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Review // The Council of Mirrors Sisters Grimm Book Nine

by Michael Buckley

Just so you know, the actual cover is a lot more attractive than the picture. I've been reading this series since third grade, and I had to finish it even if I'm well over the target age. Hey, finals are coming up, and I'm not really in the mood to read something too strenuous.

Quick series recap and no spoilers if you haven't read it. Sabrina and Daphne Grimm are sisters whose lives took a turn for the crazy when their parents go missing. They're put into a series of terrible foster homes and have always managed to escape their evil guardians until they move to Ferryport Landing to live with their Granny Relda. The town is not as it seems. The people in it are all from fairytales Sabrina and Daphne had read. They find out that all the fairytales are true, more or less. That the works of writers like the the brothers Grimm and Hans Christen Anderson weren't stories, but documents and diaries of things that actually happened. The best part is that Sabrina and Daphne are the descendants of the brothers Grimm.

Long ago all of the fairytale characters were trapped in Ferryport Landing to keep them away from the rest of the world, but now some of them want freedom. They want out. They call themselves the Scarlet Hand, and they are responsible for kidnapping Sabrina and Daphne's parents. In this final book, Sabrina and Daphne will face the head of the Hand and hopefully win.

I didn't want to reread the whole series just for this last book, but I kind of wish I had. It's been a few years since the previous book came out, and a lot of the book harkened back to things I just didn't remember.

Once I got past the not really knowing what was going on part, I really enjoyed it. It's just a really cute fairytale read for elementary and middle graders (and apparently high schoolers). I think it was a nice end to the series, and if you're looking for a cutesy summer read you should definitely check out this book and the other nine that come before it.

Review // Divergent

Divergent

by Veronica Roth

It's really hard to sum up dystopian novels in a few sentences, but here we go. Divergent is the story of Beatrice Prior, who lives in a futuristic Chicago. In her world, the people have separated themselves from one mass to five different "factions": Amity the peaceful, Abnegation the selfless, Candor the honest, Dauntless the brave, and Erudite the intelligent. Each faction has its own beliefs about the dystopian "what went wrong", our modern-day society failed, and which values are most important now to make sure their society doesn't.

When the teenagers in this society turn sixteen, they each take an aptitude test to tell them which faction they would best fit with. After the tests, there is a ceremony where they choose a faction to join for life. Most choose to stay in the faction which they were born. Some choose to switch and never see their families again. Beatrice's situation is a little different, though. She's Divergent (clever title), which means her aptitude test results were inconclusive. She can choose to go with the Dauntless or the Erudite, or stay in her family's faction, Abnegation. As the little tagline says, "One choice can transform you." The rest of the story focuses on her fitting in with her faction, making it past initiation, and figuring out what's wrong with the government. Because it wouldn't be dystopian if something wasn't wrong with the government.

The first thing you'll notice when you pick up this book is that it's a sprint from start to finish. Within the first fifty pages, Beatrice has already taken her aptitude test, chosen a faction, and we've gotten most of the background story about this futuristic world. I loved that it was so fast-paced, and the background story didn't seem too needlessly injected into the front half, but I kind of hoped for a little bit more story. It isn't really clear why Chicago has separated into these factions, and we don't really know about any other place except for Chicago. Are there even other cities, or is Chicago the only populated place left in the world? Luckily Divergent is the first in a trilogy, so hopefully we'll get to see some more world development in the second and third book.

The descriptions of Chicago are wonderful. Nothing has really changed, except that everything is divided into factions. Without giving it away, the headquarters of the faction that Beatrice either chooses to join or stays in is just awesome. It reminds me of the senate building in Star Wars, except cooler and more vertical and more nook-and-cranny-ish.

Beatrice, or "Tris" as she goes by, has a great voice. Something that makes her so awesome, and Veronica Roth says so in a little interview in the back of the book, is that Tris is an active character and not a reactive one. She likes to be in control of a situation and proves that she can control what happens to her even if she's not the biggest, strongest, or tallest, she can be the toughest, and it earns her respect from her peers. She's also very dimensional and doesn't really fit into the protagonist stereotypes of "the hero" or "the underdog."

I liked it a whole lot. I was going to wait for the paperback of the second book Insurgent to come out before I bought it, but I don't really want to wait. There's always the library, I guess.

Just so you know, this book is going to be a movie. I can feel it in my knees. Either that or it's going to rain.

Harry Potter Hullaballoo - The Polyjuice Potion

The Polyjuice Potion

In which Christmas arrives, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione finally use their Polyjuice Potion.

We begin in Dumbledore's office, immediately after Harry and the rest of the school finds Justin and Nearly Headless Nick post-petrification. Dumbledore's office seems really cool, full of old gadgets, his beloved phoenix, the Sorting Hat, and portraits of all of the previous headmasters and headmistresses.

Out of curiosity, Harry tries on the Sorting Hat again, and once again it tells him that he would make a good Slytherin, leaving Harry to doubt his placement in Gryffindor. I think Harry has the ambition and cunningness to be a Slytherin, but he's much braver.

Then Fawkes the Phoenix dies. It's funny that Fawkes's name means Falcon. But after it dies, it is reborn as a wee little baby bird. Dumbledore tells Harry all about Phoenixes and that he doesn't doubt Harry's innocence to the situation, even though Harry looks very guilty right now. That's one of the great things about Dumbledore: he isn't condescending and he is very trusting. Maybe too trusting, but he's smart enough to have those amazing sorts of hunches that are nearly always right.

Another of Hagrid's roosters is dead.

Christmas arrives, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione as well as the rest of the Weasleys choose to stay at Hogwarts over holiday. Draco Malfoy is staying, too, so it'll be the perfect time to test out their Polyjuice Potion on him. After the feast Christmas night, they run off to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom to drink their potion. Ron and Harry make a detour to put Crabbe and Goyle to sleep and steal some hairs.

After drinking the potion, Hermione decides she doesn't want to go, so Harry and Ron are left to find the Slytherin Common Room and Malfoy on their own. It's surprising Malfoy chose to stay over holiday, given his attachment to his parents.

When they find Malfoy, he shows them an article that says Arthur Weasley was fined fifty galleons for bewitching the car. Maybe it is solely based on blood, but I'm not sure why Lucius and Arthur have an ongoing feud. They aren't the same age, so they can't have met at school, and they are entirely different people. He also tells them how his father knows that the last person to open the chamber of secrets was expelled—and someone died.

When the potion wears off Ron and Harry hightail it back to Myrtle's bathroom. They find Moaning Myrtle cracking up at Hermione, who looks like a cat, because she accidentally took cat hair from Millicent, not Millicent hair. Not the best year for Hermione in terms of magic-related injuries, not that Harry's any better off with his arm bone situation.

Harry Potter Hullaballoo - The Dueling Club

The Dueling Club

In which the Polyjuice Potion starts to be brewed, a dueling club is formed, a parselmouth is outed, and a Hufflepuff is petrified.

The polyjuice potion that will hopefully give Harry, Ron, and Hermione more information about Draco Malfoy has begun brewing. Harry and Hermione carried out an elaborate plot to get all of the ingredients needed, and they're brewing it in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom of all places. Fun, Fun, Fun.

There is an official Hogwarts dueling club that's formed, with Lockhart and Snape as leaders. I just realized that Lockhart tries so hard to make himself known, and he coincidentally appears in nearly every chapter in this book—being an idiot, as usual. The Hogwarts professors are very nervous about the recent attacks on the school's muggle-born students. It's one of the scarier things that happens at Hogwarts. Hogwarts is supposed to be the safest place in the wizarding world, and if even Hogwarts isn't safe anymore, then I don't know where I was going with this sentence. Then bad things are happening.

At the dueling club, Lockhart proves to be incompetent. Snape is taking advantage the one bit of Defense Against the Dark Arts he can teach, the Dueling Club. And together they spell out disaster. Also interesting to note, the Expelliarmus spell, which later becomes Harry's sort of signature defensive move, was taught to him by Snape.

Everything is going fine until Draco shoots a snake out of his wand toward Harry. The snake goes for Justin Finch-Fletchley, Hufflepuff extraordinaire, until Harry tells him to stop. In parseltongue. The language of snakes is something that's rare, even by wizards' standards, and if you speak it, you are automatically an assumed bad guy. Even Ron and Hermione are wary of Harry at first.

By noon the next day, everyone is talking. And even the Hufflepuffs, who are normally a forgiving bunch, are accusing Harry of being a wizard darker than You-Know-Who, who had a vendetta against Justin and meant to kill him with the snake. The worst part is, the perpetrators of the rumors are some of Harry's friends.

Shortly after, Harry runs into Nearly Headless Nick looking all dark and petrified and Justin Finch-Fletchley looking all recumbent and petrified. And everyone's fears about Harry are confirmed—not really. But gosh, Harry has just run into the worst strand of unluckiness that Hogwarts has seen in a century.

Harry Potter Hullaballoo - The Rogue Bludger

The Rogue Bludger

In which a bludger chases Harry, he ends up in the hospital, and someone new is petrified.

Hermione's crush on Gilderoy Lockhart is utterly perplexing. Clearly he isn't smart and clearly he didn't do the things that he said he did in those books that he said he wrote. Everyone seems to realize this except for Hermione, who is still head over heels for him. It's kind of funny that she probably has the most common sense out of the three of them, yet she always seems to have crushes on famous guys. a.k.a. Lockhart, Krum, Ron.

They've started brewing a polyjuice potion in the hope of discovering whether or not it is Draco Malfoy who is petrifying the muggle borns. Hermione is pretty ridiculous at potions. This one will take a month.

Then it's the first Quidditch match of the season, and the game is addled only by the presence of the killer bludger that loves Harry. Obviously it was Draco Malfoy who tampered with it. If there's one thing you know from reading Harry Potter, it's that you can always blame Draco Malfoy. Finally the bludger does kill his arm, but not before Harry catches the Snitch and wins the game. If you want to see an accident, you should go to a Quidditch match. Quidditch itself is a fine sport, but things like dementors, jinxed broomsticks, and jinxed bludgers are always popping up at games and landing Harry in the hospital wing.

Actually, it wasn't the bludger that landed him in the hospital wing, it was Lockhart, duh. Lockhart, the big dummy, tries to mend Harry's arm but instead removes all of the bones in it. Gross. In the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey gives him a little potion to regrow his bones (it's just that simple!). 

Dobby visits him and lets slip that it was he who blocked the platform and tampered with the bludger. Dobby means well, he really does. We still don't technically know that the Malfoys are Dobby's owners, but Holy Hippogriffs are they nasty to him. He briefly mentions that if his owners give him clothes then he'll be free. At least he never has to do the laundry. On a serious note, though, it's extraordinarily sad that owners of house elves think so little of them that they don't even provide them with the basic immediate needs of food, shelter, and clothing. House elves only get shelter, and maybe leftovers, I'm not sure.

The chapter ends with a few teachers bringing Colin Creevey into the wing, petrified. He's the first human to be. We learn that Dumbledore believes in the Chamber of Secrets and that it has been opened again.

Harry Potter Hullaballoo - The Writing on the Wall

The Writing on the Wall

In which everyone jumps to conclusions.

Everyone jumps to conclusions. Filch and Snape jump to the conclusion that Harry petrified Mrs. Norris. Moaning Myrtle jumps to the conclusion that Harry, Ron, and Hermione hate her. Percy jumps to the conclusion that Ron is a pervert, hanging out in the girls' bathrooms. Harry, Ron, and Hermione jump to the conclusion that Malfoy is the heir of Slytherin. And the whole student body jumps to the conclusion that Harry is the heir of Slytherin. That is the gist of the chapter. Restatement of my thesis: everyone jumps to conclusions.

I find that in a lot of stories, the "background story," why or how something came into being and why it is the way it is, is just stuck in somewhere randomly in the first few pages of the first book in a series. I think J.K. Rowling did an excellent job of saving story for when it's relevant, instead of just giving it all away to start with. She sneaks in some excellent background in this chapter, the entire story of how Hogwarts came into being. And adds to it by telling us the mystery of the chamber of secrets.

The castle is struck with chamber of secrets fever, trying to figure out who the heir of Slytherin is. And Harry starts questioning his placement in Gryffindor. I said it before a while ago: the houses are pretty general. No one is simply courageous, smart, ambitious, or loyal. They're a mixture of one or more. This would probably be the opportune time to sneak cleverly in that according to Pottermore, I'm a Ravenclaw. Yeah, totally just wrote this whole paragraph, so I could say that I was a Ravenclaw.

A little sprinkling of fun for anyone who was paying extra close attention to the text: maybe it's only the older copies of CoS, and I assure you my copy is ancient, but on page 157, when Percy finds Ron coming out of Myrtle's bathroom, it's accidentally typed "Perry."

Everyone accusing everyone of everything, clever background story, house confusion, and a typo sum up my thoughts on the chapter. It wasn't very long, and not a lot happened, but it sure was a fun time.

Harry Potter Hullaballoo - The Deathday Party

The Deathday Party

In which Harry, Ron, and Hermione attend Sir Nicholas's Deathday party, and Mrs. Norris ends up looking like the picture above.

Chamber of Secrets has never been my favorite book, but something I like more then the others is that it delves deeper into wizard culture. The first book paints a great picture of the wizarding world for you to start out with, and the second book kind of twists the lens and brings everything into focus. You get to read about things like Quidditch practice, ghosts, Dueling Clubs, squibs, and detentions and experience Hogwarts.

In this chapter, Harry is invited to Sir Nicholas's deathday party, the ghostly equivalent of a birthday party. Don't quote me on this, because I'm likely wrong, but I thought that all four of the Hogwarts house ghosts, Fat Friar, Bloody Baron, Grey Lady, and Nick, were all connected somehow through some sort of story. I realize it would take me ten minutes to look that up, but I'm being lazy. There's also a poem that was cut from CoS that is deliciously dreadful. You should check it out.

It's exceedingly sad that Nearly Headless Nick died by being chopped forty-five times in the neck with a blunt axe and still can't is denied when he tries to join the Headless Hunt team. I'm not sure if J.K. Rowling's ghosts can or do move on, but I think that if Nick could run around with those headless hooligans for a year or two, then he would want to.

We also find out that Filch is a squib. I don't really have a lot to say about that, except that it makes sense, I guess.

And finally, we round out the chapter with a little murder . . . er, petrification. In the form of Filch's beloved cat, Mrs. Norris. There's writing in blood on the wall that reads "THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE" (138). If you've been reading along, you might remember Hagrid's roosters or chickens (something like that) that he'd been keeping. Well, let's just say, he might have fewer chickens after this whole debacle. And we finish the chapter with Malfoy shouting, "'Enemies of the heir beware! You'll be next Mudbloods!'" (139), which automatically makes him a suspect. Dun. Dun. Dun. And the plot thickens.

Also, Happy Harry Potter Day. I celebrated with frozen yogurt (very wizardly). I hope you did something nice to celebrate the momentous occasion.

Harry Potter Hullaballoo - Mudbloods and Murmurs

Mudbloods and Murmurs

In which the Quidditch practice season begins, a curse is uttered, and someone eats slugs.

Now that school is in full session, Oliver Wood is cracking down on Quidditch practices. Most of the people on the Gryffindor Quidditch team have other talents. Harry is a seeker and great at Defense Against the Dark Arts, Fred and George are beaters and great at joke-related magic, Charlie was a seeker and is now a dragon whisperer (whatever you call it). Alicia, Katie, and Angelina don't just chase all day (maybe). But Oliver Wood is one of those guys who eats, sleeps, and breathes his sport. He's really lucky that Puddlemore United wanted him. 

The Gryffindor Quidditch team is about to have their first practice of the season early one Saturday morning, when the Slytherin team arrives at the pitch. Apparently Draco Malfoy is on the team now, and thanks to his dad, the Slytherin team all have fancy new Nimbus 2001s. It's a little bit pathetic that when Draco is around his dad all he does is whine about Harry, and when he's around Harry all he does is flaunt the things his dad bought him and whine about how he's going to go whine to his dad about the things Harry's doing. "You wait till my father hears about this!"

Then Draco calls Hermione a mudblood. I had forgotten how big of a deal bloodlines and blood purity were in this book, and really the entire series. For the bad guys, death eaters, purebloods, family history and money are everything. For old wizarding families like the Dracos, the Blacks, and the Gaunts keeping their bloodlines free of nonmagical blood is essential. Mudblood is a terrible insult to Hermione. And the Weasleys, who are blood traitors and very poor, are just as bad as mudbloods, in a bad guy's opinion. Just as important as blood status is creature status (ahem, for example, if maybe you were a half-giant), but more on that in two books or so.

To defend Hermione—awwwww—Ron tries to curse Draco, but his broken wand backfires, and he ends up eating slugs himself. Harry, Ron, and Hermione run off to Hagrid's. At this point, we know that Hagrid's been expelled, but we don't know how.

To fulfill the detentions Harry and Ron received for flying the car to school, Ron has to polish the trophies, while still puking up slugs, and Harry has to help Lockhart answer his fanmail. I personally don't even know why McGonagall let Harry do that. Talk about your cruel and unusual punishments.

That's when Harry first hears the voice. The one that threatens to rip, tear, and kill him. You've heard it, right?