Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

This book is: light and dreamy.
Other elements: hats, magic, sisters, love, green slime.
Read it: if you like whimsy and aren’t in the mood to think.
Overall rating: 6.5/10

This book is very light and easy on the brain. Reading it is like drinking lemonade on a hot day: it’s refreshing and exactly what you want at the time, but you’ll still be hungry later.

Howl’s Moving Castle is a lovely story. I didn’t have any deep thoughts after reading it, and none of the characters ever felt like real people. But that’s also fine; books like this have their place, and more than a few of them have their place on my own bookshelves. I enjoyed reading it. It only took a few hours, I read the whole thing in one sitting. There were one or two plot points I didn’t entirely follow, but it was still pleasant to float along in the story, so I didn’t mind.

I must confess: I saw the Hayao Miyazaki movie of Howl’s Moving Castle several times before I even realized there was a book. Reading the book didn’t change my feelings about the movie; I think it’s a great adaptation. It simplifies the plot, but the way it does so makes it feel like a movie inspired by the book rather than an inadequate copy, which I think is the best thing a book-movie can hope for.

Please do read this review with a grain of salt: I know the movie better than the book. And I’m surprised to say that I think I prefer the movie. The book didn’t feel as alive to me, and I couldn’t get into the majority of the plot points that the movie had eliminated. Sohpie’s sisters’ trickery confused me, as did all of Howl’s romance triangles (or octagons). I don’t know if this is because I first experienced Miyazaki’s version of the story and now that feels truer to me, or because the book just didn’t speak to me, but either way that’s how I feel about it.

I’ve heard that Howl’s often considered to be a bit of a heartthrob. I actually sought out this book after Howel was mentioned repeatedly on my Book Riot post about potential husbands from YA fantasy novels. But I thought he was vain, slovenly, and self-absorbed. I know, I know – he explains the way he’s been acting at the end of the book. But I don’t think saying “here’s the really good reason I was being a pain in the butt!” makes up for being a pain in the butt. There are more books in this series, so perhaps in those books Howl behaves like the charmer I’ve heard he is, rather than the selfish, sloppy, womanizer he appeared to be.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did, but the love just wasn’t there for me. I think I’ll stick to Diane Wynne Jones’ (many) other excellent books.

 The Art Forger by Barbara Shapiro

This book is: a great story.
Other elements: art, crime, forgery, Degas, Isabelle Gardener, the Gardener museum heist, Boston.
Read it: if you have any interest in the art world or if you don’t but you love a good story.
Overall rating: 7/10

The contemporary heroine of the story is Claire Roth, aspiring painter struggling against the spotty reputation she’s won in the art world thanks to a misguided attempt she made to help her ex-lover through a difficult time. Claire has a talent for copying the work of other artists, which, thanks to Reproductions.com, is how she makes a living while waiting for her own original work to receive the attention it deserves.

The building was once a factory–handkerchiefs, some old-timer told me.  But old-timers aren’t known for their veracity, so it could have been hats or suspenders or maybe not even a factory at all. Now it’s a warren of artist’s studios, some, as in my case, live-in studios. Illegal, of course, but cheap. – Page 5

The plot of the The Art Forger takes its inspiration from real life events: the colorful and still mysterious Gardener museum art heist.  The story flashes back and forth between Claire’s present, in which she’s trying make a name for herself, and the past of the infamous Isabelle Gardener of the Gardener Museum, whose life and legacy become increasingly relevant to Claire’s present. Shapiro takes this true story and weaves a web of fictional and historical characters in and around the true events to create a fascinating and completely engrossing story of fine art, love, questionable morality, and festering secrets.

One of Shapiro’s strongest points is her characters: even those with only minor roles are well-rounded and complex. No one is simply evil or good; they’re all real people with motivations and of their own. And – although I can barely draw a symmetrical stick figure – my writerly self felt a kinship for the community of aspiring artists who meet at their local bar every day to talk about recent failures and the occasional success. I think any kind of art (written or painted) has a similar amount of heartbreak inherent in the process of searching for recognition and validation.

“Did it go well?” Mike asks. We sometimes call Mike “the church lady” in joking salute to his keen sense of right and wrong.
“I’m guessing not, although I wasn’t expecting much.” A lie everyone recognizes. They’ve all said the same thing after a career disappointment. It’s how we survive.
“A shot of tequila for my friend here,” Mike says to Maureen. Aside from Rik, who isn’t really an artist anymore, Mike’s the only one of us who can afford actual drinks. He’s a lawyer by day, painter by night. – Page 17

My favorite aspect of The Art Forger was the inclusion of so much technical information related to art authentication and forgery. I’m a sucker for a book that treats me like I’m capable of understanding as much about something as the main character does, and this was no exception. I love feeling like I’m learning along with the characters, and I lap up the random trivia, the more obscure the better. (Cutting for Stone is another great example of a book that excels at interweaving large amounts of technical information.) Art forgery is both sufficiently obscure that I didn’t really know anything about it going into the novel, and sufficiently fascinating to keep me interested when things got complicated.

The dialogue isn’t always the most free-flowing, and certain plot events are rather too coincidental to be entirely believable – but I still had a great time reading The Art Forger.

I also happened to start reading this book shortly after the Boston Marathon (and all of the events that followed the marathon this year), at which point it felt very timely to be reading a novel set in Boston, especially a story that delves so exquisitely into the city’s cultural history and rich, artistic present.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

This book is: a futuristic, dystopian reimagining of the Cinderella story.
Other elements: cyborgs, people who live on the moon, global pandemics, hot Princes, strong and admirable women.
Read it: if you love a good fractured fairy tale.
Overall rating: 8.75/10

This book has so many elements that I normally dislike. There are spaceships and moon people and robots – even Cinderella herself is part-robot. If I had read even one summary, I would probably never have given it a chance. But I did no research, just impulse bought it during a Kindle sale, and I’m so glad I did.

The story that begins in Cinder is woven around the bones of the Cinderella story but it goes above and beyond (and under and around) to such a degree that I found myself really wondering what was going to happen. The familiar Cinderella tropes appear – there is a ball, there is a dress from an unexpected source, there is a prince – but the situations are so different that it feels entirely fresh.

She wouldn’t fit in a a formal ball anyway. Even if she did find dress gloves and slippers that could hide her metal monstrosities, her mousy hair would never hold a curl, and she didn’t know the first thing about makeup. She would just end up sitting off the dance floor and making fun of the girls who swooned to get Prince Kai’s attention, pretending she wasn’t jealous. Pretending it didn’t bother her.

Although she was curious about the food. – Page 30

Cinder herself, a “gifted mechanic” and cyborg, is a strong, independent, and resourceful sixteen-year-old with a mysterious past. The accident that nearly killed her when she was a child – the reason she has a mechanical hand and leg – left her with no memories from before age 11. As the story progresses and events converge, Cinder starts to learn that she might not be exactly who she always thought she was.

There’s also a planet-wide plague, a looming inter-galactic military conflict, and a complex and brilliantly crafted world with political and social issues of is own. As a cyborg, Cinder has fewer rights than the human members of her adopted family; something that her stepmother takes advantage of. And of course, there’s a ball.

I actually am going to make this a book review and a half…I read the next book in the series, Scarlet, right after finishing Cinder. Scarlet continues the storyline begun by Cinder but weaves in another storyline – that of tough, Red-Riding-Hood inspired Scarlet and her new friend, who she calls Wolf. Scarlet  is just as good as Cinder but for all the same reasons, which is why I’m sticking it onto the end of this review instead of giving it its own. There’s also the fact that I only paused for about 10 minutes between the two books, so I might be fuzzy about where one ended and the other began.

This is the beginning of an excellent series, and I can’t wait to see what Marissa Meyer does next with it. Two more books are expected; the first due in 2014.