Lionboy the Chase and Lionboy the Truth

by Zizou Corder
October 2011

The Chase is the second book in the Lionboy trilogy and The Truth is the third.  I read The Chase (because  the library didn't have an audio version) and listened to The Truth, narrated by the fabulous Simon Jones.

The Chase follows Charlie Ashanti into Venice and then to Ghana as he continues looking for his kidnapped parents.   This was my favorite of the trilogy.   The Truth concludes the story.


Note:  I began writing my summary and review of this book back in October 2011. For some reason, I never finished. Now it's May 2012.

I can't remember enough to give a detailed account of the two books, but I will say that I really enjoyed them.
The Chase takes place in Venice - a nice setting. The Truth continues the action into Africa. This trilogy is a good, fun, science fiction series.

Lionboy

by Zizou Corder
August 2011

"Zizou is a creature of mystery who likes accordion music, dancing in chandeliers and telling stories. She was born in a Hungarian nightclub, to a Circus Family, and now sails the world in a blue canoe hoping that one day she will find an orchestra up a tree."

Actually, Zizou Corder "is Louisa Young and Isabel Adomahko Young, whose names are too long to fit on the front of a book."  In the posts on Zizou's blog, Zizou is referred to as a male. His(her?) name comes from a pet lizard.

I had been wanting to read this book for a while. The cover caught my attention. I always assumed it took place in Africa. I had no idea it was a somewhat of a fantasy adventure set in London, Paris and Venice in the near future and featured a floating circus.  But these things made me like the story even more than I had thought I would.

11 year old Charlie comes home from school one day to find that his scientist parents, "Magdalen Start, PHD, MD, PQRST, LPO, TP" and "Aneba Ashanti, Doctor of Endoterica and Tropical Sciences at the University of Accra in Ghana, (currently on sabbatical at London University) " have been kidnapped. Whatever they had been working on in their secret laboratory was obviously of interest to a person or persons unknown.  Luckily, Charlie can talk to cats. The strays that live at the nearby ruins tell him what has happened, but not much else.  He manages to escape from the "fancy slimy git" named Rafi who has tried to nab him as well, and goes off in search of more clues as to his parents' whereabouts.  

Charlie ends up on a floating circus called "Thibaudet's Royal Floating Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy." This is where he meets a pride of performing lions and where he aquires the nickname Lionboy.  

Charlie has no idea why his parents have been kidnapped. They never told him about their latest research project. The cats he encounters along the way know something, but they aren't very forthcoming with information.  Charlie has to piece together various clues which lead him closer to his parent's location and their secret project.

The book doesn't really end, but leaves us with the words "to be continued."  This is a trilogy. Book two is Lionboy: the Chase. The conclusion is Lionboy: the Truth."

I love that the book started as a series of bedtime stories told by Louisa to her daughter Isabel. According to an interview in Audiofile magazine, "The collaboration process gives Louisa constant access to another imagination. They discuss escape routes for lions or names for acrobats. Louisa types up the scenes, Isabel reads them, and they revise together."

I listened to the audiobook. Actually, what made me finally pick this book up to read (listen to) was the narrator - the fabulous Simon Jones, whose voice and reading I fell in love with while listening to him narrate the Bartimeus Trilogy.  Interestingly, Jones does not narrate the British audiobook. His is the American edition.  From the Audiofile interview:  

"Young Isabel likes to listen to audiobooks; whereas, Louisa likes to “read books for the silence.” They listen to audiobooks together in the car, though, and it was there that they first heard narrator Anton Lesser reading Philip Pullman’s RUBY IN THE SMOKE. Anton Lesser reads the UK audiobook production of LIONBOY at their request, and Simon Jones narrates the American audiobook. After eight years of telling each other stories from LIONBOY, it’s surprising to hear it read by someone else. When Louisa listened to Jones’s version, she found herself wondering what was going to happen next."

That last line - "...she found herself wondering what was going to happen next" - that's because Simon Jones is so good you find yourself getting completely absorbed in the story.

One sort of odd thing about this audiobook is the music. At various times throughout the book music plays behind the narration. Sometimes it makes sense, as in the calliope music of the circus boat. Other times, the music seems added randomly.  When I picked up the book itself to look at the spelling of a couple of characters' names, I saw that music is actually printed in the book.   I'm not quite sure why it's so, but apparently it was important to the authors to include it. In fact, you can buy a book of the piano music with a CD - Music from Zizou Corder's Lion Boy by Robert Lockhart.

Besides realizing the music was in the printed book, I found that there are some neat illustrations, including a map on each endpaper as well as a diagram of the circus boat.

Fortunately, the added pleasure of the illustrations will get me through the second book because,  unfortunately, the library doesn't own the audiobook of Lionboy: the Chase.  I'll have to read it in order to get to the third book, narrated by the fabulous Simon Jones.

Bartimaeus Trilogy (plus one)

The Amulet of Samarkand
The Golem's Eye
Ptolemy's Gate
The Ring of Solomon
by Jonathan Stroud
Summer 2011


Madeline had been telling me to read this series and I finally did. What actually hooked me on them was the audiobook. The reading, by Simon Jones, is just fantastic. Bartimaeus, the 5,000 djinni is a sarcastic, egotistical, egocentric troublemaker. He is also charming and hilarious. To me, most of the charm comes from Jones' voice. He is and always will be Bartimaeus to me.

The trilogy involves Nathaniel, a magician's apprentice who summons Bartimaeus all on his own. He's smart enough to have made a foolproof plan for keeping the djinni from breaking the power Nathaniel has over him. It's a good thing, because Bartimaeus really doesn't like the boy. But it's his duty to serve his master.

The books are set in an alternate reality London where the government is run by magicians and common folk are considered to be inferior humans, fit only for manual labor and menial jobs. The chapters alternate between Bartimaeus and Nathaniel, the djinni's being told in first person and the magician's in third person. It's weird, but it works somehow.

Nathaniel has a great desire to become a great magician and to rise to the highest level of government. The problem is, he's not cut out to be part of the greedy, cut-throat world of magicians. The three books of the trilogy takes Nathaniel through that journey and follows Kitty, a commoner, in her quest to change the balance of power.

There's so much involved in these three books it would be difficult to describe it all.

The fourth book, a prequel to the series takes place during the time of Solomon, king of Israel and master of an extremely powerful magical token - a ring. Asmira, captain of the guard in Sheba, is sent to assassinate Solomon and take possession of the ring. Bartimaeus becomes involved as the slave of one of Solomon's magicians.

I loved these books. I hope that Stroud continues to write more and that Simon Jones continues to read them. With Bartimaeus' 5,000 year history, Jonathan Stroud certainly has lots of material from which to draw.



The fabulous Simon Jones