The Puzzle Ring

The Puzzle Ring, by Kate Forsyth, is a book I discovered about a year ago. This is a slightly edited version of a review I posted on Goodreads.

Title: The Puzzle Ring
Author: Kate Forsyth

Hannah Rose is a twelve-almost-thirteen-year-old girl who lives in Australia with her mother, Roz. Years ago, just the day after her birth, Hannah's father Robert disappeared, somewhere in Loch Lomond, Scotland.
She comes home early one day, having been punished at school, to find a letter that turns her life upside-down.
Her great-grandmother is a countess.
In the letter, the Countess of Wintersloe, Hannah's great-grandmother, asks her and Roz to come to Scotland to see her.

In Wintersloe Castle, they meet the old, frail countess and her cook, Linnet. Hannah makes friends in the town- Donovan, the motherless boy who loves animals; Max, the science-crazy son of the Wintersloe gardener, Genie; and Scarlett, the dramatic daughter of the general store's owner. All four of them were born within four miles of each other, on four consecutive days of the same year- first Hannah, then Donovan, then Max and finally Scarlett.

And Hannah finds out about the magic the town talks of, and the curse on the Roses- how Eglantyne, the fairy wife of one of the Roses, was burnt to death and how she laid a curse on her husband's family:

By fever, fire, storm and sword
your blood shall suffer this bane.
No joy or peace for Wintersloe's lord,
till the puzzle ring is whole again.
The thorn tree shall not bud,
the green throne shall not sing,
until the child of true blood
is crowned the rightful king.

All the legends Hannah has read and loved are real!
On certain days of the year, gates to the Otherworld open- and one such gate is in Fairknowe, the hill near Wintersloe. But it is dangerous to go through, as after Eglantyne's death, the Unseelie Court, the 'bad' fairies, rule the Otherworld.
On one of the 'thin' days, Robert found one of the four parts of the puzzle ring, and hid it away. And on another of those days, he disappeared, trying to break the curse.

Two months after her thirteenth birthday, on one of the 'thin' days, Hannah, Donovan, Scarlett and Max go through the fairy gate, back in time to the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots- soon after Englantyne was killed.

Now the four friends, along with a younger Linnet (a fairy) and a new acquaintance, Angus, must look for the remaining three parts of the puzzle ring and try to break the Rose's family curse, without being caught by the black witch, now queen of the fairies, Irata.
And when they do they need to find a 'child of true blood' who will take the throne.

What happened that night, the night that Robert disappeared? Did Eglantyne actually die? Is Robert alive? Who is the child of true blood? Will the friends finish what Robert started and break the curse of the Roses?

To find out, read the book. Or you can read the spoiler below.
It's a really good book, and an excellent choice for fantasy lovers.

Holes

Oh my goodness, look at that, I haven't posted for almost two months!
How horrifyingly embarassing.

Holes happens to be a book that I personally think is awesome. It won the Newbery medal, which is, as far as I know, an award given in the USA to what the judges think is the best children's book of the year.

Don't quit reading this in disgust after the term "children's book", because a lot of those books are targeted towards teenagers as well, and even adults enjoy them.
Okay, so if you're not convinced...well, here's the review I posted on Goodreads last year.


When I read this book, I decided that it totally deserved that Newbery Medal.
Holes is the story of Stanley Yelnats IV, a singularly unlucky guy from a singularly unlucky family. His family was supposedly cursed when Stanley's no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather broke a promise to a fortune teller.
His dad is an inventor trying to invent a way for shoes not to smell. When a pair of shoes falls out of the sky and hits him on the head, he thinks it's fate. Maybe his luck is changing...
Apparently not. Those shoes once belonged to legendary baseball player, Clyde Livingstone, called Sweetfeet.
Stanley is given a choice- jail or Camp Green Lake. He chooses Camp Green Lake.
There's no lake at Camp Green Lake, a 'correctional facility' in the middle of the dry Texas desert.

Once, the desert used to be a lake, and there was a town. The schoolteacher there, Katherine Barlow, fell in love with an African American onion-seller named Sam. When the townspeople found out, they shot dead Sam.
The sheriff refused to help, and asked Katherine for a kiss instead.
Three days after Sam was killed, Miss Barlow shot the sheriff and left a lipstick mark on his forehead.
She became the feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and the lake dried up. Twenty years later, when confronted by two people she once knew, she refused to tell anyone where the money she's stolen was.
They could dig holes in the desert for a hundred years, and they wouldn't find the treasure anywhere. Soon after saying this, Kate died from the bite of a poisonous yellow-spotted lizard, laughing.

If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, he becomes a good boy. And that's what happens at Camp Green Lake. The strange Mr. Sir and the mysterious, intimidating Warden make the boys dig a hole every single day. There aren't any fences or walls- because the camp is the only place that has water for miles around. It's a prison.
The boys at Camp Green Lake all have nicknames, and soon Stanley's new name is Caveman. The boy he becomes the closest to is Zero, a quiet boy who everyone dismisses as stupid. When Zero runs away, Stanley wants to find out what happened, and follows him.
Although he doesn't know it, running after Zero will lead to the breaking of two curses- the Yelnats family curse and the curse on Green Lake.

This was a really well-written, captivating book. I stay with my statement- it totally deserved the Newbery Medal it got.


Yes, I'm serious, Stanley and his family refer to his great-great-grandfather as his *deep breath* 'no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather'.
It's engrossing and funny and a really good book, so I recommend you read it at the first chance you get!

Igraine the Brave

Title: Igraine the Brave                                          

Author: Cornelia Funke
Igraine lives in Pimpernel Castle with her mother, her father, her older brother and her talking cat, Sisyphus. Her parents, the Fair Melisande and Sir Lamorak the Wily (or the Witty), are magicians, and her brother Albert is training to be one too. Igraine, though, unlike her family, is uninterested in magic. She wants to be a knight, like her great-grandfather Pelleas.

Pimpernel, built by one of her ancestors, was often besieged before Igraine was born. The motive? Igraine's family owns the Singing Books of Magic. The castle has few neighbours, the closest being the Baroness of Darkrock, whose two pleasures in life are horses and drinking spicy mead.
The day before her twelfth birthday, as Igraine tells Sisyphus that life at Pimpernel is a bit boring, the master of horses at Darkrock, Bertram, rides to the castle. He has bad news. Osmund the Greedy, or Osmund the Magnificent (it depends on who's talking), the nephew of the Baroness, has arrived unexpectedly at Darkrock. Rumour has it that he wants the Books of Magic.

Melisande and Sir Lamorak are not worried. They assure the anxious Bertram that they can take care of Osmund.
However, they make a little mistake while finishing Igraine's birthday present...and both are turned into pigs. Talking pigs.
Meanwhile, Osmund is coming. The Baroness has disappeared.
Igraine's parents, now being pigs, can't work magic. And that means that they can't get rid of Osmund and his army until they turn back into humans. For that, they need giant's hair. Unfortuntely they're out of stock.

Osmund and his castellan, the Iron Hedgehog, a.k.a Rowan Heartless, show up outside Pimpernel and warn Albert and Igraine that if the Singing Books are not handed over to Osmund the next day, the castle will be beseiged.
As it is an emergency, the books agree to help Albert hold off Osmund until Igraine returns from the journey she has volunteered to go on- to the hills in the west to get giant's hair.
She succeeds, and meets the Sorrowful Knight along the way, who helps her. And then she learns that the cure will take an hour during which none of Pimpernel's magical defenses will work.

Will Sir Lamorak and Melisande turn back into people without losing Pimpernel? Will Osmund get what he deserves? Will the Sorrowful Knight become happy? And finally, will Igraine become a knight?

Maybe it's below my age group. But even though I'm a teenager, I enjoyed it. And if you like knights, smart girls, magic and twists in the story, I think you will too.

Shadow Spinner

Shadow Spinner, by Suzanne Fletcher, is one of my favourite books. Below, is the story. In italics, I explain the story of the 1001 nights, which, if you know it, makes the book more enjoyable.

Title: Shadow Spinner

Author: Susan Fletcher                                                

A king called Shahryar was happily married, until he discovered that his wife was in love with someone else. In a fit of rage, he executed both his wife and her lover. He was convinced that he could never trust a woman again.
Apparently kings weren't supposed to not have a wife. Or maybe Shahryar was slightly mad. Whatever the reason, Shahryar ordered his Vizier to find him a bride. He married her in the evening and executed her the next day at dawn. This went on and on, and the people developed grudges against both the king and the Vizier, especially against the Vizier- because he himself had two daughters, Shahrazad and Dunyazad.
One day Shahrazad volunteered to be the doomed bride. The night before the execution, she asked if she could tell her sister a story. Shahryar said yes. Dunyazad came and Shahrazad began to tell a story. She stopped at a particularly interesting part just at dawn. The king put off the execution, wondering how the story ended. That night, she wove in another story, left off at an interesting part, and escaped execution again. It went on and on, until, after 1001 nights, Shahryar had softened, and Shahrazad was safe.

This story is set during the dangerous time in the kingdom of Shahryar when Shahrazad was still telling stories.
It is told by Marjan, a crippled orphan who, once her mother died, was sold by her stepfather as a slave. She has a bad past...her mother crippled her before committing suicide, and Marjan has a hard time coping with the fact.
But Marjan is treated very well by her owners, who consider her as family. Marjan loves telling stories and Queen Sharazad is her idol.
One day, selling trifles in the harem, Marjan begins to tell the children there a story. She has just gotten the children to laugh when she notices an older girl listening to the story too...
The girl is Dunyazad, Sharazad's younger sister. Dunyazad takes Marjan to the queen.
Sharazad is exhausted and running out of stories after almost three years of nighttime storytelling. So when Marjan tells one that she's never heard, she's immediately interested. The next day, Marjan is bought by Sharazad and comes to live in the harem.

Sharazad tells Shahryar the story. It turns out to be one of his childhood favourites and he asks for the sequel. Sharazad tells him she knows it, but in reality, neither she nor Marjan knows. She has to get the story, for fear of the king.
Marjan is now on a mission to find the storyteller from whom she heard the tale, and get the sequel in just a few days. In the event that she doesn't...Sharazad will die and the killings will start again.

But Marjan is a member of the harem. She can't go outside at all. In order to find the storyteller, she has to sneak out without getting caught by the guards. And that's not the only obstacle in her way.

The king's mother, the Khatun, is suspicious. She loves her son and doesn't trust either Shahrazad or her crippled servant. She's very powerful, with great influence over the king. She has spies. She suspects that Marjan may be helping Shahrazad to meet a lover. And that's how the whole drama started, right? With the queen having a lover...

Marjan has to get the story. The stakes are too high. The fate of the city and the eligible unmarried girls in it rest on Marjan's shoulders. Sharazad must soften the hardened heart of the king. If only Marjan could soften the hardened corner of her own heart...
Will she manage to get the story? Will she accept her mother's actions and death?
Will the killings finally stop?

I leave you to read the book and find out.