Rebels: "Kindred" (Ep. 4.07)

-- "It's funny, no matter what happens, we always end up back here."

The Noghri are finally canon. Much like Thrawn. I don't think this is how I ever pictured them, though. In my mind 20-something years ago when I read the Zahn trilogy, I'm sure the Noghri were much more stout. I don't know, since it's been so long since I read the books, if that picture was accurate or not.
And, yeah, I'm sure some (most) of you don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
But I'm okay with that.

And I can't really dwell on anything to do with the Zahn books because that just renews my anger at the sequel trilogy and the injustice done to Mara Jade.

So let's talk about the scene in this episode:
The Empire is bearing down on our group of rebels. Tanks, speeders, the whole shebang. And a Noghri. Hera kisses Kanan. I'm going to assume it's their first ever kiss based on Kanan's expression. The Empire is fast approaching! Everyone turns to watch the kiss. That seems accurate to me.

Oh, yeah, and things continue to develop with the Loth-wolves and this final story-arc.

But it's really all about the kiss.

"This is good. When it gets strange like this, it's a good thing."

"How have you people stayed alive so long?"

Rebels: "Through Imperial Eyes" (Ep. 3.17)

-- "I haven't been summoned by a ranking officer since that incident with the princess from Alderaan."

We're closing in on the end of season three, and things are beginning to get serious. Which is not to say that things haven't been serious, but there's a real lack of the overall humorous tone developing.

Thrawn has decided he has a mole and even knows that mole's call sign: Fulcrum. Have I mentioned who Fulcrum is? I can't remember, so I'm not going to give it away just in case I haven't mentioned it before. Not that it actually matters, I'm sure, but that's the way I am about it.

Ezra heads up a mission to get Fulcrum out before s/he's discovered while Thrawn brings in Colonel Yelaren to help ferret out the mole. Hmm... Do ferrets eat moles? I actually have no idea what ferrets eat, now that I think about it. As it turns out, Yularen was one of Kallus' teachers at the Academy.

Mostly, this was a very interesting episode. Tense. I have just one quibble, which I could probably solve by doing some research but, instead, I'm going to let it nibble at me because I don't care to go to the trouble to look it up. In the episode, Thrawn, unarmed, takes on a couple of assassin droids all by his lonesome. Thinking back to Zahn's books, the ones that introduced Thrawn as a character, I can't think of any precedence for him being any kind of physical personality. He's a cerebral character; at least, that's how I remember him, so I'm a little annoyed by them making him some great hand-to-hand combatant, too. Seriously, Thrawn doesn't need to have all the skills.

Or, maybe, he has always been that way and I'm just not remembering it. I suppose it doesn't matter, since those old novels have been kicked out of the canon. But Rebels is canon, so it is as it is.

Anyway... Interesting episode. Can't wait to see where it leads.

Rebels: "Steps Into Shadow -- Part One" (Ep. 3.01)

-- "You wouldn't believe the secrets he knows."

Pre-viewing comment:

I did, of course, know that Thrawn was going to appear in season three, but I didn't know he starts off the season! I'm very excited that Thrawn is now, finally, a canon character. He's an excellent villain. At least, he was in the Zahn novels. I'm hoping they do him justice here.

This episode does not disappoint! Not only do we get the introduction of Grand Admiral Thrawn, but we have Hondo as well! You know it's going to be good when Hondo is around. And, hey, Dr. Who makes a voice appearance! THE Doctor, Tom Baker. How awesome is that? It's very awesome!

Tom Baker is the voice of The Bendu: I'm not sure if that's a race or a name. He's a Force wielder, but he uses some neutral aspect of the Force, something between the Dark and the Light. Baker's listed in five episodes, so I'm sure we'll find out more about what all of this means as he teaches Kanan how to see without his eyes.

So, yeah, Kanan is blind. That happened at the end of season two, so it's only a spoiler if you're not watching. I'm not apologizing.

Also, Ezra has learned to use the Sith holocron he got at the end of season two. He's learning to use his anger to give him power.

And we've jumped ahead enough that Ezra is visibly older. I'm guessing two years, but I don't really know.

It's a good episode; now, leave me alone so I can go watch part two...

"Acting out of anger offers quick results, but it's a trap."

Star Wars: A Discussion (Episode II)

Star Wars fans of my generation (and older) tend to have an inordinate dislike of the prequels. I blame the fans. "But how can it be their fault for not liking the movies?" you might ask. "Isn't it Lucas' fault for not making something that the fans would like?" Well, no, it's not Lucas' fault. It's the fault of fans for, basically, assuming ownership of something that doesn't belong to them. Unwarranted expectations will get you every time.

I want to go back to something I said in my last post, that thing about how I never quit on Star Wars. I think this is a significant point. See, I was there when Zahn's books came out, so to speak. I bought them in hardback. Because I was into comic books, I have first printings of the Dark Empire series from Dark Horse. For a while, I was reading all of the Star Wars novels for no other reason than that they were Star Wars, and I think reading them taught me a lesson.

See, some of them... well, some of them sucked. And sucked hard. In fact, I'll just say it: Kevin Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy was so awful that not only will I never read anything else by Anderson, but they broke me from reading anymore Star Wars novels. The lesson was not that some things that "are" Star Wars won't be good; it was about expectations. I somehow expected that these things would be great just because they were set in  the Star Wars universe. Well, I didn't really expect that, not in my head, but on some emotional level that is what I expected.

Of course, what I wanted was to be taken back to that feeling I had when I was seven when that star destroyer first "passed over my head" and made me see the world in a way I had never seen it before. But you can't have that feeling again. You can't go back to seven and experience that thing in that same way ever again. You can't have your eyes opened for the first time more than once. That can be a hard thing to learn, but Kevin Anderson beat it into me with his horrid books.

So it was that when Lucas announced the prequels I determined to have no expectations. Or as little as possible, at any rate. I knew these weren't going to be the same movies. I knew the time period they were going to be set in, and I knew what they were about. My goal was twofold: to avoid finding out stuff about the movie beforehand (because I had known absolutely nothing about Star Wars when I was seven and my grandmother took me to see it) and to not have expectations. I already knew where expectations would get me.

Which is not to say that I was not excited. I was right there with everyone else camping out for tickets for the opening midnight show of The Phantom Menace and camping again to get in so as not to have to sit in the front corner of the theater.

Also, I was in no way disappointed with The Phantom Menace. Not even with Jar Jar. He's funny. He makes me laugh. And my kids like him.

I want to make a point here: I was seven when I first saw Star Wars. I was a kid. I'm not saying that I loved Star Wars because I was a kid, but, essentially, Star Wars was a movie for young people, not for adults. There were toys because the target audience was kids. When I went into Phantom Menace, I wanted to go in with as much of that as possible. I wanted to see it with eyes that were fresh and young and with no preconceptions. Part of that was looking at it through the lens of my kids. Well, just one kid, at the time, but each of my kids has loved Jar Jar as they have come into contact with him. Lucas said Jar Jar was a character in the movie specifically for kids, and, from that standpoint, he totally works. So, really, the problem with the Jar Jar-haters is not actually Jar Jar, it's the people who hate him. And, you know what, it shows your age and your unwillingness to be a kid again, as you were when you first saw Star Wars.

And that takes me back to my opening statement: the problem with the prequels is "the fans," the original fans.
It's the truth, and you should just get over yourselves. You don't own Star Wars and Lucas doesn't owe you anything. Didn't owe you anything.
And, actually, you, all of you, should be ashamed of yourselves, because it's because of you that Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney.
/end rant

Yes, I like the prequels. Love them, even. Sure, in my list of Star Wars movies, they are not my favorite, but one of them does come in at #3, and they are Star Wars, so even the one at #6 is way ahead of most every other movie out there.

That being said, there is one problem I have with the prequels: the death of Padme during childbirth. The problem is, as it worked out, that kind of had to be the way that happened but it doesn't fit the previous narrative of Leia having gone with her mother when the twins were split up at birth, and it doesn't fit with Leia's memories of her mother from when she was a young child. So, see, despite the fact that I can see that it Padme's death is necessary from a story perspective, it doesn't work for me because of my own expectation that she should have taken Leia away and raised her in hiding for several years before her death.

But that's it. That one thing is the only issue I have with the prequels.

I don't want to get into anything about how I feel about The Force Awakens, right now, but, regardless of that, I wish that Lucas was the one making them. Just as I wanted to see his story for the prequels, I wanted to see his story for the sequel trilogy, too. As it turns out, despite what Disney said they would do (which was to follow Lucas' original story), according to Lucas, they have strayed from that, and that disappoints me.

But more on that later.

Star Wars: A Discussion (Episode I)

This is not a review; that will come later.

Those of you who know me at all or who have been following for a while probably know (ought to know) that I went to see The Force Awakens at the earliest possible showing. What that turned into was seeing it twice on "opening day," which was not, actually, opening day, because it was the day before opening day. Fortunately one of those showings was at 7:00 because the main thing I learned is that I am definitely getting too old for midnight shows, which the second viewing was. I also learned that my boys have nowhere near the stamina I did at their ages as both of them also struggled with the midnight viewing. Up until a few years ago, midnight shows where commonplace in my movie viewing repertoire.

All of which is, of course, beside the point other than the fact that when I said to my sons, "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing," as we were leaving the theater (at 2:30am!), they didn't get it. Yes, I was disappointed.
Anyway...

I want to provide some context for the upcoming review and the things I say about Force Awakens before I actually get to talking about that movie.

I have always said that Star Wars changed my life, and I mean that in a very literal sense. Even as a teenager looking back at my childhood, I could see the point where Star Wars came into my childhood and changed my path. Before Star Wars, everything was dinosaurs and cowboys and Indians. Everything changed when I seven. I was one person entering the theater and someone else when I came out. To again borrow the words of Ben Kenobi, I'd taken my first step into a larger world.

Star Wars never faded from my life, though it faded from the world around me. My Star Wars toys decorated my room all the way through the 80s, long after everyone had forgotten Return of the Jedi, and into the 90s just waiting for the resurgence that happened with the release of Zahn's Star Wars novels and the Dark Empire comic book series from Dark Horse in the early 90s. Needless to say, I was elated when Lucas announced the special edition versions of the movies.

And I remained elated after I saw them.

Let me be clear, I am not a part of the "Han shot first" crowd. I am from the "Han shot" era. That was it. Han shot. The whole argument over Han shooting first annoys me to no end. That being said, I have no issue with Lucas adding in the thing with Greedo shooting. It doesn't destroy my childhood or the movie or, even, damage them. I get it. Star Wars became a thing that's much bigger than Lucas ever imagined it would be and making Han a better role model for kids is something I can understand.

There was only one thing they added to the special editions that I didn't like, the scream by Luke as he dropped into the shaft in Cloud City after the duel with Vader, and they later took that back out.

And then there were the prequels...
Let's make that next post, shall we?

The Clone Wars is coming...

I see some of you out there shaking your heads and thinking, "You're a little late to the party," but just give me a moment. I don't mean The Clone Wars is coming to TV; I mean The Clone Wars is coming to my blog! Sounds awesome, yes? Yes! Of course, it does.

In conjunction with The Armchair Squid, we'll be going through each episode on a weekly basis and evaluating and reviewing them. That means that for... well, like, a couple of years, I guess, there will be a weekly Clone Wars post. If you haven't watched this show and you like Star Wars at all, you really should watch it, and this is a great excuse to do it. This is easily one of the best animated shows ever on TV and, actually, one of the best sci-fi shows, animated or not. Trust me; I've been known to watch some bad sci-fi, and this is not that. If you've already seen it, well, you know you should get in on this. If you want to sign up, just follow the link over to Squid's blog and get signed up!

Now, a few words... which is difficult, because I want to say a lot of words about a lot of different things, but, then, that's a lot of different things, and I don't want this post to go on all season. So let's talk canon. Hey! Pay attention! I said "canon," not "cannon." We are not shooting explosives at people. Here, we use more elegant words from a... okay, well, not so civilized age. Anyway...

Last year, when Disney took over Star Wars, one of the first things they did was to "do away" with the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I have found this whole thing amusing, but the statement they were making had to be made. But let's back up a moment.

Prior to 1991, the only Star Wars canon was the original trilogy. Sure, there were a handful of books in existence (Splinter of the Mind's Eye, some Han Solo books, a Lando book or three), but no one took those as real, especially since some things like Luke cutting Vader's arm off certainly didn't happen within the movie time line. Those books were just fun things on the side. But all of that changed in 1991 due to a couple of events:
1. The publication of Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.
2. Dark Horse comics' release of Dark Empire #1.

Both of these series take place after Return of the Jedi and are responsible for bringing Star Wars back into the American consciousness. One way or the other, you can probably thank Timothy Zahn for the fact that the prequels exist. It was his Thrawn trilogy (and everything that happened after because of it) that showed Lucas that there was still an interest in Star Wars.

Interesting fact:
Zahn originally wanted to write a trilogy set during the Clone Wars. Lucas said "no" because he knew that if he did ever make the prequels (because at that point he had no plans to do that), they would invalidate the books Zahn wanted to write. So Zahn reformed his clone story and set it after Jedi.

Now, here's the thing:
Lucas always said that anything done outside of the movies could be invalidated at any time (see Splinter of the Mind's Eye) and was never considered canon, hence the Expanded Universe. That's what it was: non-canonical material. But, over time, as there became more and more of it and people became more and more invested in it, even people at Lucasfilm, people began to view the EU as being pretty much as valid as anything Lucas himself did. People had come to view the EU as canonical even though they had been told again and again that it wasn't.

When Disney came in with their plans to officially expand the Star Wars universe, to provide a vast tapestry of new canon, they had to make a hard statement so that people would understand that they weren't going to accommodate the EU into their plans. So "the EU doesn't exist anymore" was a clear way of stating that.

The Clone Wars, though, having come from Lucas, is official Star Wars canon. This is the story. I think it's a good one. I hope you come along for the ride.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Being in the Wrong Movie

Ghost Rider has never been one of my favorite Marvel characters; although, I do like him. He's just not one of my favorites. However, I did love the series that started up in 1990, and you have to admit that he just looks cool.

That was easily one of the best comic series on the market at that time and still stands out as one of the best runs ever. Well, at least for the first 25 issues or so. It turned out to be the series that almost caused Marvel Comics to cease to exist, but that's a story for another time.
Wait, wait! Here's another one:

Maybe it was really just about the amazing art of Mark Texeira. Okay, no, it wasn't, because I'm a story guy, but his art certainly didn't hurt anything and really set the mood of the comic.

It's not surprising that Marvel licensed the character out to be made into a movie. I thought the first movie was pretty good, despite what people say about it. They did a pretty decent job of melding the classic 70s Ghost Rider with the modern 90s Ghost Rider. It wasn't a great movie, but it was pretty decent.

I just saw the new one, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and, I have to say, I have no idea what that was. It acted like a sequel, but it twisted up enough of facts from the first movie to be unrelated to it. It sounds like they want it to be a reboot, too, so that's just messed up. Really, what the movie did was give Nic Cage a chance to act crazy. Which he's really good at, but it just didn't fit in this movie, because it's not the character he established in the first movie. The movie tries really hard, and it almost succeeds (it does have some pretty cool visuals (but the cackling/crackling whenever GR is around is dumb)), but, in the end, it just falls flat on its face. Like, at one point in the movie, GR is blown up with a grenade and Blaze ends up in the hospital because of it, but a little while later, he takes multiple blasts from missiles without slowing down.

It's disappointing, because I always want Marvel movies to succeed (because I'm still just a Marvel kid at heart). But Marvel isn't doing well with this whole Marvel Knights line of movies and is now 0 for 2 (the other being Punisher: War Zone (another sequel/reboot)).

The worst thing about the movie is that the movie was not about Ghost Rider. This is a problem. It seems that when they decided to do the second movie, they wanted to go with a story that fit "very much in the zeitgeist, like Da Vinci Code." So what they wrote was another story about the devil trying to have a half human kid that will be the anti-Christ. Because, you know, that's in the Bible. That the anti-Christ is the son of Satan. Except that it's not. But maybe people think it's a good balance since Christ is the Son of God? At any rate, they wrote this story about how the devil is trying to become the anti-Christ, the same cliche' story you've already seen in dozens of movies, and through Ghost Rider into it to stop him. But the story is never really about Johnny Blaze or about Ghost Rider, so it never feels right.

Have you ever had that experience?

My first real experience of this was with Tim Burton's Batman. I just want to say, right now, that I can't stand that movie. Not only did Mr. Burton know nothing about his subject (as Burton says, "I would never read a comic book."), he didn't even want to make a movie about Batman. He wanted to make a movie about the Joker, so the movie just never felt right to me. Sure, it had Batman in it, but it wasn't really Batman's story, and it just didn't work for me.

This is also why I don't read licensed books. I loved the Dragonlance Chronicles when that came out back in the 80s. I loved Dragonlance Legends, too, but that was still Hickman and Weis. Later, they started letting other people write books set in that world and stories with the characters from the books, and I just couldn't get into them. They never felt right. Like... like I want to tell this story, but I want to use those characters even though they don't really fit what I'm doing. So, even though I tried to read some of the other Dragonlance stuff that came out, I never liked any of it and just quit trying.

The same thing happened with Star Wars. I read a few of the first Star Wars novels that came out when I was a kid: Han Solo at Star's End and the rest of that trilogy, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, and I liked them well enough, but books taking place in the expanded Star Wars universe didn't really hit it big until the 90s when Timothy Zahn wrote Heir to the Empire. What a great book. Zahn nailed it. Often, I would feel just like I was watching the movies while I read his books. However, when I went on to other Star Wars books, which exploded after Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, I was sorely disappointed. Most frequently, the characters just didn't fit the stories. The writers were doing things with the characters that just weren't in character for them in order to meet the needs of their story.

Which brings us to the point. Yeah, yeah, I know... that was a lot to go through to arrive at some point other than what it looked like I started with, but, really, it's all the same thing. See, I went to see this Ghost Rider movie and kept wondering why Ghost Rider was in the movie. He just didn't belong. The movie was about this kid, Danny, not about Ghost Rider. In that, they spoiled both things: they spoiled Ghost Rider, and they spoiled the movie about the kid. Why? Because they didn't know what to do with the character they had.

I'm not sure, but I think this may be the biggest issue that writers have. This issue of making a character do something that the character wouldn't do in order to further the story. More often than anything else, it's the thing that will ruin a book/movie/TV show/whatever for me. When I stop and think, "Why? Why did that character just do that? That's not what that character would do," the writer has failed. Like Alfred bringing Vicki Vale down into the Batcave or Batman taking off his mask in front of the Penguin. Or Ghost Rider being in eastern Europe with the flimsy reasoning "God has brought you here."

Writing is always about character vs plot, I suppose. I tend to be more plot driven myself, so I understand the temptation to bend your character to your will in order to meet a need in the plot, but you just can't do that. To give this a color metaphor, if you've painted your character red and blue, you can't have him do something green. If you need him to do something green, go back and repaint him red, blue, and green. It's probably better that way anyway. The more colors you use, the more depth the character has.


And now for some notes (LOOK! I actually remembered to put them IN the post!):

Note #1:
Last week, I won a copy of Rusty Webb's  "A Dead God's Wrath" playing in Briane Pagel's amazing Star Wars Blogathon. I already own a copy of this great little book, and you should own a copy, too. In fact, if you go over and sign up for the blogathon (just follow the link), mention that I sent you, I'll donate my copy to the first person that does. You'll also get 50 points just for signing up! It's a no lose scenario.

Note #2:
Speaking of Pagel's blogathon, a copy of my very own book, The House on the Corner, is this week's prize. The great thing? All you have to do is comment to be eligible to win. You don't have to be first, you don't have to be correct. Everyone that comments is entered into the weekly drawing. And you'll get 50 points if you mention my name! What a deal. And Briane believes that everyone should read my book, so go sign up for a chance to win your very own e-copy!

Note #3:
There's really no note #3... I want there to be one, but I'm all out. Have a great weekend!

Unexpected Applause: The Fourth Wish

My latest Unexpected Applause piece is The Fourth Wish by Elizabeth Varadan. Along with my own views on the book, I am going to add in my younger son's (middle child), since he fits the target audience. And he's having a different experience with the book than I did, so I think it will provide a more rounded picture. Just a note about my son (for those of you that may have missed me talking about this stuff previously): he's the most well-read 10-year-old I've ever known (or heard of). It's not just that he reads a lot (he does), but he's very eclectic in his reading choices. He's read Kafka (how many adults can say that?), Dumas, and RL Stevenson (more Stevenson than me, actually). He's also read Eddings, Douglas Adams, and (currently) Zahn. All of that to say that his view is worthwhile not just because he's in the target audience but because he has a good spread of prior reading material to base it on.

Let's deal with the technical stuff first. Grammar and editing. Fun. But it wasn't too bad. Especially for a piece that wasn't done professionally. The biggest (real) issue is that there are places where there's a word missing here and there. Those always throw me. [I can't complain about this too much, though, as I know of at least one spot in The House on the Corner where I have a missing word (actually, it's just a missing letter, but it changes the word. So far, no one else seems to have noticed).] It can be a hard job to catch all of those things in your own work, and, overall, it's not too bad. There are some comma errors, especially when the author chose to begin a sentence with a conjunction and follow it immediately with a comma when there wasn't a dependent clause present, i.e. "But, I wanted to." When there is just the one independent clause following a conjunction, a comma should not be there. This is one of those pet peeves I have, so I found those annoying. Still, as the only real (consistent) grammar error in the book, I can't complain about that one, either (I mean, more than I am). The only other issue is the author's use of question marks in many places when the sentence is not interrogative. I actually asked her about these, and she said they were purposeful, to show the inflection of the speaker, but I found them more confusing than anything. [I'm waiting to see how my son reacts to them as they are more prominent toward the end of the book, and he is still shy of half.] If I was grading the book (which I sort of am), I'd give it a B on its technical merits, which is pretty good, I'd say.

The story is where I ran into some problems. But, then, it may just be a function of being about 30 years past the target audience. I was unable to engage with the story and the characters. My son, however, is fully engaged. This is one of those stories where the status quo becomes disturbed, and the characters spend the rest of the story trying to put things back the way they were. Possibly, while learning a lesson or two along the way. Mostly about appreciating what you have or being satisfied with your circumstances because they're not as bad as they could be. The vehicle for this is wishes...

I'll make an example of the magic show at the beginning of the book. Once the first wish is made, I found the magic show to be predictable and cliche, but my son loved it. And I don't really want to give any of it away, so I'll leave it at that.

I suppose I'll just say what didn't work for me:

The second wish seemed to just arbitrarily fail. Yes, the wish was supposed to fail so that things good get more messed up, but, really, it wasn't significantly different from wish that fixed everything, so that bothered me.

Daisy's Doughnuts. The whole place just seemed to be yanked out of the 50s, so it just didn't seem right to me. Plus, the kids, inexplicably, bring Christmas gifts to "Daisy;" although, they don't seem to have any special relationship with her that would warrant that.

Speaking of Christmas, the revelation that it is Christmas comes quite a bit farther into the book than I was comfortable with. It took me by surprise, and I had to readjust my view of what was going on in the story.

There's no real motivation for several of the primary characters. At least, none that I could fathom. Especially for Mrs. Seraphina.

And what did work for me:

The relationship between Arthur and Cory and the way they interact with Melanie (even if there wasn't a reason behind the whole "Scorpion Queen" thing (sorry, but that's the kind of nickname you want to know where it came from)).

Melanie's diary and her collection of postcards from her dad.

The struggle of a single mom trying to raise her kids while she's off working all the time and the pressure that puts on the oldest child.

Mostly, though, the story just never came together for me. Not that it was a struggle to read (I mean, there were no feelings of dread any time I stepped near the book like there was with that Turtledove novel I talked about a while back); it wasn't. I just felt like I was back where I started from when I finished and that nothing significant had happened. Now, that may not actually be true if there is to be a sequel, but, as it is, nothing significant happened.

But! See, my son, he likes the book. When I gave it to him, I just told him to read the first few chapters to see what he thought about it. I sort of expected him to give the book back to me and tell me he didn't like it. But, instead, when I asked him about it, he said, "I like it. You're not... you're not going to take it back, are you?" Because it's my book, and he thought I was only letting him read three chapters. It made me laugh. But the book is laying next to his bed, and, I'm sure he'd be finished with it already if he wasn't reading two other books when I gave it to him.

All of that to get to the point:

I think this is probably an above average middle grade book as long as you're one of those middle graders. From an adult perspective, I see it as a pretty typical story, and it didn't thrill me, but my son thinks it's a lot of fun. I'd certainly recommend it for anyone in the 8-12 range. As far as I can tell, it ought to appeal fairly equally to boys and girls. It has a female lead, but my son is enjoying it just fine, so I don't think the central female character is too off-putting for boys.

For a comprehensive grade, I'd give it a C+ to a B-. Currently, I'm leaning toward the C+, but that could change based on my son's final evaluation. Heck, if my daughter likes it, it could go up to a B. At any rate, if you have or know kids that like to read and are in the age range, it's a book worth checking out. If nothing else, it should be fun for them.

And then you can listen to them go on about how to go about getting 5 ka-billion doughnuts for themselves!