William Shakespeare’s The Phantom of Menace by Ian Doescher

When Quirk Books offered me the opportunity to review the first installment of William Shakespeare's Star Wars I turned down the offer. I'd reviewed the first and the second and I was not a fan. After having been in a semester-long Shakespeare class that felt like I'd been in it for years, I was not happy having Shakespeare in my life again unless it was for school. However, after thinking about it for a bit I realized that I knew just the person who should review it for my blog: a fellow English major and blogger for Nerd Underground.

Ladies and gentlemen, Angie presents to you: A review by Alex, her friend with the English degree!

“The Phantom Menace” has been regarded as the worst “Star Wars” movie of the big six. Having watched it as a young padawan, I have nothing but good memories of the forsaken film. But how does Ian Doescher’s, the author responsible for “William Shakespeare’s Star Wars” series, dramatization of “The Phantom Menace” hold up?

THE GOOD:

Fans of Shakespeare and the “Star Wars” series will have a fun time reading this play. Doescher's Shakespearean text is far easier to read and to understand than any of Shakespeare's original works. This makes it more accessible to those who are more fans of “Star Wars” than Shakespeare.

The setup for “The Phantom Menace” works well for the plot of a Shakespearean play. Two ambassadors go to negotiate with an evil federation taking advantage of a young queen. The heroes flee to the "wilderness" (aka Tatooine), they comeback to take what is theirs and the play’s drama is resolved by good conquering evil and people dying.

Doescher’s “The Phantom of Menace” further develops the original characters by fleshing them out with soliloquies. Characters are provided with more agency than what they had in the film. Padmé Amidala is a young queen, judged by the older council she’s surrounded by. Obi-Wan is a Jedi who’s grown weary of his position as apprentice to Qui-Gon. The most notable change Doescher does with “The Phantom Menace” is with Jar-Jar Binks.

It would have been easy to make Jar-Jar the fool character, as seen in many of Shakespeare’s plays. Doescher puts a spin on the most disliked character in all of “Star Wars.” Instead of being the fool providing the comic relief of the play, Jar-Jar is the trickster character. Jar-Jar is clever and plays the fool out of necessity to forward his plans of uniting the Gungans and the Naboo. His actions are no longer intended for comedic effect, but are sly moves to carry the story along. On Tatooine, he steals Sebulba's food, so they may meet with Anakin again, as opposed to just being a foolish move of a simpleton. Even the pivotal decision of returning to Naboo for the final two Acts is manufactured Jar-Jar.

Doescher also likes to make vague references to other movies, books, etc. From Dr. Seuss, to Liam Neeson films, even from The Bard himself. They may be tricky to find, but some are unmistakable. In Doescher’s afterword, he says that each line of Mace Windu’s has “a little something special thrown in for the Samuel L. Jackson fans.”

THE BAD:

The play is very long. The entire story of "The Phantom Menace" is re-created, scene for scene from the movie with Doescher only going off-script at least twice. The constant cutting back and forth from scene to scene to accommodate for a few lines of dialogue causes the story to drag.

What adds to the play’s reading time is the narration of action scenes. Often what happens in stage plays is action is only portrayed in stage directions. In many plays, pivotal conversations and events even happen off-stage. Doescher chooses to expand on these scenes from the film as opposed to glossing over them. This can cause moments to become long and drawn out, especially during action scenes when there was very little to no spoken dialogue in the film.

The story also lacks true depth. With Shakespeare’s original works, readers can analyze and interpret the text in different ways. Dialogues and monologues carry far greater weight and deeper messages than just reciting the occurring events.

Doescher’s writing is more the latter, just a narration of events written in iambic-pentameter, a feat not to be downplayed.

RATING

“William Shakespeare’s The Phantom of Menace” is a fun read for those who are both Shakespeare fans and Star Wars fans. It is easy to pick up and read if one is only the latter. Doescher adds much to the film’s dramatization in terms of character development and giving them agencies. However, in terms of length, Doescher’s additions can be too much.

Top Ten Books Which Feature Characters Who Kick Ass

Top Ten Books Which Feature Characters Who Kick Ass

1. Hermione Granger--Harry Potter: Uh, Hermione...duh. She not only takes care of Harry and Ron and repeatedly saves them from death, she’s also the smartest which in like, all time.


2. Ginny Weasley--Harry Potter: You know, only saves the world with Harry, Ron, and Hermione; even if her part wasn’t displayed as prominently


3. Selaena--Throne of Glass: One of the better books I’ve read that features a woman who doesn’t need a man to save her. Of course, the men do occasionally save her, but we know that she is perfectly capable of saving her own fine self.


4. Alyssa Gardner--Splintered: Incredibly courageous, even if she doesn’t fight like the other women I’ve named so far. She goes through hell and back--well, Wonderland and back--to save one of the people who means the most to her, her mother.


5. Sophronias--Etiquette and Espionage: Another young woman who is brave beyond measure but mostly just gets herself into trouble and then, you know, out of trouble (as best she can). She’s sneaky, can fight, and can outthink even the smartest prof.


6. Alina--Shadow and Bone: Words cannot describe how amazing Alina is. She saves the world pretty much all by herself. She orchestrates plans when the kingdom falls to attack and finds a way to raise her abilities to the max, making her the most powerful Sun-Summoner of all flippin’ time.  


7. Cia Vale--The Testing: Cia is chosen for the most difficult, life endangering honor and has to fight to save her life and the life of the man she loves; and she hardly breaks a sweat doing it.


8. Thomas--The Maze Runner: Quite frankly, I’m including Thomas because I feel like I should add some men in here but most
   of the books I’ve read feature strong women anyway, so this was a difficult choice to make. He’s in this list because he is a strong leader. There you go, man #1.


9. Debrah--Darkly Dreaming Dexter: Police Lieutenant  and adopted sister of the serial killer Dexter. She can fight, saves lives, and curses unlike a true lady, and I fucking love her for that.


10. Joel--The Rithmatist: Dat boy makes the most out of his “disability” and disappointment. I’ve read the first  book and truly don’t know what it’s going to go from here.


11. And # 11, because I’m a rebel. Neville--Ha
    rry Potter (all books): Oh I soooo wish I could give away how awesome he is and how important he is to this series but I can’t, I just can’t ruin the end of the series for you like that.

 

 

 

Review: Splintered by A. G. Howard

Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.

When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own

I loved this book! I think. It wasn't an extraordinary book like Shadow and Bone but it wasn't as terrible as Alice through the Zombie Glass (quite frankly, most books are better than that one). Splintered is a unique book, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, with a lovely love triangle.

The Good: The original Alice in Wonderland never appealed to me.  I avoid classics like the plague; I find them tedious and boring and they are never able to catch my interest and keep it like a good book should. But Splintered? That book had me reading it during class (shhh, don't tell my profs!), at lunch, while I should have been doing homework, and late at night. It was an easy read, I read it in two nights and I loved every minute of it.

In Alyssa's family, the women were crazy, to the point of institutionalism. From the blurb on the back, I think it's safe to say that it's no spoiler to say that Alyssa finds out, during the course of this book, that the women in her family weren't crazy--far from it--they were adventurous and brave. Not only was Alyssa gutsy but impulsive, she was the hero of the story, something I very much appreciated. I suppose the author really wouldn't have had much of a book if Alyssa didn't embark on a quest to, you know, save the world but they could have done it badly, and they didn't.

The story resembles a screwed up version of Alice in Wonderland, a story so similar to the original but yet so different and disturbing that I was legit creeped out through a good part of the book. Have I mentioned that I like creepy? This wasn't a boring remake at all. In fact, I prefer this book to the Alice movies I've watched (assuming they kept to the story line).

Have I mentioned that I adore love triangles? This one between Alyssa, Jeb (her longtime friend) and Morpheus (the childhood friend who is manipulative but beautiful and caring) was especially interesting, considering Alyssa had to choose between a human and a mythical creature (for lack of a better word). Each man had something different to offer her (see spoiler section for my opinion of the final verdict).

I want to address something I don't usually: the aesthetics of the book. Not only is the cover beautiful and colorful, the font is purple, something I've never come across before. It was beautiful, though at night my eyes were so tired that the purple morphed into black font. Not the end of the world. I've found that books that have a model's face on them often makes me put down the book. After all, this is my reading experience. I don't want someone else telling me how my characters look. Their face is for me to come up with, not the publishers. Fortunately, this didn't deter me; that could be because I received this from the publisher and felt obligated to read it but I was also drawn to the colors on the cover and the font color so even if I didn't get it for review, I would have read it anyway.

The Bad: The way Jeb treats Alyssa is eerily similar to how Edward in the God-awful Twilight series treats Bella. He ends up being the hero, though Alyssa wasn't incapable of taking care of herself but she was pestered way to many times by Jeb about staying safe. That doesn't mean she's a strong female lead--she very much was. She was brave, intelligent, and cunning but she took too much of what the men said to her to heart.

The Final Verdict: Well worth your time. Now, for the fun part:

Be ye warned, spoilers ahead!

Oh my gosh. Jeb. Jeb went through the whole book with her and was the supporting character to Alyssa's story but...but... then he's gone. He's not dead, mind you, but he may as well as died in Wonderland. When Alyssa wished that he had never come with her, she saved his soul, but she also severed a special connection she had with no one else and would never have with anyone other than her mother. But, a mother-daughter relationship is very different from the romantic one she developed with Jeb and therefor did not make up for the lost time and romance she had with him during their adventure.

I'm glad her mom got out of the asylum. I was wondering how they'd make her seem sane again and I thought being stocked up with meds were a great way to make her no longer bat-shit crazy.

As for Morpheus, well, I can hardly feel bad for him. For one thing, there's no reason to feel bad for him. Although he only kinda-sorta got what he wanted, he got to live--outside of the box, no less--and he could still flit in and out of Alyssa's world. Whether that was to spy on her or watch out for her, that's TBD.

Wasteland by Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan

Welcome to the Wasteland. Where all the adults are long gone, and now no one lives past the age of nineteen...Everyone is forced to live under the looming threat of rampant disease and brutal attacks by the Variants-- hermaphroditic outcasts that live onthe outskirts of Prin. Esther thinks there's more to life than toiling at harvesting, gleaning, and excavating, day after day under the relentless sun, just hoping to make it to the next day. But then Caleb, a mysterious stranger, arrives in town, and Esther begins to question who she can trust. As shady pasts unravel into the present and new romances develop, Caleb and Esther realize that they must team together to fight for their lives and for the freedom of Prin. --Goodreads

First impression: I'm torn about this book. While the premise was great, and the writing was strong, it didn't leave me wanting more as soon as the book ended (unlike Taken or Throne of Glass). This isn't a book I feel compelled to rave about but I would still recommend it.

As you can tell just by looking at the cover and title, this book is set in a post apocalyptic world where only the children survive and anyone over the age of nineteen dies a terrible death. In other words, my kind of story.

The cover is ominous which immediately made me curious as to how depressing this book has the potential to be. It wasn't clear when I started reading, and it took a good fourth of the book before I figured that out.

The Good: The writing, as I mentioned above, is strong. You can't tell that the book has two authors because it flows smoothly (unlike the stories I wrote when I was in middle school with a girl friend). The world the children/young adults live in is terrible and appears to be hopeless. However, they've worked out a system.

At fifteen, they marry. At seventeen, they reproduce, and at nineteen, they die. 

I love that the children/young adults found a way to thrive without adults. Stories about strong young people fill me with hope. Too often adults do not take children seriously. This book portrayed tough young people, people that can take care of themselves. As a Teen Library Assistant, this gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, knowing that there's another book out there that young people can aspire to be like the characters.

The book is split into three parts. I absolutely love it when books are arranged that way. It helps me put the story into perspective and keeps the timeline in focus. Skar is a variant who has a part in this story, a somewhat substantial to the story though she was hardly the focus. I was very happy with this, none too often do the misunderstood "other" characters have a considerable part in the novel. While she didn't have her own chapters, she was, as the "other," seen and represented.


The Bad: It just didn't grab me, or make me want to keep reading. The only reason I finished this book was because I was trying to see how many books I could read in two weeks. (Don't judge me, any reason to read is a legit reason.) Of course I wanted to see Esther be successful but halfway through I just didn't care. I could have lived with out finishing it and been quite all right, thank you very much.

While this wasn't the longest book I've read, 328 pages is still pretty substantial. However, with each new chapter the authors (or publishers, who decides how to organize the book?) left 2/3 of the page blank, which makes me wonder if they were trying to make the book longer and were too lazy to write a few more pages.

The character of Esther and Caleb were very well developed, which meant that the ending was of no surprise whatsoever. I like twists to my reading and there were none.

Final Verdict: I wasn't a huge fan of this book. Although my review has more "The Good" than "The Bad" I think the weight of the two tips the scale in favor of "The Bad." This won't be a story I read again, however, I did also get the second book in the series, Wanderers, so I will continue to read this series. (I'm not going to let any book from my Book Outlet Haul go to waste.)

I'm giving Wasteland two stars because it wasn't a book that will forever hold a dear place in my heart but it was decent and there are many people who would certainly enjoy reading this. If you decide you want to give this book a spin you can click on the image and I'd get a very small portion of the affiliate sale, FYizzle.

Review: Taken by Erin Bowman and The Trope of Mystical Pregnancy in Literature

Gray Weathersby has grown up expecting to disappear at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. They call it the Heist--and it happens to every boy in Claysoot. His only chance at escape is to climb the wall that surrounds Claysoot. A climb no one has ever survived... --Goodreads

First Impression: I read this book right after reading Wasteland so my expectations for Taken were high, but then again, most books would be better than Wasteland. The cover is a beautiful combination of colors and that's truly what drew me to it. As we now know, the boys of Taken are, well, taken at eighteen, so I thought it was clever that the "k" in the titles was floating upward. I too often deem the value of a book by it's cover, don't judge me, I know you've done it, too.

Oh, did I mention that this is a YA dystopia novel? Totes my cup of tea.

The Good: Most of it was good, I'm happy to report. The premise of the book is very, very similar to Wasteland. After their late teens the boys are taken, just like the the late teenagers of Wasteland died. In Taken, before the young men are abducted, they have to reproduce with the women of the city. They have this system, that I found absurd in a cool kind of way, where they cycle through the young women, trying to get as many pregnant as possible. With every partner they have the opportunity to mate with them for life (until age eighteen) but for many young people knowing that their mate is going to leave in a few years made them hesitant to form any sort of emotional attachment. That was Gray's issue with the system. It was all about reproduction.

I love the idea of a society surrounded by walls. The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau or Delirium by Lauren Oliver are two books that I loved that had an encaged society. In both books we know that the wall is there for protection against beings or humans that wished to do the society harm. However, the walls weren't always a good thing, they were hiding a part of the world that was either too dangerous or was empowered enough to fight the people in their. They were prisoners, but they didn't know it. Likewise in Taken. 


As much as I enjoyed this book, one of "The Bad" was just too overwhelming. Allow me and Anita Sarkeesia to explain why this was so disturbing.

The Bad: The feminist in me had a problem with something.  As citizens of Claysoot, the women bodies were being used to make babies, they were a vessel with one purpose, something I found seriously messed up. Women are being reduced to their core function; they were baby-making machines and very little else. Anita Sarkeesia from the YouTube channel Feminist Frequency addresses, what she calls, the Mystical Pregnancy, where women are reduced to their biological functions (though the pregnancies in this book are not mystical, it's still relevant information):

So, yes, this qualifies as a negative. Unfortunately, this means that the young women had no choice but to get pregnant, it was their role in life. It took a lot of focus to try to get over this trope of the mystical pregnancy. 

Final Verdict: It's up to you to decide if you're comfortable supporting this book. Honestly, I was, because it was a catching story with an awesome dystopian world that kept my attention. It's just important to keep in mind what is going on with the societies in YA fiction that forces impregnation of young women. 

Magical Plants and Friend Recomendations

Magical plants is the topic of the meme from Tough Travels. While I don't have an extensive collection, I can give you some of the magical plants from the Harry Potter series.

The one that first came to mind was Gillyweed, from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This is the first book in the series that really started to get dark, the fifth book was when shit hit the fan, which makes this book very special to me. Gillyweed was a magical plant that gave Harry, as the name suggests, gills for an hour so he could complete a challenge in the tournament that Hogwarts was hosting. Basically, this is one of the many plants in the series though this is one of the two plants that I remember being used for good. Mandrake roots also helped de-petrify the people/creatures, that were petrified in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

That's it for the magical plants meme, I don't doubt that I've read more books with magical plants but my brain is friend so that's it for now.

There's another meme I want to address from Booking Through Thursday which asks the following:

Do you read books recommended by friends? Or do you prefer to find your own books to read.

I definitely prefer finding books on my own. My friend David, is one of the few friends whose suggestions I actually act on (the last two recommendations were Redshirts and Leviathan Wakes). He and I have read many of the same books and like the same subject material. His sister is another friend who, in our youth, suggested that I read Emma and Calling on Dragons, the latter ended up being one of my favorite middle school-high school books that I've ever read, Tamora Pierce's series, The Lioness Quartet, being my other favorite.

When it comes to non-fiction one of my Mom's friends who ended up being my friend, has given me some suggestions I plan on acting on while my other friend, Jose, does share similar interests. I haven't read any books recommended by him but we have read many of the same books and I know for a fact that, because of this, he has good taste ;)

 

Review: The Crystal Bible by Judy Hall

The book's directory format and beautiful, full-color photos ensure that the crystals are easily identifiable. Descriptions, which accompany each of the crystals, provide all the information on their appearance, worldwide distribution, attributes, actions and healing properties. All the major and less known stones currently available are contained inside, including those only recently discovered. A comprehensive index cross-referencing crystals to applications, aliments and conditions make this book a vital reference for all crystal users.
--Goodreads

I am so happy I finally got this book! I've had bronchitis for the past month and I very much needed something beyond meds to make me feel more powerful than my respiratory problem. Not only are crystals beautiful, they also vibrate positive energy that can treat pretty much any ailment that is humanly possible to have--and some for animals, too.

The Good: What I love about this book is that it's not only a reference guide but an instruction manual. Though the content is limited, the majority of the book is dedicated to information on the individual crystals. I was a bit disappointed that she only covers a bit over 200 crystals. I also read her book on healing crystals that went more into depth. In that book, she offers twelve fundamental stones for Chakra clearing/healing and not all of them are covered in the Crystal Bible. What a bummer, considering I have so many stones but not all the ones I absolutely need for a full spread.

The beginning of The Crystal Bible starts with the "Background of Crystals" which covers the creation of the crystals in the Earth and explains that crystals "emit energy, especially on the electromagnetic waveband." The chapter (or, rather, the section with the big heading) on crystal healing was what I was especially interested in. One of the few downsides with this book is that it made me realize how many additional crystals I need to get in my collection. I can't afford that, man. Fortunately, the back of the book, the index, covers all the properties of each crystals, so for different ailments there are often several crystals that can treat the "dis-ease" of the body.

Also covered is the care and keeping of crystals and crystal selection. Then begins the reference part of the bible. Each crystal has an extensive wealth of knowledge offered, including the color and appearance; attributes; healing; position; and covers specific colors if there are several for each stone.

And then comes the back of the book: a long description (separated into little sub-catagories) of all the possible crystal shapes and how they can be used for healing. Under "Quick Reference" the Chakras and corresponding stones (with several options for each) are addressed with more variety than her other book (more about that later). The association of "Crystals and the Aura" are addressed as are various body parts and crystals.

The Bad: Although this book is 400 pages there just aren't enough crystals covered. I would imagine that the size of the smallish, thick book can't be much longer than it already is, but I still need more. However, this book covers the basics. I just don't know what else I'm missing! There is not enough information in this book for one to cleanse/purify, discharge, charge, and set an intention to the crystal, so another book is necessary to educate oneself on those matters. But, that's not something I expected in a crystal reference book. I was led one in the beginning, however, and expected such information.

There wasn't enough pictures of the various rocks for my liking. Some pictures would cover the raw crystal, while others just showed a tumbled stone. Not all variations of a single crystal were shown and that made it difficult for me to

The Verdict: There are several sections, like making gem elixirs, that don't apply to me. There is no way you'll find me drinking water that a crystal has been in, just because I'm not confident that I can assure that I truly cleansed them; however, that could easily apply to the person next to me. There are not detailed instructions in this book on how to purify crystals, but I'll shortly be reviewing another book that does.