Terry Pratchett: "I Shall Wear Midnight"

Looking at the list of Discworld novels inside the cover of this particular volume, I saw that it, like all the Tiffany Aching books, was noted as being 'for young readers'. All through reading the book, I wondered what it was that made it 'for young readers'. Were the concepts less complex? The language less advanced? Mature subjects carefully excised? Eventually I decided that the only thing that made "I Shall Wear Midnight" 'for young readers' was the fact that the narrator was not quite sixteen.

Classification by age of narrator is something of a bugbear for me, since my novels sometimes have both a teen and an adult narrator and thus apparently don't quite fit. Ah well.

Thoroughly enjoyed the book. There's very few long-running series which get better as they go along, but Discworld is definitely one.

Scott Westerfeld: "Leviathan"

I bought this book because of the illustrations. I'll buy the sequel for the story.

Illustrations are a rarity these days, even in YA, and these (by one Keith Thompson) are detailed, charming and definitely go an extra mile in bringing the characters to life. [Though I wish the image used for the girl-in-disguise had been used for the boy, and vice-versa - the pictures just seemed so appropriate for the opposite characters!]

Anyway, the illustrations made me curious enough to read the blurb, the blurb made me interested in reading the book, Book Depository made it cheap and easy to get the book, and it was a one-sitting read once my paws were upon it.

Despites some niggles (How does one remove a coat while strapped into a harness? How does Darwin manage his genetic engineering?) this was a fun, fast-paced story with likeable characters, an intriguing plot, and plenty to make me keen to read on. It looks like it will be at least three or four books to the series, and as ever with series I wish I'd discovered it at the end, rather than halfway between the beginning and the middle, and I'm guessing in a spoilerish way that whatever is in those eggs is likely to "impress" on the first person they see.

Well recommended.

Garth Nix - "The Keys to the Kingdom: Lord Sunday"

The last of seven, culmination of a thoroughly enjoyable YA of a boy declared heir to what I only belatedly realised would count as Heaven.

Nix's House is not a happy Heaven. The Archangels refused the commands of their absent God, its society is rigidly stratified and its denizens grind away at interminable jobs, pointlessly and without pleasure. The heir, of course, changes all that, and the story is well worth reading.

I was reminded strongly of two other novels as "Lord Sunday" ground to a close. Diana Wynne Jones' "Howeward Bounders" and Meredith Ann Pierce's "Darkangel" trilogy. Both those stories touch on a quester seeking only home or happiness, and finding themselves succeeding only to, in a manner, lose. [Particularly "Darkangel", which is a most unhappy ending in my opinion.]

Why do we so often write stories where to win is to lose? And why are immortals never happy? Is ennui inevitable?