Middle Grade Review: The Turn of the Tide

Title: The Turn of the Tide
Author: Roseanne Parry
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers, 304 pages.
Source: Library

Summary: 
(I really didn't like the publisher's summary, which I found misleading), so I'm writing my own this time).

Kai has lost nearly everything he cares about in a tsunami. To make it worse, his parents send him from their devastated home in Japan to stay with and aunt and uncle he scarcely knows in Astoria, Oregon, instead of letting him stay to do the honorable thing and help clean up. His cousin Jet isn't too sure she wants him, either, despite her sympathy for him. She has her own problems. Together, the two find their connection through the thing they both love most: sailing. A summer's adventures in their small boat brings them healing and maybe the way to fulfill their dreams.

Review:
This wasn't a terribly deep or significant book in some ways, but it did offer an interesting take on a number of things (actually, that is my main criticism: I think it took in too many things). Jet and Kai have to learn together to help him find the healing he needs when his long-standing love of the sea collides with his new-found (and not unreasonable) fear of the ocean that brought such devastation to his life and his town. At the same time, Jet has to deal with changes in her friends after a year of Junior High, and she never lets go of her ambition: to be a bar pilot, guiding ships into the mouth of the Columbia--just like her father, and just like exactly one other woman in all the history of shipping in the river. Quite a few things are sorted out in a rather exciting finish to the story (which I really liked), as each of the cousins has to overcome fears to do what needs doing.

Even though I thought the author tried to take in too many things--I'd probably have dropped the whole changes-to-her-friends thread--the book was a fast, engaging read, and I had trouble putting it down once I passed the midpoint. Roseanne Parry has created very real and likable characters, with both good and bad traits, and deals well with the ways their different cultures shaped the two cousins (differences that made it realistically hard for them to relate at first).

I loved the historical note at the end that told about the history of the bar pilots on the Columbia--apparently one of the trickier river mouths around (and there really is, or was, only one female pilot). Part of the interest in this for me is that my mom rather wanted to be a (ship's) pilot when she was growing up, and I always wondered about how true it was that the profession was pretty much not open to women. Seeing how few and far between women are in the 21st Century, I have to concede that it would have been an uphill battle indeed to break into the profession in the 1950s.

Recommendation:
A good read for boys and girls, maybe 9-12, who like adventure and boats, or even just like thinking about boats.

Full Disclosure: I checked The Turn of the Tide out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Friday Flash: Gorg and the Mages

As a special treat this week, we return to the continuing adventures of Gorg the Troll!

Gorg and the Mages

Gorg Trollheim stood at the window at the top of the tower and studied the Valley of Baleful Stones. He tried not to notice the scattering of stone trolls. He would bring them back to life if he could. He just had to find Duke Bale, kill him yet again, and force his sorcerer to undo the petrifying spell.

Bale wasn’t in his tower. Gorg had found only three empty grey robes, like the one that had failed to stop him from entering. These didn’t speak to him, but they did stand in their corners unsupported, which gave him a creepy feeling. Were they watching him?

Probably they were. He couldn’t help that. What he had to do, and do fast, was figure out where Bale and the actual sorcerer had gone. A strange idea was starting to tickle his stone mind, and Gorg didn’t like ideas, especially strange ones. To distract himself he broke a bit of stone off the windowsill and put it in his mouth.

He spat out the stone after the first crunch. This was no fine sandstone or foamy granite! The tower was built of the stinking, sulfurous stone for which the valley was named. Gorg tried to tell himself that was only right, but he knew better. The tower he had pulled down a few months ago, crushing Bale under a pile of stone, had been built of a fine granite. Something about this tower was completely wrong.

 With a sigh of resignation, Gorg took a sip of his magic potion. The ghastly stuff had been meant to render a man incapable of intelligent speech, and it did. But it made a troll think faster and speak more wisely. Gorg needed to think just now.

When the potion took effect, Gorg stopped staring out the window, and descended the tower stairs faster than he’d gone up. The smell of burning sulfur penetrated his consciousness and now made sense, giving him the motivation to accelerate his usual deliberate troll’s pace.

He made it out the door as the tower burst into flames behind him, and vanished.

It had been an illusion. Only the mocking echo of the sorcerer’s laugh was real. Gorg turned his attention to the valley. If he could not find Bale, could he reanimate his petrified friends and relations?

Gorg approached the first statue, salt tears etching lines down his face as he recognized his friend Pulgrum Stonelump. He laid a hand on the stone head, and said, his voice the rough sound of stone rasping over stone, “I will save you, my friend.” Then, thinking hard, he uncapped his flask of Confusion Cocktail, the magic potion that had unintentionally given him such quick wits, and let a single drop fall on Pulgrum’s head.

The drop left a wet line as it ran down the stone, but, to Gorg’s disappointment, the stone remained stone. He corked the bottle and sat down, for the moment too discouraged to go one.

“I think you need our help,” said a voice behind him.

Gorg stood and whirled, faster than one would have thought a creature of stone could, and prepared to do battle with the three mages who stood a dozen feet off. He didn’t know when or from where they had materialized, but he knew that none of his dealings with mages had been positive. Well, except when the Earl of Beetroot had given him the Confusion Cocktail, but that hadn’t been meant as a favor.

“Easy, there, Trollheim,” the lead mage said. “We’ve come to help.”

“Why?” Gorg didn’t even try to sound polite.

“Because Duke Bale the Artichoke Hearted threatens this entire kingdom with his greedy, hateful ways. We have sworn to stop him.”

“I no longer care what he does to humans,” Gorg said, his eyes still fixed on the field of statues.

“I understand,” said the second mage, a female. Gorg thought he recognized that voice, and looked closer. He had last seen her at Bale’s tower.

“Have you changed your allegiance, Katerina of the Vale of Kale? You were Bale’s pet when last I saw you.”

“I have changed much, including my allegiance, Gorg Trollheim. You persuaded me to leave. I went to the City of Celestial Celery, and there I learned the extent of Bale’s plans. That included not only eliminating Trolls from the kingdom, but eliminating sorcerers, once we had done his bidding.” She made a face. “I didn’t care for his attitude.”

“He wishes to make all living beings his slaves.” The deep, calm voice came from the third mage. “We can stop him, but only if all his enemies work together. We will awaken your kindred, and you will lead us in the hunt.”

Gorg nodded. He might never fully trust a mage, but he could see their argument.  “Where has Bale gone? And what sorcerer left his empty robes to defend the tower?”

They all turned to look at the smoldering remains of the tower. Katerina scowled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you, boys?” She looked at Gorg. “I should introduce my friends. This,” she gestured at the first speaker, “is Brendren, of Mosternestine City. And our leader,” she indicated the deep-voice mage, “is Hort, master of all sorcery in the Vegetative Kingdoms.”

Gorg bowed. “I have heard of your power,” he lied. It was always good to make sorcerers feel important. The truth was that Gorg paid too little attention to human affairs to know the names of their leaders. He made a decision. “You can find Bale?”

“We can. But we are too few to stop him. There are some humans who will follow us, but most without magic are too afraid.”

“So you need the trolls, who are too stupid to fear?” If Gorg sounded bitter, he felt he had reason.

“We need the trolls, who have already lost too much to fear more.”

Gorg thought, took a sip of his potion, and thought some more while the mages waited.

“Awaken them. We will stop Bale.”

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016

The Valley of Baleful Stones, with an army of petrified trolls.

Okay, actually this is Goblin Valley State Park, Utah :)

Non-fiction review: Satellites in the High Country

 

 Title: Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man
Author: Jason Mark
Publisher: Island Press, 2015. 320 p.
Source: Purchase

Publisher's Summary: 
In Satellites in the High Country, journalist and adventurer Jason Mark travels beyond the bright lights and certainties of our cities to seek wildness wherever it survives. In California's Point Reyes National Seashore, a battle over oyster farming and designated wilderness pits former allies against one another, as locals wonder whether wilderness should be untouched, farmed, or something in between. In Washington's Cascade Mountains, a modern-day wild woman and her students learn to tan hides and start fires without matches, attempting to connect with a primal past out of reach for the rest of society. And in Colorado's High Country, dark skies and clear air reveal a breathtaking expanse of stars, flawed only by the arc of a satellite passing—beauty interrupted by the traffic of a million conversations. These expeditions to the edges of civilization's grid show us that, although our notions of pristine nature may be shattering, the mystery of the wild still exists — and in fact, it is more crucial than ever.

But wildness is wily as a coyote: you have to be willing to track it to understand the least thing about it. Satellites in the High Country is an epic journey on the trail of the wild, a poetic and incisive exploration of its meaning and enduring power in our Human Age.

 My Review:
Since this book addresses some issues near and dear to my heart (the preservation of wilderness and the pursuit of wild places), I really wanted to like it. And when the author recounts his adventures and wilderness travels, I was pulled along and enjoyed the trip. But in the end, I was disappointed, despite a number of thought-provoking moments along the way.

I think the problem may be that the author is trying to take in too much, or possibly looking too hard for the right situations to back up his argument. It's a bit hard to be sure about that, because in the end, I am not sure what his argument is. He seems to be claiming both that we are seeing (or have seen) the end of wildness/wilderness, and that we have an on-going need for it and must preserve it. Maybe those aren't contradictory arguments, and maybe I was unsatisfied because I prefer to imagine that we can have a real wilderness still, even though I know that my own ventures into "the wild" are heavily mediated by gear and infrastructure.

I'm not sure, but there's a good chance that, reading my last sentence, the author would be satisfied.

Recommendation:
This is a book that would probably bear discussion, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it as a way into the question of the wild/wilderness and it's future. In fact, for all their romantic inconsistencies, I would recommend beginning where I (and the author) did: with classics like John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Colin Fletcher. One thing is clear: the author did make the effort to put himself out there where he could experience what wildness he could find in the US, and I don't think he'd say that it's dead, however much we must (realistically) manage it.

Full Disclosure: My husband purchased Satellites in the High Country, and neither of us received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."