Catching Up

I got quite behind in my reviews, so I'm going to put them all together.

Of this batch, the book I read first, Prisoners in the Promised Land, was by far the best.

Did you know Ukrainians and other immigrants from that area were forced into internment camps in Canada during World War I? Because before I read this, I had no idea.

Anya's story is a difficult journey, but it's the most moving and I think the most important of the books here.

Anastasia's Royal Diary brings that reread to a conclusion. I confess that I skimmed this. I've been reading these while sick and recovering from being sick, so I just wasn't in the mood for another story with a sad ending after the three Titanic books! I do remember enjoying this when I've read it in the past, but it's not one of my favorites from the series.

It did get one of the only Royal Diary rereleases and the cover is so crazy that it's worth taking up the space here.

I mean, seriously. The original cover looks like a young teenage girl of that time period. It looks like it was based on actual photographs, which I'm sure it was. Then there's this thing on the left. It's a pretty picture, but that is absolutely not Anastasia.

Dear Canada has the first entry of the three World War I books.

Eliza is an interesting character, as she's the middle child of seven. She has two older brothers, both in the war, and one older sister, plus twins (one male, one female) that are younger and finally, one youngest sister. Her father is a minister, so the family is moderately well off, but not excessively.

About halfway through the book, Eliza loses her eldest and favorite brother to the war. After that, she turns into the confidante of her other older brother, who's involved in some drama over in England. Both he and his best friend love the same woman. That turns into a rather soap opera-level mess.

The story is engaging, but it's not the best home front sort of story, although I do appreciate the different ways the men are shown being affected by the war.

A lot of the war-themed I Am Canada books are rather formulaic. The male character is in his mid-upper teens at the start, goes off for training, goes into whatever type of battle, grows up enduring horrific things. Sometimes a woman is involved. They come home men. This one is more of the same. I ended up skimming it, because I feel like I read it not that long ago, even though it came out back in 2013. Good, but not one of the best. Boys doing war stuff is not the most interesting topic for me.

You can always tell a Dear America from the tail end of the line. The books lack that fabric bookmark I love so much.

I couldn't remember a thing about this book when I picked it up. I doubt I've ever reread it before. Simone is a society girl from New York City who wants to be useful, so she eventually finds her way to being a hello girl over in France. Her time over there is interesting, because it's not something covered in any of the other books. Simone is also very unusual in that she's seventeen at the beginning of the diary. Most DA girls are much younger! But the story doesn't work unless she is that old, because they don't let kids do what she does, of course.

The book is quite short and a very quick read, but it's somehow more fulfilling than others that are much longer. Simone's family is a handful of good characters, she has a love story with some adventure, she has a tragedy that actually got me sniffling, because it's been years since I read this and I'd forgotten. It's a good book. Definitely more than what I was expecting when I picked it up.

Okay, now I'm caught up! And the next DA is...suffrage. *groan*

ROYAL DIARIES: Kaiulani

You would think this would be an interesting book, because Hawaii! That's different and I'd like to learn about it.

But no.

The first part of the book takes place in Hawaii and it's the most interesting part. But Kaiulani is really not that different from the European diaries we've read in this series. Her life is rather dull, having to do political things and following all these boringly proper procedures so no one is offended blah blah blah. She likes to ride her horse and has pet peacocks and is friends with Robert Louis Stevenson. The most interesting parts are the more Hawaiian ones, but those are few and far between, because it's 1889. I'd like to learn more about Hawaiian history, but back farther in time.

Then the latter half of the book is her in England and I found it so dreadfully dull that I ended up skimming the last half. The political turmoil is mildly interesting, but not that much, because you know what happens and it isn't good.

I'm going to have the same This Does Not End Well struggle with the final Royal Diary, but at least Anastasia's story is more interesting than this.

ROYAL DIARIES: Kazunomiya

In 2004, Kathryn Lasky wrote about Kazunomiya, taking us to Japan. Japanese culture has always fascinated me, so I enjoyed reading this a lot, even though it is rather short and I feel she could have expanded on much more.

Sadly, she crafts a story that leaves one rather large loose end. She fabricates a romance between Kazunomiya and her original betrothed, only to have her marry another. This part we all saw coming, but in the epilogue, it's stated that it's unknown if she ever saw the man she actually loved again. In history, she was widowed after only a handful of years of marriage and took vows as a Buddhist nun afterward. If she had some great love from before, why not see what he's up to? Maybe that's a no no in historical Japanese culture, I dunno, but they could have at least met up again. So the crafted love story doesn't really work with her history.

Also, I think a lot of little details could have been expanded upon, too. There's a lot of court intrigue, but you don't get a really clear sense of how the Japanese imperial court works, because Kazunomiya shuns much of it, due to the poor treatment of her mother. Little things, too. She spends a lot of time talking about clothing and how you can only wear certain colors during certain seasons, but she describes colors by saying the names of things from nature instead of using color words. I don't know what color a frickin' plum blossom is. I had to look it up.

Lasky has done some excellent work for Royal Diaries, but I think this one falls in the middle. I did still enjoy it, but mostly because I like the culture it's set during, which manages to balance out the writing failures.

There are only two remaining Royal Dairies to be reviewed: Kaiulani and Anastasia. I'm always sad when I get to this point, because I love the royal series a lot. And now I'm going to be mired in the Civil War for awhile. *groan*

ROYAL DIARIES: Elisabeth

I always forget how incredibly dull this book is. Elisabeth is presented as a rather contradictory person. She is very, very, very vain. Not so much in the text of the book, but it is extremely clear that she had a major vanity issue in the epilogue and other sections at the back. However, she also has liberal views on politics (again, presented in the back) and loves horseback riding more than almost anything. And she's a poet! She's very multi-faceted. I honestly don't know how she did it, because how could the same woman who refused to leave her room if her favorite hairdresser was unavailable be comfortable riding a horse? She's also very picky about food to the point that she likely had anorexia, yet she worried constantly about her teeth. How did she let them get yellow enough to worry her if she's that vain?

I have little patience for vanity on that scale. I preferred the girl at the beginning of the book, talking about how she'd rather be with her poetic father or riding a horse or playing with her menagerie than accompanying her older sister to meet said sister's potential future husband.

Who ends up being ELISABETH's future husband. The book takes a turn for the worse after she meets this guy. Then she ends up all boring lovey dovey, crying when he leaves after a visit, and blah blah blah. The only parts that were interesting after meeting him were the ones where she still showed concern about her older sister's rejection.

I think Elisabeth had an interesting and ultimately unhappy life, but a book written for children isn't going to capture that. It wouldn't have been very appropriate for the line to talk about how she hated the rigidity of Viennese court, how her mother-in-low was a control freak bitch who wouldn't even let Elisabeth be with her own children for long, how her weak ass husband didn't stand up for the poor SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD he dragged into this unhappy marriage, the scandal when one of her sons killed himself and his mistress, and how Elisabeth herself was murdered at age sixty. Her story is interesting indeed, but this is not the right format for it.

ROYAL DIARIES: VICTORIA

Anna Kirwan only contributed one other book to the DA family: Lady of Palenque, which I enjoyed mostly because it was something not European. Victoria's book is well-written, though I won't say it isn't tedious and frustrating.

The tedious part is that nothing much really happens. This takes place when she's so young that it isn't that interesting. And Kirwan decided Victoria used the "v." abbreviation for "very," which I find VERY annoying, because "very" is such a short word that it doesn't need to be abbreviated. There was one short entry that had at least six v. uses and just UGH.

The frustrating part is that Victoria hates Sir John Conroy, who her mother lets control every little thing, and she dislikes his spying, tattling daughter, but you never see the comeuppance you want, because it doesn't happen until she's eighteen. I so wanted to see her give him what for, but nope. Off-page.

A decent addition to RD, but nothing spectacular.

ROYAL DIARIES: Marie Antoinette

I'm going to be honest here. I've read this one several times and I didn't feel like rereading it. I guess I'm in the mood for American history right now and not the decadent world of Marie Antoinette.

The book is quite enjoyable and thankfully takes place when she's younger. I got a few pages into it and the opulent lifestyles just weren't catching my attention, so I decided to just give it a generic thumbs up and move on to Revolutionary War America. Heh.

But if you're interested in Marie Antoinette, definitely check this one out. And there's a book about her daughter in the Beneath the Crown series (The Princess in the Tower) that's also worth reading.

I do love that cover though. It's gorgeous. The rerelease cover? Not so much. It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but she looks far too old. (I was going to have more pictures here, but with the minimal text, the formatting is being a bitch, so yeah, no more pics.)

ROYAL DIARIES: CATHERINE

Catherine's was the final Royal Diary, written in 2005. Kristiana Gregory wrote Cleopatra's and Eleanor's, which I enjoyed much more than this.

Catherine is an interesting character, a German girl who also speaks French, taken to live in Russia with her German betrothed, where she endures incredible stress. Her mother is an abusive social climber who clashes with the Empress Elizabeth, another strong woman whose whims Catherine must endure. And while she has a decent relationship with her betrothed, they're much more like brother and sister than anything else.

Like Cleopatra and Eleanor, this diary suffers because so much of what makes these women fascinating historical figures happened when they were adults. Gregory really phoned this one in, too, and it's so obvious. She gave Catherine a very annoying habit of not bothering to put the date on her entries, claiming often that she didn't know what day it was. Everything could have been done more in depth than it was. The epilogue is pitifully short and tells very little. The Life in Russia section glosses over Peter's "mistress" and his assassination. And the final two pages are devoted to events that are happening elsewhere at the same time as Catherine's reign.

I'm not sure why Royal Diaries chose to go out with this offering. It's quite pitiful. The interesting moments are eclipsed by sheer frustration at other issues. I wouldn't recommend this unless you're a completist.

ROYAL DIARIES: WEETAMOO

Sadly, the late Patricia Clark Smith contributed only one book to the Dear America family and that's this one. I really enjoyed the book based on the quality of the writing, but even moreso, the quality of the research.

Smith had Micmac roots and was very interested in Native American studies. You can tell these people truly meant something to her and she says that Weetamoo was one of her heroes. She did exhaustive research and when she didn't know something, she found someone who could help her. That is how you write a book properly, unlike other books we've already discussed, and that is how you write real people respectfully, unlike Ann Rinaldi. (We'll get to that eventually.)

Weetamoo is a bit different though, because she didn't know how to read and write. Her entries are presented in the form of her having thinking times and remembering. They're her private thoughts and memories, just as any diary would be, except they were never written down. It doesn't take away from the story at all, because it still reads like any other RD or DA book does, and I think Smith came up with a clever way of making this work for a character that wouldn't have kept a diary.

This book captures both the daily life of Weetamoo's Pocassets and other neighboring groups, but also covers interaction with and concerns about the "Coat-men" and how they might change Native American cultures.

I enjoyed reading this because I felt safe in Smith's hands, like she had done the people who populate this story justice and truly cared about their history.

ROYAL DIARIES:KRISTINA

Kristina of Sweden received the 14th Royal Diary, the third written by Carolyn Meyer after Isabel and Anastasia. Kristina is a very interesting character, because she's an intellectual rather like Elizabeth I, but unlike Elizabeth, she is raised to be king, not queen. She learns masculine things like fencing and warfare, and once she tries it, she won't stop riding astride instead of sidesaddle.

Kristina's book and character are both quite interesting and I recommend giving this a read.

I don't have any talking points about the book itself, but rather about a comment Meyer makes in the epilogue. She says "Historians argue that, although she is the most discussed of all queens in history, second only to Cleopatra, Kristina actually achieved very little during her brief reign." There are three major problems I have with this. First, the entire point of the book was that Kristina was not a queen, but a king. Second, Cleopatra was not a queen either. She was Pharaoh. Third, I find it hard to believe that Kristina, no matter how interesting she actually was, is more discussed than everyone but Cleopatra. Um, Elizabeth I, anyone? I have had an interest in history since I was young and I had never heard of Kristina until I read this book. Granted, I aimed more at ancient history, but still, you come across plenty of big names even in basic studies and hers was not one of them. Very interesting woman, yes, but more discussed than everyone but Cleopatra? I think not.

ROYAL DIARIES: JAHANARA

After a brief foray with the pilgrims, we go back into the world of the Royal Diaries. Jahanara takes us to the Mughal Empire in India. Jahanara is the eldest daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, the famous love that built the Taj Mahal.

Jahanara's life is full of court intrigue and that takes up the majority of her diary. At the beginning, her father isn't emperor, but he eventually takes over and the two sons being held captive by the now Dowager Empress are returned to the family. The youngest had greatly changed and will grow into a nasty puritanical ruler who killed his brothers to take the throne. It's another of those tough books to read because you know what this bratty kid will do to his awesome older brother in the future.

The end of the diary feels very rushed, jumping periods of months and even over a year between entries. I think Lasky ran out of steam and just wanted to make it to Mumtaz Mahal's death at the end and didn't know what to say in between. Lasky gave us Mem, Elizabeth, Marie-Antoinette and Zipporah, some of my favorite voices from these series, so to see her drop the ball with Jahanara is frustrating. Also, based on skimming the reviews on Amazon, she got some things wrong research-wise. I wish they'd gotten an Indian historian to write this, instead of someone who had never even heard of Jahanara before visiting India. There are loads of books about the European royalty in this series, but they only did one about India, so why not make sure it's done right? Sigh. I definitely still like Lasky as an author, but she loses some respect for not doing enough research on this and not putting as much effort into Jahanara as she did her other books.

ROYAL DIARIES: NZINGHA

I love this book. This is definitely one of my fave RDs. Literally, my only criticism is that it's far too short! It's only 85 pages. It's short, but it's also well-written and gets the entire story across in just these few pages. All the characters are pretty awesome, except the ones you're supposed to dislike.

McKissack wrote a few of the Dear America series: A Picture of Freedom (one of the more well-known DAs) in 1997, Color Me Dark in 2000, and Look to the Hills in 2004. I don't remember the latter two well enough to say right now, but I know I enjoyed A Picture of Freedom.

Really nothing much else to say other than read this! Nzingha is a badass. I love her.

ROYAL DIARIES: MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

The author of this RD is the same that wrote Elizabeth's diary, Kathryn Lasky. The same praise I gave Elizabeth's can be applied here.

Mary is written as a very approachable character and you want to know what's going to happen to her. I love her little band of four Marys, the girls from Scotland that accompanied her to France, where she's grown up. There are a lot of interesting characters running around, too, like Catherine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers and Nostradamus.

My only criticism is that the book hides her fate. It ends when she's still young, of course, before she even marries Francis. But the epilogue is coy and only hints at bad things. Only in tiny print in the family tree section does it say she was beheaded for treason. Be honest about what she did! Don't try to hide it from readers. Let them decide for themselves how they feel about her knowing the full facts. That sneakiness gives the book a bit of a dishonest feel, which I don't care for. But that doesn't take anything away from the main narrative, the diary itself.

ROYAL DIARIES: ELIZABETH

This was the first of the Royal Diaries, out in 1999. It was also one of the earliest I read. Kathryn Lasky is one of the more well-known Royal Diaries and Dear America authors. She did five Royals (Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie-Antoinette, Jahanara of India and Kazunomiya of Japan), four Dear Americas (including one of the famous ones and one of my favorites), a My America trilogy for younger readers, and one of the male-fronted My Name Is America series. (You may also know her as the Guardians of Ga'hoole author.)

This is one of the main RDs I would recommend to new readers. You can't help but fall in love with Lasky's Elizabeth. She's bursting with character and her diary melds daily life activities with royal intrigue and historical details. It feels like a real diary, because it's very personal, but it also educates like historical fiction. And it takes place during her younger years, which is good for the target audience. For the continuation of her story, try Beware, Princess Elizabeth from Carolyn Meyer's Young Royals series.

I actually don't have much to say about it, because like Josefina's AG books, I love it and there's not much to talk about other than repetitive praise.

ROYAL DIARIES: ANACAONA (1490)

Anacaona is another of those royal figures where we know next to nothing about her. Reading about her in this series was the first I'd ever heard of her. I enjoy learning new things, but I felt there wasn't much that I learned from this book.

The style is very slice of life. She's rather philosophical and a poet. You get some idea of daily life, but honestly, this book reads far more like a real diary than a diary that's meant to be educational historical fiction. There was really only one character that impacted me at all, aside from Anacaona, and that was the girl that killed herself after appearing in one single diary entry. It's also a bit hard to reread, knowing what happened to her after the events of the diary.

This book was the second last Royal Diary published back in April 2005. It sat unread in my book pile for months, because I would pick it up, read a couple entries and put it down. Catherine's diary, published in December 2005, was the last of the series, and I believe that's when I finally made myself finish Anacaona's. Is it important to the series in that it gives even a hint of educational info on a lesser-known historical figure? Sure. But as far as the series goes, it's one of the weakest.

ROYAL DIARIES: ISABEL (1466)

My first experience with Carolyn Meyer was this book, I believe. Isabel's book is the third in the Royal Diaries series, following Elizabeth and Cleopatra. Meyer also wrote about Anastasia, who has the fifth book. I know I got into RD when a lot of these were released already. I think the first I remember waiting for was Lady of Ch'iao Kuo. So I suppose I could have read Anastasia first, but I think it was Isabel. Meyer's only other contribution to the series was Kristina of Sweden and she never wrote for Dear America, although she has several other young adult historical fiction novels that are similar to RD, but also more adult. I remember being dead bored by the ones that took the characters further into adulthood. Apparently, I am not interested in Marie Antoinette or Mary Queen of Scots enough to read about them as adults.

Anyway. Isabel is known best for two things: Columbus and the Inquisition. Yay, mass death on both parts. Sigh. While I enjoy the book, it's hard to read sometimes, because the bad she did weighs in the back of my mind while I'm reading about her worrying about her future husband. That is probably 50% of the book. She has an uncertain future and this brother is king, no, now this brother is king. Yadda yadda. Like others I've reviewed, she has a good voice, but this is another that fails to really dig into the background characters. Beatriz is the only one that's really interesting and she's actually rather problematic, because she's way more interesting than Isabel!  

ROYAL DIARIES: ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE (1136)

Kristiana Gregory is the author for Cleopatra's Royal Diary, as well as Catherine the Great's and several Dear America books.

I have the same mixed feelings about this as I did about Cleopatra's. While Gregory's voice in each diary is very relatable and she has the girls talking about things girls that age would talk about, they're almost too much slice of life and not enough action. Remember when I said Cleopatra's diary was "actually fairly boring?" This one is worse. Eleanor has far less freedom than Cleopatra and she doesn't do much of anything. Her secondary cast of characters is also far less interesting. I like her sister, but Gregory didn't dig deep with them at all. Petronilla is just kind of there. All the characters are really just kind of there.

Eleanor was a powerful historical figure, and yes, much of that came later in her life, but there still could have been more here. We could have gotten even further into her head on several topics and the diary should have continued on to describe her daily life once she marries and moves to Paris. There would have been many things jarringly different for her, because the Aquitaine society was much more fun-loving, and I would have liked to read about her thoughts on either adjusting or trying to convince Paris to learn from her. I would have enjoyed comparing her experiences to Marie Antoinette's from her Royal Diary, which does exactly what I wanted to see this one do.

ROYAL DIARIES: LADY OF PALENQUE (749 AD)

Lady of Palenque is an excellent Royal Diary. I really love learning about cultures I know very little about and she gives great details mostly.

The book chronicles the Lady's travels from her home in Palenque (modern name) to Copan (modern name to make looking them up on maps easier). Its only real fault, once you get used to her repeating everyone's long names/titles a bit too often, is that the journey takes up 90% of the book. I wanted to see more of her married life and learn about daily life details, but basically, they finally arrive in Copan and the book's done. So the constantly journeying gets a bit tedious and you really just want to meet her betrothed and you do for five seconds and then it's over. Also, because she's so separated from her family, you don't really get close to any characters but her. Still very worth the read and automatically a good addition to the series, because anything not European is nice.

Anna Kirwan has only written two Royal Diaries, this one and Victoria's. She did no Dear America books. Fans of historical fiction series may have read one of her other series though. She wrote the Juliet books for Girlhood Journeys and she did the second Portraits book, Of Flowers and Shadows, which I can't remember at all, even though I know I have both of the books in that series.

ROYAL DIARIES: SONDOK (595 AD)

The Royal Diaries/Dear America series have a lot of authors that have written several books. Sondok's author is one of the few that has not. (Possibly the only. We'll see as we go forward.)

This is the only historical fiction book about Korea that I have ever read and I have pretty much zero knowledge base for Korea. (Some art history knowledge, but that's it and it's very minor.)

Sondok is a neat character, because...at least from the point of view of someone with only basic knowledge about the histories of Asian cultures...you don't think of women in roles of power in these civilizations. Granted, there were not many, but it did happen. A bit of Google research and I've learned she was the first queen of Korean, which I knew from the book, and the second female sovereign in East Asian history. And now I'm annoyed because I can't possibly continue until I look up the first. Sigh. Oh, it's Himiko from ancient Japan. I read about her in Esther Friesner's books. Cool. Anyway...

The main plot of the book is Sondok trying to find herself. She likes astronomy, but she's a girl, so she's not supposed to study it. But she's also her father's heir, so she feels she needs to develop a connection with the stars. She also struggles with identifying both with Buddhism, a more recent religion in her region, and the Shamanism from the older days of her civilization. She slowly comes to realize she loves her childhood friend, only to have him devote himself to a monastery. She loses her mother, who is set aside and forced to join a monastery herself, because it's apparently her fault she didn't produce a male heir. (*grumble grumble*) And throughout the book, she faces off with her father's new Chinese advisor, who basically hates her because he thinks she has too much power for a woman. But of course, she wins the day.

I like this book, because Sondok is definitely a character most of us can relate to, what with her struggling to figure out what she really wants out of life and how to get it. She doesn't ring too modern, even though you don't think of women in ancient East Asia doing what she does. But she did. And her observatory still stands, the oldest existing one left in the world:

ROYAL DIARIES: THE LADY OF CH'IAO KUO (531 AD)

This is the next book chronologically and already we've jumped into AD. I wish there were more ancient history books in this series. Rome should have gotten one for sure.

Anyway, this one was written by Laurence Yep, who also writes for American Girl. He did Mia and Isabelle's GotY series, plus Spring Pearl's book for the Girls of Many Lands collection. I mention this because this book reminds me a bit of Spring Pearl's. Both feature fish out of water main characters who are placed in the homes of wealthy Chinese families. Spring Pearl's is more novel and less historical fiction with nicely-developed characters you really care about, while Lady of Ch'iao Kuo is a bit too historical. Lots of talk of battles and war and less about the characters themselves, which is the strength of Spring Pearl's book.

That said, I do quite like Princess Redbird. She's a fascinating person that sadly, we don't know too much about. I think Yep did well in crafting a family and life for her, although I felt more removed from the majority of the characters than I like to feel.

I recommend this one, because it gives insight into some of China's very rich history, and I did feel like I learned a lot, even though it was a bit dull once it got into the war stuff. (Expect to hear this a lot when I get to the boys in war books. All the battles. Ho hum.) Definitely read Spring Pearl's book! Maybe someday I'll review the GoML series, which I give a high recommendation to.

ROYAL DIARIES: CLEOPATRA VII (57 BC)

I decided just today to tackle an epic rereadathon of the Dear America series and its spinoffs. Because I'm going in chronological order, we'll mostly be seeing The Royal Diaries for awhile. Royal Diaries is definitely my favorite. I only wish they'd done even more. I find it sad Cleopatra is the only Egyptian ruler present, when she was Macedonian Greek and not one of the older Egyptian female rulers.

I believe this was the first Royal Diary I read, which makes sense, being Egyptian and all. I still enjoy it quite a bit, even though it's actually fairly boring. There's a lot of intrigue, but Cleopatra is only 12-14 as the action takes place, so you don't get her big adult adventures. She suffers through seeing both her older sisters betray their father and get killed for it. Cleopatra went through some serious family shit. She meets some big name Romans like Julia, Pompey, Cicero and of course, Antony. No Caesar. That was later.

But my favorite part of the book was seeing just how smart she really is. The author captures her love of knowledge and her gift with languages. Her best friends are a Jewish boy who wants to be a rabbi (he taught her Hebrew and they communicate in it) and a Greek boy who wants to be a physician (and who taught her Latin, so she knows exactly what's going on in Rome).

Cleopatra is presented as a very intelligent girl stuck in a situation that makes her grow up too fast. (Although in those days, she was basically a woman at her age.) She's surrounded by mostly likeable characters, but the majority of the book once they escape to Rome is rather dull and slow-paced. I still recommend it though.