anneofteenfables

[anneofteenfables]

All Fall Down ♖

[anneofteenfables]

Beyond The Grave

Title: Beyond The Grave

Author: Jude Watson

Genre: Mystery

Length: 5 hours

Summary: 

Betrayed by their cousins, abandoned by their uncle, and with only the slimmest hint to guide them, fourteen-year old Amy Cahill and her younger brother, Dan, rush off to Egypt on the hunt for 39 Clues that lead to a source of unimaginable power. But when they arrive, Amy and Dan get something completely unexpected - a message from their dead grandmother, Grace. Did Grace set out to help the two orphans . . . or are Amy and Dan heading for the most devastating betrayal of them all?

Review:

Another 39 Clues book and another book about Egypt! I didn’t mean to read two books about Egypt back to back but it was kind of fun. Even though I’m sure I’ve read Beyond the Grave before, I didn’t remember a single thing about it. So it was pretty fun to read it for the first time basically. That might be my favorite thing about rereading the 39 Clues series is that I get to sort of experience it for the first time again. 

Beyond the Grave kind of goes against the typical format of a 39 Clues book and I really enjoyed it. I realized while reading it that the previous three books were sort of insular character-wise. Obviously, the Cahills are travelling the world but they don’t really meet or interact with other characters to a great extent. Typically they only deal with the other people who are chasing clues and maybe for a chapter or two they have a pilot or a museum guide. However, while in Egypt Amy and Dan spend a lot of time with Grace’s friend Hillary and her grandson, Theo. It was interesting to read how they connect with people who aren’t their clue hunting competition. It is even more unfortunate that Hillary and Theo end up double-crossing them. The reasons behind their decision to try to steal the Sakhet makes sense but it’s still just adding to the mass of people who seem to hate Amy and Dan. Hillary is a really smart way to create more exposition about Grace. Most of what the reader knows is based on Amy and Dan’s limited memories but Hillary allows for a different perspective of Grace. I really liked being able to learn more about young Grace and her version of the clue hunt. I’m still curious about Grace’s parents, amongst other things but it’s a good way of keeping the reader curious. Similar to Maze of Bones, there are a lot of lesser known female historical figures in this book. I really appreciate that, especially since most middle-grade books just mention the well known men in history. I learned that Jude Watson is a pseudonym for a female author shortly before I started reading this so I don’t know if that altered my perspective a little bit.

As always, the 39 Clues books tend to have a consistency issue. It’s obviously a byproduct of the different writers for every book. In this book I think it’s most notable in the introduction of new characters and the fact that the entire book takes place in Egypt. Most of the other books follow the Cahills through two or three countries, so the single setting in this one felt different. While it still fits into the tones and themes of the series as a whole, it still stands out in a way. There’s some minor details that confuse me. The box vault in the hotel didn’t make sense to me on a logistical level and neither did the stronghold. Though I did enjoy the Bermuda Triangle hint. I was also pretty confused about why Amy and Dan would trust Alistair again. Especially enough to get in a orb submarine with him. However, I do appreciate that Alistair tried to apologize in some way by letting them use his hotel points, credit card, etc. The humanizing of Irina was fascinating but it felt tonally out of place and I don’t remember it going anywhere. Jonah Wizard is mentioned a couple times but his presence in Egypt amounts to nothing. It is funny though that seemingly no one in Egypt cares about him. I have a general series production question. Did all of the authors know the identity of the Man in Black or Amy and Dan’s branch? Those are the two facts that I remember the most from the series and I wonder who made those decisions. 

After basically reading this for the first time, I really loved it. Though I might take a break from books about Egypt for a while. I really enjoyed learning more about Grace and the Saladin clue hint. As well as his name origin and the hummus thing! I’ve already borrowed the next book in the series, so that is forthcoming. Kind of hoping that Jude Watson has more books in the 39 Clues series!

Divider: @cafekitsune

Header Paintings: Tempio di Karnak, Sala ipostilo by W. Loeillot + Temple of Philae by Charles-Théodore Frère

[anneofteenfables]

― Emily Dickinson

[anneofteenfables]

Beyond The Grave 𓃠

39 Clues

[anneofteenfables]

Wrapped

Title: Wrapped 

Author: Jennifer Bradbury

Genre: Historical Fiction/Mystery

Length: 8 hours

Summary: 

Agnes Wilkins is standing in front of an Egyptian mummy, about to make the first cut into the wrappings, about to unlock ancient (and not-so-ancient) history.

Maybe you think this girl is wearing a pith helmet with antique dust swirling around her.

Maybe you think she is a young Egyptologist who has arrived in Cairo on camelback.

Maybe she would like to think that too. Agnes Wilkins dreams of adventures that reach beyond the garden walls, but reality for a seventeen-year-old debutante in 1815 London does not allow for camels—or dust, even. No, Agnes can only see a mummy when she is wearing a new silk gown and standing on the verdant lawns of Lord Showalter's estate, with chaperones fussing about and strolling sitar players straining to create an exotic "atmosphere" for the first party of the season. An unwrapping.

This is the start of it all, Agnes's debut season, the pretty girl parade that offers only ever-shrinking options: home, husband, and high society. It's also the start of something else, because the mummy Agnes unwraps isn't just a mummy. It's a host for a secret that could unravel a new destiny—unleashing mystery, an international intrigue, and possibly a curse in the bargain.

Review:

I found Wrapped while looking for a book similar to the Enola Holmes series. A historical fiction-mystery with a teen girl detective was my goal. Wrapped met all the requirements though it was slightly different. It’s not nearly as good as an Enola Holmes book but it was still a fun read for spring break. 

I enjoyed this book, it was a relatively average history mystery with a fun feminist supernatural twist. It was a mix of Enola Holmes and Amelia Peabody though it’s set in between both and has a different tone. There was a sort of pseudo-supernatural element, which mainly felt like the author wasn’t trying to confirm magic existed but also wanted the threat of magical consequences. This tends to be typical for books about Egyptology or archeology. The ominous possibly-real curse that often turns out to have a reasonable real world explanation. While the curse in this book has a real world solution, the power of the standard is still a possible threat at the end. I appreciate that the author gave an in-world excuse about why Napoleon would want it even if it wasn’t a real magical item. I also really appreciated that this book was relatively feminist. Most historical fiction authors really fail at making a character realistically feminist, see the book I DNF-ed at the beginning of this blog. Often the female main character is overly girl-power and will announce  loudly at any opportunity “girls can do anything a boy can do.” It’s frankly unrealistic and would even seem a bit clunky in a book set in a contemporary era. Agnes is written in a way that she thinks ‘girls can do anything a boy can do’ and she might’ve even said it once to her father but she proves to people that it’s true. Agnes also doesn’t fall into the not-like-other-girls trope that's also too typical of historical fiction feminist characters. She has close female friends, she wears jewelry and fancy dresses, and most importantly she reads Jane Austen. It honestly all makes for a more appealing character and for a more interesting plot. It’s especially entertaining when she has to lie to her French maid, Clarisse, that Cademan is her secret lover. While some of the Jane Austen stuff is a bit heavy handed, she quotes Sense & Sensibility in three languages because she doesn’t know how to feel about Cademan, it still feels very realistic for a teenage girl to be all melodramatic.

Unfortunately, the romance feels a bit poorly paced. Obviously, Agnes is going to end up with Cademan, the smart understanding museum worker, and not Showalter, the condescending older lord that she’s expected to marry. It’s pretty clear from the beginning (and it’s also a little clear, at least to me, that Showalter isn’t completely innocent). However, the romance is done a little clunkily. Agnes feels relatively nothing for Cademan, other than concern that it’ll be a social faux pas to be seen with him in the museum and cavorting around town with him after dark. This is different from the active nothingness that she feels for Showalter, she’s actively worried about what it will mean for them to be married. Then suddenly, after she has to lie to Clarisse that Cademan is her man after midnight and the two of them are trapped in a sarcophagus, she’s in love and quoting Jane Austen in Russian. It’s quite sudden and not in the love-at-first-sight kind of way. There’s a slight miscommunication trope between them that’s actually done quite well. Agnes insults Showalter when Cademan is first introduced and it’s quite literally misinterpreted as her insulting Cademan. Throughout the book there's tension between the two based on their social class, Agnes is part of the ton and Cademan is working class. It affects mainly how Cademan sees Agnes and Agnes struggles to admit her feelings to Cademan especially because she’s all but engaged to Showalter. I don’t love the miscommunication trope but I think it’s done well in Wrapped. There’s a couple historical things that seem iffy but they’re easy to disregard and don’t affect the quality of the story.

Wrapped was a fun, light read that felt like a fun mix of Regency era romance, Napoleon war drama, and early archeological mystery. I enjoyed it as a spring break read but it was rather average. My former teacher challenged me to only read female authors in March. So, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to read any 39 Clues books since those tend to be male authors but I recently found out that Jude Watson is a woman! Next on my list is hopefully Beyond The Grave, since that's the next 39 Clues book. I might also start rereading Enola Holmes!

Divider: @/cafekitsune

Header Paintings: An Illicit Letter by Vittorio Reggianini + Bonaparte with the Savants in Egypt by Maurice Orange

[anneofteenfables]

Wrapped 𓁢

[anneofteenfables]

D. H. Lawrence, from The Complete Novels and Writings of D. H. Lawrence

[anneofteenfables]

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

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Ex Libris rubber stamp design!

[anneofteenfables]

She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with the dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wondering afar, star-led.

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

[anneofteenfables]

The Sword Thief

Title: The Sword Thief 

Author: Peter Lerangis

Genre: Mystery

Length: 4 hours

Summary: 

Amy and Dan Cahill have been located once again, this time in the company of the notoriously unreliable Alistair Oh. Could they have been foolish enough to make an alliance?

Spies report that Amy and Dan seem to be tracking the life of one of the most powerful fighters the world has ever known. If this fearsome warrior was a Cahill, his secrets are sure to be well-guarded... and the price to uncover them just might be lethal.

Review:

Another 39 Clues book! I barely remembered any of this book other than the airport scene. I really enjoyed the ability to sort of read this book for the first time again. As with the rest of the 39 Clues books so far, I really liked reading this book! In all honesty, I read this book and started to write the review but then my life got busy, so it’s been a little while since I actually read this book. 

As per usual, I really enjoyed the adventure in this book and the motivation. Obviously, each character wants to find all 39 clues but in The Sword Thief, we learn more about individual motivations. I especially liked learning about Alistair Oh’s backstory. He’s not just the microwave burrito guy, his father was killed and he’s working toward revenge. I think it really humanizes certain characters and adds perspective outside of what Amy and Dan think of their competitors. It really adds more depth and helps create more of this world of the Cahill Family. There is also a lot more that Amy and Dan learn about the Cahill Family and the original siblings. Again, the fact that they don’t know their branch creates a logical opening for exposition. Obviously, the reader wants to learn more about the Cahill Family and branch systems and so do Amy and Dan. I heard someone refer to (bad) exposition as “pointing and staring” but I think the 39 Clues books smartly move away from that. Amy and Dan are being presented with a lot of information but it's not sight-seeing and a lot of times they have to figure it out on their own. Instead of one character taking them around and showing and telling them everything they need to know just because the reader needs to know these things too, the exposition and world building is logical. Amy and Dan have to learn these things because it’s part of the clue hunt, often it is how they find the clues. Even though Alistair tells them a lot about Thomas Cahill and the original four Cahill siblings, this is because it’s important to the clue. 

Speaking of Thomas Cahill, this brings me to a detail of the book that sort of bothered me. I know that the 39 Clues books involve a good dose of rewriting to history to make all of these historical figures tangentially related to the Cahill line and the clue hunt. However, in this book there is a pretty blatant change by making Thomas Cahill, a white Englishman, the father of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a pretty iconic Japanese figure. I understand that not a lot is known about Hideyoshi’s early life and his family but it still felt a little bit like they were whitewashing history by changing this fact. I think perhaps they could’ve kept Thomas Cahill as having moved to Japan but maybe he could’ve been an influential figure or ally to Hideyoshi, not his actual father. Otherwise, I enjoyed the history of this book which went outside of the European realm that this series tends to stick to. I also appreciated that they included a bit of Korean history, especially since most media at this time would’ve just stuck to Japan or China.  All in all, I enjoyed this book. It felt a bit short but there was still plenty of action and world building. I think Alistair really got a lot of good development, you feel bad as you learn his motivation but you also don’t like him after he faked his death. (again?) I think The Sword Thief definitely suffers by being written by a different author. There’s an obvious tone difference, especially with Amy and Ian Kabra being romantically inclined. Still, I think the overall tone and ideas of the series as a whole still wins out. Hopefully, I won’t be too busy and can read and review another book soon!

Divider: @/cafekitsune

Header Paintings: Jiraiya Riding a Frog by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi + Comtesse de la Châtre by Èlisabeth Vigée Le Brun

[anneofteenfables]

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

[anneofteenfables]

The Sword Thief ⚔

39 Clues

[anneofteenfables]

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

[anneofteenfables]

"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)

[anneofteenfables]

L.M. Montgomery, Chronicles of Avonlea