Unabridged Opinions

This week I have been haunted by “titian blondes”.  It began when I picked up Gregory Maguire’s Mirror, Mirror–a re-telling of Snow White with the role of the wicked queen played by Lucrezia Borgia.  Set in the gorgeous countryside of Italy and the dwarves rescued from the clutches of Disney to something much stranger, this book quickly became my favourite of all of Maguire’s re-tellings.  (Although, in my opinion, the best re-tellings of fairy tales come from Robin McKinley and Gail Carson Levine.) Bianca, a pale and quiet young girl, struggles to survive adolescence, the loss of her father, and the perils of life under the eyes of the Borgias with a grace and quiet dignity that makes her rescue by the dwarves both inevitable and understandable.

Lucrezia fits neatly into the role of the wicked queen. Willful, lovely, vicious, and conniving, she slowly pushes Bianca out of her own home and condemns her to death in the forest.  Saved by dwarves that she creates out of stone, Bianca is the mother creator of the story. Her ability to give life to those around her is in direct contrast to Lucrezia, who gradually loses everyone, son, brother, father, lover, to death and despair.

In an extremely odd pairing, Mirror Mirror ended up sitting next to a variety of Nancy Drew novels. Of course, they are the original mysteries, when Nancy drove a blue convertable, wore gloves, dressed for dinner, and had “titian” or strawberry blonde hair. There was a marked contrast between the two women: lush and lacivious Lucrezia and the buttoned-up apple of her father’s eye that is Nancy.  That didn’t make these books any less comfortable, though.  There is something charming about Nancy gaily driving up and down the countryside helping out various friends and relatives as they are robbed, conned, or intimidated with a frequency that would make anyone leary of being friends or relatives of Carson and Miss Drew.

These two women, though, Lucrezia and Nancy present two familiar types of women–the one who is dangerous because of her sexuality and the power she wields and the one who is pure and uses what power she has for the good of others.  On this line, Bianca fits neatly in the middle: purer and kinder than Lucrezia, sexier and more real than Nancy. Still though, I don’t think that these books will ever sit quietly next to each other.

I first came across these books in a post on Orbit publishing’s blog.  It was a cool two-part piece on the covers of her books (the first part can be found here)–and I immediately filed Jennifer Rardin’s name away for future reference. Normally, when I start a series, I am very particular about starting with the first book and moving on, but the only copy of the first book, Once Bitten, Twice Shy, seemed to be lost in permanently checked out limbo at my local library, so I began with the second, Another One Bites the Dust.

This one begins with Jaz, very reluctantly, astride a moped.  Separated from the powerful (and not-lame) car she clearly prefers, Jaz is heading for a county fair in Corpus Christi, Texas–where she and her team have been sent to stop an ancient Chinese vampire from joining forces with their old enemy, Edward Samos. Chien-Lung has already managed to steal a suit of armour so high-tech that it bonds to the skin and serves as a nearly impenetrable defense–and that’s if you are not already a half-crazed vampire without a conscience.

So yes, the book begins with the odds stacked against Jaz and her team.  Add to it Jaz’s continuing difficulty in coping with the grief of the loss of her fiancee and some uncomfortable feelings for her boss, an unstable alliance between the tech guy and the seer girl, and the, you know, evil-doers wandering around, and the entire team is under an amazing amount of strain.  Rardin does an excellent job making each member of the team seem essential and logical–there is a real feeling that they work in concert and that they need each other to succeed.  I found this a nice change from the lone-wolf type of fighter that seems so popular in urban fantasy.  It allows Jaz a nice vulnerability without making me feel as if any vulnerability would make her instantly…dead. Continue reading

One of the most consistent aspects of my reading life is the re-reading of books. I read all of my books at least once every couple of years; I read some of them once a year (or more), and I read some of them once a year at very specific times (ahem, Tolkien, during the Winter holidays, without fail). Redwall has been a favourite of mine for a number of years now.  In fact, I still own the (pristine originally but now incredibly battered) copy that my dad gave me for my birthday (ummm twenty years ago? Oh whoa).  This was the same birthday that I got Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown, so my dad obviously has excellent taste in birthday gifts. I loved bringing this book in to show to my students because I put off reading it forever–in book terms, about two weeks in real life–because I wasn’t sure how interesting a book about a mouse could be.  And then, well, I opened it up and read:

Matthias cut a comical little figure as he wobbled his way among the cloisters, with his large sandals flip-flopping and his tail peeping from beneath the baggy folds of an oversized novice’s habit. He paused to gaze upwards at the cloudless blue sky and tripped over the enormous sandals. Hazelnuts scattered out upon the grass from the rush basket he was carrying. Unable to stop, he went tumbling cowl over tail.

Bump!

Well, I was hooked. And then, oh my, there was the food. Continue reading