The Constant Princess - Philippa Gregory

Title: The Constant Princess
Author: Philippa Gregory
Publisher: Harper Collins, 2006 (Paperback)
Length: 486 pages
Genre: Adult; Historical Fiction
Started: April 27, 2010
Finished: April 29, 2010

Summary:
From the author's website:
We think of her as the barren wife of a notorious king; but behind this legacy lies a fascinating story. Katherine of Aragon is born Catalina, the Spanish Infanta, to parents who are both rulers and warriors. Aged four, she is betrothed to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and is raised to be Queen of England. She is never in doubt that it is her destiny to rule that far-off, wet, cold land. Her faith is tested when her prospective father-in-law greets her arrival in her new country with a great insult; Arthur seems little better than a boy; the food is strange and the customs coarse.

Slowly she adapts to the first Tudor court, and life as Arthur’s wife grows ever more bearable. But when the studious young man dies, she is left to make her own future: how can she now be queen, and found a dynasty? Only by marrying Arthur’s young brother, the sunny but spoilt Henry.

His father and grandmother are against it; her powerful parents prove little use. Yet Katherine is her mother’s daughter and her fighting spirit is strong. She will do anything to achieve her aim; even if it means telling the greatest lie, and holding to it.
Philippa Gregory proves yet again that behind the apparently familiar face of history lies an astonishing story: of women warriors influencing the future of Europe, of revered heroes making deep mistakes, and of an untold love story which changes the fate of a nation.

Review:
My friend told me to start with this book if I wanted to get into Philippa Gregory's work, and she made a good choice, if all the other novels are as good as this one, I'll be quite happy. This one deals with the early life of Katherine of Aragon ("Catalina" for most of the novel) right up to marrying King Henry. It examines her relationship with her first husband, Arthur, Prince of Wales, whom she married at the age of 16 (he was 15). The romance between the two of them is very sweet, all the more so due to the rocky start they had. It's amazing just how much of an investment and a game marriage was back then for royal families, I knew it was, but never really understood the level it could escalate to until I read this, since it deals with marriage politics. After learning to truly love her first husband, Catalina's Arthur dies, making her promise to marry his younger brother Harry (the future King Henry) in order for her to have the power to influence and enact all the policies he wanted for his kingdom. Catalina does promise, and has to lie in order to ensure her succession as the future queen of England. It helps that Catalina is very ambitious to begin with, she's been betrothed to Arthur her whole life and grew up knowing she would be the queen, and she isn't about to give that up. She's a really admirable female lead, very strong-minded and loyal, she helps support both Arthur's and Henry's dreams while on the throne. The writing is excellent, I especially liked the little excerpts from letters/diaries that Catalina writes so you get a first person perspective as well as the third person narration.

Recommendation:
A very good piece of historical fiction with a really great romance as well.

Thoughts on the cover:
I'm a little more fond of the other cover for this novel, it's more colourful; however, this cover is nice and simple and fits in with Philippa Gregory's other covers (focusing on the dress and not seeing the whole face).

Beauty - Robin McKinley

Title: Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast
Author: Robin McKinley
Publisher: Harper Trophy, 1993 (Paperback) (originally published 1978)
Length: 256 pages
Genre: Young Adult; Fantasy, Fairy Tale
Started: April 28, 2010
Finished: April 28, 2010

Summary:
From Amazon.ca:
Beauty has never liked her nickname. She is thin and awkward; it is her two sisters who are the beautiful ones. But what she lacks in looks, she can perhaps make up for in courage.

When her father comes home with the tale of an enchanted castle in the forest and the terrible promise he had to make to the Beast who lives there, Beauty knows she must go to the castle, a prisoner of her own free will. Her father protests that he will not let her go, but she answers, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?"

Review:
I found this book in a classroom library while at work today, and since I am a sucker for Beauty and the Beast stories, I borrowed it and finished it all before I left work. This is more like the traditional story with the girl named Beauty having sisters and their father ends up promising Beauty to the beast when he is caught stealing a rose from his garden. I liked the little backstory behind the sisters' names (Grace, Hope, Honour) and how Beauty is just a nickname. The line where Beauty and Beast are talking about her names and he says "I welcome Beauty and Honour", is one that I would've been disappointed in the author if she hadn't worked that pun in there. There is a lot of character development in Beauty's family: her father, her sisters, her brothers -in-law, which is rarely something I see in these stories since the sisters are supposed to be slightly evil, which is not the case here. The father is sympathetic too because he doesn't offer Beauty to the Beast when he is caught, she insists on going to take his place. Normally, the father basically trades his daughter's life for his own, so this version brings the father up a notch. The plot is believable and works into the basic elements of the original story and extends it, the Beast doesn't even appear until more than 100 pages in, so all that is used to explore Beauty and her family. I would have liked to see more interaction between Beauty and the Beast, half the time Beauty is off on her own so you don't really see a lot of instances where that romance develops, she more or less tells you it did rather than witnessing the scenes that made it so. Out of all the Beauty and the Beast novel adaptations I've read this one is the most faithful to the original, but I think Beastly by Alex Flinn is still my favourite in terms of the novels, television and movie adaptations are another story ('cause I'm just that geeky).

Recommendation:
If you're looking for an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast that's faithful to the original while expanding on that story, read this!

Thoughts on the cover:
I love how all these adaptations clearly state that the Beauty character isn't supposed to be all that beautiful, but when you see images of her, she clearly is. Ah well, maybe all these girls just have very low self esteem and are ignorant of their own beauty.

Three for a Wedding - Mary C. Sheppard

Title: Three for a Wedding (Tales from Cook's Cove series)
Author: Mary C. Sheppard
Publisher: Penguin, 2009 (Paperback)
Length: 256 pages
Genre: Young Adult; Realistic Fiction
Started: April 23, 2010
Finished: April 25, 2010

Summary:
From Amazon.ca:
There’s something mysterious about Grace-Mae’s arrival in Cook’s Cove. She wasn’t expected to arrive so early and without her mother, and there’s a strange reporter who’s been roaming around town asking questions about her, too. But Violet, Grace-Mae’s cousin, doesn’t have time to unravel the mystery. She’s got final exams, her sister’s wedding, and a garden party to prepare for. And her first boyfriend. This is sure to be a summer she’ll never forget.

Review:
This is the third title in the Tales from Cook's Cover series, though not necessarily to be read in that order. This series, written by a Canadian author who grew up in Newfoundland, is all about one large extended family living in and around Cook's Cove and the young women growing up in it. The books deal with different girls in the family in different time periods, for instance, Three for a Wedding chronicles the summer of Violet Lewis and her family; whereas one of the previous books, Seven for a Secret, tells the story of her mother and aunts when they were teenagers. I've read One for Sorrow, another title in the series, and I really enjoyed it, so I decided to give this title a try. Though immensely different than One for Sorrow, Three for a Wedding is no less enjoyable. Violet Lewis is 16 in 1988 and desperately wants to stay in her hometown that her now deceased father worked so hard to keep his family in, but is constantly pressured by her mother to go to medical school in Toronto in the hopes of finding better opportunities. At the same time, her older sister Jenny is getting married, so the plans for the wedding are squeezed in amongst studying and school functions. On top of all that, Violet's cousin, Grace-Mae, arrives for the wedding from Boston 2 months early and is staying with Violet's family. Grace-Mae is spoiled, stuck-up, materialistic, and the complete opposite of the girls from Cook's Cove, at least that's how she appears on the outside. Violet knows there's something fishy about her cousin's sudden arrival and is determined to find out.

One of the best things about this books for me was all the wedding preparations and all the frustrations Jenny had to go through to plan it. For teenagers reading this, all those vignettes would seem very boring, but for someone who's been through planning a wedding and had some of those very same problems, it made me relate to the story all that much more. Of course since it's 1988, Jenny chooses frilly purple bridesmaid dresses, but thankfully for Grace-Mae's talents in fashion design the girls don't end up looking too ridiculous. The whole crux of the novel is Violet holding herself back from her future potential because she doesn't want to leave Newfoundland because her father worked so hard to keep the family from moving out of it, and she feels like she'd be dishonouring her father's memory by doing the very thing he would have hated. Eventually, she realizes that she's holding herself and her mother back from realizing their dreams and decides to do what's best for both their futures. All the stuff with Grace-Mae and finding a first boyfriend is all mixed in amongst that. This really is a slice-of-life story, almost like a Miyazaki movie, there's no real conflict aside from real-life stuff everyone deals with, and it feels as if you could be watching this all take place in your own backyard rather than in a book. Granted, you have to like that sort of story, some people are insanely bored by it, I'm the opposite.

This series doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should, it's written by a Canandian author about Canadian teenage girls from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and it takes place in Newfoundland...I can't remember the last time I read a book that takes place in the Maritimes that wasn't a Lucy Maud Montgomery novel. These are wonderful realistic fiction novels that examine different generations of the same family growing up on the east coast, they're well worth the read, so check them out.

Recommendation:
If you like slice-of-life stories, read this! Or, if you're looking for a good example of YA Canadian literature, read this!

Thoughts on the cover:
The first book in the series, Seven for a Secret, was under a different publisher than the latest two, and as such had a different cover. I much prefer the covers of One for Sorrow and Three for a Wedding, they're dynamic with the upside-down image that is unmistakably Maritimes at the top with the image of the female character at the bottom. They're just very gorgeous covers, I almost hope that the first one gets a re-vamp cover to match the other two.

Page - Tamora Pierce

Title: Page (Book 2 of the Protector of the Small Quartet)
Author: Tamora Pierce
Publisher: Random House, 2001 (Paperback)
Length: 245 pages
Genre: Young Adult; Fantasy
Started: April 22, 2010
Finished: April 23, 2010

Summary:
From Amazon.com:
Kel’s hardships continue as she fights the prejudices that come with being a girl while maintaining the rigorous training of a page. Kel’s skills aren’t the only thing that are developing. Her feelings for her best friend Neal are also changing...in a very uncomfortable way. Luckily Kel has some new allies, including an ugly but lovable dog and an abused young woman to whom she teaches self-defense.

Review:
Okay, this is the last one, I promise.
The second book in this series covers Kel from the age of 11 until her 14th birthday, basically all of her remaining years as a page. She goes through puberty, gets a crush a Neal, acquires a maid and teaches her to defend herself, saves a dog, leads the boys against an attack on bandits in the woods, and has to make some hard decisions about what her priorities are. Kel continues to be mature, calm, and composed, sometimes to the frustration of the other boys, especially the ones that want to see her fail. I think the cutest part was when the pages were all getting ready to serve at the mid-winter banquet and they all come to see Kel beforehand to get her approval that they look nice and presentable, which is funny since Kel's not the ideal person for this, but she's the only girl around so the boys automatically go to her. Seeing the boys go a little nuts over her honour as soon as she develops a chest is just funny... sweet, but funny. I'm glad Lalasa was added as Kel's maid because it gave her another girl to talk to about things. The ending was unexpected, but in a good way, it shows that just because Kel's barely 14 doesn't mean that she won't be dealing with some pretty serious issues down the road because of what she's chosen to do.

Recommendation:
If you liked the first book in the series, this one is better, so read this!

Thoughts on the cover:
I like how they kept the theme amongst the covers, but the image itself is kind of blah.

Wild Magic - Tamora Pierce

Title: Wild Magic (Book 1 of The Immortals Quartet)
Author: Tamora Pierce
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2005
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Young Adult; Fantasy
Started: April 20, 2010
Finished: April 23, 2010

Summary:
From chapters.indigo.ca:
Thirteen-year-old Daine has always had a knack with animals, but it's not until she''s forced to leave home that she realizes it''s more than a knack -- it's magic. With this wild magic, not only can Daine speak to animals, but also she can make them obey her. Daine takes a job handling horses for the Queen's Riders, where she meets the master mage Numair and becomes his student.
Under Numair's guidance, Daine explores the scope of her magic. But she begins to sense other beings too: immortals. These bloodthirsty monsters have been imprisoned in the Divine Realms for the past four hundred years, but now someone has broken the barrier. It's up to Daine and her friends to defend their world from an immortal attack.

Review:
Yes, I'm on a nostalgia kick, so more Tamora Pierce. This series was my favourite when I was younger so re-reading it was fun. Veralidaine ("Daine") is a newly orphaned girl who has a way with animals. When she is taken on as assistant to Onua of the Queen's Riders, she has finally secured a life for herself. When immortal creatures start attacking Tortall from the Divine Realms, Daine and her newly discovered wild magic must aide in the fight to defend Tortall from them. Daine is one of my favourite of this author's heroines because she is simple but very good-hearted, plus she gets flustered so easily. The plot moves along very quickly and doesn't lag. The characters really make this series, Daine is sweet and innocent, Onua and Alanna are comic relief, Numair is charming, and the animal characters are witty.

Recommendation:
If you like medieval fantasy with strong female characters and lots of animals, read this!

Thoughts on the cover:
Again, thank god for cover redesigns. This version is so much nicer than the original, even though it doesn't show Daine's curly hair.

First Test - Tamora Pierce

Title: First Test (Book 1 of the Protector of the Small Quartet)
Author: Tamora Pierce
Publisher: Random House, 2000 (Paperback)
Length: 206 pages
Genre: Young Adult; Fantasy
Started: April 21, 2010
Finished: April 22, 2010

Summary:
From Amazon.com:
Keladry (known as Kel) is the first girl to take advantage of the decree that permits girls to train for the knighthood. The only thing that can stop her is Lord Wyldon, the training master of pages and squires. He does not think girls should be knights and puts her on probation for one year. It is a trial period that no male page has to endure and one that separates the friendly Kel even more from her fellow trainees. But Kel is not someone to underestimate. . . .

Review:
Ah, Tamora Pierce, this takes me back; I read through her Song of the Lioness quartet and The Immortals quartet in the late 90s when I was in high school. This series of books about Keladry takes off right after The Immortals quartet left off, but you don't necessarily need to read all the series from the start to get a feel for the universe that is Tortall, there are glossaries and most of the background info is explained for you. After Alanna the Lioness became the first woman to become a knight after concealing her sex to do so, a proclamation went out that girls could attempt a page's training like boys. Ten years have passed and no girl has applied until Keladry. With training master Wyldon dead set against females becoming knights, and Alanna forbidden by the king to have contact with Keladry because it might show favouritism, Kel is truly on her own. But Kel is a different kind of heroine than those of previous books. Living in the Yamani Islands for years (a thinly veiled version of Japan), Kel has been trained to never question orders, to never show emotion, and to fight using moves the boys in Tortall have never seen. She's also very calm and composed, unlike the fiery temper we see in Alanna. Kel's got morals too, she stands up to the third year pages when they take their usual hazing of the first years a little too far, despite the fact that she gets beat up almost every time she does. I love how this author always writes very strong female characters, her stories reek of feminist influences, and I don't know how I could have pictured myself at 13 or 14 without having read all her books.

Recommendation:
If you're looking for a medieval style fantasy with really strong female character, read this!

Thoughts on the cover:
Thank the gods of book covers that all her novels received updated covers once the 2000s hit. As much as I love my copies from the 90s, the covers had a tendency to look very kiddy. I love the images for this series, either focusing on Kel's face or body as she ages and in different single colours. This particular cover for book 1 is very striking simply because you see Kel's whole face, and when I looked at the cover I immediately thought that's what Kel should look like based on her description throughout the book.

The Line - Teri Hall

Title: The Line
Author: Teri Hall
Publisher: Dial Books, 2010 (Hardcover)
Length: 224 pages
Genre: Young Adult; Dystopian Fiction
Started: April 20, 2010
Finished: April 21, 2010

Summary:
From the author's website:
In the not so distant future…

Rachel lives with her mother on The Property. The good thing about living there is that it’s far from the city where the oppressive government is most active. The bad thing, at least to most people, is that it’s close to the Line—an uncrossable section of the National Border Defense System, an invisible barrier that encloses the entire country.

She can see the Line from the greenhouse windows, but she is forbidden to go near it. Across the Line is Away, and though Rachel has heard many whispers about the dangers there, she’s never really believed the stories. Until the day she hears a recording that could only have come from across the Line.

It’s a voice asking for help.

Who sent the message? What is her mother hiding? And to what lengths will Rachel go in order to do what she thinks is right?

Review:
Another good example of dystopian fiction, and my favourite kind to boot: super evil government! There's a lot of back-history and world-building to this novel, and the author cleverly conveys the information to readers through Rachel's mother quizzing her daughter in her home-school history lessons. All the female characters are very strong leads, right down to Ms. Moore, the crotchety grandmother-type whose backstory is probably the most surprising of them all. Rachel is a very clear cut girl, she believes something's right or it's wrong, contrasted with her mother whose first priority is preserving the only thing she has left of the time before her husband died: Rachel herself. The plot grabs you and pulls you in right away, hence why I plowed through this so fast, I couldn't put it down. There's a lot of dimension to the story and some sub-plots to keep your interest. I felt that Pathik and the Others could have had some more development, they seemed very flat character-wise, but then I realized this was a series (of course), so the focus on the Others and the cliffhanger will be explored in the second book.

Recommendation:
If you're looking for (yet another) good example of dystopian fiction, with some really compelling characters, read this! Keep in mind that there will be a sequel as you're reading the ending.

Thoughts on the cover:
I like the focus on the greenhouse since it's a focal point of the story (right down to Rachel's experiments with botany), and keeping the scene at night with the inside lit up is a nice touch.