Cassandra prides herself on being ready for anything, but she’s not ready for the Symphony of Smells – a strange chest full of vials that once belonged to a magician, and that appears one day at her grandfathers’ antique shop. With her new friend Max-Ernest, Cass investigates the magician’s disappearance – and finds herself battling an ancient society, the Midnight Sun, that is seeking the key to immortality. Soon Cass and Max-Ernest join the benevolent Terces Society along with their new friend Yo-Yoji, but the plots of the Midnight Sun grow ever more diabolical, and the mysteries surrounding our heroes grow ever more complex.

There’s a lot to like about these books. They are a blatant Lemony Snicket ripoff, true, but unlike many copycats, Bosch apes the style well. They’re engaging, the mythology is fresh and interesting, and the main characters are all likable. For the most part, I really enjoy reading these books, and did they not possess a couple of troubling elements, they’d probably run a strong four cupcakes. But those elements are so problematic that they overshadow the basically decent core of the books:

1. There are supporting characters in the series, most prominent in the second book, If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late, called the Skelton Sisters. They’re a pair of twins, Romi and Montana, who are actress-singers with a huge media empire. They are most directly a parody of the Olsen twins (which is weird enough on its own, because the target audience for this books is not old enough to remember the Olsen twins at their tweeny peak), but more generally a parody of tween girl culture and marketing, with a nod towards Hannah Montana.

Just on the face of it, that’s problematic because Bosch is mocking things targeted at tween girls, and all the tween girls who like those things, and that’s half of his audience, so I’m fairly uncomfortable with the Skelton Sisters to begin with. But the bigger problem is the issue of food. The Skeltons are members of the semi-immortal Midnight Sun and thus don’t need to eat – and don’t eat, thus making themselves so skinny that they are described as grotesques. However, they’re obsessed with food and at one point force a 12-year-old girl to eat a cupcake so that they can watch (after first trying to build up her resistance by telling her she’s a fat pig).

So, first of all, issues of eating disorders and food consumption are extremely complicated, especially for women. In a culture where girls are told they must be thin at all costs, the problem is with the culture and not the girls. So maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t be mocking people struggling with eating disorders? Eating disorders aren’t fun or funny. People don’t have them for kicks. They are serious medical issues. And since there are plenty of fat jokes in these books too, maybe these conflicting, poisonous messages shouldn’t be fed to the 10-year-olds who are going to be reading these books? “You must be thin without trying to be thin, or you’re a bad person,” is a pretty shitty moral for a kids’ book.

But more specifically, the Skelton Sisters are a very, very obvious parody of the Olsen twins. And Mary Kate Olsen’s eating disorder is public knowledge. So Bosch isn’t just making fun of eating disorders generally, he’s publicly making fun of one particular real life human being with an eating disorder.

And I don’t care if the kids today don’t know about Mary Kate’s medical issues or if Bosch didn’t really think through what he was saying. It’s reprehensible.

2. This Book Is Not Good for You features a little girl named Simone who is stolen from her family on the Ivory Coast and brought to America, where she’s kept in a cage and forced to taste chocolate. The climax of the book takes place at a cacao plantation, where the villains force presumably stolen African or African-American children to dig through monkey feces in order to find cacao beans that have been digested by the monkeys. At one point, the Skelton Sisters grab one of the little boys and try to take him home, because they’re very good with pets. Later, Cass discovers a sculpture of that same little boy.

Now, I’m aware that all of these atrocities are committed by the villains. The book does not condone any of these actions.

It does, however, make light of them.

Simone’s abduction is impossible to separate from its historical context, where African children were taken from their families and forced to labor for Americans. And the plantation is impossible to separate from its current context, where such things actually happen. Bosch even mentions the concept of “blood chocolate” (chocolate made with slave labor), but in a flippant way that completely dismisses and trivializes the issue.

Look, some things just aren’t funny. And joking about the very real, current issue of slave labor normalizes it. It turns an atrocity (abducted children being forced to dig through feces) into a punchline (they throw it at the bad guys! ha ha, poop is funny!). The scene where Cass happens upon the chocolate sculpture, an image that perfectly literalizes the commodification and consumption of third world children, made me sick to my stomach in a way that I doubt was Bosch’s intent.

Again, I’m aware that Bosch isn’t endorsing slave labor, the blood chocolate trade, or stealing children. But the total disregard for the seriousness of the issue and the insensitivity of making characters like Simone minor plot points to add (no pun intended) color to the narrative of his white heroes is appalling.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, The Secret Series is, for the most part, enjoyable. The characters are likable, the prose is funny, and the story is strong. But the problematic treatment of eating disorders and child slavery bring the grade way down. The Name of This Book Is Secret gets four cupcakes, while If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late and This Book Is Not Good for You get two cupcakes each, bringing the series average down to two and a half cupcakes. I’ll probably finish reading the series, but I’ll be doing it through the library and not spending money on the rest of the books.

Nimira left her home of Tiansher hoping to find fame and fortune in Lorinar, only end up a singing “trouser girl” in a low-class show. Then Hollin Parry, a well-to-do gentleman sorcerer, invites her to create a show with him, singing to accompany his fairy-made automaton piano player. Nim jumps at the chance — but when she arrives at his estate, she learns that it’s haunted by the ghost of his wife, and that there’s something strange about the automaton… In fact, it might just be alive.

I enjoyed this book, but there wasn’t much to it. It only took me a few hours to read, and after I finished, I was left without any serious impressions about it, positive or negative. Which makes it kind of hard to review.

Here’s the best I can offer: the world building was really interesting. It was clearly a fantasy take on Victorian England — I wasn’t positive where Nim’s homeland was, certainly somewhere in Fantasy Asia — with plenty of magic mixed in. Parry’s house featured tigers turned to gold by alchemy, and garden fairies turned into decorative paperweights. There was war brewing with the fairies (a second war, actually), and interesting references to the mermaids Nim’s ship had to pay off to journey to Lorinar, and some other magic creatures. The world building was definitely my favorite part. I wish there had been more to the book so we could get further into it.

Nim herself didn’t leave me with much to say about her as a character, though I thought her situation was handled interestingly. She had been a child of privilege in her home country, who came to Lorinar after she lost that; she was self-aware enough to realize she craved having the trappings of wealth back, and that was part of her motivation throughout. The fact that she was also clearly an Exotic Other to the people of Lorinar, but that we saw it from her POV and how uncomfortable and upset it made her, was an interesting touch. (And makes the fact that the book was rejacketed to show Nim as a character of color all the more important.)

The plot itself didn’t wow me. The idea of the fairy automaton was very cool — the secret of who and what it turned out to be even more so — but that largely became a romance that I was never sold on. It happened too quickly, it seemed to be largely based on pity and intrigue and not actual connection. I was somewhat disappointed. Alternately, you have the subplot about Parry and his wife’s ghost, which borrowed quite heavily from Jane Eyre. To the point where I recognized that without actually having read Jane Eyre. I wasn’t terribly impressed by either plot or the book’s resolution.

Overall, the book was… fine, if somewhat forgettable. I feel like there was no there there; I wish it had been meatier, something I could sink my teeth into. More depth (of character in particular, and plot in general) would probably have improved it a lot. It earns an entirely middle-of-the-road two and a half cupcakes.

Title: Exposure
Author: Mal Peet
Genre: Athletics sociopolitical crime drama? Also, Shakespeare fanfic again.
Pages: 430
Summary: When Otello, a black soccer player in a racially-divided unnamed South American country, and pop star Desmerelda meet, it’s love at first sight, but the machinations of Otello’s two-faced agent Diego may destroy them both.
Thoughts: Really interesting world, really interesting exploration of racial dynamics. I liked Paul Faustino, the sports journalist who apparently is the connecting thread in several of Peet’s books, and his subplot with a handful of doomed street kids. But the transition from Othello wasn’t quite as smooth. Diego’s complete lack of motivation for his evil is less acceptable in a modern book than Iago’s is, and, well, spoilers: show

Two and a half cupcakes

Title: The Pharaoh’s Secret
Author: Marissa Moss
Genre: Contemporary/urban / fairy tale/mythic / historical fantasy
Pages: 307
Summary: Talibah finds herself trying to unravel ancient Egyptian intrigue in order to put the souls that are haunting her to rest.
Thoughts: I liked the entirely non-white cast, the pluckiness of the little brother, and the solid grounding in history and Egyptology, but otherwise this book wasn’t very good. The prose was weak, and the resolution of the mystery – the explanation of how the modern characters were connected to the historical ones – was incoherent.

Two and a half cupcakes

Having returned Jealousy to the box of evils she accidentally opened last month, Pandora heads off to find the next plague: Vanity. Accompanied by her best friends Alcie and Iole, her faithful dog Dido, and their hunky new bodyguard Homer, Pandora travels to Alexandria, Egypt. But even if she can master the language, avoid the mummies, and break Vanity’s grip over the 10-year-old Queen Cleopatra, can she survive the traps the goddess Hera keeps laying in her path?

Before I read Pandora Gets Vain, I reread the first book in this series, Pandora Gets Jealous, to refresh my memory, and I found that many of the aspects that had mildly annoyed me the first time around were really getting on my nerves all of a sudden. For example, I really don’t like the fact that Pandora was able to take her two best friends, her super-smart dog, her talking diary, and a magical seashell “cell phone” that lets her talk to her father Prometheus, one of the wisest and most cunning figures in the entire Greek pantheon. Add to that a magic net, a magic rope, a talking bust of Athena, and the direct intervention of Athena, Artemis, Apollo, Poseidon, Hephaestus, and Hermes, and quite frankly her quest just seems too easy.

Then, of course, there’s the problem every mythology buff encounters when reading books based on the Greek myths: even if you can relax and quiet the voices screaming “Oh my God, Pandora is not Prometheus’s daughter!” and other such purist laments, there’s still the matter of interpretation. What I mean is, I don’t mind if someone plays fast and loose with Greek mythology, but how they play fast and loose with it can rankle me. I am not a fan of this interpretation of Hera; Hennesy is doing her best to make Hera seem lumbering, monstrous, and stupid, none of which Hera was. She wasn’t a nice goddess, but this extraordinary vilification (she wants to destroy the human race, in a roundabout way) is too much for me. And Demeter as her right-hand woman is just plain wrong; Demeter is up there with Hephaestus for “nicest god.” Meanwhile, Aphrodite is caring and sympathetic? What bizarro world is this? Of course, your mileage may vary, but I find these interpretations, well, out of character.

On top of all that, Pandora is repeatedly said to be curious without ever demonstrating such curiosity, Alcie’s affliction of cursing by shouting out the names of fruits isn’t funny, the prose is a bit amateurish, and some of the historical inaccuracies really bother me. For example, I don’t mind that the girls attend school, which wasn’t a thing that would have happened in ancient Greece, but it does bother me that they encounter Cleopatra, who existed much, much later than the historical Golden Age of Athens, much less the mythological Golden Age.

However, the books do still have a certain charm. Pandora is essentially likeable, albeit not as curious as I would like. The adventures are compelling, and the cameos from across both the Greek and Egyptian pantheons are fun. I particularly enjoyed the fact that what I thought was going to be a big, frustrating love triangle between Pandora, Homer, and Alcie wound up just being a sweet little romance between Homer and Alcie.

All in all, the Pandora series is getting to be one of those series that drives me crazy but that I can’t stop reading. I have way too many of those. I’m still going to pick up the next book, Pandora Gets Lazy, but even with that, Pandora Gets Vain only gets two and a half cupcakes.

Percy Jackson is about to get kicked out of school…again. He doesn’t mean to get in trouble, but it follows him everywhere and he just doesn’t know why. At least not until he finds out the teacher who’s always hated him is one of the Furies, and his friend Grover is actually a satyr, sent to protect him. Soon Percy discovers that all of his troubles happen because he’s the son of a Greek god, and he finds himself first surrounded by other half-human kids like him and then out on a dangerous quest to recover Zeus’s stolen lightning bolt. And if he fails, it means war among the Gods—and probably the end of the world as we know it.

There were a lot of things that I liked about The Lightning Thief, and one big thing that I didn’t. That one has a lot to do with the setup of the book’s reality: the Greek pantheon of gods is all real, and it represents all real civilization. As the heart of civilization has moved, so did the gods—from Greece to Rome, around Europe, eventually to Britain when it had its empire, and now they exist in the U.S. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, if it had tied the Gods to, I don’t know, the idea of simply great civilization or modern civilization or what have you. But it is very, very specific: the formerly-Greek gods represent The West, and The West is Real Civilization. Which means first of all, that Greece was the first real civilization to exist—which I suspect would come as rather a shock to the Chinese, Japanese, Incans, Mayans, and Egyptians, to name a very few. Second, it sets up a very sharp divide between the U.S. and its allies as The West/Civilization/All Things Good, vs. everyone else.

Um. I live in the U.S. and I’m pretty patriotic. But the West in general and the U.S. in specific has done some pretty terrible things. Furthermore, the incredible arrogance of claming that this country is the only true civilization is astounding. And I’m disturbed by the way the villain spouts off anti-West rhetoric at the end, as it verges closely on terrorist rhetoric. While the character in question is Caucasian, the book’s overall emphasis on how frigging awesome The West is and the villain using stereotypical terrorist language really, really walks a fine line when it comes to racism and anti-Islam. I’m frankly not sure which side of the line the book falls on—it isn’t blatantly spouting off that Muslims are evil, but it certainly suggests that people who aren’t totally down with the U.S. are all villains looking to destroy the world in a way that is evocative of Islam. That makes me really, really uncomfortable.

There are some other elements that made me go “Bzuh?” Like the fact that Percy is dyslexic because his brain is hard-wired to read in Ancient Greek. Or his ADHD, which has something to do with his Hero Instincts. The dyslexia and ADHD have combined to make his life miserable and school very frustrating for him for as long as he can remember, but there’s very little actual emotion in Percy’s first-person narrative, which is odd. In fact, Percy is pretty much an Everykid, so there’s not much emotion from him, period. I think the book would have been strengthened with a stronger personality narrating it, frankly, but overall Percy isn’t bad. He’s just kind of there, and sometimes very flippant in a way that often works to give the book humor, but sometimes seems to be trying too hard to force in some humor.

However, the other characters are all pretty delightful. I love Annabeth, a half-God who’s Athena’s daughter. Her skills, of course, are all set in being clever, but she’s also extremely strong and competent in a fight. She always has a plan or can come up with one. The book allows her to be a hero herself, without ever overshadowing Percy. Similarly, Grover (Percy’s guardian satyr) is a lovable dork, and a very endearing character overall.

The book uses mythology really well, too. The myths I knew were put to great use—of course the Gorgon should show up when you’ve got Athena’s daughter!—and there were a bunch I didn’t recognize. Some of it seemed a bit obvious, as if the characters should have been able to surmise what was going on from having studied their mythology (which all of the half-gods are required to), but it doesn’t get in to ‘no duh, Sherlock’ territory too often. (Even Jess, much more of a classicist than I, was impressed by the series’ choice of Big Bad when I described it to her.) And the gods who appear are all delightful in their representations as modern people—Zeus in a business suit, Poseidon as a beach comber, Ares as a biker, etc. They alone make me want to read the rest of the series to see what’s done with them.

The book’s central mystery is also quite good—while the minor mystery at he beginning (which God is Percy’s father?) is pretty obvious, the questions that arise over the course of the book are not. I was able to put things together before Percy did, but not too quickly. Plus the pacing of the story and the danger of the quest itself is great. The writing is very solid.

I’m giving The Lightning Thief two and a half cupcakes. It would have been a solid three and a half (maybe even four) if it hadn’t been for the book’s serious The West Is Awesome problem, as I think I’ll probably end up reading at least one more in the series with the hopes that the problem goes away. I don’t care too much about Percy as a protagonist, but I do like his story.

Vanessa wishes she could be a normal highschooler, with normal concerns like zits and clothes and passing her classes…But she’s not. Instead, she’s got problems like the fact that whenever she gets excited or scared, she turns invisible. And her best friend can travel through time. And now someone has found out her secret, and all she knows is she’s in terrible danger…

When I was a wee young middle schooler, “Sailor Moon” was dubbed and aired in the US for the first time. I adored it, and since it coincided with my family’s first internet connection at home, I was able to research it in obsessive detail. I bring this up because not only did Goddess of the Night remind me of it thematically—the moon is mysterious and feminine, and a teenage girl has developed moon-themed powers with which to fight evil!—but also because “Sailor Moon” introduced me to what is occasionally referred to as the “Magical Girl” genre—that is, a series where a mostly-ordinary teenage girl (and often her BFFs) abruptly develops magical powers and have to use them for good, maintaining a double life and saving the world (usually with the help of some sort of mentor, who spews the mythology and exposition). And that is, of course, what Goddess is all about. And I am a sucker for Magical Girl stories—I wrote quite a few in my early teens, and still plot them on occasion—but unfortunately, Goddess just didn’t do it for me.

The book isn’t bad, it’s just flat. Vanessa is essentially an Everyteen. She wants to be normal and fit in, and yet feels like she doesn’t—but that’s odd, because every time we see her in the context of her peers, she fits in perfectly. She’s popular, she gets decent grades, the boy she has a crush on likes her back. We know she’s not normal, what with that whole uncontrollable invisibility problem, but she doesn’t get treated as at all odd by anyone, so her constant worry doesn’t ring true. But perhaps that’s just because we never get in her head. According to her author bio, Ewing is a screenplay writer, and it shows: the book reads as a log of events, without a lot of emotion or voice to the narrative—the story would have been better served either by developing that voice, or by appearing in a media where other elements—visuals, soundtrack—can be used to convey emotion.

In fact, Goddess (the first in a long-ish series) reads very much as a pilot episode of a TV show. You’ve got a multi-ethnic cast that represents a bunch of different teen archetypes; you’ve got a lot of stand-alone (dare I say, episodic) stories which build to a season—I mean series—finale, and a Big Bad who has minions to be defeated. I think it would work very well as a TV show, but translated to books, the formula doesn’t quite work. None of the characters are terribly well developed; the backstory for their powers isn’t very mysterious. And that’s just with regards to the episodic-like nature of the book—it also wasn’t helped by the awkward pacing or the not-terribly-dramatic climax. And it was obviously trying for an edgy tone (set in LA, lots of going to clubs, occasional references to the supporting characters’ drug use and random hookups), but failed, as it didn’t have much of a tone at all.

It hits another personal pet peeve of mine: a supporting character, Serena, tells Vanessa that she knows what’s going on and how to help…but rather than tell her, Serena insists that she can’t be the one to explain, it isn’t the right time and it isn’t her place to say, and that Vanessa should go meet someone mysterious with her. Of course Vanessa doesn’t, at that point, and later she does and all is revealed. My problem with this is that it’s a trope frequently used by authors to shoehorn some extra suspense into the narrative, but ultimately, it’s just a cheap trick and sloppy writing, unless there is a darned good reason why the secret can not be revealed at that moment. And like in so many cases, there was no reason at all. (Similarly, there’s a moment where Vanessa says that “they” gave her a necklace when she was born—an obvious dance around explaining anything about who gave it to her, since that’s important information that can’t be revealed so early on, but “they” is a really unnatural word to use when there’s absolutely no mention of who “they” are.)

So what did I like about the book? Well, it was pretty overtly feminist. It was about a group of girls who become best friends. They use magic powers to save the world, and tied closely to those powers is their self-confidence. The climax may be awkward, but it also makes it clear that what makes them Goddesses—aside from the magical powers, I mean—is their ability to walk into a room and own it. I can dig that. And oh, the book nearly opened with this:

Finally, she turned and started walking again, her bare feet steady on the cool cement. Her mother had warned her how danger it was to be out alone in Los Angeles at night. Now anger filled her and made a knot in her throat. It shouldn’t be dangerous. Girls had a right to enjoy the night, to run wild under the moon and stars, not stay home huddled behind bolted doors.

Using self-belief to save the world, and growing angry at the idea that girls shouldn’t walk alone at night—or rather, at the reason why girls are told not to be alone at night—are both non-subtle messages, and well-placed in a book that is obviously intended to appeal to girls in their early teens. (Hilariously, you can also tell exactly when the book was written by the amount of body glitter Vanessa applies. The copyright is 2000, which means it was probably written in 1998 or ’99. Ha.)

So overall…the book was obviously the beginning of a franchise, which probably would make a better TV show than novel series. I’m not shocked I’d never heard of it before. It was an easy, quick read, and fairly fun, but not terribly engaging. Goddess of the Night earns two and a half cupcakes.

Since returning to Ferryport Landing, now under the control of Mayor (Queen of) Heart(s) and Sheriff Nottingham, Sabrina has thrown herself into the business of being a Grimm with a will. But when their latest case causes rips in time to start opening up over town, that business seems even more dangerous than usual. Sabrina and Daphne find themselves on the other side of one of those rips, in a dystopian future where their very survival is in question. Can they get back to their own time and solve the case before they’re left with no future at all?

I found that I couldn’t really discuss my reactions to this book without talking about the various twists and turns the plot makes in some depth, so beware: there are major spoilers behind the cut, and they are not hidden behind a spoiler tag. You have been warned.

First the basic stuff. The last time Rebecca and I discussed this series, we had some major quibbles. Most of those are still in full force in this installment: Puck still rescues Sabrina all the time (both our current Puck and Sabrina, and the Puck and Sabrina of the future), which makes Sabrina seem incompetent and passive. No one listens to Elvis, who is still the smartest character in the series. They’re still not very good detectives. Sabrina is still patently racist against Everafters, who, the book says, “unnerve” her.

On the other hand, we also had some very good things to say about the series, mostly having to do with how well Buckley handles most of the Everafters, and those are still in full force as well. Our old favorites, Canis, Charming, and Snow, continue to be wonderful and actually more nuanced than the main characters. The new additions are great: Mordred is hilarious, Cinderella is bright and likeable, Sleeping Beauty is adorable, Rapunzel is fun, and the Wicked Queen is perfectly crisp and efficient. Though they’re not strictly new, Nottingham and the Queen of Hearts get to play a much bigger role in this book, and they make great villains – funny and threatening at the same time, which is a difficult balance to maintain. The only new character I wasn’t sold on was Puss in Boots, mostly because I was completely bewildered by Buckley’s take on him, but he only had one scene, so it wasn’t really a problem.

I also adored a scene that was a bit of an aside – the four main princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Briar Rose) gathering to talk about their shared history. Though the scene didn’t exactly pass the Bechdel Test, since the four women discuss Charming pretty much exclusively, I really enjoyed the fact that they were all very mature and gracious about the fact that they’d all been married to the same man, and that they decided to make their friendship more of a regular thing. I am all for female friendship in fiction (and in real life, of course!), and since Sabrina and Daphne have had no peers to speak of since Book 2, I’ll take it with the princesses.

There’s a bit of weirdness with continuity. I’m glad to see that Buckley remembers Sabrina’s addiction to magic from Book 3; she can’t be around too much magic without getting the shakes. However, when Baba Yaga rather logically accuses Sabrina of stealing one of her magic wands, pointing out that Sabrina is “touched,” no one – not Baba Yaga, not Sabrina, not Granny Relda, no one – seems to recall or find it worth mentioning that Sabrina has stolen a magic wand from Baba Yaga before. There’s even a mention of Sabrina’s being turned into a frog by Baba Yaga, but Buckley fails to say that this was because Sabrina stole from her.

Now for the meat of the book: the time travel plotline. The idea of the heroes of a story catching a glimpse of a dystopian possible future and returning to their own time determined to avoid said dystopian future is a fairly common one, and with good reason: it’s awesome. Generally the difference between Okay Future and Dystopian Future is the solving of a mystery, or a difficult decision that must be made by the hero(es). The mystery is solved, the correct decision is made, and Dystopian Future is avoided. It’s all very simple and elegant and narratively powerful.

Buckley’s version? A big ol’ mess. Sabrina and Daphne are brought to Dystopian Future, where Canis has irrevocably become the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White and Uncle Jake are dead, and the Scarlet Hand rules the town (why the state government doesn’t notice, I have no idea). Charming is there too, and when the three of them return to the present, he tells them that they need to change absolutely everything they can in order to try and prevent Dystopian Future. Except…that’s not how that story is supposed to work! There is supposed to be one lynch pin, which in this case is obvious the missing time-travel-related artifacts that are being stolen all over town, that must be pulled in order to resolve things! I’m not trying to be hidebound to tradition here, I’m just saying that the story usually plays out that way because it works. If Buckley’s way of doing it worked too, I’d be giving him his due props, but it’s just confusing, since there’s no clear goal to focus on.

Then, the changes they do make make no sense. For example, Future Daphne has a big scar on her face that Charming says was a result of an encounter the two of them had – recently – with Future Nottingham. When Charming and the girls return to the present, Sabrina worries about taking Daphne with them to face Nottingham, since she blames the lack of Daphne’s usual exuberance in Future Daphne on the scar. Sure enough, Nottingham almost manages to cut Daphne’s face – until Charming stops him. (Which actually made me think this series would be far more awesome if it was just Charming and Daphne fighting crime together, but that’s another story.) When the girls next encounter Future Daphne, she no longer has a scar. Except – she didn’t get the scar as a child, she got it as an adult! The two events are not related!

But the real kicker is that none of these changes do any real good. They solve the case, but the book is very clear on the fact that this does not mean that Dystopian Future has been avoided. At one point Canis asks Future Relda point blank how he can avoid becoming the Wolf, and she tells him he can’t. Now, it’s possible that she’s wrong, but at this point she’s the best authority that we have. This is not a book that turns fatalism on its head; this is a book that accepts fatalism wholeheartedly. And if that’s the point – if the major, important aspects of the future are unchangeable and unyielding – then what was the point of this entire book? That the future is bleak and unavoidable? Chipper! But even aside from the dark tone it casts on the series, I feel rather cheated to have read nearly 300 pages of an exercise in futility.

And yet. The end of the book was terrifying and compelling, and made me deeply impatient for the Book 6, which comes out next month. Even though each installment of this series makes me crazier, I can’t seem to stop reading them. Thus, despite all its flaws, Magic and Other Misdemeanors gets two and a half cupcakes. Book 6 may be the series’s saving grace, or it may make me give up for good, or it may keep me frustrated but following along, but for now I am still hooked on the Sisters Grimm.

As every summer, Alexa Daley is staying in Bridewell with her father while he conducts important political business. But she has decided that this summer will be different: Alexa is bound and determined to find a way outside of the wall that protects the civilized cities from the outside world. And when she does so, she develops the magical ability to speak to animals—and discovers a conspiracy that might just doom the world as she knows it.

This book left nearly no impression on me. I read it a couple of months ago and forgot about it entirely until I just glanced at my booklist, and realized that a) I never reviewed it, and b) I can’t actually find my copy of it. But here goes what little I remember.

The world building of the book is a little strange. World building seems to be a favorite thing of writer Patrick Carman, as Jess noted it was a major part of Atherton: The House of Power (another Carman work) when she reviewed it. But I actually found the world building a bit confusing: first, it was just hard to figure out how the cities were connected and the odd way the wall worked (four cities, with one in the middle and the others connected to it like spokes on a wagon wheel, with a wall running around each city and the roads that connect the cities together, so no one from the cities can ever leave—yes, it is confusing).

After that, it seemed like the walls were very old and no one had ever been beyond them, except that the guy who built them was still around, if old, until the beginning of the story. Apparently, the walls were built to keep out some mysterious evil thing, but what it was or why people should worry about it is barely even hinted at or mentioned. Alexa certainly doesn’t discover it or worry about it too much. It reads very much like Alexa’s big destiny will be as the person who brings the walls down, but without knowing why they were built in the first place, it doesn’t seem like that matters much.

And finally, the whole world seems very small, and there are some references to actual Earth mythology, so it feels like another Atherton-esque “built world.” There are references to Alexa needing to discover why the world was created. But none of that—and no reason why it’s important, or hint of how or why it happened—is given in the book. I’m all for building things up in the series, but the first book was a stand-alone without a greater context given. Hinting at it seems bizarre, when the hints aren’t big enough to have an impact on the story itself. Basically, I feel like either the world itself needed to be more dramatic and mysterious, or a lot less confusing; instead, it’s at a middle ground that leaves me going, “…Huh?”

That was my main impression of the book, several months later. The only other thing that stands out was the character of Pervis Kotcher, who I thought was interesting. He was Alexa’s antagonist, the head guard of Bridewell, who was trying to stop her from sneaking out. A generally rotten guy, he was set up as a villain—but in the end was only antagonizing Alexa, but mostly interested in doing his job. While not the most morally complex character in the world, I appreciated the realness of having a character who the protagonist dislikes (and for valid reason), but who isn’t actually bad or a villain. After all, not all good guys have get along, and not all protagonists have to be nice.

Some of my lack of interest in the book was doubtlessly personal preference. I’m not all that into talking animals—I can handle them in small doses, but the story of a girl who can converse with wild creatures doesn’t interest me too much. So anyway, I give the book two and a half cupcakes, as I don’t remember anything great about it, but aside from being confused by the world, I don’t remember anything bad, either. It wasn’t interesting enough for me to want the sequel, so there you go.

Floating out in space like a miniature planetoid, Art’s hodgepodge house Larklight has always been rather isolated and boring, much to his social-climbing sister Myrtle’s dismay. But when giant spiders attack Larklight in search of a mysterious “key,” Art and Myrtle are quickly forced to adjust to a far less boring way of life – one that includes man-eating moths, sentient storms, a motley crew of aliens, the British Secret Service, and the dashing space pirate Captain Jack Havock. Now the siblings must figure out how to save the entire solar system – and, more importantly, the Queen – and the answers may just lie in Larklight itself.

This book probably has the best concept I have encountered since Active Voice began. Basically, in this alternate history, Newton’s discoveries paved the way for actual space travel almost immediately, and now it is the middle of the 19th century and the height of the glory of the British Empire, and Queen Victoria’s regime stretches across most of the solar system. Reeve plays fast and loose with astronomy here – there’s intelligent life on pretty much anything with a solid surface, and the treatment of the laws of physics and various astronomical details may not quite hold up to the white-hot scrutiny of my one semester of astronomy – but the world created thusly is so enjoyable I can’t complain.

Unfortunately, that’s where the awesome ends. See, setting a book at the height of British imperialism means that issues of racism, sexism, classism, and xenophobia are going to be pushed to the fore; the presence of aliens adds another dimension to that. However, Larklight failed to treat any of those subjects in any meaningful way. Myrtle’s prejudice against aliens and the lower classes is pretty consistent for most of the book, while Art’s varies drastically depending on the necessities of the plot; he’ll have a long thought process on British superiority, and then scold Myrtle for her rudeness towards aliens, in a transparent narrative attempt to make Art seem like a better person than Myrtle. Most importantly, however, while the book makes some vague stabs at expressing the idea that bigotry on an individual level is bad and that you should treat everyone with respect, it never says that imperialism itself is wrong. British dominion over everything from Mercury to Saturn is unquestioned and even lauded.

This would be problematic if it was just the abstract idea of Earth lording it over the other planets, but it’s made worse by the fact that it’s explicitly linked to Earthly imperialism, which is still affecting racial and international relations in the real world. If it’s totally cool for the English to rule over the Martians, who are apparently not worthy of the full rights given to an English citizen, it must be totally cool for the English to rule over, say, India, right? Obviously I’m not going to say that a person cannot write a book for children about imperialism without expressly condemning imperialism. However, I think this gleefully oblivious treatment is incredibly irresponsible.

The poor attitude towards other races and classes is compounded by the equally poor attitude towards women. There are four in the book (not counting Queen Victoria, who shows up at the end): Art’s mother, who is entirely defined by her roles as wife and mother; Ulla, a Martian who married an Englishman and joined the British Secret Service with him (which is another morally complicated imperialistic issue that’s never really discussed); Ssilissa, a blue anthropomorphic lizard of indeterminate origin who is a member of Jack’s crew and hopelessly, tragically in love with him; and Myrtle.

I really, really wanted to like Myrtle. I generally enjoy the prim young lady who loosens up over the course of the adventure and teaches her confederates that cleanliness and manners really are helpful, but unfortunately, Myrtle doesn’t really get an arc like that. She doesn’t really get an arc, in fact. She’s kind of obnoxious, and not in a cute way, and then she summons up courage in adversity by thinking of Jack (because of course a woman must be shown the way towards heroism by a man), but it doesn’t make her any less obnoxious. A lot of that is because most of the book is narrated by her little brother, who thinks of her as a bossy girl, but she’s both forbidden to be anything but traditionally feminine and constantly metatextually criticized for it, which hardly seems fair.

Plus the “romance” between Myrtle and Jack has some very unsettling underpinnings. Soon after they meet, the pirates and the siblings find themselves running for their lives from the Navy. Myrtle has fainted, of course. Jack is about to sacrifice himself in order to get the Navy to let the rest of the crew go, and Art asks if there’s anything he can do:

“You?” He glanced at me, incredulous. “Of course there ain’t!” he scoffed. But then his eye fell upon my insensible sister. Myrtle is always at her best when she is unconscious. Her spectacles had fallen off, and she looked almost pretty, lying there all pale and swoonsome. Jack Havock frowned thoughtfully, tugging at the brim of his wideawake hat. “Or maybe there is,” he said softly.

He then grabs Art, has another crewmember grab Myrtle, and shows them to the Navy as hostages, which allows them to get away. They even shake Myrtle so that it looks like she’s awake and struggling. The whole thing is incredibly distasteful and upsetting. She’s at her best when she’s unconscious? She looks kind of dead, so that makes her pretty and useful? Of course, the loss of her glasses stops her being a someone who looks and turns her into a something that is looked at, and the word “insensible” implies that the dumber Myrtle is, the more palatable she is. The invasion of Myrtle’s privacy and personhood continues throughout, particularly with the three chapters that are made up of large sections of her diary, used, Art tells us, without permission.

So. Great world, decent swashbuckling, really unsettling treatment of…um, everything else. The truth is, I am probably going to pick up Starcross, the sequel to Larklight, which would ordinarily mean this book gets three cupcakes, but my weakness for adventures in space does not change the poor treatment of –isms in Larklight. Two and a half cupcakes, and not a sprinkle more.