Beasts and Beauty

Oh, man, this was SO GOOD. 

Soman Chainani is the author of the School for Good and Evil series. I read the first one...all or most, I can't remember...and have the first two sitting on my to read shelf. Reading this is going to make me go get them and read the rest of the series, too. 

So Beasts and Beauty is an anthology of retold fairy tales, which is one of my biggest reading not-one-bit-guilty pleasures. 

The stories he chose are all the big names but the way he retells them is excellent. I'll do a list of them, which will have spoilers. 

RED RIDING HOOD: "On the first day of spring, the wolves eat the prettiest girl." This has the wolves coming into the town and marking the door of the girl they've selected. She's sent out into the woods to be eaten. When it comes RRH's turn, she's surprised because she was an ugly duckling who only more recently turned beautiful. She plots to fight the wolves, arming herself with a knife, and then learns they're shapeshifters who turn into a gang of boys. She is forced to choose which boy/wolf will eat her but then entices him with tales of her younger sister, more beautiful than she, who lives with their grandmother. After sending the wolves the wrong direction, she hurries to her grandmother's and together, they lure and kill the entire wolf pack. But every year, the "wolves" mark the door of another girl. Only this time, the girl is taken to grandmother's house where she'll live happily. And on and on until the grandmother is now the original RRH. I liked this one and the feminist tones, though the scene where the wolves turn to boys was unsettling. I imagine that's what the author was going for, the fear of some sort of gang rape scene.

SNOW WHITE: Black Snow White. Not an unusual take on the story and not a particularly interesting one. Racism is clear throughout and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, like where did the original prince meet his black princess in the first place if there are so few black people Snow White grows up never seeing a single one? I did like Snow killing the queen using the queen's own poison, but the racist prince discovering the dead queen, who the dwarves put in the glass coffin, and wanting her only for the dwarves to...bring Snow White to him? Why would you want Snow to go with the racist who drove you out of his land? (The dwarves are also black.) And why would Snow want to? So she's stuck in the literal retelling of her mother's story, only the dwarves save her from the illness that killed Snow's mother. Snow gets to raise Little Snow White (...really?) properly and she'll grow up strong and loved. I like that part of the ending, but still don't get why Snow went with the racist prince in the first place. 

SLEEPING BEAUTY: Closeted male Sleeping Beauty fed on by vampiric incubus boy. This one was a bit weird. 

RAPUNZEL: Rapunzel stolen away by MALE non-witch. This one's got a bit of weird Daddy issues, though her rejection of the prince was awesome and her escape at the end, while ambiguous, I also liked.  

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK: Jack has a gambling addict dad who likely got killed by the people he owed debts, too. His mom is supposed to come across as abusive but it doesn't read that way when Jack is a lazyass who mooches off her and does nothing to contribute. Jack basically has an old cow as a substitute for his mom but his mom would be loving if he'd just FUCKING DO SOMETHING USEFUL. So when the cow's milk dries up, his mom wants her sold so they can survive. Jack tries to get a job and fails at the only one that would take him, leading him to have to sell the cow. So that's Jack failing Cow Mom, not his mother being the bad guy. A magical woman buys the cow and promises to give her a good home, trading Jack the beans. Jack's mom is mad, as she always is in this story, and the next day, there's the beanstalk. He goes up and finds a man who's married to an ogress. Jack confuses the man for his father at first and then turns him into a new substitute parent. The ogress comes home and falls asleep, so Jack races out with a sack of her gold and a young calf. He totally has a thing for cows. Jack and Mom are happy for a time but when the money runs out, he has to go back up. This time, he actually goes up for the man. The ogress chases them and the falling beanstalk kills both her and Jack's mom, who seriously never did that much wrong. She wasted some of the money like Jack did but that was it. So Jack, the man and the calf live happily ever after. Jack seriously is too obsessed with cows. It's creepy. This was easily the worst story in the book, both because of the cow obsession and the completely unlikeable protagonist. At the end, Jack was willing to get a job to take care of his calf and his random man, but he couldn't do that in the beginning for his Cow Mom and real mom? It makes no sense. 

HANSEL AND GRETEL: Indian Hansel and Gretel. I like this one a lot. Their mother is the best baker in town but because she's a woman, they have to pretend all her stuff was made by her husband. She's eventually thrown out of town blinded because she simply must be a witch. Her husband totally sucks. He marries a bitch that begins the string of child murder attempts. They find their mother's candy house and have a happy ending, killing the greedy stepmother and sending daily reminders of his loss to their asshole father. 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Handsome prince gets turned into a beast because he doesn't fall in love with the old fairy that rescued him. This version makes the old fairy look bad, not the prince. You can't force someone to love you so he didn't deserve his punishment. Then we have a Chinese man with three sons who help him run the merchant business and three daughters. The two eldest daughters are vain. The youngest is Mei, who is beauty. But Mei is...not without flaws. She plans to take care of her father until he dies then use the money he's given her over time to live by herself and just read. Dad goes on the usual business trip and needs help from the beast on the way home, takes the rose, promises to send Mei in return. But Mei WANTS to go. Not because she wants to save her father but because her plan is to kill the beast and live in his giant castle with its huge library. The beast woos her by selecting a book each day, which she gives him a review of at dinner. They're getting closer but have an argument over whether Mei cares about looks or not. The beast follows her into the library, where she's on the highest ladder, trying to select her own book when she falls. He catches her but her fall crushes him. She expresses her love but then her father, rich again, brings an army to the castle to rescue her. When Mei rushes back to the library, the beast is no longer there but a healed handsome man. However, Mei mistakes him for one of her father's men and kills him herself. Mei is left alone in the castle, taken care of by the fairies who run it (no enchanted objects here), reading in peace. When she finishes a book, an invisible presence brings her a new one. I like this one a lot, too. Mei isn't like perfect Belle. She's definitely selfish and has to work toward love, not because of the beast's looks but because of who she is. But when it backfires on her, well...I don't think she really regrets the life she ends up with, which is what she wanted all along. 

BLUEBEARD: Bluebeard, who the illustrator definitely made to look like Blackbeard, is adopting boys, not marrying wives. No obvious sexual intentions here but I think the language hints at rapey things. Not with Bluebeard so much as the main character's uncle, who he killed. Pietro survives his Bluebeard experience and returns to the orphanage to adopt all the boys. I liked this. 

CINDERELLA: Set in Spain. The prince falls for a melon seller, only to have his intended wife (he doesn't know she's a witch) turn that girl into a mouse. Mouse ends up with Cinderella, who can understand mice, and the whole thing is the mouse trying to get Cinderella to the ball so she (the mouse) can somehow win her prince back. It's really entertaining. Cinderella is pretty weak-willed at first but she grows a lot. She and the mouse kill the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, but then get hit by the witch and her grandmother. The mouse takes the spell hit and returns to girl form. She's basically loved back to life by Cinderella, while the prince's guards grab the witches. So the prince picks both girls but they prefer each other's company to his and he eventually takes a third. Magdalena the former mouse and Lourdes the former Cinderella leave and have their own adventures. I am really torn on the ending because the vibe is definitely lesbians but no, they're friends. Magdalena gets married and divorced. Lourdes never marries but finds a nice guy and has 3 kids. The two grow old together. So on one hand, it's a bit of a tease because I wanted them to be a couple, but on the other hand, this way it's fulfilling the "friendship is just as important as romance" angle that I love. So I'm disappointed but also happy with the ending, I guess.

LITTLE MERMAID: The sea witch talks to Not Ariel for a long time before finally agreeing to give her legs. But by then, Not Ariel isn't sure she wants them. This is something I could have written. It's every flaw with The Little Mermaid thrown into Not Ariel's face until she finally sees sense. This one also has the best illustration by far. I like a lot of the illustrations, though some are a bit more goofy and cartoony than feels right, but this one is fab. It's just the sea witch's eyes glowing in a black background. Gorgeous. 

RUMPLESTILTSKIN: A more Christian take on the tale where Rumple is the devil. I didn't love it, didn't hate it. It was just there. 

PETER PAN: Set after the events of the book, Peter fetches Wendy for a week every year so she can have adventures with him and play mother to everyone. As she ages, Peter gets mad and she ends up falling for a young pirate. Said pirate then is the one to come see her whenever he can, but she eventually gets married and is pregnant. When she gives birth, the baby is ill and the pirate arrives and says it's because he's supposed to live in Neverland. Yep, it's his kid. So poor Wendy is left behind on earth, having lost the last of her magic giving birth, while the pirate she wishes she could have married lives in Neverland with their son. I liked this one quite a bit, though it's frustrating that the actions of other characters, on Peter's side as well as the pirates, made it so Wendy couldn't just stay in Neverland. Of course, the pirate didn't want to live in the mundane either, which he totally could have tried. 

So big name stories retold in mostly interesting ways. Some gender flipping. Some sexuality changes. But not so much that it feels like the point of the anthology. I highly recommend this one if you love fairy tales like I do.

SWEET VALLEY TWINS: 21-30 (Including Super Editions #2 & 3)

In the main plot, Elizabeth's friend Sarah Thomas is dealing with problems at home. Her mother died at some point (I forget when they said it was) and she lives with her father. She hates her father's fiancee, who's a total selfish, childish brat. Well, her father has to leave for a week on a business trip and he asks his fiancee to stay with Sarah. Except he leaves on Monday and shortly after, the fiancee takes off, too, claiming she has to care for her sick younger sister. Sarah is left home alone for a terrifying week. She's twelve. She's too scared to say anything because once again, we've got a kid who doesn't know when to speak up about an unsafe situation. She ends up falling down the stairs, getting a concussion and breaking two toes. Thankfully, it's not long before Elizabeth, her father, and Amy arrive to pick Sarah up for a sleepover and they're able to get her to the hospital. Mr. Wakefield was able to locate Mr. Thomas and he arrives, talks to Sarah briefly when she finally regains consciousness, and then calls his fiancee's family's house, only to learn that everything she told him is a lie. She claimed she spent years raising her younger siblings. Well, she has none. A grown adult chose to leave a 12-year-old alone for a week. She doesn't get nearly enough punishment, just kicked out of their lives. But with her gone, Sarah can finally be happy again.

In the B-plot, Jess is busy impressing Janet Howell, only to realize Janet is only hanging out with her to try to see Steven. Jess and Lila fight. Jess and Janet fight once Jess realizes she's being used. Everything ends up okay in the end. 

The science teacher's niece from a small town in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee comes to Sweet Valley, because her mother and aunt want her to have better educational opportunities than they did. However, she's almost instantly mocked for her clothes and accent. Lila but especially Ellen are the worst ones, completely ruining any goodness they'd shown in #19. 

Ginny Lu is a whiz with Appalachian folk art though and Elizabeth persuades her to enter the school's art and craft fair. She ends up winning but doesn't know it right away, as the crowd singing along with her poem made her flee the show. She plans to return home, but stops in at the stables. She loves horses and befriended the white mare Ellen just got at the end of #21. In her pregnant state, Snow White only really lets Ginny get close to her, although Ellen forbade her from it. 

When she goes to say her goodbyes, Ginny Lu discovers Ted the stablehand trying to help the mare, who's given birth prematurely. It's up to Ginny to get close enough to help the foal stand so it can nurse. Ellen comes running in and struggles far too long with her prejudices before she finally relents and lets Ginny help. This is pretty ridiculous because they make fun of Ginny for being a hillbilly, but if she really is, that should make her animal knowledge quite excellent. Ginny saves the foal's life and Ellen apologizes for her behavior and even allows Ginny to name the foal (she dubs him "Sooner"). 

Ginny has won the craft fair and hopefully won't have to endure more ridicule, so she decides to stay in Sweet Valley. 

The B-plot has Jessica loaning her father's prized tennis racket to Janet, who somehow leaves it on her lawn for her brother to run over with the mower. Classy, Janet. Jessica is terrified to tell him, so there are a bunch of money-making schemes from her. She sees her mother's interest in Ginny's whittled dolls and finds stores that want to sell them. With Jessica making a 10% agent fee, she soon has all the money she needs. 

I like Ginny Lu as a character, but the bullying was so childish and I wish she'd had opportunities to stick up for herself better. Nora had a brief scene. She's definitely in the series more than stuck with me on my past reads. 

This is a good cover for Jessica but...Elizabeth, WTF is with your hair? 

Oh, they're going to a 60s theme dance. I get it. 

So the plot of this one is that it's the school's 25th anniversary and they're having a contest for a time capsule. Teams of four look for important items from the 60s and the best team will get their photos put into the time capsule. Of course Jessica is with three Unicorns and Elizabeth is with Amy and Julie. Their fourth member was suggested by Mrs. Arnette. He's a quiet boy named George Henkel, who Elizabeth learns is the son of the reclusive man in the wheelchair that she helps out sometimes. 

The inevitable competition and Jessica's underhanded tactics arise. Both teams have decent items for their first two things, but neither can find a third. Elizabeth learns that Mr. Henkel caught the game-winning pass in the school's first championship football game. He was awarded the ball and both Elizabeth and a reluctant George try to get it. George's mother died when he was young and he was raised by his aunt and uncle, because Vietnam really messed up his father both physically and emotionally. Elizabeth really hopes the football can bring the two together and after some hurdles, it ends up doing just that and Elizabeth's team wins the contest. 

My favorite moment was George having a crush on Nora and Nora seeming to be into it. 

At the end of #23, both twins note that their mother has been working late a lot. She and their father haven't spent much time together. Jessica notes she saw their mother and an unknown man going to lunch at the mall not long ago. So of course this one is going to have the twins spying on their mom, thinking she's having an affair. Ughhhhh. Just gotta get through it fast so I can crack open Super Edition #2. 

Yup, most of the book was the twins and even Steven truly convinced their mother was having an affair with her new client, who's a famous rich guy. All because both their parents had been so busy that they accidentally forgot their 16th anniversary. 

Elizabeth, Amy and Pamela are working on a living history project and decide to make theirs about romance and how their parents met. It takes Elizabeth a long time before she's able to finally get the story, but all three couples have these unrealistic meet cute stories. 

The highlight is definitely when the twins, Steven, Amy, Pamela, and six guys from Steven's basketball team all try to convince the rich client that they're ALL Mrs. Wakefield's ill-behaved children from her multiple marriages. 

The entire thing is quite ridiculous. Let's move on. 

Yay, Super Edition #2! 

Now that I've finally finished it, less yay. This one took me ages to read. 

I don't know why but I remembered this one a lot better than it was. It's fun but it's also seriously far-fetched. 

So the twins' friend Anna is adopted and she knows she has a sister named Leslie living in Australia. I guess she was adopted by the ambassador and his family and now they're moving to DC. What's going to be in DC? A big holiday choral competition. What can't Anna do? Sing a damn note. 

It's up to the twins to help Anna fake her way into the chorus group. There are auditions and everything. There's no way this would ever have worked. 

Then they get to DC and there's a rivalry with this other school and their mean girl star singer. 

Then Anna and Jessica sneak out of the hotel and go to this big party at the Australian Embassy. They pretend to be kids of this couple and no one checks up on this. It's done very quickly with little detail. 

So we've got them able to get tone-deaf Anna into the chorus, sneak out of the hotel and into the embassy. 

THEN THEY HELP CATCH A SPY.

Yep, I'm serious. Anna and Jessica hide in a room and then a man comes in and steals some papers. There's a teenage boy hiding, too, and he leads them out of the room and now they're running from the spy. They make it back to the party and then help ID the spy, who's disguised as the cook. Jessica's eye for fashion saves the day. She recognizes the diamond ring he wears. 

Who's the teenage boy? Well, his name is Leslie. Yeah, he's Anna's older brother that she assumed was female. 

So Anna meets her brother and his adoptive family and then her parents come there and they have the singing competition. Sweet Valley wins and Jess ties the bitchy girl from the other school. 

It is A LOT. I do remember liking this one, so it's possible it's just because they traveled. When I was younger, a lot of my favorite series books involved travelling. It certainly doesn't stand out as anything but just plain wacky upon this reread. 

Ah, the one about tomboy Billie. She's the one in the middle there. Looks a bit like Jonathan Brandis, doesn't she? Man, I'm old. And my gods, Ladybugs never would be made today. Yikes. I remember watching it several times and enjoying it but yikes. Ah, the early 90s and the things that weren't a big deal to us. 

Okay, so this one was pretty fun but a bit problematic. Billie has a lot of changes going on. She's getting a new baby brother, so she's somewhat worried her dad won't be as close to her once he's got a boy. This is never addressed with a conversation. She just got her first period and she's worried about changes that can come with that and how it might affect her playing sports in the future. I don't remember this being really addressed or clarified by an adult either. Or even a friend saying "Look at all the female athletes out there. You're fine." She's dealing with new feelings for her best friend Jim Sturbridge, though again this is never really handled. He's hanging out with a flirty girl and that's what sparks Billie's feelings but are they jealousy or crush? Never clarified. They do seem to hint at a mutual crush at the end but nothing is really discussed or admitted. 

Jessica and Elizabeth take Billie under their wing and help her buy a dress and get ready for a party. She ends up wowing all the boys there, including Jim, although she thinks he doesn't care when instead he simply didn't recognize her until Jessica said something. But by then, Commander Layton has come to get Billie and take her to the hospital because her mom is having the baby. 

All of her fears about the baby are completed thrown out when she holds him and loves him immediately. This is all well and good, but one of her problems was that her parents want to name him William after the paternal grandfather. So Billie for some reason will lose her nickname? I don't see why they can't be Billie and Will or Willie, but whatever. This was the plot point that bothered me the most. The parents NEVER talk to her about this. EVER. That is a conversation that needed to happen. In the end, she just gives up her nickname and goes to being Belinda but COME ON. That was completely unnecessary. 

She also was in a pitching slump but that ends after she pitches a shut out at the end. 

So this is one of those books where there are a lot of problems that need discussions, none of those ever happen, yet everything is neatly resolved anyway. Oh, and she joins the Unicorns at the end. I really do not remember that so let's see how long it lasts. 

A bit of a crossover mention: One of the boys on Billie's baseball team is named Pete Stone. He puts in a pretty decent appearance. He dances with her at the party and even asks her out. I don't remember a Pete Stone being mentioned in the background boy cast before. Does the name sound familiar to you? It should if you read Sleepover Friends. Pete Stone was one of the popular boys in Riverhurst. Lauren was interested in him off and on. I am so rereading Sleepover Friends after this and finally making this blog live up to its name. And finishing Pen Pals. And rereading Junior High.

Ugh. It's another one where talking would have solved all the problems. Were adults this stupid in all the kids' chapter book series around this time? Am I just not remembering it right? 

This one is about the twins' friend Patrick Morris. 

Who?

You know. Patrick. Patrick Morris. He's been the twins' male BFF like FOREVER. 

No, really, I'm pretty sure we never saw him before the end of the last book. WTF. 

Anyway, Patrick is having some strict parent troubles because they've gotten worse lately. He kills it in his band audition but they won't let him join. Blah blah blah. He runs away. He gets found because Elizabeth knows when not to keep a secret. Everything is fine. 

Patrick's dad lost his job, so they had to cut his allowance and make him focus on his schoolwork so he could do something better for himself than his dad did for himself. Instead of explaining this to him, they just made him feel like they hated him and wouldn't let him do anything. Excellent, completely first rate parenting. Fucking idiots. So his dad gets a new job and Patrick can join the band. Which he totally could have in the first place if his parents had bothered to ASK HIM QUESTIONS about their monetary concerns, like buying an instrument (he got a sax on loan from the school) or paying for lessons (none required). 

The Wakefield parents, the cops and the fire department all do some stupid shit in here, too. Like not searching until daylight. He's fucking twelve. Go look for him. 

The B plot is the science projects going on in Jessica's class. She's stuck doing a report on mold with Winston Eggbert. This is the most we've seen of Winston so far and he was the most kickass character in this book. Although I have to admit, I was firmly on Team Jessica this time. Elizabeth said some really dumb shit. 

Oh, this scene on the cover? Never happened. That's the condemned church Patrick hides in but he's already in there when everyone comes to the rescue. And why does it look like Elizabeth is trying to force him into it? Weird. 

Anyway, another book where good parenting and talking would have solved the problems before they happened. I wonder if we'll ever see Patrick again?

Oh, man, I moved right on to #28 and never wrote this one up.

The Wakefield twins aren't allowed to do anything. They want to host a dinner party with their friends and try out a new recipe. Their parents shoot it down. Now on the scale Jess was planning, this is reasonable, but Alice could easily have said they could each have 2 friends over and try the recipe. The girls cook ALL THE TIME. And a lot of it is when Alice is napping because apparently a part-time job is oh, so exhausting. That would have been the actual proper solution. Then they want to visit their...I think it was great aunt? And that requires bus tickets. The Wakefields say they can go but only if they earn the money. So the twins begin to plot money-making schemes and eventually end up walking dogs. As you can imagine, Jessica is not a fan of this. She's scared of a lot of dogs, which was established a long time ago. But she tries for a bit, then predictably ends up dumping the work on Elizabeth. Elizabeth though is helped by Ken Matthews, as you can see on the cover there. He loves dogs, his parents won't let him have one because "he's too young" and he offers to help for free. This turns into a bit of dog-sitting and in my opinion, they get paid way too little for this particular service. 

So eventually, they get the dog on the cover left with them and they can tell he's been abused. Ken works with him and is able to calm him down and even teach him some tricks. Then they're all afraid the owner will abuse him again so...they DYE THE DOG BLACK AND JESS GIVES HIM A HAIRCUT. And they hide him at Ken's uncle's ranch. I can't remember all the details of this elaborate scheme anymore but they refuse to let the owner have him back and Ned has to step in to back them up. The owner leaves and says to keep the dog and Ken gets to. It's a rather outlandish story. 

Oh, and once again we have the issue of lack of communication. The kids should have learned by now when they need help from adults, even if the adults said something like "you have to earn the money on your own." When things get into the criminal realm, GET A FUCKING ADULT. Elizabeth, you are smarter than this. I think this time Ned at least says something along the lines of they should have known when to get help from adults. 

Oh, hooray, a fluff book. It's April 1st. Elizabeth and Jessica usually trade places but this year, Jess says they'll stay themselves but make it look like they swapped. Liz is down with this but as the day goes on, she keeps getting in trouble because people think she's Jess. Even when she repeatedly protests. She gets 2 detentions (one as herself but the other is Jess's, neither of which she ends up serving right away), a C in cooking class (that Jessica earned), and has to wash Mrs. Reitman's car when the Unicorns play an April Fools' joke on "Jessica." The bad things keep coming when her own mother punishes her for something Jessica did and she's forced to come to a meeting at the school instead of the party in the school gym she was supposed to go to. Only on the way to the meeting, the Wakefields have her take a "clean shirt" in to Jess, only for everyone there to reveal that this whole scheme was one huge, extremely elaborate prank played by Jessica with help from Steven, their parents, friends, and even teachers. 

It was a total fluff piece and it's crazy to think the entire damn class loves Elizabeth so much that they'd all work together just to get her on April Fools' Day but it was also a pretty fun read, especially after the more dramatic plots of the past few books.

Man, the covers to #28 and #29 are classic Jessica. What a face. And this whole book is classic Jessica. 

So the sixth grade is holding a fair to raise money for something. I've forgotten what already. There will be game booths and the students who volunteered are randomly picked to see who will run what. Jessica wants a particular booth but Caroline gets it. And Jess ends up with the water balloon toss! I don't think this is something that would be allowed today, letting a kid stand there and be pelted with water balloons all day, but it was the 80s. 

Elizabeth isn't running a booth, just making posters with Olivia Davidson. So when Amy is sad that she can't go to the fair or help run a booth because she has to babysit, Elizabeth offers to take the job. 

You can see where this is going. Jessica ends up taking the babysitting job, playing it off as a favor for Liz to help her be able to go to the fair, and then she sticks Elizabeth with the water balloon booth. But the two little kids are pretty much terrors. Even though Jess had the wrong idea of babysitting being a bunch of easy free time, these two brats really are out of control. It would have taken Kristy or Stacey to wrangle them. When the older two kids, who each had activities that were supposed to keep them gone all day, end up coming home, Elizabeth finally comes to the rescue. Lila has a cordless phone at the fair so Jess keeps calling for Elizabeth but only when all four kids are there does Liz go help. They make it look like Jessica is magic and can be in two places at once so the kids finally will behave for her in fear of her magical powers. 

Once home, Jessica at first accepts all the praise for her babysitting skill and all the $80 she made, but an angry Elizabeth finally makes her realize she owes her twin some credit and some money. She offers to split it but Liz says to keep the tip and only takes $30. 

The fun part is the other students set up a mini fair for Jessica...that turns out to be them pelting her with water balloons but sadly no one has great aim and only Liz hits her with one. Then everyone agrees to go to the beach instead. In typical Jessica fashion, she gets off way too easily, especially because Lila had to stand in for her and got an outfit ruined. 

Teaser for the next book is a boy exchange student from the tiny principality of Santa Dora.

So the exchange student from Santa Dora is named Arthur Castle. Elizabeth befriends him and learns he wants to do a lot of American things. Then it comes out that he's a prince and he accidentally references this to Jessica, thinking she's Elizabeth, so Jessica tells the Unicorns and soon everyone knows and starts treating him differently, which is exactly why he had asked Elizabeth to keep it a secret. He's mad at Elizabeth and dragged along to all these boring events by the Unicorns, but Jessica eventually tells him it was her that spilled the secret and he makes up with Elizabeth, and even takes them both to a big event in LA being held for the royal family. 

It's a pretty fun book but there are definite issues. First, the sixth grade is heavily researching Santa Dora and doing projects on it for the entire two weeks Arthur is there. HE IS ON THE MONEY. You can't tell me in all that research someone wouldn't have found his picture on one of the Santa Doran bills photographed in a book or something. That's how Elizabeth learns, by picking up a bill he dropped. Second, Arthur buys a bunch of American stuff...including a replica Confederate hat. Where the hell in the Sweet Valley mall do they sell Confederate hats and why wouldn't Elizabeth explain about the Civil War enough that he'd pick a Union hat instead? The Sixers staff is putting together a scrapbook for him with American stuff and someone heard about the hat and contributed a Confederate flag sticker. Again, why was this not handled better? The Confederacy and Civil War were important parts of American history but there needed to be a few lines in there explaining what the Confederacy was fighting for and why that's not a losing side you want to show support for. It was the eighties but still. I grew up then and it was clear the Confederates were not a side you wanted to back. Nowhere in any history class were we taught that was the right side in any way. Third, there's a Santa Doran consulate in LA. Seriously? The place is a tiny principality barely bigger than Sweet Valley and there's a consulate? Doubtful. 

#31 is about Sandra Ferris, the class ugly duckling. We'll be getting to that one in the next post. This particular batch of reviews I'm ending with the third Super Edition. 

The Big Camp Secret is Grace Oliver. Grace's parents keep fighting and for some reason, that means she has to go stay with her aunt (or some other female relative I've already forgotten about) instead of going to camp for two weeks with a bunch of the other girls. This makes zero sense but Grace doesn't push it because she's afraid she'll make her parents fight again. What she does is sneak onto one of the buses going to camp, which happen to leave from the same bus station around the same time as the bus to her aunt's. She finds an old cabin up on the hill next to camp and stays there a lot of the time, while the girls sneak her into meals and activities. The whole camp thinks hiding Grace in plain sight is pretty fun because they all like her. Who they don't like is Barbara, an unhappy camper that starts to get her way by blackmailing the other girls, threatening to tell about Grace. Things come to a head during some storms when problems with Barbara have led Grace to head to her aunt's. Except she's not at the bus station so the whole story comes out, search parties happen, and it's Barbara who finds Grace at the little cabin. She sprained her ankle trying to get to the bus station and it was easier to return to the cabin. Barbara's parents are getting a divorce and she disappeared to the cabin to read their bitchy letters and cry. She ends up saving Grace's life after a lightning strike lights the cabin on fire. A bit dramatic. They could have removed this part entirely. Grace's parents arrive and promise to stop fighting. Grace is allowed to stay at the camp and all's well that ends well. It was a decent book, though the bit of life-threatening drama at the end was totally unnecessary. 

ETA: Coming back in because I forgot to bitch about the cover. While that is a really great image of Amy, why she and Elizabeth are on the cover and not Grace is beyond me. Oh, and Ellen had a decent showing in this book. I should give her credit and mention that.

So that wraps up another batch of SVT! We've still got a long way to go. The next chunk includes the first two Super Chillers. Yes! Love those. I think. I remember loving them anyway. We'll see how they hold up.

Serena Valentino Disney Villains 2

 
This one was a much quicker read than the first. It doesn't really drag on. 

The time frame of the backstory is changed a lot. Here the prince is already pretty old when he's cursed. Old enough to have been a skilled hunter and womanizer and Gaston's best friend. Gaston was the son of the gamekeeper and it was the prince who gave him lands and wealth, something he hates to be reminded of. 

The prince is engaged to a girl named Circe but Gaston says she's the daughter of a pig farmer. At first, the prince doesn't believe it but when he sees her on the farm, he's enraged and declares she lied to him because she knew he could never marry that far below his station. She comes to him and tries to win back his love but when he's cold to her, she reveals her true self. The odd sisters from the first book swoop in and say Circe is cousin to the old king (Snow White's dad) and their younger sister. They're all witches but Circe is the most powerful as well as the most kind-hearted. She curses the beast with the curse we know from the movie. 

Unlike in the movie though, the curse takes a long time to take effect. As long as he remains cruel, the prince's cruelty will begin to show on his body. At first, this is hardened eyes and looking older than he is. It takes a long time before he becomes the beast. In this time, Gaston throws a party to find the prince a new bride. He matches him with Princess Tulip Morningstar. Belle is actually at this party, though the prince never gets a good look at her. 

Tulip is an interesting character. I like her a lot. She's well aware she's trapped by her gender. Being a girl means you're only taught certain things and she's frustrated that she knows so little and that people think she's stupid for it. She was also taught not to contradict men or offer her own opinion. So she doesn't carry on conversations very well but she's so pretty that when she giggles instead of contributing thoughts, it's endearing. From the outside, this would be a very annoying character but being able to be inside her head a bit, you see how she's a product of being a royal girl in that time. 

So the prince tries to use Tulip to break the curse but his cruelty remains and everything comes undone. The staff slowly turn into objects, though they never actually appear on the page as speaking objects. The prince hides in his room. 

The odd sisters are determined to make him pay for hurting their sister so they send compassionate Circe off on an errand to see Ursula. Ursula saved Tulip when she tried to throw herself off a cliff after the prince broke their engagement, but being Ursula, she took Tulip's beauty in payment. Circe's off to fix this and help Tulip's family, as they were counting on the marriage to help their land. The odd sisters bring about the events of the movie and this part of the book is only the last few chapters. Most of it is taken up with backstory. When Circe returns, her sisters spell her into sleep but awaken her to see the beast mortally wounded after fighting Gaston. An angry Circe berates her sisters and uses her powers to revive the beast and return him to human form, as seen in the movie. 

It's not the most fascinating story ever and the details are strange. Making Gaston the prince's BFF and then part of the curse being that everyone in the castle forgot about the townspeople and everyone in town forgot about the court was a bit contrived. Making the prince stay human for far longer seems like less of a punishment, although it does serve to show that he really earned that curse. It wasn't only a fleeting moment of rudeness that caused such punishment. Lumiere just sort of appears, too. Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts are the only servants named for quite some time but then later on, Lumiere is just suddenly there. 

I do like the odd sisters being the older sisters to the Enchantress (Circe). I like that they know Ursula and Circe says she likes Ursula best of the sisters' friends. They make a few references to the days of Snow White, though it's clearly long past. They also make references to the events in Sleeping Beauty. Next up is Ursula's book, then Maleficent's. I believe I stopped partway through Ursula's and never finished nor did I read any of the rest of the series, so this will be my first readings of each from here on out.

Serena Valentino Disney Villains 1

 
It's been so long since I read this for the first time. This was published in 2009, though I don't think I read it that early. I'm pretty sure I remember getting it along with the second in the series, which is about the Beast. Ah, yes. I love Amazon's record keeping. Right there on the item page it says I purchased this in August 2015. So 6 years after it was published and the one about the Beast had also been out a year at that point. 

I knew Serena Valentino from Gloomcookie, a goth comic book series. Maybe someday I'll track down all the collections. I think I only had two. Serena also did the Nightmares & Fairy Tales comic series, which I bought much later than when they came out. So she has the darker mind that works well for darker fairy tales. 

I did a short entry here after reading the second book in the series, which mentioned that I didn't care for this one...and that still mostly holds true.

The book follows how the Wicked Queen became so wicked because she wasn't originally. She was the daughter of the most famous mirror maker in the land and when the king visited his shop, he fell in love with the girl after the death of Snow White's mother. The early chapters are nice with the queen getting to know Snow and the little family having fun times. But the king keeps riding off into war and each time, it becomes harder on the queen. Finally, he dies in battle which breaks her. 

The king has three "odd sisters" who are supposed to be his cousins but likely aren't really. They're triplets named Lucinda, Ruby and Martha. These three turn out to be witches and it's them behind the molding of the Wicked Queen. When she was still alive, the queen's mother wished for a child. Her husband, the mirror maker, bargained with the odd sisters, trading his soul for a pregnancy. Unfortunately, his wife died after birth and he spent his entire life tormenting and abusing the little girl who would become the queen. So the queen comes from an abusive background. Then even in death, he works with the odd sisters to control the queen. He is the face in her magic mirror. She still craves his approval, though it's also become her holding power over him, forcing him to say that she's the fairest when all she heard from him in her youth was that she was ugly. So now we've got victim gaining power over her abuser. The queen learns witchcraft from the odd sisters and is driven down an obsessive path to true evil by their hand and her father's. The sisters use a spell on her to drive her to her final act: trying to kill Snow White. 

So we've got a sympathetic character who was abused in childhood and then found love, only for her husband to constantly neglect his wife and child. I blame him for part of this, too. He abandoned her and Snow over and over. She was an easy tool for the odd sisters to transform. The constant chapters on her depression and descent into madness were boring though and you read through all of them and the sisters still have to use a spell to truly turn the queen evil! 

In the end, she repents of her actions. The sisters appear when she's still a crone and say she can run into the forest and escape or she can run to the cliff, which will lead to certain death. The queen chooses that path, regretting what she's done and what she's made of her life. After Snow is married, she gets the magic mirror and inside it, she sees her stepmother, who tells her she always loved her and always will. It's a nice little ending. 

I'm not sure how I feel about it overall. Not every villain needs a sympathetic backstory that explains what drove them to evil. Some people simply are evil. And I don't tend to like the abused becoming abuser trope. I do like the addition of the odd sisters though because they're going to keep coming back. At least if there has to be some driving force behind the creation of all the Disney villains, it's interesting. This one was very slow-paced but it's probably worth starting the series here just to have the full picture of it all.

A Universe of Wishes

I meant to finish this book a long time ago but got utterly sidetracked. Now I have to skim back through each story to remember what I thought of them before finally finishing. Argh. 

I'll go through this story by story. It'll be the easiest considering I set it aside so long. 

"A Universe of Wishes:" The titular story was one of the best. A boy who harvests wishes from dead bodies, where the energy to make wishes is stored. He needs "a universe of wishes" to wish his parents back to life. This one's a cute, somewhat sad and wistful story. I like the relationship between the two male leads. 

"The Silk Blade:" A girl in a competition to become the consort of the ruler falls for another female competitor. This one made me want an entire book about this world. Definitely my favorite so far.

"The Scarlet Woman:" This is a Gemma Doyle story. I have all those books and haven't read but a few chapters of the first, so I didn't read this. I need to remember it's here once I actually do get to those books,

"Cristal Y Ceniza:" Glass and Ash. Cinderella-themed. A girl from a small country heads to the palace to try to persuade the rulers to help her people escape from the anti-gay laws that would separate her mothers, amongst others. The prince she befriends is trans male. I enjoyed this one a lot.

"Liberia:" Now we leap to the sci-fi. This one is a male scientist who is travelling to the colonies in space. He has plants with him that carry the voices and memories of his family, but a disaster causes him to risk losing them all and he has to fight to keep what he can. I liked this but sci-fi never resonates with me much. 

"A Royal Affair:" A story linked to the author's series. A man's relationship with the prince is ended by his abusive brother. I'm sure this one is better if you know the characters. It was decent.

"The Takeback Tango:" Back to sci-fi but I liked this one a lot more. A "Robin Hood"-type female character wants to steal back her homeworld's artifacts from the Museum of the Conquered and meets a boy along the way. 

"Dream and Dare:" Beauty and the Beast, only the Beast is a runaway tomboyish princess. This one is cute. 

"Wish:" Sci-fi genie helps a sick girl who is stuck as the only teen on Venus because she's too sick to return to Earth like the rest of the kids her age. Cute.

"The Weight:" Weird story about couples having their hearts removed and weighed to learn their hearts' true story. Ambivalent ending. My least favorite so far. 

"Unmoor:" An Unmoor is someone who can take memories from you. It's a paid service likely often used by those with a broken heart. Main male character wants to forget his ex-boyfriend and the results are bittersweet. Pretty good. I like it more than the previous story but it's my second least fave so far. 

"The Coldest Spot in the Universe:" Time flip between a girl in a post-apocalyptic, dying world and the alien girl studying that now-ancient civilization possibly almost a thousand years later if they're using the same year count. This one is quite poignant. I loved it. 

"The Beginning of Monsters:" More sci-fi. This one's got a significantly different world. People can do body augmentation so well that it passes on genetically. A girl was born with retractable crystal claws that help her design these bodies. She's currently designing a body for "one of eleven small kings of the nameless crater city." The king is currently female but is tired of being a woman. The king's offspring is referred to by an entirely new pronoun "an." This was jarring at first because it seemed like a typo. It's just written right into the text without explanation so it took a bit of reading to realize it was meant as a pronoun. Choosing a word like "an" that actually is already an English word might not have been the best choice. You're doing a sci-fi story. Invent a word. And now having finished the story, I can say how frustrating it was. I really liked the two main characters but this level of world-building needs a novel. At the short story level, it simply does not work. I don't understand the structure of their society, what any of these "force" things they keep referencing are, what the four genders they mention are (he, she, an and az), or much of anything really. This is a great example of a good idea meant for a novel that turned into a short story with shitty world-building. 

"Longer Than the Threads of Time:" A take on Rapunzel. A Dominican witch with fire-starting powers is placed in an invisible tower of Belvedere Castle in Central Park in the late 1940s. It's meant to keep others safe from her powers and was done with the aid of her mother. Decades later, a young brujo can see the tower, though he was warned against ever approaching it, and they get into a Rapunzel-style romance. During a bit of love talk, he offers to take her place and that's what frees her. She vows to return for him, though first it's time for a family reunion.

"Habibi:" This one was sad. It's letters magically exchanged between two prisoners. One is a young black boy and the other is a young Muslim boy in Gaza. My issue with it is that because it's letters, it's written in two different fonts and my eyes struggled with both. They describe their lives and the Muslim boy is partaking in a hunger strike, while the black boy vows to get out, find him and save him. 

This was a good anthology overall. Some of the more sci-fi stories lost me a bit but they always will. It's worth reading.

The Olympians

 

For years, I have read George O'Connor's Olympians graphic novel series. The first one, Zeus (of course), came out way back in January 2010. The final one, Dionysos, came out a little less than a month ago on March 8th. Twelve years. Twelve volumes. 

O'Connor knows his stuff. He's got a section of notes at the back of each book with explanations, stories, little asides that give depth to each graphic novel. I like reading them as I go, but others may want to read through first, then go back and see what the notes were talking about. The gods and other characters get profiles at the end. There's a family tree. It's all very educational. The art and character designs are great. It's simply a lot of fun. 

If you like Greek mythology, this series is an absolute must read. It's that good. 

If you want to read the books in order, they go like this: Zeus, Athena, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Hephaistos, Dinoysos (which also has a hood showing by Hestia). 

Oh, My Gods! 1 & 2

I can't believe I never reviewed this. I swore I did! This came out in January 2021 and the second one just released Tuesday. I came here to review that one, but when I went to look up my review of the first, I noticed it doesn't exist. 

Oh, My Gods! is a middle-grade graphic novel. The main character, Karen, is 13, though honestly, all of them look way older than 13. Like at least 16, I think. 

Karen lives with her mom in NJ and her mom gets a cool job offer, which I'm pretty sure was arranged by her dad. I just reread this before reading the second and I don't think it was mentioned explicitly, but I could be wrong. Anyway, Karen needs to go live with her dad in Mt. Olympus for a while. 

Her dad is Zeus. She calls him Zed for a bit before finally calling him Dad. The other characters are the actual gods. It takes Karen far too long to realize this. 

The world of Mt. Olympus is like a modernized version of what you imagine the world of Greek myth was. There are centaur and satyr students at the school, for example. Lots of Greek references. One of the characters explains that every so often, the gods decide to be reborn so they can experience life all over again. That's why they're that young and why they don't exactly all look like ancient Greeks. 

So while Karen is trying to fit in, a student is turned to stone and some suspicion falls on her. She learns Zeus is her dad, making her a demigoddess, and she may be developing powers eventually. 

Determined to clear her name, Karen sets out to solve the mystery with the help of Tina (Athena, the blonde with glasses), Dita (Aphrodite, pink hair), Artemis (white hair), and Pol (Apollo, the brown-haired guy above Tina). Hermes has a brief role as Karen's school tour guide. The three Fates are sort of the school mean girls but sort of not. They're not actively mean, but they're popular and fearsome because of their powers. Hera is an adult and Zeus's secretary. The only other one that stood out was Hades, who has long, light gray hair. Though he had a minor role, I still loved this version of him. 

Predictably, the cause of the stone people is Medusa. The detectives find out she and her sisters have been living in an old lighthouse. Karen works to lower Medusa's punishment, teaching Zeus about "community service." And they realize putting sunglasses on the gorgons will let them live normal lives. Medusa is a really cute character. I like her a lot.  

It's a really cute graphic novel. I love the art. I honestly have no idea how I didn't review it!

Here's the second one. The scene on the cover isn't in the story at all. 

This time the mystery is finding out the identity of M1not4ur, a minotaur (duh) guy who keeps interrupting Karen playing her favorite video game with her NJ friends. 

Tina is really excited to take over the school paper and gives all her friends good jobs. Karen decides she's going to write about her video game obsession and then as it unfolds, about the mysterious guy who's ruining all her fun. Eventually, she and the detective/newspaper gang end up in an actual maze in the school basement that the antagonist designed to be like Karen's video game, which he also loves. 

Spoiler: It's Minos. Instead of being the king who stuck the minotaur in the labyrinth, he IS a minotaur. Which is a species, not a one-off, in this series.

My favorite part of this one was seeing new characters. We got to meet Ares, who's not your typical Ares character in the least. Dionysus is in the theater club, of course. He's doing play auditions. Persephone is there trying out, though we don't see much of her. We do see Hades very obviously fanboying her from the seats though and that was fabulous. Hades has had like one line between both books but he is my favorite. Hecate has a really cute appearance and so does Arachne, who's like the spider version of a centaur. She's into lighting and technology and it's pretty cool. (The spider likes the worldwide web. Punny.) 

Another highlight was Karen getting some weather powers, which ought to prove interesting. She kinda Mary Sues them out of the final battle in the labyrinth, but she's a daughter of Zeus so it's also a given that she's gonna be powerful. 

Ooh, Artemis was totally fun in this volume, too. She's my favorite of the main cast. 

So another strong recommendation for this one. It's just a lot of fun.