Chris Chandler, Collaborations (Prime CD, 1998)

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I never realized just how much ignorance was bliss, until I started listening to the Chris Chandler CD Collaborations, knowing absolutely nothing about it or the artist, save for the category, “singer-songwriter.” Now, that category can encompass a lot of ground, and I couldn’t even begin to form an assumption about this album. Because of this, my life has just become a little brighter. Imagine that, out of the blue, someone hands you a package, wrapped in nice, shiny silver paper, with a big red bow. It’s not your birthday, anniversary, or graduation.

It’s a random day, a random person, and a random package. Driven by curiosity, you open it and find a signed book by your favorite author, one you’ve never read. Or maybe a love letter from the love of your life. Something completely unexpected, but a small treasure to brighten your day, or even your week.

That’s what I felt like when I listened to Collaborations. What we have here is a compelling, brilliant, insane, goofy, imaginative, thoughtful, irreverent collection of songs starring musician/poet/artist Chris Chandler, his mentor Phil Rockstroh, and no less than thirteen other musicians/groups. The album title really says it all. It’s the musical version of an anthology, all revolving around Chandler’s keen sense of the absurd and Rockstroh’s comedic writings.

How can I better explain this? Chandler and Rockstroh, on their own, are like the love children of some insane cloning experiment between Bob Dylan, the Beat poets (all of them!), Tom Smith (noted for his filk [misspelling intentional] albums), and the best of Dr. Demento. Intrigued? It gets better. Listening to Chandler’s segues and monologues is remarkably similiar to letting Robin Williams or Jerry Lewis loose on stage and giving them free rein to wreak havoc on popular culture. Numerous times while listening to this album, I was forced to put it on pause until I stopped laughing.

To try and describe the songs individually would defeat the purpose. Words alone cannot capture the pure feeling that this album conveys. Some of the songs resemble stand-up comedy with musical background. Others are toe-tapping, foot- stomping, head-shaking good times. Careful that you don’t lose your concentration while listening to this… I stopped listening during one song, only to be jerked back to attention with the words “if you ever feel like slummin’, come on down here to the trailer court we call Earth.” A copy of Chandler’s lyrics would go over like pure gold… if one listened that hard and wrote that fast.

I’ll admit to ignorance. I’ve never heard of Catie Curtis, the Austin Lounge Lizards, Chuck Brodsky, Dan Bern, Jim’s Big Ego, Mike West and Myshkin, Trout Fishing in America, Ellis Paul, Martin Sexton, Tom Prasada-Rao, Dar Williams, or the Convenience Store Troubadours. As for Peter Yarrow, the light dawned only after my mother informed me he was the Peter, in Peter Paul and Mary. That’s twelve names, not including Chandler himself, with whom I’ve just become familiar. And not a single one disappoints on this album. Out of thirteen tracks, one might expect a few disappointments, but honestly? I enjoyed all of them. And I can’t say that about many albums in general. I think I’ve been missing something all these years, and someone finally pulled me aside to clue me in.

This isn’t just folk music. It’s social commentary, existentialist blues, comforting humor that pokes fun at the jokes we’ve always suspected, redefines the boundaries of thought, and provides the perfect soundtrack to life. Where else will you overhear lines like “God loves us so much he has a hard-on” or “What do you mean you traced my heritage even further back to a puddle of primordial uck? Y’know, I’ll bet you came from the wrong side of the primordial ooze! I’ll bet you came from the wrong side of the cell division! We should call the evolution police right now and report ourselves!”

This album isn’t for the humor-impaired, the overly-uptight, or the easily- offended. Like the Beat poets in the ’50s, Chandler doesn’t spare many targets, and his collaborators should be locked up as accessories to the crime, providing their musical accompaniment and vocal talents to his spoken word mayhem. That said, I can’t recommend this album highly enough. You don’t have to know anything about the artists, the genre, or the style to appreciate this album. In fact, those who come in blissfully ignorant may just find themselves as pleasantly surprised as I was. All you need to appreciate this one is to be alive. So go ahead, and get this one. It’s definitely worth it.

Chronicle – The Lost YA Reviews (2002)

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This post is just here for the sake of completion. The following reviews ran in Chronicle issue 232, dated January 2003, and unfortunately, I no longer have any records of them beyond the actual magazine they appeared in. Someday, I’ll get around to either transcribing or summarizing them.

Tithe, by Holly Black (Simon and Schuster, 2002)
Growing Wings, by Laurel Winters (Firebird, 2002)
Echo, by Francesca Lia Block (Harper Collins, 2002)
Companions of the Night, by Vivian Vande Velde (Magic Carpet Books, 2002)
The Green Man, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (Viking, 2002)
Falling Sideways, by Tom Holt (Orbit, 2002)
Nothing but Blue Skies, by Tom Holt (Orbit, 2002)
Little People, by Tom Holt (Orbit, 2002)
Valhalla, by Tom Holt (Orbit, 2002)
Hexwood, by Diana Wynne Jones (Greenwillow, 2002)
Witches Business, by Diana Wynne Jones (Greenwillow, 2002)
The Time of the Ghost, by Diana Wynne Jones (Greenwillow, 2002)


New Review Online / Reviews Archive Update

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Now live over at SF Site:
Feed by Mira Grant

In addition, I’ve just completed a major update to my reviews archive, having uploaded every last YA review I wrote for Science Fiction Chronicle between 2000 and 2005. This just leaves ten years worth of reviews for Green Man Review and it’ll be pretty much complete. Feel free to go look and browse what I was reading and what I thought about it years ago.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, edited by Jane Yolen and Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor, 2005)

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When I first stumbled across this particular anthology, I couldn’t resist it. After all, I love YA science fiction and fantasy, and I love short fiction. So finding a collection which combined both those loves seemed tailor-made for me. I was definitely interested to see what stories passed the editors’ high standards, and how they stacked up against what I read – or didn’t read –
in the past year. I was happy to see that while some of the stories gathered within were familiar, just as many came from sources I missed. The end result: an interesting mix of young adult short fiction.

First up is Kelly Link’s “The Faery Handbag,” which is an offbeat tale of a magical handbag which contains an entire world within its depths. Open it, and discover great wonders, or perhaps surprising horrors; it’s all in how you look at the situation. S.M. Stirling’s “Blood Wolf” is a welcome return to Stirling’s Nantucket series, in which the island of Nantucket, as well as a Coast Guard training vessel, were transported back in time to the Bronze Age. A generation after that initial transition, the world is a vastly different place, with 20th Century philosophies, ideals and techniques mixing with Bronze Age civilizations. Now a young man has ventured forth from his tribe to experience the fabled magic of Nantucket, where he promptly runs afoul of strange people and stranger customs. Is there a place for him here, or will he fare poorly in the new world?

Lynette Abbey’s “Sleeping Dragons” is an interestingly multilayered tale about family, mythology, and of course, dragons. Very little is as it appears on the surface, and it’s up to a girl to protect her little brother from the destiny that awaits him. Garth Nix gives us “Endings,” a quick story about a man with two daughters, two swords, and two endings to his tale. Everything is interconnected, in the end.

David Gerrold’s “Dancer in the Dark” is, on the surface, about a boy sent away from everything he’s known to live in a strange new place. Underneath, there’s a lot more going on involving light, dark, truth, and beauty. Adam Stemple’s story, “A Piece of Flesh” is a traditional changeling story, a fairy tale in which a boy recognizes the unnatural being which has replaced his infant sibling and has to do something about it. His success, however, is not going to be an easily-gained thing.
Also in the changeling mold is Delia Sherman’s “CATNYP,” about a young woman who’s grown up in the New York -between the real world and Faery. Trapped between worlds and as restless as any teenager, she embarks upon something of a quest to find her true place, and discovers a whole lot more, including the enchanted lion of the New York Public Library. For a true blast from the past, the editors have included a classic: Rudyard Kipling’s “They.”

Other stories include Theodora Goss’ “The Wings of Meister Wilhelm,” Leah Bobet’s “Displaced Persons,” and one of the best stories of the year in any age group, “Sergeant Chip,” by Bradley Denton. The last is about an overly-intelligent, highly-trained military canine and the lengths to which he has to go in order to fulfill his orders and protect his companions.

Helpfully, the editors also include plenty of “If you like this tale, then try…” in their introductions to each story, thus giving the unfulfilled reader plenty of directions in which to turn their attentions. What can I say? This is bound to be the first in a yearly series, and that makes me very happy. The selection of stories here is excellent, providing a wonderful sampling of the wide range of fiction aimed (directly or indirectly) at the young adult audience, and there’s plenty to please in here. Previously, I’d praised Patrick Nielson Hayden’s other YA anthologies for filling a valuable, much-needed niche; The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens is another fine addition to that particular bookshelf, and a logical extension of the “Year’s Best…” trend in general. I’m already looking forward to next year.

Wizard’s Holiday, by Diane Duane (Harcourt Press, 2003)

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The seventh book in Diane Duane’s long-running Young Wizards series picks up shortly after the previous one, A Wizard Alone, left off. For teen wizards Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan, it’s one of their favorite times of the year: spring break. They’re both looking forward to some time away from school, though pressures at home are putting a strain on them both. Nita’s starting to crack under the pressure of adjusting to life without her mother, while at Kit’s house, things are getting -weird- thanks to magical leakage. When his sister starts hanging out in alien chatrooms, he knows things have gone way past normal. Luckily, our heroes are about to get the chance of a lifetime. Thanks to Nita’s younger sister Dairine, also a wizard, Kit and Nita travel across the galaxy in a wizard exchange program, to the idyllic world of Alaalu. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Dairine gets to play host to a trio of otherworldly wizards from decidedly different backgrounds: the centipede-like Sker’ret, the ambulatory tree Filif, and the arrogant elflike Roshaun. And naturally, things don’t go smoothly.

On Alaalu, Kit, Nita, and Kit’s faithful dimension-hopping dog Ponch begin to suspect things aren’t what they seem. Their investigations into the history and culture of Alaalu unearth a deadly secret, and bring them into direct confrontation with their old enemy, the Lone Power. But this aspect of the Lone Power is unlike any they’ve ever battled before. As it says, “I was getting bored with absolute evil.” Can they trust it? Dare they, when a planet’s future is at stake? Back home, a sudden crisis could end all life on Earth, unless Dairine and her three visitors can stop arguing and work together.

Unlike the other books in the series, Wizard’s Holiday sets direct seeds for a sequel by laying several minor subplots that aren’t resolved by the end of the book. Luckily, Duane has constructed this story well enough that familiarity with the previous books isn’t required, just suggested. As always, her heroes struggle with a certain grey area of morality, with an unusual level of sophistication mixed with splendid characterization. This is one series I can’t recommend enough, and Wizard’s Holiday is one of the strongest offerings to date; I couldn’t stop reading.

Wizards at War, by Diane Duane (Harcourt, 2005)

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For teenage wizards Nita, Kit, and Dairine, life is never dull or ordinary. As part of a select group of magical champions, they might be called upon at any time to travel across the universe, negotiate a peace treaty between cats and dogs, journey through time, or fight the Lone Power as it attempts to bring death and destruction to all that lives. But now things are getting out of hand. As dark matter floods the universe, wizards begin to lose their powers, rapidly incapacitating the senior wizards who normally take care of the truly major problems. In a short time, the only ones left to stand against the encroaching end of everything are the young wizards, who balance raw power with inexperience. Now Nita, Kit, Dairine, and their allies (including several visiting alien exchange students) must find a way to stop the dark matter from engulfing the entire universe. But the Lone Power’s out there also, ready to take advantage of the opportunities provided in the chaos, and it may be seeking an ancient magical weapon forged at the dawn of time. Our heroes will have to work together, even though they’ll be spread out across an entire universe, if they want to survive. And because this is, in many respects, a war, not everyone will come home. But what price will success exact upon the young wizards and their friends, and does it have anything to do with Kit’s dog, Ponch, acting stranger than usual?

Diane Duane really believes in upping the stakes with each successive Young Wizards book, and she always manages to make the struggle feel fresh and new, no matter how many times we’ve seen the protagonists face off against the Lone Power. However, it’ll be interesting to see if she can top the sense of urgency and accomplishment that Wizards At War invokes. Of course, the real joy comes in watching our heroes interact, from the deep-rooted bonds of friendship (turning into something more, perhaps?) between Kit and Nita, to the feisty, playful interactions between independent-minded Dairine and arrogant alien prince Roshaun, to the always entertaining attitude of Ponch. These are characters we grow to care about, so it’s all the more powerful when someone actually falls in battle.

I’ve been reading this series for a long time now, and it just keeps getting better. Blending science fiction and fantasy, it delivers the perfect mix of adventure and characterization, making for books with staying power. There’s a reason Nita and Kit have been around this long, and why they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. Need something to read while Rowling finishes off Harry Potter? Try Wizards At War and the rest of this series.

Wildside, by Steven Gould, (Tor, 2003)

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Some kids get a car when they graduate high school. Charlie Newell, however, got an entire parallel world, an Earth where humanity never evolved and extinct species still roam free. The legacy of his missing-and-presumed-dead uncle, the portal hidden in the barn of a private ranch has remained a closely-guarded secret until now, when Charlie decides to share it with his four closest friends. Together, they can embark upon a scheme that will make them all millionaires. A world full of untapped, unplundered resources lies ripe for the taking. All they need to do is raise some capital to fund their expedition out West, and they’re all set. Charlie has that angle covered also. It’s a pity that his plans will attract the attention of an unsavory faction of the government, one willing to use any means necessary to gain control of the portal to the Wildside. The resulting ordeal will push Charlie and his friends to the breaking point, force them to rely upon one another like never before, and exercise every ounce of cunning. Even then, a sacrifice may be required to prevent humanity from despoiling a second world.

I still prefer Gould’s previous book, Jumper, but Wildside is a strong, fast-paced story that manages to surprise more than once, mixing action and intrigue with rich descriptions. Some of the characterization seems a little one-dimensional, especially on the part of the antagonists, and I’ve always been a little dubious about the progression of events leading up to the first real confrontation. I’m not sure if it’s Charlie being overly paranoid, or the government justifying said paranoia, but I was disappointed when that part of the story came to pass, given how much I was enjoying the other subplots. There’s Charlie’s growing self-confidence, the romantic entanglements between the three males and two females, the personal conflicts several people have to deal with, and more. There’s a fine line between “A very special episode…” and believable plotting, and Gould manages to balance it out quite nicely. Aviation enthusiasts take note: there are enough lovingly-detailed scenes of flying to make even me want to learn how to pilot a small aircraft. I’m glad Tor reprinted Wildside; it’s a worthy addition to the Tor Teen imprint, and a fun coming-of-age story

White Midnight, by Dia Calhoun (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003)

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Rose Chandler isn’t your typical heroine: she’s skinny, ugly, and prone to panic attacks that often lead to fainting. At fifteen, she’s old enough to marry but knows all too well how undesirable she is. Frankly, she doesn’t care; her true love is Greengarden Orchard, and her specialty is growing apple trees, and splicing together various trees to create hardy hybrids. Then she discovers her family has made a devil’s bargain with the lord and master of Greengarden, the cold Mr. Brae. If she marries his grandson, a misshapen creature known as the Thing and kept locked in the attic of the Bighouse, her family will have everything it’s ever wanted. Can she make that sacrifice for her family and for Greengarden? She doesn’t have much of a choice, all told. But when she goes through with the marriage, she’s made privy to a series of truths that shock her world to the core. Among them: Mr. Brae needs an heir, and he doesn’t care if he fathers it… or the Thing does. And so Rose will discover just what terrors are locked in the attic, and how they relate to a race of people known as the Dalriadas, with whom Rose’s people are at war. She’ll be forced to deal with her darkest fears, and face the Thing head-on, and make some terrible sacrifices, but will they be the right ones?

White Midnight is an interesting book, possessing an almost Gothic quality and evoking elements of The Secret Garden, Jane Eyre, and Beauty and the Beast. In some ways, it’s an uncomfortable book, with a heroine it’s hard to really emphasize with, and a plot that takes some strange turns. The pacing is almost surprisingly choppy in places, and the ending abrupt. Billed as a prequel to Calhoun’s first book, Firegold, it works well as a standalone; not having read Firegold, I can’t say how well they relate overall. This book isn’t for everyone, and the issue of teen pregnancy may be a warning flag for some readers or parents. Nevertheless, it’s still worth checking out.

Valiant, by Holly Black (Simon and Schuster, 2005)

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When Valerie Russell’s life turns upside-down, and she’s simultaneously betrayed by both her mother and her boyfriend, she runs away from home, leaving behind everything she knows to eke out a new existence for herself on the streets, and in the abandoned sewers, of New York City. There, she can reinvent herself, scrounging on the streets with her new friends, and gradually falling into a world where magic is real and things aren’t what they seem. The strangest thing of all comes when she accompanies her friends to visit the lair of a being called Ravus, who turns out to be a not-entirely unpleasant troll in exile from the Courts of Faerie. Bound to serve Ravus after he catches her in his home, Valerie soon learns much about the hidden magical world that exists alongside our own, and she’s quickly caught up in schemes both mortal and Fae, doing favors and running errands to expunge her debt. But then she discovers she’s also bound by ties of friendship and honor, ties which will cost her dearly once she starts to use a magical drug that makes its users whims into reality for a time. Even if Val can kick her new habit, she won’t be free of a danger that stalks the Fae of New York. The question isn’t “can Val escape the hold of Faerie once it’s in her soul,” it’s “what changes will it wreak in her life before it’s through?”

Valiant, like Tithe before it, is Holly Black’s take on what happens when the worlds of the mundane and the magical overlap. Her New York is as gritty, vibrant, dangerous, and alluring as any fantasy world, and the Fae who inhabit it are as capricious and slippery as their forebears in the old fairy tales. While almost no urban fantasy can live up to the love I hold for Emma Bull’s War For The Oaks, Black’s books come pretty darn close, and only time will tell if they can equal it. There’s a fair amount of urban fantasy for teens out there today, and Valiant is definitely ahead of the pack. Don’t miss it.

Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld, (Simon Pulse, 2005)

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Several hundred years in the future, after civilization has collapsed and been rebuilt, all of human society is divided into two categories: the uglies, and the pretties. Until you turn sixteen, you’re an ugly, forced to live in giant dormitories with others just like you, spending your time learning and playing pranks, full of youthful enthusiasm, but always aware of your physical shortcomings. Whether your nose is too big, chin too narrow, your ears stick out, or your eyes are too close together, you’re ugly. But once you turn sixteen, you’re transformed and enhanced through extensive plastic surgery and other procedures, becoming one of the vacuously happy pretties, leading a party-filled life in a paradise designed for contentment. This is the world Tally has grown up in, and it’s everything she knows. But when her friend Shay chooses to run away rather than become a pretty, Tally is forced to make a difficult decision: do the bidding of the authorities by seeking Shay out in the vast wilderness and bring her back, or stay ugly forever. Tally chooses the former option, and thus begins a quest that’ll take her out of the world she’s known, and into an entirely new society. Because out there, far from civilization, there are others who refuse to become pretty, and they know the horrible secret which lies at the very foundation of pretty society. Will Tally make the ultimate sacrifice to save her new friends and family?

Westerfeld has really established himself as an excellent, imaginative writer of young adult science fiction of late, and Uglies, the first book in a new trilogy, proves that he’s got what it takes to stay on top of the game. He lays down believable rules and guidelines for the society he explores here, and the more we learn, the more interesting the mystery at its heart becomes. With two books to go, it’s anyone’s guess as to what Westerfeld has planned, but he hasn’t disappointed yet with his YA offerings.