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Review: Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin

Posted by Anastasia on March 24, 2010 4 Responses »

Mar 242010

60. Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin
Publication: Ace (September 27, 2005) originally published 1999, Paperback, 336pp / ISBN 0441013384
Genre: Fantasy, Horror
Rating:
Read: March 8-9, 2010
Source: BookMooch
Summary from Amazon:

A young girl is drawn into the strange, spooky underworld in the basement of her uncle’s funeral parlor.

Review

Somehow I heard about this book, I think in a recommendations list for books with kids having adventures in fantasy lands that exist in a sort of side-slipped reality to ours. That’s exactly what Dragonfly is, and while I normally enjoy books like that, I didn’t entirely enjoy Dragonfly.

I didn’t dislike it. But it’s definitely not a YA book like I thought it was. I think that was the fault of wrong categorization somewhere, so don’t go assuming it’s like Artemis Fowl or anything like that. It’s more like The Book of Lost Things, if you’ve read that– it’s a kid getting into adult situations, with life and death hanging on a precarious balance and morally corrupt people running around everywhere causing trouble. It disturbed me multiple times, Dragonfly, not least because Dragonfly falls in love with a werewolf who a) kills people and eats them and b) is enchanting her into staying with him anyway while he siphons off her dreams. So in lieu of eating her flesh he eats her soul, basically.

That does not sound like a happy-go-lucky romance to me, and in fact it never actually seemed that Dragonfly was really in love with that werewolf. She was being enchanted! But everyone acts like it was this great thing, even the people that should no better, and that rubbed me the wrong way. Dragonfly’s constant crying and feeling sorry for herself rubbed me the wrong way, too. It was annoying, especially since se never seemed to do anything except get into more trouble. I suppose it was more realistic, because she was, after all, ten, and how good at being a hero can a ten year old be, really? But she was down there for several months, which was more than enough time to learn a new skill set, and she never acted like a ten year old anyway. It was just weird.

Anyway, that was basically my main problem(s) with Dragonfly. Everything else was fine. Heck, everything else was fantastic! I loved how creepy it was, and how it melded together several mythologies and urban myths, and made it all scary. It was more of a Halloweentown than Halloweentown was, and that was great. I think if Dragonfly had been a different sort of person I would have liked the book better, but as it is now I think I’m just mostly torn between loving the creepy and hating the rest, and I think that’s because I went in expecting one thing and getting another.

YA books shouldn’t be as creepy as this one, and because I was expecting a YA book it threw me for a loop. If I had been expecting an adult horror/fantasy book starring a kid, I would have been better prepared and might have even liked it more. Maybe. Probably? Who knows.

And

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Other reviews: Talien & Maleficent’s Reviews | Reviews Alone

This post brings up some interesting points about Durbin’s writing. It’s very strange in some parts, and it doesn’t help the ten-year-old sound anything like a ten-year-old. What ten-year-old says stuff like “when the chuckle-dark harvest moon shaped pumpkins in its own image,” anyway? Some people like stuff like that– even I go for it sometimes– but not when the narrator is so young. I think I’d go for realism over style, then.

DNF: Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Miller

Posted by Anastasia on September 8, 2009 No Responses »

Sep 082009

DNF: Lonely Werewolf Girl Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Miller
Publication: Soft Skull Press (April 20, 2008), Paperback, 560 pages / ISBN 0979663660
Genre: YA, Urban Fantasy
Rating: N/A
Find @ Amazon or IndieBound
Read: Did Not Finish
First sentence: Kalix was lost.

I wasn’t sure whether or not I should post this, but since I did plod my way through about a third of it before giving up, and since I did get it from a publisher, I feel as if I owe a bit of something.

Summary from Amazon:

While teenage werewolf Kalix MacRinnalch is being pursued through the streets of London by murderous hunters, her sister, the Werewolf Enchantress, is busy designing clothes for the Fire Queen. Meanwhile, in the Scottish Highlands, the MacRinnalch Clan is plotting and feuding after the head of the clan suddenly dies intestate. As the court intrigue threatens to blow up into all-out civil war, the competing factions determine that Kalix is the swing vote necessary to assume leadership of the clan. Unfortunately, Kalix isn’t really into clan politics — laudanum’s more her thing. Even more unfortunately, Kalix is the reason the head of the clan ended up dead, which is why she’s now on the lam in London. . . This expansive tale of werewolves in the modern world — friendly werewolves, fashionista werewolves, troubled teenage werewolves, cross-dressing werewolves, werewolves of every sort — is hard-edged, hilarious, and utterly believable.

I started reading Lonely Werewolf Girl in January (or possibly last December). It took me about two months to get to page 250, whereupon I stuck it on my nightstand and left it for “another day.” I cleaned off my nightstand this weekend, and, not having read a single paragraph since placing it there, I decided to finally remove Lonely Werewolf Girl. Honestly, there’s no way I’m going to be able to finish it. If I could actually actively dislike a book, it’d be this one. Not hate, because I think it has potential for someone to like it– but that someone isn’t me. (I feel guilty enough as it is without hating the entire book!)

I hated all the characters but one (Kalix’s fashion designer sister). The writing was much too stilted and plain for my taste. The storyline was okay but I kept getting bogged down in everything that I didn’t enjoy and it all went to pot.

I liked the unusualness of the werewolves and how they’ve set up their world (in clans, very Scottish and with castles and everything), and sometimes the story got so interesting I did want to continue (this is how I made it to page 250, by the way). But unfortunately it’s not interesting enough for me to want to pick it back up again and so I think I’d like to give it away.

First person to comment on this post asking for the book gets it. It’s quite big, however, so US only, please. (Sorry about that, but I honestly can’t afford the $12+ it’d undoubtedly cost to ship internationally.) I’m going to be sending it Media Mail rate.