Children's Fiction ~

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark

Review by: Bluninja29

Opening Thoughts:

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark is a collection of stories based off the TV show Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2003 TV series.) It has 11 Short Stories all based off episodes from the TV show. with more view points that we didn't get to see in the show. One of the Short stories im are gonna look at is about Count Dooku.

Story:

Count Dooku was surprised attacked by the Republic.

Presentation:

I do like how these are in the characters point of view like Count Dooku. I also like how all the stories are based off the show. What I didn't like is how these are short stories, but it is a nitpick so I won't get crazy over it. I honestly liked this book.

If you are a star wars nerd or want to give your kid a star wars book to read. then this is the book for you!

4/5

This is the sweetest juvenile sf book I've read in a long time. 'Cog' follows the eponymous android, designed for realistic human cognition, as he has to make up for a very, very big mistake of a learning experience.

Cog has lived happily since their creation-date of some months before with Gina in a house in the suburbs until a misunderstanding has Cog taken to a new "home" at the headquarters of the tech firm that funded their creation. Once there Cog makes friends with a talking car, a trash-bot, a robo-dog and a sibling.

'Cog' quickly gets to the heart of artificial-intelligence sf, morality, and the buddy road-trip adventure. This will engage young readers at once and make them ask questions about assumptions of appearance, the law, and family. The publisher is really putting their support behind this book and it is 100% warranted. Loved it.

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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Of course, the humans couldn't go alone. There had to be dogs. Because wherever humans went dogs came along. Like rats, only more helpful. Dogs would herd livestock. Dogs would keep watch against the unknown. And, more importantly, dogs would keep the human crew company during the long spaceflight, and on their new home, far away from Earth.

 

But first they had to get there.

I guess this is technically a "Middle Grade" book -- but forget about that. Call it All-Ages instead -- that way, adults and YA readers and . . . everyone can enjoy this SF guilt-free. I should also include this line from The Big Idea post Van Eekhout wrote on Scalzi's blog: "Spoiler: I don’t kill off any of the dogs in this book. Why not? Because I’m not a monster, that’s why not." It's important to get that out of the way.

Let's start with this: the rationale to bring dogs along on a spaceship. It's brilliant. It also points to one of the biggest problems with Starfleet, the Colonial Battle Fleet, the Serenity, etc. A lack of animals. Sure, NCC 1701-D had pets (not that we saw them often), but they were sealed up in cabins. And Firefly's episode "Safe" had cattle, but that was an oddity. The animals aboard Laika are there for purposes -- like the main character, Lopside. He's there to hunt rats -- where there are humans and cargo, there are rats. Something small and fast -- and with a good nose -- is needed to hunt rats down.

The book will do a better job explaining the roles of the other three dogs and what advances in breeding have led to dogs being capable of being more than the dogs we have today -- while still remaining dogs -- to become Barkonauts.

These poor, brave dogs go into the hibernation state just before the humans do to complete the voyage to a nearby star system as part of human exploration and colonization, the first mission like this humanity has tried. But when the dogs wake up, they notice something's wrong -- part of the ship is missing, as is the crew.

They're too far into the mission to turn around, too far away for a rescue mission to reach them. At this point, Lopside and the others have to try to salvage what they can and limp along to their final destination.

Lopside is a terrier mix, he's brave, he has (understandably) abandonment issues -- which are not helped at all by the absence of the humans. He's a little scatter-brained (like a good terrier) and he's incredibly loyal and has a great heart. The other barkonauts are as well-drawn and lovable.

Van Eekhout is clearly a dog-lover and it comes out in his characters. He's also a pretty good story-teller, because even with that spoiler, I was invested in the outcome and really wasn't sure how he was going to pull things off in a way that was satisfying and that wouldn't reduce semi-sensitive 5th-graders across the globe to quivering balls of tears (a lesson Wilson Rawls could've used, I have to say -- no, I'm not still torn up about Old Dan and Little Ann, why do you ask?). He does succeed in that -- although some might get a bit misty at a point or two. It's a fun and creative story, and takes some oft-repeated SF tropes and deals with them in a refreshing way.

Ignore the stars -- I can't bring myself to give it more, I don't know why. Pay attention to what I have said above and this: read the book. It'll warm your heart, it'll make you make you a little sad, it'll give you something to grin about -- and it tells a good story, too. What more do you want?

I actually read this months ago, but life got all up in my business, and I didn't review it. So I'm going to do so now, because I really liked it.

+: Standalone (omg I am tired of cliffhangers. And I like ongoing well enough where each book tells one tale and is done, but nobody seems to write those anymore much.)

+: Light on the romance. There is one, sort of, but it's not the driving force.

+: Omnipotent godlike powers, that... well they aren't always that helpful. Or let me say, neither main protagonist is a Mary Sue, despite being well armed. There's no tension for me, when the heroes are just getting powerup after powerup, or they start out so damn awesome there's no way they could lose.

-/+: Cover is a bit misleading, it looks like any number of PNR centered on a female heroine kicking butt and taking names. And while our heroine does in fact do a fair bit of both, it's not a PNR, and she isn't in fact the major character - she's one of two major characters, and the male protagonist just as badass and possibly more fun, since he actually knows what's going on and she's a bit lost for a while, although she makes the best of it.

-: Standalone (there's definitely room for a sequel, or more in this setting, although this story is most definitely done and told. And I would read the hell out of that sequel.)

-: It's a little confusing and I suspect you need to already be pretty familiar with Nordic myth, or at least the prophecies surrounding Ragnarök, or you'll miss quite a lot.

+: Even if you aren't actually familiar with the myths and prophecies, it's a rollicking ride, it'll just be full of really out of left-field events and impossible to pronounce names.

So essentially this is a modern urban fantasy set in current day(ish) California, using the characters and background of the Norse pantheon. And it didn't offend the hell out of me. Yay!

That might seem like damning with faint praise, but it's actually not, it's pretty darn big praise.

I'm a pretty critical reader of people taking mythologies I'm familiar with. Which amounts to two of them, but this is one. Bearing in mind I live in Viking central (my kids junior high had a runestone on the grounds, we are about 20 minutes from Birka by boat or over ice in winter (not the one with the dragons, sadly, but the actual viking capital) and so it permeates everything around here. My kids were absolutely steeped in viking culture and naturally the mythology, and so that kind of meant I was too. The swedes take preserving their cultural heritage pretty seriously. while at the same time not believing a word of it. I kinda like that.

Weirdly, it doesn't bother me when it's done camp, like the Marvel versions of the Asgårdians running rampant, because they basically just stole the names of a few things and completely made up the rest with glee and abandon. But when an author takes a mythology and attempts to use it "seriously" but gets it wildly wrong, that's just annoying. Is this distinction rational? Possibly not, but it's there. van Eekhout managed to get through a whole book without even once pushing my "omg, that is so wrong" buttons.

That and it's a darn good story, with a really satisfying ending.

Dragon Coast was the third installation in the Daniel Blackland series, and it brought the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion. The story the second and third books focused on was wrapped up, but the book was left open ended enough that I wouldn't mind returning to this world and these characters again in the future. High points remain setting, voice, and character - all consistently engaging throughout the series. I also enjoyed the continued themes of fatherhood, which have run through all three books and seem to come to a head within this one. We also get some fun action and a return to some of the more heist roots established earlier in the series.

The downside of this book was that some portions were far more interesting than others. Without giving out spoilers I can say this: with the cast of characters split into groups I found myself far more invested in some of the story lines than others, and I got the feeling Van Eekhout felt similarly since a few of them seemed to resolve themselves very simply or failed to really coalesce. (Max and Gabriel remain far more compelling than they have any right to be. Sam significantly less so.) There are some interesting and shining moments to be found, but the connective tissue is somewhat lacking in this one. I forgive it because the former two books did so much heavy lifting, but I can't help but feel this book needed more time on Van Eekhout's desk percolating and revising. Simply put: it was good, but not great. Don't let this dissuade you from reading though. This is by far one of the better series I've discovered in recent years, and Van Eekhout has earned my loyalty for future releases, whether set in this world or another.