Festival of Life

The ordinary people of Kinyn do not have calendars. They track the years by seasons and natural phenomena, like the Lights. So most people don’t remember the day someone was born, or the day someone died. Instead, each town and village chooses a mid-summer day for the Festival of Life. No work is done that day except what is necessary, like milking the cows. Food is simple, mostly freshly-harvested fruits and vegetables, uncooked. Some towns offer their firstfruits to the gods they think protect the town. In the morning, people rejoice and sing to the gods, honoring another year of living. When night falls, lanterns are lit in remembrance of those who have passed on.

Those who follow the Savior observe the festival in their own way. In the morning, they sing songs of praise to the Savior who gave them life. At night, they still remember those who have passed on. Though some people struggle to push back the pain of loss, they pray their thanks to the Savior for promising a second life to those who love Him. Followers of the Savior give offerings of firstfruits, but instead of leaving them for their God, they give them to those who are in need.

Book Review - Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet

Book: Auralia's Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet

This is Julie!  I have a review system you may (or may not) want to look at to see HOW I come up with my ratings and what I rate on.

Ridiculously simplified summary: A selfish king takes all the colorful items in his realm, forbidding the people from having colors. Meanwhile, a strange girl comes to the Gatherers, the people outside the city walls, and brings colors to them...

Content: See my review of Beckon. I like happy endings, or at least not miserable ones. I thought this book would end pleasantly enough but around 2/3 or even 3/4 through, things start going very, very, very wrong.  Bodies literally pile up. And unlike in Beckon, I have no idea why any of it happens.

As for Christian content, presumably the Keeper is the God or Christ figure, but it's some sort of conglomeration of animals (for some reason I imagine it looking like one of the Legendary Beasts in Pokémon). It's referred to as an "it" and if I recall correctly, it doesn't speak. Unlike Aslan (who has at least a Biblical link in the whole "Lion of Judah" thing), this weird figure did not appeal to me at all.

Rating: 

Compelling: 4 out of 10. What one person finds fascinating, another will find dull, but I like character-driven plots more than omniscient, flowery language. I found the basic idea of a king stealing the land's colors interesting but wasn't driven along to read, so it took me a long time to finish. The end is where Overstreet pulls out the stops and accelerates the action.

Characters: 3 out of 10. You ever see Dharma and Greg, where a straitlaced guy marries a free-spirited woman? Or maybe more accurately, the parodies? (Dharma stands on the table. Greg: "You come down from there." Dharma: "No, you come up here!" Greg stands on the table and the audience laughs.)

I felt like the title character Auralia was like Dharma in that she was a bizarre character who didn't fit in. (Yet everyone--everyone, even the man they said was beyond redemption--adored her and/or thought she was amazing.) I'd actually consider her a Mary Sue character. We eventually see that yes, she was meant to be amazing and otherworldly and such. I just don't like characters who we are told are amazing and great, when I never feel like they are. I just didn't "get" why she was so great. Other readers might.

I found most of the other characters flat or annoying. A month later, I still recall the driving motivation for at least three point-of-view characters is "something bad happened and they went crazy."

This book reminded me how exciting it is to read characters who want something, with strong motivations.  The only two characters I liked (comparatively minor ones) were the young woman scheming to become queen and the thief. They were the only ones who seemed to want concrete things. They were the only ones I felt were real, with goals and hopes of their own. I felt like the rest of the characters really existed to serve the story, doing whatever it required.

Writing/editing: 7 out of 10. Very difficult for me to rate this. There are some beautiful descriptions and a few interesting turns of phrases. However, I really just want a fun and compelling read. Much of this read to me as though Overstreet were trying to write a literary novel. As I read I couldn't help thinking of James Joyce, Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," and all those other authors Creative Writing and English teachers revere. Me, I want to read an entertaining story, not a story where the words are viewed as more important than the characters.

Plausibility/believability: 1 out of 5. Again, there are some good physical details. At first I was caught up in the concepts but by the end I really didn't understand why anything happened the way it happened.

Positive: 1 out of 5. See the body count referenced above. It had some of the most gruesome images I've read, like a man lovingly holding a hand with no body attached. Any Christian references are so subtle I didn't get them. Apparently there are supposed to be 3 more books, so it all may pull together as the series progresses. But I couldn't glean any meaning from the tragedies in this one.

Gut reaction: 1 out of 5. This is not a book for me. I probably should have known better, given the reviews I saw went on and on about how poetic and flowery the language was. But I was hoping looking at this book would strengthen how I write my descriptions. Since I'm not going to write from an omniscient point-of-view and don't really want to write "fancy," I don't think it helped me.

Bonus points: 5 out of 5.

Recommended for: Fans of epic fantasy with omniscient point-of-view and a literary/flowery style, who aren't adverse to a high body count.

Probably not good for: People who like happy endings; people who hate Mary Sue characters; people who need concrete motivations for characters; people expecting an explicitly Christian book.

Total Rating: 2.2 out of 5 stars

Ship Month - James M. Schoonmaker / Willis B. Boyer

OK, here's a completely different kind of ship docked in Toledo, Ohio (open til Labor Day 2012; I'd assume summer hours next year, maybe with more restoration done!).

The James M. Schoonmaker (formerly the Willis B. Boyer, and before that, the James M. Schoonmaker again!) is a lake freighter built in 1911, right around the time of Titanic.

Aside from her enormity the SCHOONMAKER displayed unparalleled elegance. The showpiece of her owner, William P. Snyder, and flagship of her fleet, The Shenango Furnace Co., the SCHOONMAKER provided luxurious passenger accommodations which rivaled the “appointments of such magnificent transatlantic express steamships as the Lusitania and Olympic.”
--from http://willisbboyer.org/history.html

Not for the faint of heart, you travel up a slightly steep, small-looking (but safe) gangway to get onto the deck. The whole place has several flights of stairs and is not for those who are afraid of heights, unless they love ships.  (I am afraid of heights, but I love ships, so it worked out fine.)  They charged me $4--I thought I'd read it would be $7, but I couldn't complain.

The inside is like a museum, not all that polished yet, but that's one of the things I loved about it!

They have some displays in the lowest level (the "ground floor," though this is several stories up).  I believe this was higher-up crew members' quarters.

If I recall correctly they had two functioning bathrooms!  That is something I haven't seen in many museum ships.

This is in the Grill Room, a passenger lounge.

Electric fireplace in said room.

Heading upstairs!

You slip outside...

 

and head up to the next level, the "Texas Deck." The Observation Room was hard to photograph.

I THINK this was still on the Texas Deck, but it could've been one level up.

Anyway, one more flight of stairs gets you to the Pilothouse!

This looked so Titanic-y.

All in all it was a great little museum. As it stands, 30 minutes would probably be plenty of time to tour, even if you like to read everything; 20 if you're in a rush. You can spend a bit more time if you love taking photos or just standing on the deck and relaxing. Well worth the trip.

If you want to read more about Great Lakes freighters, well, the volunteer who showed me around the lowest level asked if I heard about them through Boat Nerd (I hadn't). I looked recently and didn't see info on this particular vessel, but I'm sure there is some.

Hope you enjoyed ship month!

Ship Month! - HMS Surprise

Julie again!

So the HMS Surprise is a 1970s replica of a 1700s ship at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. But she's a beautiful ship. You may recognize her from Master and Commander, though I understand she has a brief stint in the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

I assume there is a cannon on the other side of that wall!

OK, this is just a little surreal.

Like the Columbia in Disneyland, this ship has an impressive captain's room. Unlike the Columbia, you could walk around in it!

One last look.

I have more on the H.M.S. Surprise on my personal blog.

Next week, a more modern ship to wrap up Ship Month. Just haven't decided which one yet!

Ship Month! - Star of India

Julie again.  Here's the Star of India, dubbed the world's oldest active sailing ship. It resides at the San Diego Maritime Museum.

I hate to admit, lifeboats do kind of clutter a deck.

This little restroom is less than appealing.

The Star of India was an immigrant ship for much of its life...I wonder if women had to try to use that with their hoop skirts. Though the ship had a long useful life, so maybe they had different heads back then.

And I believe this was the captain's cabin. Pretty swanky, huh?

We'll end with a nautical term here.

I have a lot more pictures and information on the Star of India on my personal blog here and here.

Next week, we'll spend some time aboard the H.M.S. Surprise!

Ship Month! - The Californian

Julie here.  So here are some shots from the Californian, another replica ship, this one at the Maritime Museum of San Diego.



One major difference between this one and the Columbia is that this is a functioning vessel...most obvious by the sails! Also, there are a lot more lines.



The main thing I learned on this voyage was that ships sail by hitting the wind at an angle, not straight on. I believe it's the same principle as an airplane wing.

The boom is VERY low, which probably makes sense for a ship that's built for speed. The railing was very low too! I'm not sure if the ropes that block people from falling off are period-authentic or not, but given the number of landlubbers taking cruises on the ship, it's probably good that they're there.





I didn't get any good pictures of the ship itself, though you can make it out in the sunset here.



I have a lot more pictures of the Californian on my other blog.

We'll be back at the Maritime Museum of San Diego next week!

Ship Month! - The Sailing Ship Columbia

Julie here. This month I'm going to be posting ship pictures. Why? Because ships are neat.

Here's one that should be familiar to most Disney fans near the West Coast.

 

This is the Sailing Ship Columbia!

Below deck is a pseudo-museum of sorts. The ship is based on the Columbia Rediviva, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe.

Here's where the crew might have slept. (At most the crew could have been about 30 people...still, not much room on the ship!)

Here are some tools a ship's carpenter might use, which of course makes me think of Aridin. The corkscrew thing is an auger. The thing to the right is almost certainly a brace, a tool still used today (precursor to a modern electric drill).  Btusdin has a great picture, and Musings from the Workbench has great photos of old-fashioned tools as well, including a brace. I suspect those peg-looking things are chisels, but it's hard to tell in photographs.

It is rather small below decks.

While The Healer and the Pirate is set in a world more like medieval or early Renaissance times, the ships are closer to this 1700s ships...you know, grand age of piracy and all. In fact, in the show Fantasmic! the Columbia gets transformed into a pirate ship.

I have a lot more pictures on my personal blog, and might put up some more at the end of the month.

Come back next week to see pictures of another ship!