As mentioned in last month's post, I began reading Juvenile Fantasy in late October. I have always loved this particular genre and was thrilled to introduce it to my son when he grew old enough to read it.

To be honest, some of my favorite books are categorized as Juvenile, including Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising Series, on which the movie of the same name was based. Between me and you, the movie falls far short of the books and skips over a lot of the really good stuff. If you have young readers in your life, I highly recommend the Dark Is Rising Series. In fact, I think it's time for a re-read, but for now, here are the books I read this month.

Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty is not a read I feel comfortable recommending wholeheartedly.

It's set at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, during the Gilded Age, but as a somewhat dark, Historical Fantasy, it fails on several levels. For one, the native dialogue (with which I am very familiar) is rendered in a stiff and unrealistic manner. It's almost as if the author tried to emulate the dialect without having a deep understanding of it. For that reason alone, I had a difficult time reading the book.

I normally don't discuss books I can't recommend, but in this case, I recognize that personal bias may be interfering with my enjoyment of the story. The truth is, I wanted to like Serafina. I just couldn't get into it. Others may be able to overlook the awkwardly crafted dialogue. Certainly, it has enough stellar reviews by others as endorsements.

Fairy-Tale Detectives, the first book in the Sisters Grimm Series by Michael Buckley, is another one I can't recommend without some reservations.

First, the best part of this book is the story world. It's totally awesome. In it, all the fairy tale characters you read and loved as a child are immortal Ever Afters (as they prefer to be called) trapped in Ferryport Landing as long as a Grimm is in residence there.

And that's when the story world begins to unravel. The Grimm living in Ferryport Landing is the titular sisters' grandmother, who is a Grimm by marriage. (One would think it's the blood that holds the spell on the Ever Afters firm, not the name, but there you go.) The unraveling continues when we learn that the grandmother, who has a few decades under her belt, is a detective who doesn't really know how to be a detective.

But let's just skip over all the pesky worldbuilding errors and go straight to the one thing that really set my teeth on edge: The story is so condescendingly narrated, I nearly closed the book and threw it half a dozen times.

Look, I have a son and I've cared for many, many other children. They don't appreciate being talked down to any more than adults do, and it's completely unnecessary. It's almost like the author (I'm beginning to see a pattern here) had never had contact with actual, you know, children before he wrote the book.

At any rate, other readers may not have the problems I did, and again, the series has plenty of reviews endorsing its finer qualities. If you can overlook those less than thorough worldbuilding and get past the condescending tone, the story is actually a fun read.

At last, a book I can wholeheartedly recommend. I first read Coraline by Neil Gaiman to my son when he was younger, and he loved it.

In this dark little tale, Coraline moves to a new house where she discovers a door leading to an alternate sort of reality created by another mother who isn't what she seems, and what she wants from Coraline is somewhat terrifying, even for an adult.

There's a graphic novel version of Coraline, if you're interested, and a movie, but I prefer the printed version.

I started reading another of Gaiman's juvenile stories, The Graveyard Book, near the end of the month and didn't quite get it finished in time to list here.

In non-fiction, I finished Writing Monsters: How to Craft Believably Terrifying Creatures to Enhance Your Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by Philip Athans, as well as Mastering Amazon Ads by Brian D. Meeks. Both gave me ideas I'm sure y'all will hear about soon enough.

Once finished with those, I began reading Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm and ordered 1066: The Year of the Conquest by David Howarth from the library. Both are research for stories, the former for the Zombie Comedy I keep mentioning and the latter for a Daughters of the People story featuring Rebecca the Blade.

And that's all I can say about that!

Here are a few books from my to be read shelves that I'm looking forward to reading soon.