{"id":412,"date":"2006-04-13T22:07:49","date_gmt":"2006-04-13T22:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=412"},"modified":"2024-04-07T20:19:05","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T00:19:05","slug":"alexander_westmark01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2006\/04\/alexander_westmark01\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander, Lloyd: Westmark<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark<\/cite><\/strong> is the first book in a much-loved trilogy of the same name. I didn’t love this book, and while I’ve been warned that it’s not as good, I suspect that I don’t love it for different reasons that most people.<\/p>\n

This is a YA Ruritanian fantasy set in a country where the king is ill with grief over the death of his only child, and his chief minister (a power-hungry manipulative bastard) is plotting to take control of the country in name as well as fact. Theo is an orphan apprenticed to a printer, and the plot happens when the chief minister’s oppressive policies turn him into a fugitive who encounters con artists and would-be revolutionaries.<\/p>\n

The way the book handles the political side of the plot is admirable. As Rilina says in a thoughtful and spoilery discussion<\/a>, “Westmark<\/cite> is distinguished by its refusal to offer anything close to a definitive answer to the questions it raises.” I genuinely could not tell what path the book was going to take or wanted us to approve of. That’s a hard thing to do.<\/p>\n

But while I admire this book, I don’t love it. I found the prose a barrier: I was constantly feeling that the sentences were a little short, the rhythms a little choppy, the descriptions and characterizations a little sparse. (Maybe I was off form today, but I completely missed the romance until it was explicitly stated, for instance; I think I mistook the ages of the characters in question.) My overall impression was of an excellently-constructed skeleton, which is nevertheless not entirely satisfying in the absence of muscle and skin. Put another way, I’m not too old for the content of Westmark<\/cite>, but I felt too old for the way it was expressed.<\/p>\n

Somewhat like The Ordinary Princess<\/cite><\/a>, I suspect I would have loved this if I’d found it when I was young. Everyone says that The Kestrel<\/cite> is excellent, and I own it thanks to a mistaken purchase, so I will read at least that one; perhaps the expected jump in content-quality will pull me past the prose (I’m expecting that the prose stays constant over the series, which may not be correct). At any rate, I would certainly recommend this to kids in late-elementary and middle school.<\/p>\n

[Originally posted at my LiveJournal while this booklog was down; there are comments<\/a> there.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark is the first book in a much-loved trilogy of the same name. I didn’t love this book, and while I’ve been warned that it’s not as good, I suspect that I don’t love it for different reasons that most people. This is a YA Ruritanian fantasy set in a country where the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Alexander, Lloyd: Westmark<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[127],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-alexander-lloyd"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2911,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions\/2911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}