.

Read more...

Book: Elantris

Ten years ago, the great city of Elantris fell. With it went any semblance of democratic government, though this isn’t to say that Elantris led a democratic example. A paranoid and stingy king rules Kae now, the city feeling the brunt of Elantris’ fall. The kingdom of Fjordell is trying to invade with their demanding and regimented religion, Shu-Dereth, by sending its high-ranking gyorn, Hrathen. The Teoish princess, Sarene, is on her way to Kae to marry the crown prince, Raoden, only to hear once leaving the ship that her fiancé has very mysteriously died/disappeared. No one knows how it happened, but the situation is profitable for Hrathen and potentially disastrous for Sarene.

Read more...