anneofteenfables

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Anne Sexton, from “The Sermon of the Twelve Acknowledgements” in The Complete Poems

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The Sword Thief ⚔

39 Clues

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One False Note

Title: One False Note

Author: Gordon Korman

Genre: Mystery

Length: 4 hours

Summary:

The race is on to find 39 Clues that safeguard a great power, and fourteen-year-old Amy Cahill and her younger brother, Dan, are shocked to find themselves in the lead. The search seems to be taking them to Vienna, and they hold a coded piece of Mozart's sheet music that's key to finding the next Clue. But tailed by a pack of power-hungry relatives, Amy and Dan can't see if they are sailing toward victory - or straight into a deadly trap.

Review:

My second book of the year, One False Note, is the next book in the 39 Clues series. This series is one where every book ends on a cliffhanger and makes you want to read the next one immediately. Luckily my library has all of the books on audiobook so I read the first three books in the span of a couple days. I think I must have listened or read One False Note the most when I first read this series because I remember large portions of it.

While the stakes are still high in this book, it’s much less violent than The Maze of Bones. No one is possibly killed  in front of the Cahills but they are still chased through Venice and Vienna. I appreciate that there is still an element of danger but it seems much more genre appropriate. These are middle-grade books so obviously a little bit of violence is par for the course but it definitely feels a bit excessive in certain books. I think it makes it a bit more realistic when the danger is relatively minimal, obviously more than the average person. I think Korman does a good job in this book in having real stakes that keep the reader on edge without having it be too unbelievable or gory. There’s a real concern about Nelly getting arrested and Dan and Amy having to jump out of a window but it seems reasonable given their situation. There’s also a different sort of danger with Social Services looming to take Dan and Amy back to Boston and Aunt Beatrice. It’s not a violent threat at all compared to what their various cousins have done but it’s still a very real and important risk for Dan and Amy.

I really appreciate the amount of world building in this book. The readers, through Dan and Amy, learn more about the different branches of the family, especially the Janus Branch. They discover the Janus stronghold and start to gain insights into how the branches work. Obviously, each one is different but there is sort of a base or stronghold for each of them and they all have a leader. It’s also interesting to see how the Janus Branch considers many different things as artistic, not just the typical ideas. I think it also creates a deeper sense of alienation for Dan and Amy. They know basically nothing about Cahill lore or about the 39 Clues, and even more so they don’t know anything at all about what branch they might be in. This, to me, creates a different level of motivation for them because they want to learn about themselves and their family and where they belong in the world as well as discover the 39 Clues. The two issues go hand in hand for them, which I think makes them more incentivized than the other teams. The other teams just want to win but Dan and Amy want more than that. 

One False Note  is a bit toned down violence-wise compared to the other books in the series but I think that has to do with the issue of multiple authors. It’s a very cool idea to have multiple authors for one series but it creates certain consistency problems. While there are a lot of basic facts that stay throughout the series, the premise and most of the overarching themes and characters, there are a few minor things. A pretty common or easy to notice fact is whether or not Amy and Dan have phones. There are other more subtle things, like the violence factor, tone, and pacing. I think I don’t notice as many of them because I have always listened to these books and they all have the same (wonderful) narrator, David Pittu. He might unintentionally create a sense of cohesion by generating a sense of consistency just through his voice and how he reads these books. 

All in all, I really liked One False Note. I appreciated the perhaps unintentionally feminist history of Nannerl Mozart amongst other things. I think this is a great book for Nelly, she really gets to shine as a very capable and cool person who listens to the Arctic Monkeys. After finishing this, I almost immediately started listening to The Sword Thief, so be on the lookout for that one soon!

Divider: @cafekitsune

Header Paintings: Venice in Moonlight by Ivan Augustovich Veltz + Lady Playing a Lute by Bartolomeo Veneto

[anneofteenfables]

One False Note ♫

39 Clues

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"In my maturity, I've come to the happy, evolutionary opinion that I'm unusual, and I embrace it."

Anne with an E (2017-2019)

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L.M. Montgomery, Chronicles of Avonlea

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kate's 365 days of ships:

day 5: anne shirley-cuthbert & gilbert blythe anne with an e

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The Maze of Bones

Title: The Maze of Bones

Author: Rick Riordan

Genre: Mystery

Length: 5 hours

Summary: 

Minutes before she died Grace Cahill changed her will, leaving her descendants an impossible decision: “You have a choice – one million dollars or a clue.” 

Grace is the last matriarch of the Cahills, the world’s most powerful family. Everyone from Napoleon to Houdini is related to the Cahills, yet the source of the family power is lost. 39 Clues hidden around the world will reveal the family’s secret, but no one has been able to assemble them. Now the clues race is on, and young Amy and Dan must decide what’s important: hunting clues or uncovering what really happened to their parents.

Review:

My first book of the year, The Maze of Bones, is a book I chose as part of my library’s reading challenge. I’m really excited to be able to start my library’s yearly reading challenge at the beginning of the year instead of halfway through, and I already have a couple books started for various categories. The Maze of Bones fulfills the “First Book in a Series” category. I read this book in middle school. (I realize a lot of the books on this blog are ones I’ve read before.) I didn’t really have high hopes as I reread it, I remembered it being good but also knew there was a possibility that it hadn’t aged well. While some parts of the book have indeed not aged well (Jonah Wizard’s whole ‘gangster’ thing, a lot of the descriptions of the Kabras), a vast majority are still really good and even better than I remember it.

The Maze of Bones is an interesting mix of mystery, adventure, and emotion. It’s what I would call a history-mystery where the clues are all related to a historical figure or event, in the same vein as National Treasure. I am a history nerd and therefore love it and think it’s a really cool technique to teach kids about history and also science and math at times. I’m a bit older than the intended middle grade audience but the clues/plot doesn’t seem silly or overly obvious. I think the mystery element is really good, within each book the mystery plot is seemingly well thought out. I know within the series this gets more complicated and disjointed since the whole series has different authors. At least, in the first book the mystery is both easy to follow but also not too obvious or easy to guess. I think the adventure element is also really good. Dan and Amy have to escape a burning mansion and a museum explosion, along with various other dangers. They also do all this while travelling the world and the United States. I also appreciate the realism of the adventure element. Finances are a real issue for Amy, Dan, and Nellie, they are constantly worried about money and it’s nice to read that especially when most books would brush over those details or have one character be really rich or inherit money just so that it isn’t an issue. There are also real consequences to the situations they get in, Amy and Dan don’t walk out of fires or explosions or the catacombs unscathed, physically or emotionally. They experience temporary hearing loss and asthma attacks and they also feel bad/sad/guilty about the other people involved. This also has to do with the surprisingly emotional aspect and real consequences of this book. The book starts with Amy and Dan’s real grief over their grandmother, and then real grief and trauma reactions to the mansion fire. They also struggle greatly with thinking their competitors are dead after the museum explosion. Even when Amy and Dan learn that they aren’t dead, they still feel very bad. There’s also the emotion and grief that comes along with their parents death and the consequences of that. I think they especially struggle with it because they are so young and they were so young when their parents died. I was enjoyably surprised with how real their emotions feel and how understandable their decisions are for their characters. Obviously, they make silly and often rash decisions but it makes sense how they made those decisions.

While most of this book seems well thought out, there are still some things that don’t make sense. While it is clear that this series would have to start with the first clue, it doesn’t make much sense to me that no one else in the Cahill family would’ve known about the clues. Grace and Amy and Dan’s parents know about the clues and obviously have figured out various clues. However, it seems no one else in the family or at least the people at Grace’s funeral even knew that there were clues. While I read the entire series at one point, I don’t remember much but I also feel like if these clues have been around for centuries someone else would’ve solved them by now. It just seems unrealistic to me that no one else in the Cahill family knew of or was looking for these clues at the time of Grace’s death.  Anyway, I really enjoyed this book, I think a lot of the portrayals are very realistic. All of the siblings act like siblings, and every team has pretty clear motivations about why they chose the clue. I think the writing is very good, the plot is well thought out, though it makes sense because this is a Rick Riordan book. I most definitely will continue to read this series because I plan to use the second book, One False Note, for another category. All in all, this was a quick and easy read that I highly recommend.

Divider: @/cafekitsune

Header Paintings: Head of Skeleton with Burning Cigarette by Vincent van Gogh + Paris by Daniel J Keys

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Dan Cahill 39 Clues

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Amy Cahill 39 Clues

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Oh, bedrooms were made to dream in! And you know one can dream so much better in a room where there are pretty things.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908)

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Little Women (1994) Dir: Gillian Armstrong

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What I read in November!

Oh well, you can’t win them all. My very good excuse is that we had a new baby at the start of the month and reading time has been a bit of a luxury. There’s lots to get finished for December!

Links

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"Surrender." | "You mean you wish to surrender to me? Very well, I accept." Favorite Characters in Television & Film - Cary Elwes as Westley in The Princess Bride (1987) dir. Rob Reiner

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Pride & Prejudice (2005) dir. joe wright

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Classic Stack

Links

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Etiquette & Espionage

Title: Etiquette & Espionage

Author: Gail Carriger

Genre: Fantasy/Historical Fiction

Length: 9 hours

Summary:

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners--and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage--in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education.

Review:

Much like Cress, I’ve read Etiquette & Espionage before but didn’t remember much of it. Rereading it on a whim, I found it to be better than I remembered. I remembered the vague premise of it but it was much funnier and more feminist than I remember. Though some moments were a bit repetitive, it wasn’t overbearing or too annoying. 

I think almost every part of this book would’ve been the best part of a lesser book. It’s witty and clever but not too pretentious. I really enjoy that the main character, Sophronia, is a “covert recruit” and we as the reader can be introduced to this absurd world the same time that she is. Sophronia has heard of werewolves and vampires but has never met one so when we as the reader are introduced to each, so is she. She is also being dumped headfirst into this world full of evil geniuses and dangerous spies. Her finishing school teaches her how to finish in more ways than one, Sophronia and the audience all figure out together that Mademoiselle Geraldine’s is more than it seems. I appreciated that unlike the typical normal person entering a magical world story, Sophronia isn’t slow on the uptake. She still struggles in some situations because she doesn’t understand the social rules of this new society of espionage but she catches on quickly and even excels in other situations. I also appreciate that there’s not really any clunky exposition or lore drop scene, most other characters will either assume that Sophronia understands or they’ll explain it in a casual way. Often the people around her will just say something unusual and Sophronia eventually figures it out or it’s left as a funny absurd joke. Sophronia is smart and clever and makes a space for herself in this society. She’s still a bit of an outsider and often doesn’t feel comfortable or understand certain things but she makes friends and doesn’t ever feel bad for herself.

I truly enjoyed how feminist this book is. Unlike the book I DNF’d before starting The Elegant Escapade, Etiquette & Espionage doesn’t sell itself as a feminist book. However, it’s more feminist than the book that shall not be named. Sophronia has many female friends (and a few male ones) and they all support each other. The ‘mean girl’ in this story, Monique, isn’t just snobby, she has done something actually wrong against Sophronia. Sophronia isn’t just a meek victim though, she also acts out against Monique. A vast majority of the cast is female and all relatively strongly built. They aren’t all tomboys, as most historical fiction books seem to think is the only way a girl can be feminist. Many of them are very feminine, as this is a finishing school, and they all abide by the restrictive rules of Victorian society. However, they are all very capable, they can do a million things with a hair ribbon or a pair of stays. They are spies and killers who outsmart men time and again and support each other. It’s never a book that says overtly, girls can do everything boys can do, it’s a book that makes it clear by showing girls overpower and fool boys and men. 

Despite having read this book multiple times before, I never read any of the other books in the series. I also just recently learned it’s a spin-off series within a larger world. I can’t wait to read more of the Finishing School books and hopefully more Gail Carriger books. I really enjoy this paranormal steampunk world. I like the Bumbersnoot, the mechanimal and all of the fun side characters. I hope the rest of the books are as well written and witty as Etiquette & Espionage.

Divider: @/cafekitsune

Header paintings: Portrait of Baronne de Rothschild by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres + A Shocking Announcement by Vittorio Reggianini