2007 Book Log #38: A Stir of Bones, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

This one was a short, fast read--and, it turns out, the third thing I've read this year actually intended for a YA audience. It's also a prequel of sorts to A Red Heart of Memories and Past the Size of Dreaming, two of Hoffman's earlier novels, telling the backstory of several of the characters that appear therein. It dates, however, back to when they were youngsters.

That said? It's a nice little novel. Not particularly complex of plot, but there are some lovely lyrical passages in it describing certain magical experiences for our young heroine. It's also quite wrenching when it describes the abuse her family is suffering at the hands of her father, behind the perfect facade he is forcing them to present to the world. I initially wanted to find the ending a little too pat and convenient, and yet, that's unjust of me, since upon reflection it's really only like that on the surface. What's accomplished is something subtler, a sort of minor victory that will hopefully set the stage for a larger victory at some later date. And it really makes me want to read Past the Size of Dreaming, to see if that victory does indeed occur.

Check it out. Hoffman has a talent for magic realism, which is what drew me to this book of hers in the first place, and in that respect certainly this book did not disappoint. Three stars.

2007 Book Log #39: The Children of Hurin, by J.R.R. Tolkien

I promised earlier this year that I'd write about this book, and now I finally can! I'd had to read it in bits and pieces, since I didn't dare take it out of the house or into the bath as part of my usual reading cycle. It's such a lovely volume that I was scared to death of damaging it!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is reason number one that you should have this book. Even completely aside from the words it contains, this book is a work of art. I've long heard people speak of the physical pleasure of reading a book; The Children of Hurin should now become one of the causes for this sentiment. I loved everything about its construction. I loved the paper it was written on. I loved the fold-out map of Beleriand and surrounding territory at the back. Hell, I even loved its fonts. More impressive, though, is the lovely artwork all throughout the book. The full-color plates at regular intervals are stunning, but the smaller black-and-white drawings that appear at the tops of the first page of every new chapter are also gorgeous.

Reason number two to have this book is, of course, the story. Hardcore Tolkien geeks who have read either The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales will already know most of the saga of Turin and his family and all the various flavors of doom that descend upon them, but those are shorter versions. Reading the tale in a complete form from start to finish is wonderful, and at least for me as a reader, the parts edited in by Christopher Tolkien felt seamless. Most of them, in fact, were seamless enough that I couldn't even tell where the father had left off and the son picked up... except at the very end, where there's a coda that I hadn't recognized and which I found poignant indeed. Harder-core Tolkien geeks than I may be able to tell me whether that's something Tolkien wrote, or whether his son added it in.

Make no mistake--the saga of Turin is dark grim darkity dark dark grim with a side order of WTF, slathered over with a generous layer of gloom, doom, and despair. And most if not all of the place names and character names will be unfamilar to anyone who's only looked at the movies or who has read just the best-known works. The time of Turin is the First Age, which by the time of Bilbo and Frodo and company is nothing more than fragments of memory and legend; Sauron isn't even on the radar yet, and Morgoth, the original Big Bad of Middle-Earth, still holds sway. So it's almost literally like reading about an entirely different world... and yet, it is all part of the vast scope of Arda, and you can see the seeds of what will come later being sown here.

Highly, highly recommended. Four stars!