Fun Friday: The Lightning Thief

There is no shortage of excitement on this end over all of the fabulous YA books making it into theaters lately. Obviously, we know the old adage that the book is always better than the movie, but I’m not opposed to watching an adaptation if only to see if it matched any of my personal thoughts on the books. And sometimes, it’s just fantastic to see something that felt a little flat on paper brought to life on screen (vampire baseball anyone?)

So I’m thrilled to be seeing the trailers for The Lightning Thief! Have you checked them out?

Anyone a fan of the books and looking forward to the movie? Shout out!

Thursday Myths & Legends 101: Glatisant, The Questing Beast

The Questing Beast—or the Beast Glatisant, comes to us from Arthurian legend.  It’s physical description is usually something of a chimera—head of a snake, body of a leopard, haunches of a lion, and feet of a deer.  Confused?  Well, so is it.

The legend inside the legend (revealed by Merlin) is that the Questing Beast was born of a human woman—she fell in love with her own brother, and slept with a devil who promised to make the brother love her in return, but instead the devil tricked her into accusing the brother of rape—which resulted in her father ordering him to be torn apart by rabid dogs.  As he was dying, he cursed her, saying she’d give birth to a hideous creature, which would make the same sounds as the animals that killed him—which is where Glatisant comes from, the French word for “yelping” or “barking,” glapissant.

The Questing Beast is sort of a symbol of incest, destruction, and all kinds of bad things rolled into one.  In most legends, Arthur first sees the Questing Beast after sleeping with his (unbeknowst to him) sister, Morgause, who bears Mordred, who ultimately becomes Arthur’s downfall.  In most legends it is also understood that it is the family quest of the Pellinore line to hunt the Glatisant—thus the “Questing” Beast.  T.H. White makes a running joke of this in The Once and Future King, using Pellinore and also a few other knights, including Sir Palomides, who is also linked to hunting the Questing Beast, in later stories.

There is another, completely different version of the Questing Beast, however.  The Perlesvaus represents the beast as beautiful, pure white, and smaller than a fox.  likening the beast to the church of Christ.  This version seems to have an entirely different background, and it’s “barking” sounds are accounted for by being the creature’s offspring, ripping it to shreds from the inside—representative of impious churchgoers.  The first, more traditional representation of the beast is understandably more popular.  Its symbolism of destruction is befitting of the fall of Arthur, also.

The best place to go looking for the Questing Beast, then, is of course in the megaliths of Arthurian legend themselves, like Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, and The Once and Future King by T.H. White.

Book Geek Wednesday: The Dreaded DNF

So, I’ve had high hopes to post a review of Kristin Cashore’s Graceling by now, for the past few months even, and every time I go to try and finish it, I get stuck. I’m not sure what it is about the book that isn’t really clicking for me. The characters are interesting enough. The storyline is original. The world is well thought out and feels three dimensional. So what is it that keeps me so distracted? Is it that New Year’s Ennui Lisa was talking about? Maybe. But I keep getting the feeling that it’s much more in the pacing. I’m bored. Everything is in place for a great story and yet it feels like the ingredients are mixing in my mind.

So I’m going to just leave it alone for a bit and come back to it for one more attempt. Because I just hate giving up on books. I really do. The guilt is crushing. And although this is only like the second or third time this has happened to me, I’ve decided I’ll have to add DNF to my rating system.

Did Not Finish. For those books that for whatever reason just did not make it to the finish line.

Lisa’s Tuesday Perspective: Song of the Lioness Books I & II by Tamora Pierce

I’ll admit right off the bat that I read these because I’m working my way towards the Beka Cooper series, which is supposed to be Pierce’s best work.  It took me some time to realize that that series is actually an offshoot of Pierce’s first quartet of books, the Song of the Lioness books.  I’d previously read The Circle of Magic books, and while I liked the concepts behind the book, I had to grit my teeth and force myself through a few of the books, so my expectations weren’t very high for these.

That said, I was kind of surprised.  I enjoyed Alanna: The First Adventure, for what it was meant for—a kid’s book about a girl defying the rules and becoming a knight by disguising herself as a boy.  If I’d read these when I was a kid, like a friend of mine did, I might well have loved them.  I think the foreshadowing in these books is a bit heavy-handed, looking at them through my own eyes, but for a kid it might not be quite so obvious who the bad guy was.

I continued to have a lot of fun with In the Hands of the Goddess, though I didn’t enjoy that one quite as much.  The foreshadowing really got to me on this one.  To be fair, there’s actually a bit written into the plot as to why Alanna doesn’t realize sooner who it is that’s plotting against both her and the prince, but as the reader you sort of want to bang your head against the wall every time she says something like “hm… he’s suspicious, and could probably gain from all of this, but… oh I’m probably just imagining things.”

No, Alanna.  You’re not imagining things.  And the showdown at the end would have been much more scandalous if we hadn’t seen it coming for ages.

Also… she has a talking cat in this book.  A familiar, as it were, but… well, it just doesn’t really work for me.  As I said before, this probably wouldn’t be an issue if I had read this at the age it’s actually intended for… but this edged more towards the problems I had with her Circle quartets—namely, bad guys who were bad just because they were bad, and really deserved to die, and that’s it.   I don’t know, Pierce.  I know you’re a big name in the fantasy industry, but really sometimes I wonder why.

These get a B- from me.  I’ll continue with them… if only because I really do want to get to Beka Cooper, and my OCD brain won’t let me read them out of order.  Yes, it’s true.

Movie Magic Monday: Race to Witch Mountain

The selling point for me to watch this movie was aliens. Aliens with cool powers. I’m always down to watch humanoid aliens do neat things that we humans only dream about. I figured, it’s Disney, so I’m sure it’ll have a feel good element. And well, The Rock isn’t too bad to look at either.

Though I really enjoyed the logic of the storyline once it was explained, I was very disappointed that it happened in the form of an infodump, rather than through interesting scenes involving character discovery. Yes, I get that we only had so much time in the movie, but the alien kids remained very vague and unimportant to me. I cared about them only in so far as I couldn’t bear two kids getting caught by the government. As people, as characters, they failed to truly capture me.

The story seemed to focus much more on Dwayne Johnson’s character, the non-believing taxi driver who gets caught in all the action. His paternal instinct to protect is charming and his progression toward discovering the truth is amusing. The action scenes were fun to watch, particularly the one advertised in the commercials where the boy is standing in front of the SUV. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it for you, but I did get pretty psyched by it, visually.

I think the movie had a lot of promise but failed to deliver on most aspects. It was entertaining but not overly memorable. It was fun in a sci-fi meets pop culture kind of way, but not a genuine science fiction story, like ET or the new Avatar (which I am SO going to go see in 3d soon!).

Unfortunately, I have to give this movie a C+. But for light, family entertainment, it does what it set out to do. dwayne john

Fun Friday: 100 Posts!

Tales from the Hollow Tree has officially past its first milestone—100 posts!

We have reviewed dozens of books since opening last August, and are still having so much fun!  We are so excited and just wanted to thank you so much for sticking with us!  This has been such a fulfilling endeavor for us, having a schedule and sticking to it, and we hope to hit many more milestones in the future!

~Lisa and Isabelle

Thursday Myths & Legends 101: Neverland

Second star to the right, and straight on ’til morning.

I have a confession to make.  I love Peter Pan.  I think I’ve been an escapist my entire life, and when you’re little, Never Never Land is the ultimate in escapism.  Really, there’s mermaids, pirates, indians!  What more could you want?  (If you were like me as a kid, I was sold at mermaids!)

J.M. Barrie described Neverland as the map of a child’s mind, therefore it varies from child to child, so I really can’t give you a point-by-point description of the island (it’s always an island).  The best I can do is to encourage you to think back to how you imagined Neverland to be.  Mine, personally, was full of bright colors and was suspiciously influenced by the 1960 Mary Martin film (I cannot tell you how much I wanted a seat-sized toadstool after watching that movie. So, so much.)

The way to find it is always the same, second star to the right, and straight on ’til morning—of course to the right of what precisely is up to you—but if you’re meant to get there, you’ll know.  It is also told that you can see Neverland, if you try.  When you close your eyes really tight and the blackness explodes in bursts of impossible colors?  That’s Neverland.  It’s also meant to be the place just between waking and sleeping, that moment when you’re conscious, but still wrapped up in dream.

But really what’s magical about Neverland is how with just the slightest of suggestions J.M. Barrie managed to create a whole new, totally accessible and fully-customizable fantasy world.  There are several reasons why Peter Pan is a classic, and Neverland is a big one.

Book Geek Wednesday: Into The Cold Fire by Lynne Ewing

Continuing my exploration of the Daughters of the Moon series, Book 2 is the one that really hooked me. As I said before, Book 1 is a great starter story, a great introduction to the main characters, to the evil known as the Atrox, and to their alternate world in general. Book 2 ups the stakes. Plot wise, it kept me riveted to the page.

For starters, the book focuses on another of the ‘daughters’, the second of the four best friends, Serena. Her power is mindreading. It’s great to see how Ewing incorporates the supernatural elements into a teen’s everyday life and how it might make them feel so out of place. While Vanessa fears disappearing during a kiss, Serena has finished conversations with boys who never actually said anything to her. You can imagine how much that freaked them out.

Anyway, Jimena, Serena’s closest friend of the four, has had a premonition. She sees Serena betraying them and stepping into the cold fire, an ancient ritual meant to convert a dark follower of the Atrox into an immortal. Very few get this privilege, and for some reason, Serena is chosen. Of course, Serena is convinced she’d never do that. But… well Jimena’s premonitions have ALWAYS come true. So what will she do? How will she change her fate? Can she?

I have to say, thus far, Serena’s POV and voice suited me much better than Vanessa’s. While V was all preppy and popular, Serena is a kind of free spirit. I really dug that. She plays the cello. Her brother is a surfer. She exudes intelligence and maturity. But most of all, I enjoyed Serena because she’s not as cut and dry as Vanessa. There are definite grey areas to her. And although you never doubt her loyalty to the daughters, you do wonder if she’d turn to the dark side, because she has definite dark tendencies. This fascinated me and made her a very strong heroine in my book.

And there was an added bonus, something that Lisa can tell you I get weak in the knees over. His name is Stanton. And although he’s a follower of the Atrox, there are definite feelings going on between he and Serena. Very impossible and forbidden feelings, seeing as how they’re on very seperate sides.

This book earns a solid A from me and remains til this day one of my favorites of the series.

Lisa’s Tuesday Perspective: New Year’s Ennui.

So, the holidays are over, and I’ve had puh-lenty of time to read a new book for this week… and yet I don’t have one.  Why is this?  Well, it’s partially because… well the holidays are over.  And as holidays do, they wreaked havoc on life as we know it for a few weeks.  Not that this is always a bad thing.  Actually usually for me it’s a pretty good thing—most of it was good this year, too.  Still, the holidays are enough craziness to throw anybody a little bit off their game.  Some years no matter how much you looked forward to the season, you’re a little bit relieved when January starts up and life gets back to normal.  Of course then we have to kickstart the year, and… well, that just hasn’t quite hit for me yet.  Which by the fifth of January is pretty bad, but I just haven’t gotten back in the groove just yet.

Which is not to say I haven’t tried.  Sigh.  I think I’m suffering from PFBS (Post Fantastic Book Syndrome) because I’ve started two books the past few weeks, but I’m not over Lament, which pretty much blew my mind (and I may or may not be rereading it as we speak—which I NEVER do that quickly).

The books I’ve been trying just haven’t been hitting the spot, though.  First there’s Michelle Zink’s Prophecy of the Sisters, which I want to like… I really, do, because the premise is creepy and eerie and  I really wanted to like the book, but it was due back at the library before I could even get a hundred pages into it.  Something about the gothic style Zink is trying to use just doesn’t flow for me.  You can really feel how out-of-her vernacular it is, and it reads false.  I think this is maybe because she pays a little bit more attention to the dialogue her characters are speaking than the way Lia, the main character, thinks things through in her head, and you can feel the disparity.  I do want to finish this at some point, because the concept seems pretty fantastic, and even though I didn’t get into much plot at all, I’m really curious as to what goes on here, so I’ve placed a hold on it to give it another go, but for now… it didn’t strike my fancy.

Nor has Claudia Gray’s Evernight.  I wanted to like this, because I’ve heard over and over that it’s a highly-underrated YA series, but I’m starting to realize something I’ve suspected for a long time now.  Or re-realize it, I should say.  That something is that… I just don’t like vampire books.  They don’t interest me at all.  I can read Twilight, sure, and I watch The Vampire Diaries pretty avidly… but neither one of those things makes me at all interested in reading a book about somebody that wants to drink somebody else’s blood.  This is enough to counteract my usual liking of new-kid-at-ancient-creeptastic-school types of storylines.  I’m not 100% ready to give up on this book yet, but I’m not super-invested in it, either, and I have a feeling the giving-up is coming…

Maybe this really is just the PFBS talking, though.  Maybe I’m being way too hard on these books.  Meanwhile, I have some other very promising books waiting their turn… I think I’m going to bite on Scott Westerfield’s Leviathan, first.  I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and something outside of this girly girly fantasy might be just what I need…

TV Magic Monday: Lost

2010 marks the final season of Lost. Hard to believe as I still remember sitting at the edge of my seat for the premiere. It was one of the most memorable openers I’ve ever seen, and it stuck with you long after the episode ended. It kept up that fascinating pace for about three and a half exhausting seasons. Then, like most great shows, it allowed the hype or the executives, not sure which, to over complicate things.

I lost my faithful week to week interest at about season four. I stopped watching alltogether when we lost Charlie. But that’s the thing about this show. It becomes an addiction. Somehow, this past year I was sucked back into its magnetic vortex. And its even more fantastical and crazy than I remember. Now I have to finish watching just to see how it ends.

Will you be watching? Granted, it’s not aimed at a YA audience but its a smart, mysterious sci-fi fantasy adventure that can appeal to all ages.