Chalice by Robin McKinley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was difficult to really get into this book, as the concept of the “Chalice” and the other members of the “Circle” aren’t clearly or fully explained initially, or at all. The reader gets a pretty good sense of what is supposed to be going on with all of these really mysterious and fantastical elements, but there is so so so much more Mckinley could have delved into and really hooked her readers. Some books leave you with questions, which can be okay, not everything need be explained in painstaking detail, but I feel that Chalice may be one of those instances when the author knows what is going on and assumes the reader will by instinct. Despite this, Mckinley is wonderful and I managed to get through the book, even with my questions.

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The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Sarah Addison Allen is amazing. I LOVED Garden Spells. That being said, The Peach Keeper was good. I liked the characters, and I liked the story. It was a good read, but it wasn’t amazing. I couldn’t really tell you why, but it probably had something to do with the fact that I didn’t take any of the character’s problems seriously, except maybe Sebastian. I didn’t understand Willa’s ostracism (and it’s not because I’m unable identify with ostracism—I can), probably because it wasn’t reinforced. All of the other characters seemed to like her just fine. Then there was Paxton’s inability, despite being such an assertive and capable person, to move out of her parent’s house, and her brother Colin’s lashing out against the nonexistent tethers of his family and hometown. These problems make sense, and I bought them, but I would never take them seriously in reality. It’s probably something to do with my personality. I also felt the climax wasn’t very dramatic, but again, it’s probably to do with personal taste. I was reminded vaguely of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic in regard to the Tucker Devlin ghost/murdery aspects of the plot, particularly when Agatha Osgood tells his ghost to go away, but then Hoffman and Allen’s styles are very similar.

I DID like Claire Waverly’s cameo, and I love how magical Allen can make small sleepy towns. I’ll look forward to reading more of her works, and will just hope that they’re more…climactic than The Peach Keeper.

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The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, + Jane Eyre + “magick”. Seriously. But in a good way? Sort of?

I’ve also read reviews that say that much of the plot in the first-person-narrated-for-reasons-indecipherable-to-the-reader-and-probably-the-author-too second part is based on Turn of the Screw, which I haven’t read, but probably will now.

Don’t get me wrong, the plot rip-offs aren’t as bothersome as they should be, mostly because they’re intentional. It says almost-clearly on the book jacket that author Galen Beckett wrote the series to explore the question of what it would be like if there was a solid reason women in 19th century literature functioned the way they seem to do. Or something. Does this get cleared up in the novel? No. But it’s kind of fun to read. It doesn’t really tax the brain, given you can pretty much guarantee what will happen next (I was kind of disappointed Gennivel Quent wasn’t inside the locked room, to be honest. Her character would have been interesting), and the scientifically impossible day/night lengths thing is pretty interesting, even if it is reminiscent of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series and its long winter/summer seasons, as well as the mythology of this alternate world, and the function of the illusionists (I’m still not sure what differentiates them from magicians and whether or not they’re human), the magicians, and the witches in the general hierarchy of magic in relation to the plot.

Pretty much I’m hoping the second and third books in the series will tie up some loose ends (like what was up with Westen?) and lend this “experiment” some credibility. I placed a lot of trust in Galen Beckett as an author with whom I am unfamiliar and un-endorsed, and I didn’t dislike the book. I just wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone without a large store of patience or a rabid love for the genre(s).

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How To Be Good by Nick Hornby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first two pages of this book are hilarious, and the narrative stays consistently amusing beyond that point. The characters’ limited perspectives are so wonderfully flat and self-centered! Not a single character in this book desires to actually be good, not if it interferes with their self-righteousness or their conception of what, exactly, the term entails. Katie Carr is a wonderful unreliable narrator, funny and sarcastic and a seeming projection of the mind of every guilty liberal stuck on his or her First World problems.
How To Be Good is a highly polished mirror held up to society with the same cold, sharp objectivity Hornby can bring to seemingly any type of character, along with his gift of the over-warm, squishy embarrassment of everyday life delivered perfectly on the page with uncomfortable accuracy. The in-depth examination of what it is to be good, and be human at once really hit home for me, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in a smart novel guaranteed to make you examine one’s own state of “Good-ness”.

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