Jingo by Terry Pratchett – A Review

Tags

Discworld, fantasy fiction, funny books, Jingo, teenage books, Terry Pratchett

Jingo is the twenty first Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett that my son, Oscar and I have shared together. It isn’t my favourite. We’re now into the middle years for Pratchett, where I lost enthusiasm for him and we parted ways for a few years. It’s interesting to read them again after such a long break (twenty odd years).

Jingo deals with the emergence of a new island between Ankh Morpork and Klatch that both cities decide belong to them. A small squabble over fishing rights and who gets to occupy the land, turns into the threat of all out war, and the mobilisation of ancestral armies on the streets of Ankh Morpork.

Samuel Vimes, commander of the Watch, smells a rat and investigates, or he would do if he wasn’t hampered by the political machinations of his aristocratic haters, in particular, Lord Rust, a man who wants to shut Vimes down for many reasons.

Oscar loved this because it is a book about the Watch. He brings to his reading, a wealth of knowledge amassed from the previous books and it suddenly makes him realise how valuable things like back stories are. He is beginning to predict how characters will behave in certain circumstances, and it gives him enormous joy when he is right.

I disliked this less, this time around, but then it seems to echo a lot of the political landscape in which we are forced to live at the moment, jingoism, xenophobia, racism and casual intolerance are all lampooned on Pratchett’s sharpest pen and I was moved to laugh more than once by parallels with current events. Despite the fact that they aren’t really funny. Current events that is.

It holds up better than I expected and there are some wonderful moments between Nobby Knobbs, Sergeant Colon and Lord Vetinari that I had totally forgotten about and which really made this a winner this time around.

Wonderful for teens who love fantasy, humour and satire. Not suitable for primary aged children unless you don’t mind doing lots of explaining of adult humour, double entendres, and in this case, politics and science.

The Rachel Riley Diaries: My (Not So) Simple Life by Joanna Nadin – A Review

Tags

books for girls, books for YA audiences, Diary style books, funny books, teenage books

The Rachel Riley Diaries: My (Not So) Simple Life, is the fourth in the seven book series about Rachel Riley by Joanna Nadin.

Regular readers will know that I discovered this series back to front, being sent the last one to review by Amazon, and absolutely loving it. I rushed out and purchased the entire rest of the series on the strength of it.

I am, unlike my normal reading habits, forcing myself to read through the series very slowly. Firstly I know there is little chance that there will be more of them. They have clearly reached a natural end point in the series, and secondly, the writer I was relying on to see me through in terms of this type of literature, Louise Rennison, died this year. Nadia’s work is much more varied and wide ranging and has taken a serious and enthralling turn in some areas. It seems clear that she has left Rachel Riley far behind her for now.

I had read Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicholson series first, and when I picked up Nadin’s series about Rachel Riley I was reminded very strongly of them. It’s not that I think either is plagiaristic, they are both teenage diary series and as such share a lot in common, it’s that I found similar things to admire and love in both series.

Rachel Riley is a slightly older, more explicit version of Georgia Nicholson. Her life as a wannabe Bohemian, literary type, is squashed by the fact that she lives in Saffron Walden, and her mother is a woman obsessed by cleaning products and middle class aspirations. There can be no bohemianism amongst the Stain Devils and Duchy Original biscuits. Rachel feels very hard done by, and we are treated to the trials and tribulations of her year with a difficult family and her complicated love life, which is more fervently lived in her imagination than it is in real life.

I’m not going to spoil the book. There are equal delights in rediscovering your relationship with all the characters Nadin has been building throughout the series, and new ones that make their appearances, as well as the every day trials and tribulations of Riley. I will say that I absolutely loved her brother’s attempts at ghost busting and the story about the vacuum cleaner made me cry with laughter. I shall leave the rest for you to discover.

Start with book one,they get better as the series progresses.

These are absolutely books for teenagers, dealing as they do with all kinds of inappropriate jokes, teen sexuality and a frankness about sex that isn’t going to wash for the under elevens. These are also absolutely books for girls, which is a shame, as they’re so funny and it would be wonderful to share the jokes, but it would take a lot, I think, to get a boy to read them.

I’m saving volume five as a treat.

 

Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson – A Review

Tags

books about relationships, books about teenage sexuality, girls books, Girls in Love, Jacqueline Wilson, teenage books, YA books

Regular readers will know (if there are any of you left out there, after my appalling slovenliness of late) that I occasionally dip my toe into the water of the world of Jacqueline Wilson. There are several reasons for this:

She is the most borrowed author from UK libraries, and is persistently popular with almost every girl reader I have ever come across. There is not a single child of the female sex I have yet met who does not flirt with Wilson’s novels. Most of them are obsessed. If you’re going to recommend books to children, it really helps to be au fait with what they read. It lets them see that it is alright for adults to read children’s fiction and plants the seed, conversely, that it is alright for children to read adult fiction. It also means they trust you when you say you think they will like something.

My oldest girl, now fifteen, went through a phase of reading everything by Wilson she could get her hands on. My middle child, who is now eleven, has been reading her books for about four years now with varying degrees of enthusiasm. At the moment she is piling through some of Wilson’s more teen based fiction. Her particular favourites are the Girls in Love series, the first of which I took on holiday with me to read. She was very keen that I read it. She still believes that one day I will find the book that will convert me into being a Wilson fan.

The book Girls in Love made the BBC Big Read top 100 books, and I am steadily reading my way through them all, so it had to be done.

I have to say that this is not the book that is going to convert me into being a fan of Wilson. Sorry Tallulah.

As with all of her other books I’ve read, I can totally see why girls love them, but I find them miserable, unhelpful and sometimes just plain distressing.

This book tells the story of Ellie (through Ellie’s eyes), and her two friends as they start to fall seriously in love with boys. Ellie feels fat and insecure and hates her burgeoning body. She feels overlooked in her new family (step mum and young brother), and out of place as her two gorgeous friends find it easy to get boyfriends, and all she gets is the unwanted adoration of a dorky boy she meets on holiday in Wales. Ellie starts to embroider a fantasy boyfriend, and the whole thing gets rather out of hand as the world of her imagination and the world of her reality collide.

If I were eleven again, I’d probably love this. As it is, I found it irritating and a bit sad and it brought back the persistent wonder as to why anyone would choose to read this kind of thing for fun. Having said that, if I asked a bunch of eleven year old’s to appreciate Wuthering Heights I’m sure they’d have the same question for me.

So, great for girls, not at all for boys in any way shape or form.

It’s good in that it talks about tricky family relationships. It’s good in that it talks about the ups and downs of friendships and how friends are important, even when they fall out with each other. It is good in that it talks frankly about girls having relationships with older boys and the question of whether you can or indeed want to have sex with them. It has a lot to say about the speed with which young girls are required to grow into young adults these days, and it handles that in a non patronising, useful way.

Perfect for girls aged eleven to fifteen/sixteen. I wouldn’t go lower on age, not because it’s difficult to read but because it does talk about sexual experimentation and drugs, albeit in a reasonably informed and not at all gratuitous way.

Younger girls will undoubtedly read it. Wilson writes for children of all ages, and they’re not going to be satisfied by an adult trying to stop them reading through her massive oeuvre, but you need to be prepared for questions and/or discussions if you’re going to allow younger children to read this material. If you’re uncomfortable with it, there are about four million other Wilson books out there, so you are bound to be able to deflect attention away from this one for a while longer should you wish.

Jasmine Skies by Sita Brahmachari – A Review

Tags

books for girls, Jasmine Skies, romance books for girls, Sita Brahmachari, teenage books, YA books

Jasmine Skies by Sita Brahmachari is the sequel to Artichoke Hearts, a book which I have reviewed here.

In Artichoke Hearts, the heroine of the book, Mira Levenson, deals with her feelings of loss at the death of her grandmother, and her first romance with a refugee boy called Jide.

In this book, Mira is older, and flying out to India for the first time to meet her aunt and cousin.  She knows very little about the Indian side of her family, as her mother and aunt have something secret in their past which means that their friendship has come adrift.

Mira goes to find her roots, and along the way discovers what it is that has changed the family dynamic. In trying to heal the rift in her family she also uncovers her feelings for a young man called Janu, and it calls into question her relationship with Jide, the boy she falls in love with in Artichoke Hearts.  Mira must learn to listen to her heart, and find where she really belongs.

This book takes Mira further on her journey into the teenage years, questioning if a first love can really be a true love, and how to read your own heart. It also talks about family and your place in it.

Jasmine Skies is as beautifully written as Artichoke Hearts, Brahmachari writes with a painterly eye, and her descriptions of India are spectacular. She is also good at empathising with and describing the confusion of teenage love.

I don’t think this sequel is as strong as Artichoke Hearts however. At the heart of the first book is a meditation on loss. In this book, there seems to be a missing element, the story line seems rather fragmented, and at times chaotic. There is not the cohesiveness of the first book.  I liked it, because the character of Mira is a fascinating one, and I wanted to know what happened to her next, but I got the sense that the book was rather rushed, and the whole thing felt a bit unfinished. I hope there is a third volume.

The book is suitable for girls rather than boys, written again from Mira’s point of view and dealing with the dilemmas of the female heart. In this book in particular, the boys’ characters are not particularly strong. Jide is only in it briefly, and his presence is there as a foil for Mira’s feelings of doubt and exploration of love. Janu remains somewhat of a cipher, and at times seems more of a mystical than a physical figure, which I thought was a shame.

I recommend the book for children aged twelve and up, dealing as it does with teenage love.  It is not sexually explicit, but it is frank about teenage issues, and as such probably not suitable for younger readers.

The Sacrifice by Charlie Higson – A Review

Tags

Book four, books for boys, books for girls, Charlie Higson, horror books, teenage books, The Enemy series, The Sacrifice, YA books, zombies

The Sacrifice by Charlie Higson is the fourth in the zombie series The Enemy. The first book: The Enemy, is reviewed here. The second book; The Dead, is reviewed here. The third book; The Fear, is reviewed here.

The books are all concerned with a virus/plague that has swept through the world, killing off everyone over the age of fourteen. Those who survive it are altered irrevocably by it, rotting slowly and turned into zombie creatures who prey on the flesh of children.  The books each tell the stories of survivor children, either singly or in bands, and how they manage to survive together, fighting the zombies, and sometimes each other, to try to create a new life for themselves.

The books are set in London and show the children moving across a post apocalyptic city landscape as they make camps, group together, disband and fight for their lives.  Rather than taking the narrative in straight linear fashion, each book threads into the books that have preceded it, inching the story along in time only slightly, but enriching the initial story so that the reader is drawn deeper, and deeper into the world the children inhabit.

The writing is excellent, the plot is thoughtful, stylish and clever and the books are gripping in the way they tantalise you with a little more information every time you read. The picture is always building, and in each book there are at least a handful of lightbulb moments where you suddenly make the link with something that has happened in a previous book.

This book is my favourite of the four so far. It is by far the most revealing of the four, not just because it builds on the stories that have gone before, but because it gives new information about the enemy the children are fighting and they suddenly become much more than shambling cannibalistic puppets.

I’m not giving anything else away, because the real thrill is reading the books themselves and just not being able to put them down.

As I have said in previous reviews, these books are very violent, extremely graphic and not at all suitable for children. They are strictly in the YA/Teen genre, and I would not recommend them to anyone under the age of twelve, and I’d hesitate to go as young as twelve unless I was sure they had very strong stomachs.

The books, as ever, are written with pleasingly strong characters of both sexes and I recommend them to both boys and girls.

Charlie Higson’s website is here, for more information on the books.  There is a time line available so you can see what happens when, but it will, of necessity, contain spoilers if you haven’t read the other books, so I would advise you not to look until you’re up to date, unless you don’t mind finding out what happens before you read.

Higson’s next book: ‘The Fallen’ is out in September 2013.  I rate them so highly, my copy is already on preorder.