![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
December Reviews
Dec. 16th, 2008 08:39 amI have two reviews showing up on Teenreads this month:
HERE LIES ARTHUR by Philip Reeve
A brutal 'realistic' adaptation of the Arthurian legend, as told by Myrddin's servant. I can't believe I submitted the draft with the phrase, "As the title suggests, Reeve has not come to praise Arthur, but to bury him." Not included: discussions of transformation in Welsh mythology, the queer aspect of several characters' shifts in gender, or comparisons to other 'rational' Arthurs, most notable Mary Stewart's engineering epic: The Crystal Cave.
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/9780545093347.asp
THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION, Volume II: THE KINGDOM ON THE WAVES
One of the best and most difficult books I have read all year, completing the story of Octavian, a slave raised with a classical education as an experiment in ethnicity and intelligence on the eve of the Revolutionary War. I'm still not convinced I would hand it out, willy-nilly, to teen readers, (it's grim and incredibly depressing, not to mention written in eloquent, but challenging, 18C English,) but I found the series incredibly thought provoking, and include the author's defense why teens should read it.
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/9780763629502.asp
HERE LIES ARTHUR by Philip Reeve
A brutal 'realistic' adaptation of the Arthurian legend, as told by Myrddin's servant. I can't believe I submitted the draft with the phrase, "As the title suggests, Reeve has not come to praise Arthur, but to bury him." Not included: discussions of transformation in Welsh mythology, the queer aspect of several characters' shifts in gender, or comparisons to other 'rational' Arthurs, most notable Mary Stewart's engineering epic: The Crystal Cave.
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/9780545093347.asp
THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING, TRAITOR TO THE NATION, Volume II: THE KINGDOM ON THE WAVES
One of the best and most difficult books I have read all year, completing the story of Octavian, a slave raised with a classical education as an experiment in ethnicity and intelligence on the eve of the Revolutionary War. I'm still not convinced I would hand it out, willy-nilly, to teen readers, (it's grim and incredibly depressing, not to mention written in eloquent, but challenging, 18C English,) but I found the series incredibly thought provoking, and include the author's defense why teens should read it.
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/9780763629502.asp
