Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

I feel I should start this review with a disclaimer: I am not the target audience for this book. Perhaps if I were, my review would be quite different, since the popularity of this book indicates that the writing holds appeal to one group or another.

That said, Twilight is a strange book. Now, I love a good vampire story, I really do. I also love a bad vampire story, because let's face it - vampires are awesome. The modern-day vampires are monsters, and that appeals to the tough little kid in all of us, and they are tragic romantic heroes, and that appeals to the wide-eyed and full of wonder little kid in all of us. But Twilight isn't so much a book about vampires as it is about restraint. So much restraint perhaps, that it approaches the idealized courtly love of a medieval story from a young adult book of the early 21st century.

The story centers around Bella Swan, a young lady (high school junior) who moves back to the Pacific Northwest to get away from her mother and her mother's new boyfriend. The first third of the book must be much maligned in the Pacific Northwest, because the major feature of that section of the book is discussing how much the Pacific Northwest is terrible. Bella really honestly hates it, until she spots Edward, whose major personality feature seems to be that he's gorgeous and that he doesn't want to hang around with Bella.

After a rocky start and some admittedly decent set-up, Bella realizes Edward is a vampire and their courtship starts. It basically consists of Bella wanting to know Edward better (in every sense of the word) and Edward insisting he's dangerous. Edward's claims of danger are undermined by his a. inability to leave Bella alone and b. the fact that nothing about him seems dangerous in any way. His thirst for blood is under control. His reaction time is so inhumanly fast that nothing can hurt him (or anyone with him). He insists that if he lost control he could really hurt Bella, but his control is so exacting we never believe him. He doesn't even burst in to flame in the sunlight... he just sparkles. In the end, we're left wondering what the downside is to being a vampire, and why he's so dead-set against allowing Bella to become one.

There's really not much to recommend for this book or the series. The book is paced oddly, spending most of the book on set-up of the world they live in and what vampires are. The characters are often one-dimensional; Bella is inhumanely distant emotionally, and inhumanly clumsy physically. Edward doesn't have much going for him, in terms of personality. Bella's father seems to exist only because she has to have one parent or another to live where she does. And most of the other humans in the book (with the possible exception of the Native Americans) are written in such a way as you feel they do nothing but compare, poorly, to the vampires...

And yet...I can’t help but want to know what happens to these characters next. I can't explain why. But I'm very, very interested in reading the rest of the series. Which can only mean that even if I can't identify it, there must be something right about this series. Off to read New Moon now. - Reviewed by John

His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman

An elderly man – a regular library patron - sparked my curiosity about Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials. Although they were shelved in the Young Adult section, he told me that they were based on John Milton's Paradise Lost and recommended them for adults.

He was listening to the audio books on CD, read by the author. I, too, listened to the three books - read aloud to me over the course of several months by a friend (a great way for us to experience books together!)

The Golden Compass was the most exciting – filled with brave children, evil parents, arctic places with cool names like “Svalbard” (a real place that is home of the global seed vault about 700 miles from the North Pole!), armored polar bears, and physical "daemons," which are spirits in personalized animal forms attached to every human. In the finale, a massive explosion of energy released from the separation of a child from his daemon rips a hole in the universe that the young heroine, Lira, travels through to a new world.

In the second book, The Subtle Knife, Lira meets Will, who uses a magical knife to cut anything – even windows into more worlds. From this point and throughout the third book, The Amber Spyglass, the adventure follows the two children as they explore the world of the dead and confront a fundamental choice between good and evil that parallels the story of Eve’s choice in the Garden of Eden.

I really enjoyed these books. They were fun and also thought-provoking in that they raised questions of spirituality, organized religion and the existence of a supreme, divine "Authority,” as well as scenarios of global climate changes. Sometimes, though, I felt that the three books could have been consolidated into one, for it seemed like the author was repeating himself. Although that may allow each book to stand on its own, I advise reading them in order.

We began reading/listening to these books last winter, the same period of time that the first book in the trilogy, The Golden Compass, was released as a movie. I haven't seen it yet, but the library has the DVD. I’ve placed a hold on it and am looking forward to watching it.

I would recommend the Dark Materials trilogy to adults and youth who enjoy fantasy/science fiction, or just want to read a good adventure tale. - Reviewed by Joyce

Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher

Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher, is a solid fantasy novel which has one extra thing going for it - it’s not like other fantasy novels. While I'm a fantasy fan, people who like the genre do have to admit one thing - much of it (by no means all, but much of it) - is written as a Tolkien rip-off. The same medieval societies, the same "fear but respect" magic, the same elves, dwarves, orcs, and other such things. Furies of Calderon is different.

There is no question this is a pure fantasy novel, unlike Butcher's other, more popular series The Dresden Files which takes place in the modern day. This is a world where magic is real. So real, in fact, that everyone has a little of it. Every human has at least a little bit of "fury-craft", the ability to manipulate elemental creatures called Furies. Furies come in six types - earth, air, fire, water, metal, and wood - and humans usually have at least a little ability in 1 or 2 of those types, which allows them to shape items made of those things, or manipulate emotions that are like those things (firecrafting calls up anger, for example), or even have simulacrums of living creatures made of those things - we meet a dog made of stone, for example. Most humans just have enough to make life a little easier - to light lamps, or keep the rain off, or make the field a little easier to plow... but some, mostly nobility, are incredibly powerful and can do things that well qualify as "magic". Everyone in the entire world... except Tavi.

Tavi is 15, and by 15 most students have at least a bit of skill (it seems to start no later than puberty, sometimes earlier) in furycrafting. Tavi can't do it at all. He is seen - at best - as fundamentally disabled - while the crueler folks among his village think he's a freak of nature. Tavi is smart, sensible, and caring, but seems destined to live an abnormal life, and probably alone. He's being raised by his aunt and uncle in a small valley and outside a small village. It’s utterly unimportant, and far removed from the political intrigues of the Roman-like cities and civilization of the Aleran Empire. Or it would be, except that his valley is the border in to the lands of the Marat, a nomadic, almost-human people who have gone to war with Alera before, and seem poised to do so again.

Tavi, his friends (including one newly arrived), and his family must do more than just survive the coming storm of clashes between those loyal to the empire and those who oppose it, and of the marauding Marat - if possible, they have to avert it. If you want to read a fantasy novel with a fully-constructed and realized setting but are a bit bored of the same old thing, you should read Furies of Calderon, the first book in a 6 book cycle called Codex Alera, 4 of which are already published - the 5th will be out in November. - Reviewed by John