Book Review: WATCHDOG by Will McIntosh

First Paragraph(s): Vick never got used to the smell. Usually he stopped noticing bad smells after a while, but the eye-watering stink of mountains of trash baking in the blazing August sun was so bad, it made every breath an ordeal. And then there were the flies buzzing around Vick’s face, landing on him with their tickly legs. He never got used to them, either.

Is 2018 doing all right by you so far, Esteemed Reader? Are you sticking to your New Years resolution(s)? The Ninja is so far still getting all the usual exercise and meeting his daily word counts. I'm still terribly slow, but a draft of Banneker Bones 2 should be done in the reasonably near future and I may or may not be sitting on a partial for Banneker Bones 3. I'm all middle grade all the time just recently.

I've been mostly turning down book review requests because although I'm reading lots of books, writing these reviews takes time away from my fiction. More, I think this blog is better served by guest posts by more talented authors than myself or interviews with more interesting people (speaking of which, Will McIntosh will be here Wednesday to join the list of distinguished writers who've faced the 7 Questions).

But when I looked up between Bannekers and saw a Hugo-winning author had created a humorous middle grade Sci-Fi story about middle grade kids, one of  whom is an inventor of robots and on the autism spectrum, I figured I'd better read this one (if the book also had zombies, I'd have totally freaked out). Some books are books the reader finds, and some books find readers. Watchdog is a book that found me and I'm so glad it did.

Watchdog is a fun book I know you're going to love, Esteemed Reader, so feel free to skip this review and just go get yourself a copy if you like (it will save time). My review is as follows: This book is swell. Here's a blurb for Delacorte Books for Young Readers (feel free to put this on the jacket going forward at no charge):

"This book has robots in it. I like robots. Will McIntosh's name reminds me of a McMuffin. That sounds so good right now. I'm going to go eat one." --Middle Grade Ninja

Now that we've dispensed with that review business and progressed my booming empire of book blurbs, we can move on to our true purpose which is to discuss craft elements we can apply to our own writing (I'm assuming y'all are writing about middle grade autistic robot inventors as well). The first thing I have for you this week, Esteemed Reader, is to note the way in which McIntosh introduces genre up front in chapter one (remembering there was no way for him to guarantee there would be a robotic dog on the cover):

Tara was nowhere in sight. Huffing, Vick trudged around the base of the mound he was working on, arms spread to aid his balance as his feet sank into the trash. 
She was sitting on a filthy mattress on the opposite side of the mound, waving off the flies and laughing as she watched a TV show on a decrepit handheld with a missing back panel. Vick had no clue how she’d gotten it working, but it didn’t surprise him. Wild audience laughter drifted from the handheld. Vick guessed she was watching Boffo, a reality show where people gave domestic robots tricky orders so the robots would do the wrong things and look stupid. It was one of her favorite shows.

This is the very definition of show, don't tell. The description of the trash and the broken television tells us our heroes are living in a not great situation by showing us that situation. The television program introduces a central concept of the book: this a world in which advanced robots live among people and they're so commonplace that there's a TV show about tricking them. In a decade, maybe less, this might no longer be a giveaway of the type of story we can expect as we'll all be living in such a world, but in 2018 this is still Sci-Fi territory.

Pro-tip: If a writer ever takes the time to tell us what's on a character's television/radio/internet/holocomputer/etc, it's a good bet we're about to be introduced to some vital exposition, either because present characters don't know the information and need to learn it, or because it's a faster way for the reader to learn something. In both my zombie stories, characters get vital information from the TV. If you're a reading a writer who describes what's on a fictional television and the content of the program has no bearing on the story you're reading, that writer is an amateur and you should put their book down.

McIntosh (God, I want a McMuffin) applies this same skill when it comes to introducing our characters. Witness how he describes Tara while simultaneously telling us information about Vick and setting the parameters of their relationship:

From his angle, her profile was hidden by her dirty-blond hair (with the emphasis on dirty). Every morning he tied it back with a rubber band to try to keep it clean, and within an hour she took it out. She was so small she could pass for a seven-year-old. With the difference in their sizes, and Vick’s dark hair and Tara’s light, no one could believe they were twins.

Behold how he conveys the age of our protagonists in a manner that's relevant to the situation and the story and which provides additional crucial exposition:

Thirteen was a bad age to be homeless. Not young and cute enough for pity, but not old enough to hold their ground against grown-ups.

Unlike certain books about giant robot bees you might read and not even realize the title character is on the autism spectrum until you read the sequel (or the author's blog), Watchdog puts the autism of its main character on main street. If you're looking for a book specifically dealing with autism while also being about a charming and engaging story (and the reader in question is too young for Gone), Watchdog is a great book for this purpose.

I'd happily hand a copy to anyone who's either on the spectrum or in contact with someone who is (and probably you are even if you're unaware of it). The Ninja himself hums tunelessly and possesses many other spectrum traits. Tara is a wonderfully sympathetic hero who succeeds not just despite, but perhaps because of her autism. Tara's brain works differently, which is good. Vick and Tara (and Daisy, who we'll talk about in a minute) need a brain that works differently to get them out of their present situation.

 A sudden wave of homesickness mixed with sympathy for Tara nearly doubled Vick over. He squeezed his eyes shut until it passed. As much as it ever passed. Routine and sameness were so important for Tara—a classic symptom of autism. “It won’t be exactly the same as home, Tara. But it’ll be nice. You can have your own room.” 
Tara just stood there, arms dangling at her sides, gazing off to Vick’s right. A cloud of flies buzzed around her head. A few landed on the corners of her mouth. 
“Please help me. Dig. You’re the one who knows what we’re looking for. What we can sell.” 
“Okay. I’m sorry.” She knelt where she was and picked at the trash, moving it a piece at a time. The little robot sat beside her, wagging its rat tail. 
“I know it’s disgusting. I hate it, too.” 
“You can go away now. You’re bothering me,” Tara said. 
Vick sighed as he turned away. You never had to guess with Tara; she always gave it to you straight. He headed back to his spot. Behind him Tara began humming tunelessly.

As they settled into the trash, Tara pressed close to Vick. Mom had told him most kids with autism didn’t like to be touched or held. Not Tara. When she was scared she went overboard the other way, pretty much climbing into your lap and squeezing you until you couldn’t breathe.

So, what is a watchdog anyway? I could give you my less good definition, or I could just let McIntosh do it:

“I love watchdogs.” Tara reached up and set her hand between the thing’s shoulder blades, which rose and fell like levers as it walked. It didn’t seem to notice. People called them watchdogs, but you could build them to look like anything—a tiger, a spider, a velociraptor—or they could resemble nothing at all. This one looked like a cross between a pit bull and a four-legged T. rex. It had an oversized head, with dozens of silver fangs bristling inside massive jaws. The body was squat and powerful, the hind legs shorter than the front ones. 
One look at it was enough to know it was designed to be a fighter. It was technically illegal to create a robot designed to kill, but it was a gray area. Even a domestic robot could crush someone’s windpipe, and it was hard to know what a robot could do just by looking at it. As long as you didn’t outfit one with an automatic weapon you could probably get away with anything, especially in bad areas like this one. Police rarely ventured into this neighborhood anymore, and when they did they definitely had no interest in tangling with a watchdog.

Here's another pro-tip: if you introduce any fictional thing, such as a robot dog, readers want to know about the most interesting version of that fictional thing. Viewers don't care about all the Nova robots who weren't struck by lightning. They care about the fifth one. Why? Because number five is alive.

And if you aren't old enough to catch those references, then good for you. Nothing makes me feel older than remembering that within my lifetime there was a mainstream movie that involved a white actor darkening his skin and taking on racial stereotypes for laughs (and not nearly enough people thought it was weird until later as evidenced by an equally successful sequel). But my horror in learning that some of my favorite things from childhood are marred by racism is the subject of another post.

There are many watchdogs in Watchdog, but the one we most care about is Daisy. Why? Because thanks to Tara's brilliant inventing, Daisy has become sentient. So much so that she's able to reinvent herself and other robots, which is a terrifying concept, but lucky for middle grade readers, Daisy is friendly and fiercely loyal to her humans. Daisy starts out small and relatively harmless, but she doesn't stay that way for long.

Vick couldn’t quite believe this little robot was helping design her own new body. Robots didn’t design. A high-end domestic robot couldn’t decide what brand of coffee to buy unless you told it exactly. It would stand in the coffee section of the supermarket for eternity, trapped in a decision-loop.

Eventually, Tara's talents are discovered by Ms. Alba, who wants to take the twins off the streets and provide them with a job designing robots, which is good. Unfortunately, Ms. Alba is a sinister crime lord not unlike Oliver Twist's Fagin, which is bad. In no time, the kids are involved in multiple chases and futuristic battles with robots, which is what we all came to read in the first place.

McIntosh's story is fast-past and never gets bogged down with too many details. Watchdog is less concerned with the intricacies of robotic-human integration and crime life (although there are unavoidable parallels in the story to America's current blight of extreme economic inequality), and more concerned with robot fights. This book is a lot of fun and would make a great movie. I  enjoyed this story and I have no doubt you will as well.

And that's where we'll leave it except for one thing. You regular Esteemed Readers know how much I love it when writers get all writer-ly in their books. I never can resist drawing attention to it. But I mean, McIntosh, or at least, his character, isn't wrong:

Mom hadn’t graduated from high school, but she’d always pushed them to do “smart” things—visit museums, see plays instead of movies. She loved trashy romance books, but her rule for herself was she had to read one classic—Moby-Dick or Jane Eyre—for every trashy romance she read. No matter how boring the book turned out to be, she read every word.

Make sure you come back Wednesday for the interview. As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Watchdog:

Tara rose and trudged toward him, her pet robot hopping along at her heels looking like a cross between a big rat and a rag doll, its cobbled-together parts all mismatched, its face nothing but a snout and eyes on scuffed silver metal.

It was almost dark, and the last sun rays gave the unlit lights down West Huron Street a glow, a reminder of when Vick was a little kid, before the economy crashed and everything turned bad. Bad in the poor neighborhoods, anyway. The lights were still shining in the wealthy neighborhoods on the north side.

His entire life seemed like a slow-motion fall down a flight of stairs.

They’d only been able to take what they could carry, and mostly that was stuff Tara insisted she couldn’t live without. Things like her plastic toy robot collection and the Disney Purple Girls shirt that hadn’t fit since she was four. He’d been stupid to let her load them up with so much junk when they could have been carrying food and medicine, but he’d been so sure this was temporary, that some adult was going to swoop in to save them. He hadn’t realized that when things got bad, when there weren’t enough jobs and people were hungry, adults only took care of their own kids.

“You need to talk to your sister. If she gives them grief, they’re going to make her life miserable. Yours, too.” 
Talk to his sister. If things had been different, he might have laughed at that. “She’s autistic. When she gets like that, it’s like a switch was flipped in her head. She can’t help it. You might as well tell the wind not to blow.”

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book Review: WISHTREE by Katherine Applegate

First Paragraph(s): It’s hard to talk to trees. We’re not big on chitchat. 
That’s not to say we can’t do amazing things, things you’ll probably never do. 
Cradle downy owlets. Steady flimsy tree forts. Photosynthesize. But talk to people? Not so much. 
And just try to get a tree to tell a good joke. 
Trees do talk to some folks, the ones we know we can trust. We talk to daredevil squirrels. We talk to hardworking worms. We talk to flashy butterflies and bashful moths. 
Birds? They’re delightful. Frogs? Grumpy, but good-hearted. Snakes? Terrible gossips. 
Trees? Never met a tree I didn’t like. 
Well, okay. There’s that sycamore down at the corner. Yakkity-yakkity-yak, that one. 
So do we ever talk to people? Actually talk, that most people-y of people skills? 
Good question. 
Trees have a rather complicated relationship with people, after all. One minute you’re hugging us. The next minute you’re turning us into tables and tongue depressors. 

What a treat we're in for this week, Esteemed Reader, as we'll have Katherine Applegate here on Wednesday to face the 7 Questions. Really? I hear you asking. The same month we've already had Kate DiCamillo!?! Could one blog truly be that amazingly awesome!?! One blog could, Esteemed Reader. One blog could:)

Actually, we've got quite the lineup of cool stuff heading our way: lots of big time literary agents and talented authors will be appearing here as will a few marketing experts. We've also got some killer guest posts lined up and I'm going to review a few more books (surely the high point of all our existences). I don't want to spoil by naming names (cough, cough, Lois Sachar!!! cough), but be sure and check back on a weekly basis to see who stops by.

Did you love The One and Only Ivan, Esteemed Reader? Of course, you did! Everybody did! It sold all the copies and won a Newbery and we're all looking forward to the movie. Grown-ups have wiped tears from their eyes while telling me of their love for that book. If I were Katherine Applegate (one day, Esteemed Reader, one day), I would probably drop the mic in a most epic fashion and never publish another book. So I think Applegate deserves a round of applause just for being brave enough to publish a follow up novel and now a second (if I were a betting man, I'd say there's likely to be a third).

So is Wishtree as good as The One and Only Ivan? Don't be a jerk, Esteemed Reader. Why would you even ask that? But yes, yes it is:)

Wishtree is a wonderful read that made me laugh many, many times before the end. There's all sorts of amazing craft technique on display that makes this a must-read for writers. More, this is the sort of book I would be happy to place in the hands of any reader with the proud glow of having found something you're really going to enjoy.

Here's what I like about Applegate (having never met her): she's a writer. She's not somebody who spent 20 years tinkering on one novel, published it to huge acclaim and success, and then spent another 20 years working on the follow-up. A search for her books brings up over 50 titles, and that's probably a conservative number. That's inspiring stuff, Esteemed Reader. While I'm playing the new Assassin's Creed Friday (killing pixels in Egypt y'all!), she's going to be writing another book. I'd guess if you gave Applegate no money, no Newberies (yep, that's how I'm doing the plural form), or any other swell perks, but you did promise readers, she'd keep writing.

Wishtree is very much a writer's book as the very premise feels like an imposed challenge; like maybe Applegate lost a bet or something:) If any other writer sent me a book for review in which the protagonist was a tree, I'd say "hard pass." In this case, I sought this book out because I genuinely wanted to see if Applegate could pull off a full novel written from the perspective of a tree (if any writer could, she could).

And Applegate openly acknowledges the problem from the start:

“I’m passive. I just sit here watching the world.”
“You’re a tree, Red. That’s kind of the job description.”

So how the heck is a tree supposed to be a proactive character? The answer, of course, is that Applegate personifies the tree and endows it (she makes a point to tell us this tree is sexless) with qualities real trees presumably do not have. Is that cheating? I don't know, I wasn't there to hear the parameters of the bet she lost:)

The premise of this story is that our tree can talk as can other animals, but they never talk to humans (usually), for their own safety and because it's the rule. It's not quite clear what the consequences of breaking this one rule are, but it's not good.

So let's talk about this tree:

Name’s Red, by the way. 
Maybe we’ve met? Oak tree near the elementary school? Big, but not too? Sweet shade in the summer, fine color in the fall? 
I am proud to say that I’m a northern red oak, also known as Quercus rubra. Red oaks are one of the most common trees in North America. In my neighborhood alone, hundreds upon hundreds of us are weaving our roots into the soil like knitters on a mission.

You might be surprised to learn that all red oaks are named Red. 
Likewise, all sugar maples are called Sugar. All junipers are called Juniper. And all boojum trees are called Boojum. 
That’s how it is in tree world. We don’t need names to tell one another apart. 
Imagine a classroom where every child is named Melvin. Imagine the poor teacher trying to take attendance each morning. 
It’s a good thing trees don’t go to school. 
Of course, there are exceptions to the name rule. Somewhere in Los Angeles there’s a palm tree who insists on being called Karma, but you know how Californians can be.

Applegate has a lot of fun with names in this book. Red has many animal friends who live in its hollows. All of them are personified as well, though their personalities and actions are shaped by their animal characteristics, as they would be. And their names are consistently hysterical.

There's a skunk named FreshBakedBread, raccoon babies named You, You, and You, an Opossum named HairySpiders, and on and on, because each species of animal has their own method for determining names:

Many crows opt for sounds they’re fond of making. (Crows are excellent mimics.) I’ve met crows named WindChime, EighteenWheeler, and GrouchyCabDriver, not to mention a few others that are not appropriate for polite company.

My favorite character by far is Red's best friend, a crow named Bongo. Bongo likes to untie the shoes of children so she can steel their lunches while they're retying them. She's also very fond of leaving large "deposits" on the heads of humans who mess with animals and trees.

Bongo is a ride-or-die bird that is an extremely active character to counterpoint Red's mostly passive nature (because even personified, a tree is still stationary). Bongo also routinely gives Red a hard time for playing into the wise old tree cliché :

“I really think you should all calm down,” I interrupted. “Let’s not buy trouble. One day at a time, my friends. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?” 
The mothers glared at me. I heard a great deal of sighing. 
“Too much Wise Old Tree?” I asked. 
“Too much Wise Old Tree,” Bongo confirmed, as everyone retreated into their homes in a huff. “They’re all a bit tense,” Bongo said. “Worried about your … your situation.” 
“I can see that.” 
“I’m worried, too,” Bongo said in an almost-whisper.
“I know,” I said gently. “But every cloud has a silver—” 
“Red,” Bongo interrupted. 
“Sorry.” 
“There must be something I can do,” Bongo said. 
“You’re a good friend, Bongo. But sometimes all you can do is stand tall and reach deep.” 
“Red!” 
“Sorry,” I said again.

I had a college professor once point out to me that the reason Celie works as a protagonist in The Color Purple, despite her passiveness for so much of the book (lots of bad stuff happens to her without her doing much in response for years) is because she's paired up with Shug Avery and Sophia, who are both so active and aggressive they carry much of the protagonist's responsibilities until Ceili is ready to go all Spielbergian table-pounding and become an active character very late in her story.

As you know, Esteemed Reader, I routinely offer blurbs to publishers free of charge. So if the folks at Feiwell and Friends are looking for something snappy to slap on the cover of Wishtree for future editions, I offer up this gem:

"Katherine Applegate has written The Color Purple of talking tree stories." --Middle Grade Ninja

I'm cracking myself up today, but it is genuinely important that Red is surrounded by so many animals that can act on her behalf. And these Book of the Week reviews are typically less about the book and more about what we writers can take away from the author's use of technique. Something we should absolutely take away from Wishtree is techniques in which to make a necessarily somewhat passive character active.

Another trick is to put the character in an interesting setting where interesting things will happen around the passive character. Out of all the trees Applegate could tell us a story about, she's chosen one that's planted where some action is naturally going to happen because Red is a wishtree, which I didn't even know was a thing until I read this book:

Every year on the first day of May, people come from all over town to adorn me with scraps of paper, tags, bits of fabric, snippets of yarn, and the occasional gym sock. Each offering represents a dream, a desire, a longing.

It’s an honor, all the hopes bestowed upon my tired old limbs. 
Although by the end of May Day, I look like someone dumped a huge basket of trash on top of me.

By virtue of human tradition, Red is in a position to interact with humans rather intimately. Red is also in a position where all of the human characters in the story are likely to converge at least twice a year, and you can bet that's going to be important right around the climax of the story.

Ultimately, a story about trees, animals, or any other nonhuman character is a story written for humans. And humans are interested in humans. It's just how we are. So an author can either endow her nonhuman characters with human characteristics and problems humans can relate to, or directly involve them in human affairs. Applegate does both.

The community of humans around Red is behaving strangely:

Other things happened. Someone threw raw eggs at the blue house. One afternoon, a car passed by, filled with angry men yelling angry things, things like “Muslims, get out!” Sometimes Samar would walk home trailed by children taunting her. 
I love people dearly. 
And yet. 
Two hundred and sixteen rings, and I still haven’t figured them out.

I'm sure other reviews will focus on this aspect on the novel, as they should, but this review is already long and I've got something else I want to talk about. Plus, although a certain racist reality television star is never directly mentioned, it's pretty clear some of the folks in this story voted for President "Many Sides" and that they're part of the rise of Death Eaters in America. Fair enough. Children are living through these dark days as surely as the rest of us. But I have a hard enough time reading the news on a daily basis, so I don't want to devote my discussion of a talking tree book to the last angry buzzing of white supremacist wasps before winter we're currently living through in the United States.

Here's what relevant for our discussion: the problem of racism is not solved in this story, but a solution is discussed. Although Red is passive through the first part of the story, before the end, our heroic tree does take action that impacts the story as a protagonist must in order to qualify as the protagonist.

I don't want to spoil the book, but if the conceit of Wishtree is that trees can talk, but as a rule don't, you can imagine what unthinkable thing Red might do before the tale's end. In fact, the rules of storytelling demand Red do this thing. Red has been around longer than its human counterparts and knows a few things about human nature worth listening to.

And don't let my mention of politics put you off. The focus of Wishtree is on the two lonely children who need friends despite the conflict of their parents and their country, as well as the animals who want to save Red from being cut down. These separate conflicts merge in a big finale that involves my favorite human character's reaction to animals working together of all time:

One of the tree cutters took off his helmet and scratched his head. “This just don’t happen,” he said to Dave. “Those animals oughta be eating each other.”
“It’s some kinda crazy critter miracle,” said another worker. He pulled out his smartphone. “This is going on Facebook.”

That's about going to do it, except for one other thing. Wishtree is absolutely a story about a tree and its family of animals pulling together to overcome adversity, which is classic middle grade territory. It's also about racism and other ism's that divide our communities and the ways individual humans can overcome this weakness.

But don't be fooled, Esteemed Reader. Wishtree is also an examination of mortality and the end of existence that awaits us all, which is an unusual treat in a middle grade story.

This is the kind of thing that's easier to chat about when it's happening to a tree, but remember, this is a tree with many human qualities. Don't be thrown off by the metaphor. We're not just discussing a tree that's scheduled to be chopped down:

I was in the midst of a conversation with Bongo, who had just pointed out to me that I was a year older. Two hundred and sixteen rings old, to be precise. 
“Another sproutday,” I said. “I still feel like a sapling.” 
“You don’t look a day over a hundred and fifty,” Bongo replied. “Best-looking tree on the block.”
“I’m really”—I paused for comic effect—“getting up there.”

I wondered, too, if I’d done enough for the world I loved. It was something I’d asked myself before. But impending death has a way of focusing your attention.

I didn’t want to leave the world I loved so much. I wanted to meet next spring’s owl nestlings. I wanted to praise the new maple sapling across the street when it blushed red as sunset. I wanted my roots to journey farther, my branches to reach higher. 
But that is how it is when you love life. And I could accept that if my time had come, it had come. After a life as fine as mine, who was I to complain?

The end of my story was coming. 
Well, it had been a beautiful story. How lucky was I to have seen a day like today?

It's sobering stuff, Esteemed Reader. Don't let anybody tell you this is just a talking tree story. And don't ever let anyone convince you that middle grade fiction can't be used to discuss the entire spectrum of the human experience.

Red never hints at an afterlife for trees or finds some other means of flinching. This is a stark look at the predicament we who are alive and know one day we won't be find ourselves in. Through Red, Applegate gives us a philosophical take on death that is perhaps useful to be read by non-tree entities.

And that's were we'll leave it for today, Esteemed Reader. Make sure you come back Wednesday when we'll have Katherine Applegate here, assuming she's not ticked that I speculated her hard-labored and much-loved novel is the result of a lost bet:) As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Wishtree:

Over the years, I’ve learned that botanists—those lucky souls who study the lives of plants all day—call some trees, such as hollies and willows, “dioecious,” which means they have separate male and female trees. 
Lots of other trees, like me, are called “monoecious.” That’s just a fancy way of saying that on the same plant you’ll find separate male and female flowers. 
It is also evidence that trees have far more interesting lives than you sometimes give us credit for.

In Stephen’s eyes, in the way he’d looked at Samar that afternoon, I saw something I’d seen many times before. 
A wish.

“Here’s an idea for you: Ideas are a bad idea,” said Bongo.

In the silence that followed, I felt as if the whole world was holding its breath. I’d broken the rule. Stephen and Samar still stared open-mouthed at me. They looked as rooted to the ground as I was.

One creature’s nastiness is another creature’s nibble.

Each cat was wearing an embarrassingly sparkly harness.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own. 

Book of the Week: GIDEON'S SPEAR by Darby Karchut

First Paragraph(s): Screaming bored out of his mind, thirteen-year-old Finn MacCullen blew a long sigh as he wandered around the clearing in the woods. The late-afternoon rays of the summer sun lit the trees surrounding him, tinting the trunks of the Ponderosa pines with the same shade of bronze as that of the large knife, almost the length of his forearm, he held in one hand. With a snap of his wrist, he flipped it into the air and caught it by the handle.

Holding the weapon level with his eyes, he tilted it to and fro, trying to view his reflection. For just a moment, he caught a flash of blue eyes in a boyish face dusted with freckles, and a mop of hair the same flaming color as the blade. Adjusting the angle downward, he grinned as he was further rewarded with a glimpse of a twisted rope of gold, as thick as the Knight Mac Roth's thumb, that encircled his throat just above the collar of his T-shirt. "You are, Finnegan MacCullen," he murmured to himself, adjusting the torc so that the twin knobs on each end of the neckpiece were dead center under his Adam's apple, "one kickbutt warrior."

Gravel crunched behind him.

He whirled around. "Oh, crap." His heart rammed against the roof of his mouth at the sight of his worst nightmare.

Hello there, Esteemed Reader! Are you ready for St. Patrick's Day? In the past, I've spent the day at the bar (ahh, writer friends), but this year I'll likely be home reading a book with a baby on my chest drinking not so much as a green beer (I might do green tea). But you'll note from the new Irish background that I'm in the spirit, helped greatly by our old friend Darby Karchut's newest Gideon's Spear, the sequel to Finn Finnegan. 

You may note that the word count for All Right Now has slowed a bit, but I assure you this is because I've decided to prepare another horror story for you to be released in the next two months rather than waiting until October. For more details, I was interviewed yesterday at Jessica Lawson's extraordinary blog, Falling Leaflets, where I discuss character development in depth (if you're into that kinda thing, and if you're here, you might be).

Bad Ninja! My apologies, Esteemed Reader. How rude of me to discuss myself in a post about someone else's book. This space should be dedicated to Darby Karchut and an overview of her work, not a cheap ad for yours truly. I apologize. Won't happen again. 

Let's look at Gideon's Spear, available at fine retailers everywhere. Here is my favorite passage from Gideon's Spear written by Darby Karchut:

“Finn Finnegan is a Fine Folio of Fantastic Fiction!” — Middle Grade Ninja

Isn't that a--oh for crying out loud, I've done it again! I did everything I could to discuss this week's book and I ended up talking about me. That's because Gideon's Spear is the first book I'm aware of to feature a blurb from me, though any author who's book I've reviewed is welcome to blurb me anywhere they like. You may remember in my review of Finn Finegan I joked that the good people of Spencer Hill Press were welcome to use my blurb. I also offered this gem: 

Finn Finnegan is a good time read and you're going to enjoy yourself. This St. Patrick's Day, don't just get pass-out drunk. Read Finn Finnegan while-st you drink, then pass out

Well, the blurb Spencer Hill Press chose is good too and I'm thrilled with it. Gideon's Spear sits in a place of honor on my bookshelf as I bought an actual paper copy as a keepsake (though I actually read most of it on Kindle). And Darby Karchut was kind enough to blurb my book (all ways lead back to the ninja). I consider her a friend. So I think we can dispense with the review and spend the remainder of this post coming up with potential blurbs for the upcoming three-quel, The Hound at the Gate.

How about this: "Gideon's Spear through my heart and Darby Karchut's to blame. She gives writing middle grade Irish fantasy a good name." Or the trite: "Gideon's Spear is Good Stuff." Or the misleading: "I was so shocked when Finn died at the end!" Or the bizarre: "In the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, having watched everyone you ever knew or loved burn to a cinder, as you sit waiting for the radiation sickness to put you out and at last take your pain away, those hours will be made less agonizing by reading Darby Karchut's Gideon's Spear."

All right, honest and for true, let's talk about this book. Honest and for true, I liked Gideon's Spear even better than Finn Finnegan, though newcomers to the series would be better off starting with that book. The origin and introduction of our characters out of the way, Karchut is able to spend book two deepening the characters and their relationships, thickening the plot, and raising the stakes. Also, there's even more action this time around, which makes the pages fly by in no time. 

Karchut expertly reminds return readers and catches up new readers by giving us a casual conversation in chapter one between our heroes that works nicely as a "last time on Finn Finnegan" narration:

“But how can I learn anything if all I do is follow you around?” 
Gideon’s face darkened. “Arguing with me is as dangerous as hunting the Amandán.” 
“But I’ve fought them before.” Finn’s voice cracked in frustration. “I know—” 
“You know less than you think. A few skirmishes with the goblins do not make you ready to hunt alone.” 
“Why won’t you let me at least try?” 
“Because you’re not ready!” Finn scowled. “It’s because of the whole Spear thing, isn’t it?” 
“Oh, aye, that’s it,” Gideon said, heavy on the sarcasm. “Discovering that my apprentice of less than two months is none other than the legendary Spear of the Tuatha De Danaan has made me decide to treat you differently from now on.” 
“It has?” Finn’s heart sank. I’m sick of always being different. I just want to be a Knight. Like Gideon and Mac Roth. 
“No, you dolt.” Gideon reached out and cuffed him lightly on the side of the head.

What I like about that passage is not just the brevity of the exposition, but the way Karchut shows us the nature of Gideon and Finn's relationship (as well as explaining the title). Last time around, I compared Gideon to Hagrid from that other wonderful series of children's books you may have heard of. But that's not accurate. Gideon is a much more central figure than Hagrid and a large amount of this book is devoted to his and Finn's mentor/apprentice/surrogate father/son relationship and I think it's fair to say that relationship is the core of this series. Gideon even writes his own journal entries as does Finn, and Hagrid never got nearly this amount of screen time. 

But lest we forget, our heroes are in the middle of an ongoing war, naturally. Karchut catches us up on that score early on by having the Amandán conveniently attack with more exposition than weapons. Note Gideon taking center stage with no Finn in sight:

“Too bad yer whelp turned tail and ran,” spoke another one. “I likes me Fey young and fresh.” 
“I just likes mine dead,” a deep voice growled. “The day will come when ye high and mighty—” it stopped to spit out the name “—Tuatha De Danaan will be nothing but a pile of leftovers. And Eire will be ours once more.” 
“Not that old grievance again,” Gideon said, tedium in his tone. “You think the death of all Tuatha De Danaan will return the Green Isle to the likes of you?” He raised his chin. “Ireland will never be yours again. The Goddess Danu gave it to us to hold.” 
“We hads it first,” the first goblin hissed. “We be the true heirs of Eire. Us the Bog-born, not the feeble offspring of some upstart goddess.” 
Gideon curled his lip. “Yet here you are. In Colorado. Not Ireland.” 
“We could says the same thing about ye Tuatha De Danaan—” 
“Bah,” the second Amandán interrupted. “Too much talking, not enough killing. Let’s get him, mates.” The pack closed ranks.

As with Finn Finnegan, the language gets a little strong for younger readers, but is perfect for upper middle grade readers who will chuckle at "assengai" just as surely his new African neighbors and Finn do. Comparisons to Harry Potter like the one I made are inevitable, but truth be told this book reminded me more of the Lord of the Rings and a little of Duck Tales.

There are goblin battles galore, but Gideon and Finn can't just fight them all day. They've got to come up against a heavy hitter sooner or later. Enter Iona. She's a witch, though she prefers the term "enchantress," and she and Gideon have an interesting history that goes back centuries, as such feuds do when dealing with fantasy characters. Gideon has reason to believe Iona was indirectly responsible for the death of his son, which is a great touch. Iona wants to get her claws on Gideon's new son, which is what editors mean when they tell us to "raise the stakes." Gideon and Iona are gonna rumble and this time it's personal, which is as it should be, or no one's going to care enough to read book three.

Gideon's Spear surpasses the original and it's a great read to be enjoyed by younger readers and adults, especially teachers like Darby Karchut, who will surely get a kick out of allusions such as these:

“Finnegan, wake,” he said softly, smiling to himself at the old joke. He nudged the bed with a knee, giving it a shake.

If you like action, adventure, and fun, and if you don't, you probably don't like books, but if you do like those things, Gideon's Spear is for you. This one comes highly recommended and with just one more book to go, now is the perfect time to join the series.

As always, I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from Gideon's Spear:

He looked down at Finn’s bandaged hands. His eyebrows asked the question. 

“And I’m assuming the O’Neills will be footing the bill for the festivities?” Mac Roth nodded in anticipation. “Ye know the O’Neills. They’re a proud family and enjoy sharing their wealth with the rest of us.” “You mean flaunting their wealth,” Gideon replied, then shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t want to show disrespect by not partaking in their generosity.” “Forever thinking of others, Lir.” “Aye, that I do. Excessive kindness has always been a fault of mine.”

Something about Iona made Finn’s skin want to crawl off his skeleton. And hide.

A faint drumming accompanied the voice, the thump of a bodhran, its rhythm as ancient as the first heartbeat of the world.

Icy silence frosted the inside of the cab.  

 
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Book of the Week is simply the best book I happened to read in a given week. There are likely other books as good or better that I just didn’t happen to read that week. Also, all reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.  

Book Review: FINN FINNEGAN by Darby Karchut

First Paragraph: "Son of a goat!" The boy swore and jumped back. A second squirt of bird poop landed with a plop, this time on the toe of his shoe. "Oh, real funny," he said with a grimace. He glared up at the crow swinging back and forth on the power line overhead, sooty wings spread wide for balance. The bird cocked its head and stared back, its eye a red-rimmed marble.

Darby Karchut will be here Thursday to face the 7 Questions.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Esteemed Reader! I'm listening to The Departed soundtrack and drinking my coffee "Irish." I realize everyone else will be properly celebrating on Sunday, but I say we should be allowed to pinch non-green-wearers more than one day a year.

Esteemed Reader, the only name I can think of more Irish than Darby Karchut has got to be Finn Finnegan. The cover of this week's book is green, just in case there might be any doubt in the reader's mind this will be an Irish-themed story. I guess the publisher wouldn't spring for the sound module ensuring each time a reader opens the book it plays Danny Boy:)

"Finn Finnegan is a Fine Folio of Fantastic Fiction!" There's my blurb should the good people at Spencer Hill Press desire to slap it on Finn's cover next to the blurb from the author of Ashfall and Ashen Winter. That's right. Those white words across the forehead of the hunky pale kid whose piercing blue eyes are meant to attract female readers (and I have no doubt they will) belong to none other than our favorite cannibal, Mike Mullin.

The publishing world is a small place and we writers are all six degrees of Kevin Bacon from someone else. That's worth remembering when you want to make fun of a book for having a green cover to signify Irish-ness:) I've looked the cover over multiple times for a shamrock and haven't found one, but I'm betting there's one hidden somewhere like an Irish Waldo.

Finn (not bleedin Finnegan) MacCullen is a thirteen-year-old apprentice with the famous Irish temperament (no idea what that means). But he's the lad to follow for a series of adventures. Girls want him and boys want to be him. He's joining forces with Gideon Lir, a Knight and warrior whose a bit of  Hagrid mixed with a bit of Dumbledore.

Gideon Lir is the one to break the news to Finn that like a fair number of non-magic folks in Ireland, he's been born into a holy war with a race of goblin-like creatures called the Amandan:

"Since the beginning of time, the non-human beings of Ireland, the Tuatha Da Dananan and the Amandan, have battled for control of our beloved land. For both have a claim to it, as our ancestral home. In fact, the Amandan believe they first emerged from the peat bogs of Eire--the Bog-born. In a sense, they and the land are one."
"What about us?"
"Why, we are descendants of Danu, one of the Celtic goddesses of war. Hence our flair for battle. She bestowed upon us the Emerald Isle as our own as long as we could hold it from the Amandan, and our struggle with the beasties would have been contained to Ireland if it wasn't for the invaders.

The Amandan are shape-shifting nasties who regularly attack Finn when the story's dragging a bit:) There's plenty of action throughout and the reader will leave this first story eager for book 2 (teased at the end). Book 1 does a nice job of setting up the world of Finn and preparing us for what promises to be be an exciting series. As such, Karchut hints at several future plot lines and lays down the rules for her fantasy:

The Knight nodded. "Whatever kills a mortal can kill us. Except our powers and our training make us just a wee bit more difficult to destroy. Always remember this, Finn." He tapped his torc for emphasis. "In spite of being part human, ye come from an ancient line of warriors."

Finn Finnegan is a great read and you're going to have a good time, largely because Darby Karchut is genuinely funny. Finn and Gideon Lir banter like the best comedy teams and their journal entries are particularly fun. Karchut hints at some possibly darker territory ahead in the books to come, but Finn Finnegan is at it's best during its many action scenes and jokes.

This made me laugh:

"I dinna write the rules. It clearly states in the 'How to Train Yer Apprentice' manual that the apprentice does the laundry."
"Can I see this manual? When we get back?"
"I seem to recall that I've misplaced me copy."
"So, how do I know you're not just making all this sh--crap up?"

Something that struck me curious was Karchut's casual swearing throughout the text. Finn Finnegan is written much like a MG novel with YA elements, making it the quintessential tween adventure. Time will tell which direction the sequels take the story, but Karchut slips in more than one "ass" and "arse," yet falls short of a sh@* (as do I, apparently).

I don't really have a point here, except it's odd how some language is just fine for a tween novel and some isn't. For instance, if I had written poop, no one would care, excrement, no one would've noticed, but if I write the other word, it's vulgar.  It's a wacky world of social norms and I have no doubt Karchut is bucking them to endear younger readers to her. If a teacher reads this book to her class and has to read the word "ass," those students will request more of that author's book be read:)

In conclusion, Finn Finnegan is a good time read and you're going to enjoy yourself. This St. Patrick's Day, don't just get pass-out drunk. Read Finn Finnegan while-st you drink, then pass out (this blurb also available). As always, I'll leave you with my favorite passages from Finn Finnegan:

Grief poked a claw into Gideon's heart.

Her features began twisting and shifting with a moist popping sound. (I love all passages featuring the word "moist" -- MGN)

Finn nodded politely. Read Shakespeare--yeah, like that's ever going to happen. 

He round himself tumbling back down the slope, his arms flailing as he tried to control his fall. Branches clawed at him, leaving burning scratches along his back and stomach where his tee shirt pulled up. The ground and sky exchanged places in slow motion. 

Finn's voice cracked as he let out a yell and charged.
And tripped over a half-buried log in the sand.
He slammed face-first into the ground, sand abrading his cheek. The air whooshed out of him. He laid there, mouth opening and shutting like a stranded fish.




STANDARD DISCLAIMER: All reviews here will be written to highlight a book’s positive qualities. It is my policy that if I don’t have something nice to say online, I won’t say anything at all (usually). I’ll leave you to discover the negative qualities of each week’s book on your own.