Friday Face Off: Staring Eyes

Friday Face-Off is a weekly feature hosted by Misty at The Book Rat. 

This week's FFO compares Peeps by Scott Westerfeld and Gothic!, a short story collection by Deborah Noyes (Editor), Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Celia Rees, Barry Yourgrau, Janni Lee Simner, Vivian Vande Velde, Joan Aiken , M.T. Anderson, Neil Gaiman, and Caitlín R. Kiernan. Both covers give me the creeps. Which do you prefer?

Now it's your turn to choose...

Which cover did it better?

Click on any cover to enlarge.
Leave your thoughts in the comments!

On the last FFO: Ordinary Magic won against Rump: The True Story of Rumplestilskin with three votes to none. It's been quite a while since then!

As usual, you are still welcome to comment with your thoughts on old FFOs, and I will update this page accordingly.

Review: Heir Apparent

by Vivian Vande Velde
Start Date: 4 September 2011
End Date: 4 September 2011
Paperback, 315 pages
Published January 1st 2002 by Magic Carpet Books

Summary (from Goodreads):
Lose the game, lose your life. 

In the virtual reality game Heir Apparent, there are way too many ways to get killed - and Giannine seems to be finding them all. Unless she can
   - get the magic ring,
   - find the stolen treasure,
   - answer the dwarf's dumb riddles,
   - impress the head-chopping statue,
   - charm the army of ghosts,
   - fend off the barbarians,
   -and defeat the man-eating dragon,
she'll never win. And if she doesn't win, she will die - for real this time.

I am so glad I reread this book. For years it has been, still is, and will be for a very long time, one of my absolute favorite books. Heir Apparent was the first book I ever reviewed on this blog (click for my old review). Wow, have I come far since then.

Since I've read it so many times, rather than worrying along with Giannine about the chances of "fatal overload"(minor spoiler, highlight to view), I can enjoy the twists and turns she goes through as she tries to find her way through the game, and laugh at all the crazy situations she gets herself into.

This is by far my favorite of Vande Velde's works. She is consistently funny from the first sentence to the last chapter. From the ridiculous positions Giannine finds herself in ("Cluck, cluck cluck,' I said: You stupid idiot, you have lousy timing") to her nearly continuous and constantly amusing side-commentary ("Luckily, I found that all I needed to contribute to the situation was a rapt expression and an occasional 'Impressive!' or 'My! That's interesting.'")

The characters are all extremely memorable (as one meets them over and over every time Giannine mus restart the game). Whether Queen Andreanna with her "This girl smells like a goat" or Xenos's father with his riddles, they're all lots of fun to read about. A personal favorite of mine is Sister Mary Ursala. Every time I read Heir Apparent, I'll be giggling whenever someone says the word "One" for days afterward.

Overall Thoughts: This is definitely on my "short list" of favorites. It's harder than one would think to write a review for an absolute favorite, but I did my best (and hopefully didn't overwhelm you with quotes). Heir Apparent is recommended for Middle Schoolers.


I read this book for my Fortnight of Old Favorites Challenge.

Witch Dreams Cover

My friend Ray and I made a new cover today for the book Witch Dreams.

The old cover looks like this:

We thought that it wasn't a very good cover for the book, so we made a new one that looks like this:

What do you think?

Click here to read my review of Witch Dreams.

Review: Witch Dreams

by Vivian Vande Velde
Start Date: 23 July 2011
End Date: 23 July 2011
Paperback, 120 pages
Published August 28th 2008

Summary (from the back of the book):
Nyssa could dream other people's dreams...

In this suspenseful tale of murder and witchery, Nyssa struggles to hide her true identity from the witch-hunters in her medieval town, while using her gift to solve the biggest mystery of her life: who killed her parents six years ago? Nyssa's dangerous journey leads her through a maze of adventures - in the real world and in the world of the unconscious. Will Nyssa be the next to die?

Oh, for goodness sakes. I didn't include the summary from Goodreads in this review, because it didn't even begin to explain what the book was about, but the summary on the back of the book doesn't really do it either. I'll do my best to write a better one:

My Summary:
Nyssa, a young witch with the powers to see into other people's dreams, has a mission. She wants to avenge the death of her parents, six years ago. She is sure, Elsdon, a local nobleman, is behind the murders, but as she investigates further, she becomes less sure. She uncovers many secrets in her search, but some of those secrets are best undiscovered...

(Okay, not great, but I was trying to imitate the style of the "back of the book reviews" and it turned out better than the one on the back of this book, and far better than the one on Goodreads, so I suppose it's not too bad.)

My Review:
When I finished Witch Dreams, my first thought was "that's it"? The story was both interesting and well-written, but I felt like the entire 120 pages of Witch Dreams was the introduction to a much longer book. Vande Velde could have expanded so much more - I felt like I got a tiny peek into a huge and rich world that I would have loved to spend more time in. And since the book was so short, I felt like I was missing about 200-300 pages of story.

Other than that objection, there was only two other things I was dissatisfied with. One was the very strange twist at the end that seemed to come out of nowhere. If you've read the book you'll know what I'm talking about (Worrell's "secret") (spoiler, highlight to view). It's one of the main reveals at the end, and I felt like it didn't need to be kept from the reader. Rather than a gasp of realization, it made me flip through earlier pages to see if I missed an earlier mention of it. The last issue I had was that at the end I felt like I knew more about Elsdon than Nyssa. Even though the reader got inside Nyssa's dreams, I never felt like I rally got inside her head. She didn't seem very deep as a character, or if she was, it was not obvious enough for me to really get at.

Many aspects of the story were very well done. Vande Velde started with a good concept and was able to expand it, if not to its very fullest potential, to a complete story. VVV was also very skilled at presenting the story in different narrative styles (flashbacks, dreams, straightforward narrative, etc.). One chapter was told from the point of view of a dog - one of my favorite chapters, actually.

VVV's strength as a writer is clear in Witch Dreams as she is able to create a compelling story even though not much actually happens in the course of the book. Nearly all of the action takes place in flashbacks and Nyssa's dreams. Also, there is a second twist as the end that is not nearly as strange as the first that I really enjoyed finding out about. I did not see it coming at all, but it totally worked, and it set up the ending really well.

I should probably read Witch Dreams again someday. I was very sleep-deprived when a read it (very late on a summer-school night, at a time which I will not post since my parents read this blog) so I'm sure I didn't get everything out of it I should have. Besides, it's a very short read - only 120 pages in large font and wide margins. I read it in under an hour the first time around, and it usually takes me even less time to read a book the for the second time.

One thing that put me off reading Witch Dreams for a while was the cover. I really don't like the cover on my book. Not only do I dislike the design, but since the cover is darker when it's printed than when it's online, the girl looks like she's been crying as well as being badly sunburnt on her cheeks (or cheek, rather). I want to create a better cover for it - my friend and I are going to make an attempt this weekend. If it turns out any good, I'll post it here. [EDIT: I posted it here.]

Fractured Fairy Tales

By Vivian Vande Velde

While I’m about to start rereading some of my old favorites, I thought I’d do a combined post about the three books Vivian Vande Velde has written fracturing fairy tales. First of all, I love VVV’s writing. At the time I started this blog last April, I’d be willing to say she was my absolute favorite author. In fact, my first review on this blog was of her book Heir Apparent. (http://picareads.blogspot.com/2010/04/heir-apparent.html) She recently published a book called Cloaked in Red, which contains eight retellings of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. In the past, she has also published two similar books; The Rumplestiltskin Problem and Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird.

The Rumplestiltskin Problem
128 pages (Paperback Edition)
Published 1 September 2002
I seriously love this book. It’s a collection of six retellings of the story Rumplestiltskin. In the author’s note, one of my favorite parts of the book, VVV explains why Rumplestiltskin is such a crazy, mixed-up fairy tale. So, she wrote six alternative versions. Each is totally different from the one before, extremely funny, and makes much more sense than the original fairy tale. This is my favorite of the two books I've read. Highly recommended.


Tales From the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird
144 pages (Paperback Edition)
Published 1 August 2005
This is similar to The Rumplestiltskin problem, but rather than having multiple retellings of the same fairy tale, each story in this book is a retelling of a different tale. I’ve always personally preferred The Rumplestiltskin Problem, but I enjoyed the variety of this one as well. It shares one story with the Rumplestiltskin Problem. There are thirteen stories in this one as opposed to The Rumplestiltskin Problem's six, which I like. It has retellings of The Frog Prince, Little Red Riding Hood (which I'm pretty sure is not included in Cloaked in Red), Jack and the Beanstalk, The Princess and the Pea, and a few others, all of which are entertaining and fun to read.


Cloaked in Red
128 pages (Hardcover Edition)
Published 1 October 2010
Reccomended for: VVV’s website says 12+, so I’ll go with that.
Cloaked in Red in a collection of eight retellings of Little Red Riding Hood. I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy yet, but VVV has the author’s note from the beginning of the book on her website. I was trying to read it to my brother, but I could barely get through it because I kept cracking up in the middle of a sentence and having to start over. It was that funny. Here’s a link so that you can read it for yourself: http://www.vivianvandevelde.com/bookDetail.cfm?BookId=48. I’m looking forward to reading it as soon as Amazon gets it back into stock. I’m sure it’ll be great.

P.S. I've posted at least once on every weekday since last Friday (the 14th). Yay! I'm going to try to keep it up for as long as I can.

The Book of Mordred

by Vivian Vande Velde

Start Date: 18 April 2010

End Date: 22 April 2010

I didn't really want to repeat authors so soon, but I really did not like this book at all, and I thought it deserved mention just to say how much I disliked it. (Also, I have just been reading a lot of Vivian Vande Velde recently.) The story itself is about Mordred, the illegitimate son of King Arthur. The book is split into three sections, each told by a different person. One of the things I didn't like about the book is how disjointed and separate each of the sections seemed. They all sort of came together in the end, but I still felt like there was something missing in the flow of the story. The idea behind the story is to take the character Mordred, who was cast in a very bad light in the traditional stories of King Arthur, and present a different side of his story. The reader never really trusts Mordred, but he is definitely considered a "good guy." It sort of bugs me in books when you want to trust the main character but you know you can't because all of a sudden he does something that makes him seem like a bad guy again. So even though I do really really really like Vivian Vande Velde's books, this one did not meet my expectations. It wasn't funny like the others, it wasn't engaging like the others, and most of all, I just didn't enjoy reading it. Please do not read this book.

Heir Apparent

by Vivian Vande Velde
Start Date: 14 April 2010

End Date: 15 April 2010

This is the 5th time (I think) that I've read Heir Apparent, and it never gets old. I found myself laughing out loud on the 5th time just as much as the 1st. Basically, the story is about a teenage girl, Giannine Bellisaro, who gets stuck in a virtual reality game called Heir Apparent. While she is playing, the equipment gets damaged, and so the game gets stuck on a loop. The only way out is to win. However, when the equipment gets damaged, the safety systems also get damaged, so Giannine only has a certain amount of tries before it overheats and goes on "fatal overload." As strange as it sounds, this book is amazing, hilarious, and really well written. I definitely recommend it.

P.S. Okay, I know that I read this a few days ago and it's not 15 April anymore, but I'm going to mix old and new books, so a lot of these books will not be in order of when I read them.