Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy

Title: Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy
Author: Karen Foxlee
Published: 2014
Pages: 233
First Line: In the end the Queen was nothing like she was in the stories the Marvellous Boy had been told, first as a child beside the hearth and later by the wizards.

"She was running out of the room as fast as she could, with the sword raised before her. She called back to her father. "I'll be back soon. I've just got to save the world."

Ophelia’s father is the world’s leading expert on swords, which is why she, and her sister Alice are staying in a fancy museum while her father curates a much-awaited exhibit. Alice, fourteen and distant since the death of their mother, has little time for Ophelia, preferring instead to enjoy the privileges and treats laid out before her by the cold and aloof museum director, Ms. Kaminski. With her sister and father busy, this leaves Ophelia to explore the museum largely unchaperoned – except for the guards knitting in the corners, that is (I would love to be a knitting guard, by the way).

I’m not entirely sure what kind of museum this is (it’s either unclear or I completely missed it) but it is housed within a palace and has pretty much everything you could imagine – dinosaurs, armour, doll houses, clothes, paintings, everything. While wondering, Ophelia comes across a room with beautiful mosaics set into the floor and walls, mosaics and sea creatures, and a boy her age, a boy holding a sword and referred to as “The Marvellous Boy”. It is while admiring these that she hears a voice, a call for help.

“And you might think a name is just a name, nothing but a word, but that is not the case. Your name is tacked to you. Where it has joined you, it has seeped into your skin and into your essence and into your soul. So when they plucked my name from me with their spell, it was as heavy as a rock in their hands but as invisible as the wind, and it wasn't just the memory of my name, but me myself. A tiny part of me that they took and stored away.” 

Locked in a bare room is the Marvellous Boy himself. He has been imprisoned by the Snow Queen and has mere days remaining to claim his freedom, find “The Other One” who will recover his lost sword, and help him defeat the Snow Queen. Unfortunately, he has enlisted the help of a rather scientifically-minded young girl. She has no time for his talk of wizards, magic, swords, and evil queens. She is going to stay out of trouble and go ice-skating with her sister, not go on a crazy hunt for keys, dodging man-eating misery birds. Right? Of course not.

I really wanted to love Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy, going in I felt the story had the right level of simple magic and straight forward quest to really hit the nail on the head for a quick younger read. Unfortunately, I felt it dragged a bit, to the point where I even considered putting it down (very unlike me). It had a lot of promising elements – I loved the idea of the wizards taking away the boy’s name to keep it safe, and I would have liked to have explored the museum a little more, because it’s range of exhibits fascinated me, but ultimately these elements did not outweigh the holes in the plot (more information on the Snow Queen’s motivations, what happened to the King?) and the repetition (go here and find a key, then go there and find another key, oh but then the key you really need…). The novel had its charms, but not enough to make me love it. 3/5

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Dare to read aloud….

Inkheart Cornelia Funke
543 pages; published 2003

So Mo began filling the silence with words. He lured them out of the pages as if they had only been waiting for his voice, words long and short, words sharp and soft, cooing, purring words. They danced through the room, painting stained-glass pictures, tickling the skin. (252)

There are books, and then there are books for booklovers. Inkheart definitely falls into the second category.

Twelve year old Meggie Folchart inherited her love of reading from her father Mo (Mortimer), a dedicated bookbinder. Everything about their lives together revolves around their shared passion: reading books, talking about books, collecting books…

Until the day a strange man, with an even stranger name (Dustfinger) turns up and disrupts Meggie’s understanding of the world. Suddenly books aren’t quite as safe as they used to be, her father is not the simple man he always seemed, and villains are no longer limited to the page.

I hate the idea of seeing a movie based on a book BEFORE actually reading the book, so I’ll admit that I bought this book before I really knew what it was about – just that it was had a pretty cover and was something about books… luckily it all worked out well.

Inkheart was a very enjoyable read, a real adventure story for booklovers. The idea of people and creatures literally leaping out of a book through the power of a reading voice is an amazingly beautiful one – even if it’s uncontrollability did have dire consequences in this book. How many times have you wished the books you love could just come to live beside you?

The relationship between Meggie and Mo was heartwarming, a father and daughter with no one but each other, and I hope to see that that progresses with the rest of the trilogy, as Meggie continues to mature – especially in face of everything Inkheart puts her through.

I did feel that the book was a little on the long side, like it dragged a little towards the end, however I will own up to having spent a rather long – and interrupted – time reading it. I am very curious to see how the rest of the series unfolds in Inkspell and Inkdeath. 4/5

I do believe in fairies…

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale Holly Black
331 pages; published 2002

A man was sprawled in the mud only a few steps from her, clutching a curved sword in one hand. It shone like a sliver of moonlight in the hazy dark. Long pewter hair, plastered wetly to his neck, framed a face that was long and full of sharp angles. Rivulets of rain ran over the jointed black armour he wore. His other hand was at his heart, clutching a branch that jutted from his chest. The rain there was tinted pink with blood.

“Was it you, girl? … [have you] come to finish me off?” (24-5)

Kaye’s mum is a unknown rockstar-wannabe, her grandmother disapproves of everything, and she hasn’t been to school in years. Her life couldn’t be less magical. It is a far cry from the happy life she enjoyed as a small child, surrounded by her fairy and pixie friends, even if no one else could see them.

When Kaye and her mother move back to town, however, her little friends are nowhere to be seen, and life just isn’t the same without them. And the friends who are around aren’t quite the same either. Even the people she meets are a little unusual. Roiben, the young man she meets in the woods is… well, he’s not human for starters.

But as it turns out, neither is Kaye.

Having proof that fairies are real makes life different but no less hard when Kaye finds herself the target in a battle of good and evil in the world of faerie.

It is so good to finally read a book that has been on your tbr list for so long… not so good when it’s the first in a trilogy and you don’t have the next two books (stupid, stupid). Despite that little hiccup however, it was still a pretty good read – hard to make a final judgment until I read the rest of the series.

I was a little bugged to read another ‘normal-girl-loves-supernatural-boy’ story (was written before Twilight) but got over it pretty quick because there were a few spins on it – namely that the girl herself isn’t exactly normal.

For the most part, Tithe was a good first book, it set up the world well – a somewhat intimidating world, I might add. Kaye was an interesting character, damaged enough to make you very sympathetic toward her, but curious enough to make her interesting. My only real concern was the language; it was a little strong in the first part the novel which, while somewhat confronting (and may need a warning for some readers), worked quite well within the context of the world they were setting up. 3.5/5

Angels and Visitations

Angels and Visitations: A Miscellany
Neil Gaiman
166 pages; published 1993

Memory is the great deceiver. Perhaps there are individuals whose memories act like tape recordings, daily records of their lives complete in every detail, but I am not one of them. My memory is a patchwork of occurrences, of discontinuous events roughly sewn together: the parts I remember, I remember precisely, whilst other sections seem to have vanished completely. (141)

I always enjoy Neil Gaiman’s writing, so I pretty much knew I would love this one too. His writing is just so clever, so rich, that you can’t help but want to read more.

Angels and Visitations, however, was a little different from the other novels and short stories of his that I’ve read. It is, as the title says, ‘a miscellany’, a collection of literary bits and pieces he has accumulated over the years: poetry, book reviews, stories written for this and that. As such, it was a bit of an odd collection, but still full of wonderful pieces that I’d recommend to any Neil Gaiman fan. 4.5

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Rapunzel's Revenge

Shannon and Dean Hale

Illustrated by Nathan Hale

144 pgs; published 2008

Everyone knows the story of Rapunzel, right? Locked away in a tall tower by an evil witch until the day a handsome, hair-climbing prince comes along to rescue her. Well. Not in this version. For starters, this Rapunzel’s got spunk; she’s not going to just hang around waiting to be rescued. This girl’s out for revenge; revenge against the evil witch who kidnapped her, forced her parents into slavery, and named her after a lettuce.

But Rapunzel soon learns that life outside her tower isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and that seeking revenge may be harder that she had anticipated. Mother Gothel’s magic and greed has affected all the surrounding lands, leaving the population poverty stricken and distrustful. This idealistic hair lasso-er, however, may be just what they need to set things straight.

First of all, I have to say that Rapunzel’s Revenge is hilarious. It has infused its text and images with so much humour that I laughed out loud through the whole thing. I love a good story retelling and this one was even better than I had expected. If you enjoy fractured fairytales then I’d definitely give this one a read. 4.5/5

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Second star to the right...

Posts have been a little sparse lately, sorry bout that. Being on prac, means I haven't really had the time to read (sad) let alone review, but I've got some done, so I'm gonna try to spread them out to cover my time away.

Peter and the Starcatchers
Dave Barry and Ridley Scott
463 pages; published 2006

Peter was the leader of the boys, because he was the oldest. Or maybe he wasn’t. Peter had no idea how old he really was, so he gave himself whatever age suited him, and it suited him to always be one year older than the oldest of his mates. If Peter was nine, and a new boy came to St. Norbert’s Home for Wayward Boys who said he was ten, why, then Peter would declare himself to be eleven. Also, he could spit the farthest. That made him the undisputed leader. (13)

The first in a trilogy chronicling the events before J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Peter Pan and the Starcatchers is a suprisingly delightful read. Why suprising? Well, as a firm believer in the 'original is always best' school of thought, I had not expected this prequel to be both as interesting and charming as it was.

Peter and his band of loyal friends (the origins of the Lost Boys) are wards of London's St. Norbert's Home for Wayward Boys. Taken away from the home in an mystery only achievable by unexplained midnight outing, the young boys are boarded on a ship, the Never Land. They soon learn that they are being tansported to the island of Rundoon, to be slaves to island's ruthless king - a man more likely to feed the boys to his snake than offer them any real or home or employment, let alone kindness.

But even before they get to Runddon things are prety rough. The Never Land's crew runs the gamut from incompetent to downright villainous, their quarters are cramped, and the food literally has things living it - not exactly a luxury liner. The only source of friendship found onboard by Peter is in the form of Alf, a kindly deckhand and the curious secretive young passenger, Molly.

Downtrodden and disgusting the voyage may be, but it doesn't lack for excitement - for it is not long before a pirate ship, captaied by the infamous 'Black Stache', starts to run them down, determined to retrieve a crumbling trunk in the Never Land's cargo.

Why are these pirates so intent on retrieving the trunk? What is inside it? And just how is Molly involved?

As I said, Peter and the Starcatchers was a lovely read - both funny and moving in equal parts. Young Peter and the others were true enough to their original counterparts to be a faithful retelling, yet fresh enough to be of interest. There were times that I felt the story to be a little on the long side - at over 400 pages, it is rather long for the start of a children's trilogy - yet despite this, there was no real dragging of the story.

My only real issue ith teh book - and it was an extremely light one at that - was that the almost ultra-realistic tone of teh start led me to beleive that it was going to be a realistic reinterpretation of the book. It's magical elements returned quickly and, while executed well, I thought it would have been interesting to have it go down the other route.

A wonderful read for lovers of Peter Pan and new readers like. 4/5

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Catch a Falling Star...

Stardust
Neil Gaimen
198 pages, published 1999

Neil Gaimen is an author I have been intending to read for some time but had never quite managed to get to, so when the new Stardust movie came out, I thought I’d take the opportunity to get in and read the book before I saw the movie.

A lovely book, that read more like a fairy tale than I had anticipated, Stardust tells the story of a young man who sets off into the magical world beyond the village confines to retrieve a fallen star to impress the young woman he wishes to love. Of course, as is want with fairy tales, all is complicated when the star herself assures him that she has no intentions of being retrieved. 5/5