Book Review Tiem!

[lace_agate]

Reviewed in this post are The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones, Silk Road to Ruin by Ted Rall, Scatterheart by Lili Wilkinson and Kino No Tabi: Book one of The Beautiful World by Keiichi Sigsawa.

The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones
Rhiannon's been after me for a while to read this and I'm glad I listened.  It's another of DWJ's "multiple worlds" stories, but darker and a bit more melancholy than, say, the Chrestomanci series.  Twelve-year-old Jamie unwittingly stumbles upon some secrets about how the world is run, and is banished across the multiverse.  Forbidden from staying ("entering play") in any world except his own, he tries to find his way back home.
Like all of Diana Wynne Jones's best books, this one is unpredictable, entertaining and really leaves you thinking.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, not just for the story, but for all the ideas and old myths and legends that have been woven into the plot.

Silk Road To Ruin by Ted Rall
Central Asia isn't a place we hear much about in the West.  Kazakhstan we've heard of, but only because of Borat.  Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan - we barely know the names.  And yet, if journalist and cartoonist Ted Rall is right, they're about to become one of the most politically explosive regions on Earth.
Ted Rall does a generally good job of presenting his case: he describes the politics of the region, its history since the fall of the Soviet Union, the state of its environment and also draws on his own experience travelling there.  The text chapters are interspered with short comics detailing the many trips he's made around the area.  However, the book really could have done with a bit more stringent editing, as the order of chapters and comics, for instance, doesn't really make sense to my mind.
This is a fascinating, informative book, but not a comfortable read.  The chapter on Uzbekistan, for instance, should probably come with a health warning - some of the things that happen there are positively nauseating.  Overall a recommended read for people interested in global politics, US foreign policy or the central Asian region.

Scatterheart by Lili Wilkinson
An interesting concept: a retelling of the fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon that is also a historical novel about convicts transported to Australia in the early 19th century.  Lili Wilkinson does a fantastic job of blending the two elements in this beautifully written novel.  The characters are believeable and the story never fails to engage.
She doesn't shy away from the horrors of convict life or other more gruesome aspects of life in 1814, but the book isn't hopeless or depressing in spite of that.  Hannah's journey from a priveleged upbringing in London to a factory in Sydney and then her quest in the Blue Mountains and Scatterheart's parallel journey in search of home are moving and ultimately redemptive.  My one criticism is that I felt the ending was tidied away too quickly, but even that doesn't really detract from the book as a whole.  Highly recommended.

Kino No Tabi: Book one of The Beautiful World by Keiichi Sigsawa
In a world not so different from our own, a girl called Kino travels from city-state to dystopian city-state on a talking motorcycle, never staying in one place for more than three days.  Each place has its ugliness and imperfection (some of it mirrors our own world), but there's also beauty to be found in Kino's world if you know where to look.
The book is divided into several connected short stories with a prologue and an epilogue to tie them together.  The stories read a bit like fables or parables; some of them reminded me of The Giver and Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry, while quite a few critics have compared it to The Little Prince.  I found that, after finishing each story, I'd have to stop reading for a while just to digest all the ideas.  Having said that, though, the ideas never get in the way of the story and it remains engaging throughout.  Personally, I can't wait to read the sequel.

Comments

[grass-angel.livejournal.com]

Kino no Tabi is a light novel sequence which means they're [the books] all actually the same story, just different sections. It's not so much a series, more like a serial.

And wait... I think I have read the Homeward Bounders. It had something weird to do with a garden or building.