FINISHED:
Meloy, Colin. (2012). Under Wildwood. New York: Balzer + Bray.


[Prue and Curtis are reunited in this sequel to Meloy’s own Wildwood (Balzer + Bray, 2011), with Prue being drawn back to Wildwood by the voices of the vegetation there (a newly-discovered ability that she has), and Curtis having become a full-fledged Wildwood bandit-in-training.  The two of them embark on a quest to unite a fractured land by finding a just and rightful leader for Wildwood, along the way finding themselves underground and assisting mole people in a war to regain their throne from an usurper.  Meanwhile, Curtis’s parents leave his two sisters at an orphanage to watch the girls while they are away in Istanbul, having received a tip that Curtis may have been spotted there.  In typical fashion, the orphanage turns out to be a factory sweatshop run by a faded Russian movie starlet and her inventor boyfriend who is obsessed with finding a way into the Impassable Wilderness, sure that it’s potential as an industrial site is untapped.  There’s A LOT going on here, and it’s not until 400 pages into the novel that things begin to overlap and you understand how all of the storylines are related, but the language is rich and it does flesh out the woods more, exploring new terrain and expanding upon the world-building in the first book.  In addition, as with the previous tome, this one comes with fanciful and striking spot art illustrations (as well as a couple of full page, color plates) by Meloy’s wife, Carson Ellis. One of the major storylines deals with the topical issue of the growing economic disparity in the world and rise of rampant corporate growth:  after the Russian starlet Desdemona sees The 1% Journal on a desk, Meloy writes, “She didn’t understand the industrialist sensibility…  She’d fallen in with the crowd because she’d been attracted to the money… though she understood now that there was more to success and satisfaction than just blindly following the money.”  Whereas the first book could work as a contained story on its own, this one feels like a “middle book” – a bridge between stories – which, at the end, leaves all of the characters with things left to do and concludes with, “Their daily struggle, the tenuousness of their lives in the vacuum of power that has remained in the wake of a revolution, can wait until tomorrow.  Winter is passing.  A Spring will soon arrive.”  And the next installment can’t come soon enough.]

STARTED & FINISHED:
Kibuishi, Kazu. (2012). Prince of the elves [Amulet: Book 5]. New York: Graphix/Scholastic.


[.]


STARTED:
Martel, Yann. (2001). Life of Pi. New York: Harcourt.

[Re-reading before the film is released.  One of my favorites, so I'm glad to read it again...]

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