Category: review

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (Tom Angleberger)

The Plot
Tommy isn’t exactly the coolest boy in the sixth grade, but he knows he’s cooler than Dwight. Which is why it’s so very confusing when Dwight, who has committed many crimes against coolness, produces an origami Yoda. And not just any origami Yoda, but a Yoda who gives great advice (if in a poor imitation of the actual Yoda’s voice). If Dwight is so incredibly out of the loop, how does Yoda do it? Is the Force really at work here or is it something else?

My Thoughts
The title of this book alone made it required reading, and then the cover (with its picture of an origami Yoda made by the author) just clinches the deal. But other than those things and the cover blurb, I didn’t have much more information about it going in.

The setting is a U.S. middle school, a fairly liberal one, as the kids seem to have plenty of time to congregate out of class (not a feature of the junior high I went to – though at least we still got a long enough lunch to have some recess time after eating). Tommy is a kind of middle of the road kid, perhaps on the less popular side of average, and his friends mostly occupy the same social stratum. Dwight is a boy on the fringe of their group — he’s considered borderline acceptable even by them, due to his behaviors and habits which are considered odd by the other kids.

Dwight, however, doesn’t seem to care or notice that he’s looked down upon by the others. He seems oblivious for the most part to the horror he creates when he wears a weird outfit or eats his food in an odd fashion, or talks to a girl without agonizing over it. It’s not clear to me as a reader if Dwight is meant to be socially awkward and unaware of the views of others or if he’s completely aware of their shock, but is just above petty social games and confident enough in himself to behave the way he wants. In the end it may not matter (we spend the book in Tommy’s head, not Dwight’s) but it’s an interesting question which I don’t entirely feel was resolved.

One day, Dwight shows up having made a Yoda out of origami. He puts it on his finger and does a Yoda imitation and thus proceeds to give advice to the others. Most of the time, this advice seems to be very wise, and most of the other kids find this completely incompatible with their view of Dwight as clueless. (Though it fits better with the possible second view of Dwight which none of them have entertained.) Tommy is one of the most concerned by this seeming divergence from expectations (perhaps because it forces him to think he may have mislabeled and underestimated Dwight?) and so he attempts to compile a dossier of the advice Yoda has given and the results which ensued.

The various scenarios presented are all reasonable, realistic and all that (well, maybe — do they really still have middle school dances? they were lame 20 years ago and not many people went), and the premise is a fine one. The only place where the story falls down a bit is in the fact that all the kids (except for Tommy’s cynical “friend” Harvey, who as far as this story actually has an antagonist, is it) sound exactly the same, even though we’re supposed to be getting stories from a variety of perspectives. Perhaps the stories are meant to have been filtered through Tommy before being written down. I’m not sure. But I would have liked to have seen a bit more variety in voice.

The other issue I had was with the girls. And in the context of the story, it’s not really a fault, it’s just a POV that’s so common I’d really like to see some effort to make it new again. And that is the view of girls as alien beings impossible to comprehend, a view which most of the boys seem to share. I’m not sure how one would make this new, but I do know it wasn’t exactly ‘new’ here.

Overall, this was a pleasant little story. By the end, Tommy seems to have learned a lesson, everyone is happy (except Harvey) and it ends on a feel good note. There is a sequel coming, which I find I’m actually interested to read, because it seems like it’s going to focus on Harvey and his reaction to all of these events.

In Short
Though The Strange Case of Origami Yoda doesn’t exactly break new ground in tween books, it’s still a decent story with some interesting characters. I really like the idea of the origami Yoda, and really it was that which attracted me to the book in the first place. (And shows what you can do with a kickass title.) Though most of the characters felt pretty generic, Dwight and Harvey (and to a certain extent Caroline, a hearing impaired student just slipped in there for no moral value at all — nice work!!) stood out as being unique constructs. I’ll be picking up the sequel to see what happens next.

Origami Yoda
Edited to add my not so great attempt at making this version of Origami Yoda. The only origami paper I could find in the house was small and rainbow colored, neither of which helped.

[Yoda uses the force to prevent his picture being taken]

[Yoda’s force powers are overcome by sunlight]

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J’s Take on The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

Origami Yoda CoverThe Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger isn’t exactly what I was expecting. But it was surprising in a good way.

I thought it would be shorter. I also thought it would be paperback. It’s not overly long, but it wasn’t something I could read on one bus trip or lunch break. And it’s a very nice hardcover. Reminds me of the Doctor Who tie-in novels and The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities which you should totally buy, yo. A very nice look and feel to it.

Also, how can you resist that origami Yoda on the cover?!

For bonus points, I read this while listening to Weird Al’s “Yoda”. Yo-yo-yo-yo Yoda.

This book is laid out as case files, as the main character, Tommy, tries to work out if Origami Yoda is magic, or what. Origami Yoda is a Yoda origami puppet that a strange classmate of his, Dwight, made and designed himself. He wears it around on his finger and it gives sage advice to those who ask. In a bad Yoda voice with questionable Yoda syntax. (But the book makes a point of pointing that out!)

Other classmates have contributed to the case files, and added their thoughts and comments. And doodles.

I really have very little negative to say about this book. I liked that the pages were all crinkly (well, the design on them was of crinkly paper, the paper wasn’t actually crinkly). There are little tie fighters and X-wing fighters in the corners of the pages. The doodles are believably drawn by a kid, and funny! The one of the squirrels struck me particularly.

The book was just geeky enough for me, with Star Wars references, Shakespeare quotes, mention of Tycho Brahe. There are girls in here who don’t come off as idiots. (Although they do seem the goal of most of the male characters.) There’s even a hard-of-hearing girl, though she doesn’t get to write a case file herself.

So to my two problems with the book. First, the kids are in sixth grade, and they seem rather obsessed with girls and a PTA Fun Night dance that happens every month. That’s not the sixth grade I remember. (Though admittedly I am far from typical.) I wonder if it’s because it’s part of a middle school, whereas my sixth grade was still elementary school.

My origami Yoda
Imagination you must use

 

The other is the origami Yoda instructions at the back. I was worried I couldn’t follow them well, but in the end, I think I came out with a decent origami Yoda. I didn’t cut the paper in half and in half like it said, so he’s a large origami Yoda. He’s also not green.

Buuuut… it’s also not the Yoda(s) in the book. If you expect to make one like the Yoda on the cover, you’ll be disappointed. I wish the author had included two different versions of Yoda instructions. One easy one and one more complex one that looks nicer. I probably would’ve failed to make the good one properly, but hey.. I could try!

 
 

There’s a sequel out soon (already?) and I’m rather interested in seeing the return of the origami Jedi.

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Skyfall (Catherine Asaro)

Skyfall coverThe Plot
The Skolian Empire stands on the brink of war, with only an important vote in the ruling Assembly to decide which way the decision will turn. Roca Skolia, the Foreign Affairs Minister and daughter of the current rulers of the Empire, is desperate to get back and cast her votes against the war. But she knows her son Kurj, head of one of the military branches, is just as determined to keep her from arriving in time so he can cast her votes for her. She attempts to avoid his agents by taking a roundabout method back and accidentally finds herself stranded upon the world called Skyfall. What happens next may end up having an even more profound effect upon the Empire than the war ever could.

My Thoughts
I was first introduced to Catherine Asaro’s Saga of the Skolian Empire sort of by accident. I was with friends in Boston, and we stopped by Pandemonium, a science fiction and fantasy bookstore. I was not feeling very flush with cash at the time, so I lingered near the door while they shopped, trying to avoid temptation. At a table near the entrance were some books and also their author, who I ended up talking to, because I felt awkward just standing there and ignoring someone. It was Catherine Asaro, and she gave me a pen. And then I felt guilty for taking the pen, so I also bought one of her books, The Last Hawk, which she told me was probably the easiest to read as a standalone. I took it home and read it and enjoyed it, and even went so far as to figure out which book I ought to read next, so I read that one and liked it too. And that’s kind of where things stood, because I knew even though the two I had read were enjoyable, I still felt like there was a multitude of backstory I had missed and which I needed to properly enjoy the later books in the series. I am a freak for timelines.

So when we decided to read one of Asaro’s books for Tripletake, I seized upon the chance to finally have an excuse to (1) figure out the internal chronology of the series and (2) buy all the rest of the books. Skyfall comes chronologically first (for now, at least) in the series, though it was not published first.

In Skyfall, we’re introduced to Roca Skolia, the second daughter of the current rulers of the Skolian Empire and the Empire’s Foreign Affairs Councillor. As the story opens, she’s realizing she was tricked by her son Kurj into leaving the seat of government just before an important vote will be called — a vote which will determine whether or not the Empire enters into a war with their rival empire, the Eubian Concord. With Roca out of touch, Kurj will be able to cast her votes as proxy and thus swing the result in the direction he desires. In order to thwart his plans, Roca devises an extremely roundabout method of returning to the Assembly. She lands on the world of Skyfall a few days before her next connection and promptly finds herself swept off by a group of the planet’s inhabitants. Though her kidnappers don’t mean her harm, an unexpected blizzard keeps her from getting back to the spaceport in time to make her flight, and she is stranded. Then, to make matters worse, she finds herself in the middle of a siege when the stronghold where she is staying is attacked by a group seeking to overthrow Eldrinson Valdoria, the current man in charge.

That Roca and Eldrinson find themselves mutually attracted is probably not a surprise. But what was a nice surprise was the effort made to make the residents of Skyfall (aka Lyshriol) actually different, even though they were of human stock. Instead of five-fingered and toed appendages, they have four fingers which bend in the middle to oppose one another. They think and count in base 8, and their vocal abilities have been enhanced so that they can make more sounds than a normal human. But somehow they can’t grasp the idea of a written record. Though they’re human, they’re still very alien — it’s hard to imagine them or get in their heads. And that was interesting to me, much more than your typical degenerate colony. It also seemed fairly self-consistent to me, more logical than say, the ancient colony/experiment which we visit in The Left Hand of Darkness.

Now, meanwhile, Roca’s son Kurj, though pleased with the voting results he’s achieved with his machinations, is increasingly agitated over his mother’s disappearance and consumed with the guilt of knowing it would not have happened but for his schemes. He devotes fantastic amounts of time and resources into trying to figure out where she’s gone, hoping to rescue her and also to punish anyone who might have been involved in keeping her away from him.

Along the way of this, we get a good amount of information about the history of the Skolian Empire, the leaders, the current political situation, the distribution of humans in this particular future, and various technologies which are unique to Asaro’s universe. As an introduction to the series, I came away from Skyfall feeling far less confused by the cast of characters and the setting than I recall feeling after the other books I read. There was plenty of information provided, but the number of main characters was not excessive and I was able to keep track of them and their relationships to one another without any trouble.

I’m looking forward to going through the series now in chronological order, and I expect that when I do hit the two books which I’ve already read, they’ll make a lot more sense and have more meaning once I can place them within a bigger context.

In Short
Though I had read a couple of books from the Skolian Empire series several years ago and found then enjoyable, I had been a bit confused by all of the names and places flying around because they took place quite far along in the series’ internal chronology. Skyfall is currently chronologically first and thus serves as a very good introduction to the characters and the setting, laying the groundwork for the rest of the books. Though it wasn’t published first, Asaro did a very good job of not expecting people to have read any of the other books before this one. I’m looking forward to continuing with the series from here.c

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The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

From the back cover:
Meet Dwight, a sixth-grade oddball. Dwight does a lot of weird things, like wearing the same t-shirt for a month or telling people to call him “Captain Dwight.” This is embarrassing, particularly for Tommy, who sits with him at lunch every day.

But Dwight does one cool thing. He makes origami. One day he makes an origami finger puppet of Yoda. And that’s when things get mysterious. Origami Yoda can predict the future and suggest the best way to deal with a tricky situation. His advice actually works, and soon most of the sixth grade is lining up with questions.

Tommy wants to know how Origami Yoda can be so smart when Dwight himself is so clueless. Is Yoda tapping into the Force? It’s crucial that Tommy figure out the mystery before he takes Yoda’s advice about something VERY IMPORTANT that has to do with a girl.

This is Tommy’s case file of his investigation into “The Strange Case of Origami Yoda.”

Review:
If you had asked me to sum up The Strange Case of Origami Yoda in one word, my initial answer would have simply been “cute.” When I first finished it, I was left with a pleasant impression but wasn’t sure I had too much to say about it. After a period of mulling, however, I realized that, even if the story itself is fairly straightforward, Angleberger does some interesting things with the way he tells it.

“The big question,” protagonist Tommy begins, “is Origami Yoda real?” The weirdest kid in sixth grade, Dwight, has made an origami Yoda finger puppet, which seems to dispense good advice even though Dwight himself is a big spaz. Tommy compiles a case file of students’ interactions with Yoda in an effort to determine if he’s for real and, therefore, if his advice concerning the girl that Tommy likes should be followed or if it will lead to total humiliation. He allows his friends to add comments and doodles, giving the book a bit of flair.

Origami Yoda offers advice on various topics, like helping a boy not burst into angry tears whenever he strikes out in softball, or helping another kid live down an unwelcome nickname (“Cheeto Hog”). Each chapter recounts a different incident, and though they are nominally written by different students, there is no discernible difference in narrative voice, except in the case of Harvey, Tommy’s obnoxious friend.

Angleberger doesn’t spell out the answer concerning Yoda’s authenticity in detail, but he does show that Tommy gradually gets fed up of Harvey “criticizing everything and everybody all the time” and realizes that he would rather be friends with Dwight, even if he is an oddball. Everyone probably has a toxic friend like Harvey at some point and must make the difficult decision to stop associating with them, and I thought Angleberger handled Tommy’s revelation in this regard rather well.

He also incorporates themes of inclusion and tolerance with subtlety. At no point, for example, is a racial characteristic ever assigned for any of these characters. We know that Tommy is short with unruly hair, Harvey is perpetually smirking, and Kellen is thin, but that’s it. Too, one of the female characters is described as “cute and cool” before it’s revealed a few paragraphs later that she also happens to be deaf. True, characterization doesn’t go much deeper than this for anyone, but I still appreciated the lack of preachiness.

Again, I come back to the idea that The Strange Case of Origami Yoda is a cute read, but I reckon late elementary Star Wars fans would have fun with it. A sequel, Darth Paper Strikes Back (in which Harvey is out for revenge), is due out next month.

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Doubletake: Cold Magic (Kate Elliott)

The Plot
Catherine Hassi Barahal has been raised by her aunt and uncle after the accidental death of her parents when she was just a little girl. Now nearly twenty — considered the age of majority both legally and by society — she finds her ordered world turned on its head when a cold mage from one of the powerful mage houses arrives one night and claims the Barahal family is under obligation to let him marry their eldest daughter. Cat, older than her cousin Beatrice by just a couple months, finds herself abruptly wed to this arrogant stranger and carted off to Four Moons House and an unknown fate.

My Thoughts
First, some background: in the summer of 1996, I was doing an internship at Middlebury College. I didn’t know anyone, and I was feeling particularly antisocial that summer; it was not the best for networking during an internship, but conditions were perfect for consuming vast quantities of books. I spent quite a bit of time at the small bookshop in town, and every time I visited, my eyes were caught by a group of fat novels by Kate Elliott — the Jaran series. I’d pick them up, look at the covers, read the back copy, and then put them back without buying them, though somehow in the back of my mind I always felt that their eventual purchase was inevitable. And soon enough the day came that I could find no other more pressing books to buy, so purchase them I did.

I read them, and I enjoyed them quite a lot (though the later books not quite as much, as focus shifted to characters I cared for less), enough that Elliott was on my watch list as an author whose other books I would probably enjoy.

But for various reasons, though I’ve picked up others of her series, I’ve never actually read them through. Crown of Stars lost me with book 2’s horrific cover. And the giant Eagles of Spirit Gate — for some reason they just didn’t capture my imagination. So by the time the Spiritwalker trilogy’s first installment was released, I wasn’t sure how I would react. However, it passed the cover test, and I very much wanted to like it.

The story begins in the city of Adurnam on the southern coast of Britain. Geography is considerably different in this alternate Earth, but my best guess is that Adurnam is roughly near where Southampton is today. And that will be my last attempt to identify this world with our own, because though I am compelled to try and work out the differences, the differences here are not only vast, they involve a great deal of history with which I’m only marginally familiar. (I point again to the Strange Horizons review which goes further into the alternativeness of the timeline.) Some years ago, much of Europe was in flames as the result of a Napoleanic general, known as Camjiata. He was defeated and imprisoned and society has returned to a more even keel since, though there are hints of discontent stirring (once again?) among the lower classes. Adurnam in this world is a city which boasts a university and a growing industrial base, and is thus a place where the classes are often thrust into contact with one another. The Hassi Barahals, a branch of a larger clan, have a house here in a respectable neighborhood.

From here, the story takes quite a number of twists and turns which I, happily spoiler free, did not always anticipate or see coming. The first segment of the story involves Cat and her cousin Beatrice at the university, giving us an introduction to the way upper middle class society operates. But just when you start to think the plot might center around the school and a mystery surrounding people there, the story shifts: Andevai Diarisso Haranwy appears at the Barahal house, marries Catherine and then spirits her off in a carriage. We then follow them on their travels as they make their way back across the countryside to Four Moons House, where Andevai will report on the success of his mission(s). But just when you start to think the story might center around the journey (both literal and figurative) of two people whose pride prevents them from admitting they find each other attractive, the story shifts: we discover that Andevai has mucked up his assignment thanks to the cleverness of the elder Barahals and Cat’s world is overturned yet again.

There are several more shifts of this nature as the book progresses, and though I was able to predict a few things before they happened (a certain inevitable betrayal springs to mind) the plot remained for the most part delightfully unexpected. By the time we reach our climax and slope down to the point where this story ends, the reader can be both satisfied by the number of revelations made and tantalized by the questions left unanswered. Fortunately for everyone, the second book of the trilogy, Cold Fire, is due to be released in the fall, and Elliott has begun doing the spadework for the third, so at least in publishing time (if not so much in real time) there won’t be much of a wait.

In Short
After enjoying the Jaran books very much, I had been unable to recapture the same level of pleasure with Elliott’s subsequent series — until Cold Magic. This book, the first of a trilogy (… and dare we hope for additional visits to this world afterward? We are already promised a Rory-centric short story.) introduces an alternate Earth where history and climate has gone not quite as it did in our own. Catherine, the point of view character, is learning about the world much as we do while her previously sheltered life is exploded. She is likeable and, more importantly, intriguing, along with her entire supporting cast. I had borrowed this book from the library to read, which I thought a suitable caution after my inability to get into Crown of Stars or Crossroads, but I’ve already ordered a copy for myself and pre-ordered the second, which should say it all.

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