Puss Reboots: Blog: June 2010: Princess Ben

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Reviews:
All Aboard the Dinotrain by Deb Lund
Are You Afraid Yet? by Stephen James O'Meara
Bailey's Day by Robert Haggerty
A Brief History of Time by Shaindel Beers
Cat Heaven by Cynthia Rylant
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
A Dark, Dark Tale by Ruth Brown
Dead End by Helen R. Myers
Dreamstone by D. A. Hendrickson
The Electric Church by Jeff Somers
The Essential Basho by Basho and translated by Sam Hamill
Excuse Me... Are You a Witch? by Emily Horn
Farewell Atlantis by Terry Bisson
Freckle Juice by Judy Blume
Grampa's Zombie BBQ by Kirk Scraggs
The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry
How to Host a Killer Party by Penny Warner
The Kayla Chroincles by Sherri Winston
The Ladies' Paradise by Émile Zola
Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint
Little Quack's Hide and Seek by Lauren Thompson
The Man Who Did Something About It by Harvey Jacobs
Owly Volume 1: The Way Home and The Bittersweet Summer by Andy Runton
Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Revolutionary War on Wednesday (Magic Tree House #22) by Mary Pope Osborne
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
The Soul of the Rhino by Hemanta Mishra
Spot Visits His Grandparents by Eric Hill
The Texicans by Nina Vida
The Thanksgiving Door by Debby Atwell
Twister on Tuesday (Magic Tree House #23) by Mary Pope Osborne
Two Little Trains by Margaret Wise Brown and Leo Dillon
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman
Veracity by Laura Bynum

Previous month

Princess Ben: 06/19/10

Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock is told from Benevolence's point of view from the future where she's Queen and a mage. She recounts how she came to be where she is now.

I normally love this sort of book. Seriously. Add into the fact that Ben isn't a typical princess (not especially feminine, not shaped like a Disney princess) and she should be my perfect heroine.

And yet... try as may, I could not finish the book. I found present day Queen Benevolence's observations on past events too disjointed from what was happening. Every time the suspense started to build, she would break in with a reminder that everything would work out for the best, turning fantasy and adventure into something more like a book report.

I made it through the first hundred pages and then I skipped to the last couple of chapters. There just wasn't enough in the close of the book to motivate me to read the chapters in between.