Westmark, by Lloyd Alexander

Westmark
by Lloyd Alexander
184 pages (hardcover)
Genre: Fiction/YA/Fantasy

Read for mrissa's book-club discussion. My comment, abridged:

I clearly felt the influence of children's (vs. YA) literature in the heavy-handed characterization, the simple prose, and the arc length. Cabbarus seemed like a flat villain, and I never became much enamored of Theo. His philosophical struggles about morality appear distinctly childish, although perhaps I'm comparing unfairly to recent readings in philosophy at a layman but much more sophisticated level (solidly adult nonfiction).

The politics became more interesting, but again, I prefer the denser machinations of adult secondary-world fantasy. I did like the absence of magic; what subgenre is this exactly? Not fantasy-of-manners in style, but no apparent magic either. In terms of type, I'm also not fond of adventure stories.

Were it not for your discussions, I probably would not continue reading the series simply because I can think of so many better books to read (though I don't think WESTMARK is bad really); but I will persevere, and hopefully the other books are more satisfying intellectually.

All three of Alexander's books in the Westmark trilogy are classified as children's lit in my library; is this the younger side of YA or middle-grade?

Random comments: I haven't read a classic bildungsroman adventure fantasy in so long, but now that I have, I'm reminded that I dislike it. Many of the characters, like the dwarf Musket and his mountebank master Las Bombas, border on cariacture. I guessed Mickle's secret-ish when she and Theo met Cabbarus, so the drawn-out hinting from that point on was painfully tedious. The apprentice=devil jargon in the very first sentence was confusing; I've never heard that terminology before, and at first I thought it was meant as a funny allusion/pun.

Oh yes, the plot: Theo is an (orphan?) boy apprenticed to the printer Anton, happy with his simple life. When he agrees to print pamphlets for a mysterious Dr. Absalom, the press is unexpectedly raided by royal soldiers and destroyed. With that, Theo sets off on an unwilling adventure across Westmark.

Overall, I am not entirely repulsed, and the books are short enough for me to give the improving plot another chance; but were it not for mrissa, I don't know when that second chance would come given the length of my TBR list. I've already gotten The Kestrel from the library and I have been told it is a stronger book than Westmark, which for me did not live up to high praise from mrissa and yhlee.

Forever Princess, by Meg Cabot

Forever Princess
by Meg Cabot
383 pages (hardcover)
Genre: Fiction/YA

So, er, what was the big Other Thing with J.P., if not sex? I don't think I ever figured that out. Apparently this is the final book in the Princess Diaries series; I'll be sad, as they serve as very consistent fluff reading. (I think I may have missed a volume, though.( Hooray for Mia's happily ever after, at last! I pretty much skipped the romance novel excerpts after the first two, because they were terribly purple and deadly boring. Cabot actually wrote and published Mia's novel, called Ransom My Heart... I will pass, thanks.

I liked how Mia "grew up" over the course of these books; here the format is updated as well (the college acceptance letter clippings, the text messages). Tradeoff is that these books will be obviously dated in five or ten years.