YA Fantasy: Skyborn, David Dalglish

Skyborn (first of a trilogy)
David Dalglish
ISBN: 9780316302685
Floating islands, religious oppression, spunky war-orphans.

Part of my ongoing research into "floating islands in the sky" stories, and this first book started out very neatly, but it's headed into religious territory that I don't feel particularly inclined to pursue.  I've got the feeling of the writing and the world-building pretty well from the first book.  I very much enjoyed the focus on their version of military academy, and on the training in magic and tactics and their equipment, and I also thought Dalglish did a very good job of describing aerial combat.  If it wasn't for the religious overtones building up through the book, I would probably have stuck with the series just because it's decently written and interesting politically, but oh well.

Young Adult: The Walled City, Ryan Graudin

The Walled City
Ryan Graudin
ISBN: 9780316405058
A pair of sisters cross paths with mob bosses and desperate kids in a gritty crime-filled shanty-town.

This book is roughly based on the reality of the Walled City of Kowloon, which used to be in Hong Kong, but set in roughly modern times. What's interesting is that for a large part of the story, I couldn't tell if they were even in a real-world setting, or a gritty semi-modern "fantasy" analogue, and it doesn't really matter.  The story is real and gripping and powerful, and even though it's a bit darker than I usually select (trigger warnings here for rape and abuse and parental abandonment and really just about every type of violence you can think of), I'm glad I read it, and it was VERY good.  It reminded me strongly of The Girl With Ghost Eyes, but with better agency and voices for the women leads.

YA Novel/Graphic: Draw the Line, by Laurent Linn

Written and drawn in sections by Laurent Linn, this isn't as solidly half-and-half graphic novel and book like The Adventures of Hugo Cabret or the more recent Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape.  Still, there's a decent amount of illustrated material, which really adds something to the story.

Draw the Line
written and illustrated by Laurent Linn
ISBN: 9781481452809
Read August 20

Adrian has a lot of talent, but he's also a pragmatist (perhaps a pessimist) - he knows that artsy gay online comic creators aren't really the power players at school, so he's WAY into the closet, about everything.  His wardrobe is made of muted greys and taupes, he keeps his head down, and no one besides his two similarly-marginalized friends has any idea what sort of ideas and passions make him tick.  But all that changes dramatically when Adrian watches a flamboyantly gay classmate get savagely beaten at a local diner, and Adrian makes a terrified stand that puts him in the spotlight, and into the sights of school bullies.

It was a little heavy-handed at times, and the progression was a bit quick, and the ending a bit pat, but I forgive those in the interests of having a mostly upbeat and positive story, despite the focus on some tough issues.

I don't know if there's anywhere more for Adrian's story to go, but it might be interesting to see Linn tackle a slant-wise sequel that focuses on one of the other characters involved, several of whom have really strong potential for a powerful story of their own.

Graphic Novel: The Nameless City

The Nameless City
Faith Erin Hicks
colors by Jordie Bellaire
ISBN: 9781626721579
Original fantasy graphic novel, first of hopefully a long-running series.
Read June 28, 2016

The Nameless City has been conquered serially by outsiders for as long as history remembers.  The invaders always pick a new name for it, but for people who live here, the city is nameless, and the need to name it is a sure mark of an outsider.  The Dao are the current masters here, and Kaidu has been sent over by his mother to be a part of the new empire.  He doesn't fit in with the war-mongering kids that he's training with, but he does find a friend - of sorts - in the city street smart Rat.

Love all the colors of people, and the close look at colonialism and oppression, and the limitations of people in power trying to keep power and perhaps do some good as well.

I'm really looking forward to the second book!

YA Fantasy: Vessel, Sarah Beth Durst

Vessel
Sarah Beth Durst
ISBN: 9781442423763
Follows the adventures of a girl fated to die and allow her clan's goddess to claim her body, when the goddess never shows up.


Nicely plotted, and the romantic entanglements didn't make me want to stab anyone in the eyes, so that's always a benefit.  Lots of really good world-building, and an interesting take on how bad things happen in a world with active gods all over the place. Not so thrilled that the eventual villain is revealed as a mad depressed person.

Very enjoyable.

2015 Review Round-Up: YA Fantasy: Court of Fives, Kate Elliott

Court of Fives
Kate Elliott
ISBN: 9780316364195
Read September 2015

This is Elliott's first YA, and I found it really enjoyable, although the set-up to the inevitable series relies on the ever-exasperating trope of characters feeling betrayed because they didn't actually communicate with each other for whatever shoehorned reason the author imagines to keep them from communicating so that they can feel betrayed.  I hate to feel personally offended by this when it is a common trope and not even unique to YA, it just bugs the ever living crap out of me.

That said - despite ending on a note that personally pissed me right off, this was a very good story, and an enjoyable read, and I've been recommending it to people.

Our fantasy world is pretty small: a single city, with stories and legends of other places that come into play later on, but I like that we're tightly focused on the here and now, because that place is exceptionally well-crafted and interesting.  The city was somewhat recently conquered, and the indigenous people are now very much second-class citizens.  Their folkways and traditions are outlawed, they're barred from the nobility and from the army, and even having one as a concubine can be a social millstone.  Which is unfortunate for our story, as our main character Jessamy, along with her sisters, are the result of one such relationship - even worse is that her father, a respected military leader, actually loves his concubine, and would even marry her if it were legal.  Of course all this leads to grief, and that rich backstory provided a lot of interesting food for thought while reading.

Despite all that class-based melodrama, the real action comes in the American Ninja Warrior-style martial arts competitions that are staged throughout the city: the Fives games.  Gyms sponsor promising athletic youths (male and female both - which I loved) who compete against each other in an obstacle-course area.  Winners are feted and upwardly mobile, middle tiers can somewhat comfortably retire into training the next generation of athletes, losers generally end up unpleasantly dead in the arena somehow.  Jessamy is of course, obsessed with this game, and naturally quite good at it (I adore that Elliot has her taking after her father in many respects - a very nice touch).

The magic is low-key, and the world building is fantastic.  I'm very much looking forward to the next one in the series, and I hope that the "relationship troubles built on miscommunications" aren't a death knell for characters I actually like.

YA SF, The Cage, Megan Shepherd

The Cage
Megan Shepherd
ISBN: 9780062243058
First in a trilogy:  Cora, along with five other teens, wakes in a crazed warped-spacetime funhouse designed to superficially resemble various cultures and biospheres on Earth.

This was an interesting read, and a really good example of how to have a solid, tight, COMPLETE storyline and climax, while still leaving lots of good space for the remainder of the trilogy.

Cora is a solid character, and she attempts to befriend the others in the menagerie, but their own complacency and the capricious nature of their captors (zookeepers?) keeps her apart from them.  I really liked how Shepherd made Cora fight, mentally and physically, against their captivity, even when her actions weren't helpful or were actively hampered by the rest of the group.  Nice to see a really powerful girl kick back against the "victim" mentality.  

My one major quibble is that the kids are supposedly meant to represent human diversity, yet there are no black characters at all.  There are two darker-skinned girl characters, but one is dead before the story begins (which is unfortunately stereotypical) and the other is introduced as a crazed feral creature (which is also unfortunately stereotypical), and the one male "ethnic" boy is Polynesian or Maori - Pacific Islander, instead of black.  There is one other Asian character, and the remaining three (also the most important three for the majority of the story) are white.  On the one hand, I hate to dock a book because of casting choices, but when the premise is established as specifically as this was, it's a little noticeable when fully half of your "genetically diverse" menagerie is made of lily-white people, when the actual demographics of planet Earth are fundamentally different.  I was left with the stunning realization that if Cora herself had been a black girl, the story would have been in large part the same, but with an even more powerful engine behind her drive to never be a victim.  I have to think that alternate-universe version would be even more amazing.

Still, the book ends with our character group divided and split up, with the promise of more potential characters to add to the mix.  It's scheduled for May next year, and I'm already looking forward to it.

For people who want to read an entire trilogy at once with no waiting, I would highly suggest Shepherd's earlier trilogy; The Madman's Daughter, Her Dark Curiosity, A Cold Legacy.
    

YA Fantasy: The Orphan Queen, Jodi Meadows

The Orphan Queen
Jodi Meadows
ISBN: 9780062317384
Traditional "western european" YA fantasy sets a young exiled princess against a conquering kingdom and a murderous magical incursion.  First in a projected series, with a GIANT CLIFFHANGER ENDING!

First things first: I read this immediately after devouring two other fantasy series back to back, by absolute masters of the craft, and THEN I read another very similarly plotted book immediately afterwards, which was flat-out one of the best fantasy-fairy-tale adaptations I've ever been blessed to read.  So I'm going to be a little sharp here, and it really is unfair of me, because this book was not bad.  It wasn't even mediocre, it just - wasn't at the very top of the heap, and that's where everything else this week was, so this suffers unjustly by the comparison.

With that in mind: a decent start-up to a series, with a Hunger Games inspired cliffhanger for the ending.  Sadly, I wasn't invested enough in the characters to actually care one way or the other about said cliffhanger, and I won't be particularly looking out for the next in the series.  Now, if it happens to come up, or cross my desk, I'll certainly read it - it was an interesting set-up, and I'm curious to know where things will go - just, more in an academic sort of way.


List of unfortunate things:
Character names don't make any damn sense.  This is a stereotypical white western european fantasy medieval/Victorian setting.  Please just pick a real medieval kingdom to pretend the characters are from, and choose names from there: France, Germany, Poland, wherever!  Just don't name one girl Wilhemina, another Quinn, another Teresa, and yet a different girl Paige, and expect me to not slip a few gears.

The "spy ring" was not so great.  Naming yourselves (and identifying as such to potential enemies or informants, and wearing clothes embroidered with the representation of such) after the heraldric creature of the fallen kingdom is sweet, but it's also stupid dangerous when living in enemy territory.  My desire to think of the main character and the group as a whole as competent and formidable was straining against this the entire book.  My opinion was also not helped by the main character's utter uselessness at an infiltration that had apparently been planned for quite some time.  I know they're all kids, but they're all trained and espionage-hardened kids, or at least that's what they're supposed to be.

The rationale behind going to the "mysterious location" in a totally different kingdom was really stretched.  When the character was explaining her motives to another person, I could just see the author explaining the reasons to an editor, who just nodded with a glazed look under the torrent of words.  Set up your plotting better, so decisions and events are actually important to the character's stated goals.

Have you ever seen Zorro: The Gay Blade?  If not, go see it, I'll wait.  Back now?  There's a very "Zorro" character here, and it was super obvious, and a little forced.  While I liked the masked version of the character, I had to restrain myself from rolling my eyes otherwise.  Cute, decently executed, but so very obvious.



List of enjoyable things:
Wil was an awesome lead, despite being utterly useless at most of her life choices.  She made her decisions, stuck to them, and mostly (despite one glaring plot-rail) had in-character reasons for them.  She had agency, personality, and an interesting background conflict.

The growing relationship and partnership with "Zorro" was meet-cute.

The plot concept was nifty, and has potential for interesting developments through the series.  The "magic gone bad" concept is sort of hot now, but this version also has intro-country political repercussions (slim and plot-dependent, but actually acknowledged) of the magic problem, and attempts to solve it in earlier years.

The lead friendship was very well drawn.

The "mysterious location" was, on reflection, one of the best parts of the book - it was supremely creepy and paced well.


All in all, a fun way to spend an afternoon.  

YA: Fallout (Lois Lane), by Gwenda Bond

Fallout (Lois Lane) 
Gwenda Bond
ISBN: 9781630790059
Read April 28, 2015

Lois Lane often gets relegated to the shadows in Superman stories.  Or, even worse, exists as a victim to rescue, or a sacrifice to fridge to up the angst points in our Man of Steel.  It's about damn time we hear from her in her own voice, and man, what a strong vibrant voice this is.

Bond starts with a teen Lois finally landing in Metropolis, after a string of moves and a dismal career of getting into trouble at various schools, all with the best of intentions.  Now tho, she has great resolutions, and she's going to be scholastic, invisible, and stay out of trouble.  That lasts for the literal minute it takes before she overhears her new principal haughtily rebuffing a loquacious young lady pleading for help; she's being bullied by the school super-stars, a freaky synchronized gang of youngsters who are part of a pilot collaboration between the school and a local technical and development company.

Before Lois can even get her class schedule, she's made enemies of the principal and the gang (the ominously named Warheads), and even the bullied girl wants her to just go away and leave her to her inevitable fate.  But our heroine is nothing if not tenacious, and she'll get her story, and save the girl while she's at it.

Everything about this book is lovely.  The sweet but still-innocent txt relationship between her and SmallvilleGuy in Kansas, the contrast between Lois' foolhardy and courageous exterior and her worried and insecure feelings, the tentative developing friendship between the debut members of The Daily Scoop (the Planet's teen-run online offshoot).

I especially like that Lois is willing to admit that she needs help, and to accept it from people (although grudgingly) but she is also more than willing to do what needs to be done on her own, and to shield her friends and companions from her reckless actions.  On that same note, it was nice to see certain super-powered persons relegated to a chatroom window, some text-messages, and a couple of instances of nerfed avatars in an online multiplayer game.  Lois deserves the chance to be seen standing on her own, and in this book, she does just that, and does it ferociously.

I really hope there's a sequel.

YA Dystopia: HIT, by Delilah Dawson

Do you ever read the fine print?  Perhaps you should start.

HIT
Delilah Dawson
ISBN: 9781481423397
Read April 26, 2015

On the plus side, the National Debt is gone.  On the downside, Valor National Bank (now just Valor National) is taking out the nation's fiscal dead weight.  Patsy gets caught up in the chaotic first five days of the national takeover, and she's got some hard work ahead of her.  You see, Patsy's mom had a string of bad luck, and a great deal of credit card debt.  

Now either the creepy Matrix-like agent shoots mom and Patsy both and burns down their house, OR Patsy takes his nice little 9mm and goes and offs the next 10 people who owe Valor more than they're worth.  She has 5 days to finish.

Along the way she is going to figure out a lot of things, including what sort of person she is that she could kill and extort strangers so readily.

This book is literally killer, and I really loved how Dawson didn't shy away from the emotional and physical repercussions of premeditated murder and physical violence on a person - especially one who never imagined themselves in this sort of situation.  The honesty there really did a lot to balance out the ultra-violent scenes of death and mayhem.

One final note, there is a dog, but you needn't worry - this isn't THAT sort of book.

YA Dystopia: The Glass Arrow, Kristen Simmons

The Glass Arrow
Kristen Simmons
ISBN: 9780765336613
YA Dystopia
Read April 24, 2015

This wasn't a bad book, but I wanted a lot more from it than it gave.  The premise is sketchy, but interesting: women somehow caused an uprising, and now pregnancy uncommon, and male birthrate is very low.  Thus, women are considered property, and young girls are sheltered in "Gardens" before being auctioned off to the highest bidder; unless of course they're willing to hide out in the wilderness and live off the land.  Even those wild folk have to worry about their girls being hunted down - they're generally considered to be more fertile.

That's our info-dump, and that's really all we get through the whole book.  There's a whole society of people who manage to live out in the wilds fairly happily, but they're not the focus so we don't learn much about them.  The actual history of why women were targeted in the first place is presented as mythology, leading me to hope that it wasn't intended to be the real rationale behind the development of this misogynistic society.

That's my biggest gripe with dystopian YA in general - there's just not enough worldbuilding for me to be really engaged in the story.  I want to know the backgrounds, and the history, and the culture, and the development of this crazy world, even if the main characters aren't able to understand or see how it works, I (as a reader) want to know that information is there and being considered.

I don't mean to say that this book is bad, just I really wanted some more depth to the world.  It was a light, enjoyable read, that was straightforward about personhood and autonomy and self-determination, and I really appreciated that.  

Juv Fantasy: The Castle Behind Thorns, Merrie Haskell

The Castle Behind Thorns
Merrie Haskell
ISBN: 9780062008190
A lush and leisurely re-working of Sleeping Beauty set in Brittany in 1518, with saints and magic and themes of family betrayal, friendship, trust, and forgiveness.
Read December 28, 2014

Lovely to read through, but it will be a very specific middle-grade reader to appreciate the vocabulary, dense thematic structure, and really superbly slow narrative pace.  It's fun for me as an adult, as a fast reader, and as someone who appreciates fairy-tale re-workings and historical fiction, but I think that it might easily fail to grab attention.

Sand (great name for a smith) wakes up in a fireplace, and realizes he's in the Sundered Castle, which has been hidden behind thorns since his father was a child.  The castle is still hidden behind thorns, but now they are keeping him prisoner as well.

I'll try to remain vague to avoid spoiling everything.

I loved the slow build of exploration and discovery.

I loved the focus on mending and repairing, especially how it relates to the other characters.

I loved the unapologetic hatred towards war and violence.

I loved the way that forgiveness was presented - not as a religious or civic duty, but as an act of self-preservation and personal mental/emotional health.

I loved the mending magic, the saints, and the Greek afterlife complete with Lethe, shades, and pomegranate seeds.

I loved Sand's enormous complicated blacksmithing solution.

I loved that the resolution was prosaic and mundane and that the "punishment" for the guilty was self-inflicted (although that was a little too perfectly settled, and I really feel for that priest and those poor knights).


The author has another fairy-tale re-working (12 Dancing Princesses) that I have almost picked up several times and just never felt like it grabbed me: The Princess Curse.  Now that I've read this one and have high opinions of the language and writing style, I might give that one a try even if the storyline itself doesn't seem as personally interesting.

Goodwill Find! Fantasy: The Coelura, Anne McCaffrey, illustrated by Ned Dameron

Found this at the Goodwill, in the children's section, which I disagree with slightly - I don't think the story would hold a child's interest very well, being a glorified love story.

The Coelura
Anne McCaffrey, illustrated by Ned Dameron
ISBN: 0312930429 (this illustrated edition from 1987, original story from 1983)
Read November 5, 2014

I want to say this is a good book, because the story and the world and the illustrations (let's be honest here and say that my delight was MOSTLY because of the illustrations) were so much fun to jump into for a short afternoon read.  I read it over lunch, it's only 156 paperback-sized pages, and many of those pages are illustrations.  If it weren't for the copyright page, I'd be highly temped to say that the illustrations came first, and the story was created as an attempt to mesh them all together, but knowing the story was written first makes me somehow gleefully happy at the bonkers illustrations of characters, environments, and poses that Dameron decided needed interpreting.  His vision of the protagonist at age 14 is especially delightful, and very reminiscent of the eighties.

So, is this a good book?  Sadly, not really.  The language is stilted and grasping for "alienness" in phrases and descriptions, the characters all speak and act like they're college theatre majors doing their first Shakespeare production, with lots of expansive gesturing (in the text, as well as the illustrations) and very proper, very formal, very unrealistic dialogue.  The plot isn't any great shakes either - in 120 pages, it ought to be trim, but a lot of time and energy are wasted on the wordy dialogue-laden intro, then the follow-up manages both to totally fulfill cliche expectations while missing a giant Chekov's gun in regards to one specific character which changes the entire climax and denouement of the story (in my opinion for the worse).  Also, egregious editor fail:  bells "peal" and one can "peel" fruit.  Different words, different meanings.

Summary: (spoilers?)
Caissa is the "body-heir" of a planetary regional governor (no more specifics, just that he's obviously rich and important and part of "society" in this place - our descriptions of jobs and titles are forever maddeningly vague) and thus will inherit all of his wealth and glory and positions, in addition to whatever she manages to accrue on her own.  Her "womb-mother" is obsessed with fashion and the high-life, and doesn't spend much time on this small world with nothing other than hunting and a small court of provincials.  Mom leaves one day in a huff, declaring that she's still owed part of her "contract" that dad hasn't fulfilled, and Caissa is now curious.  She discovers that there is a missing species on the planet, but meanwhile she just had her first serious proposal to be a mother to a body-heir of another society person (her dad is adamant that she consider the proposal for political reasons that STILL, even after finishing the story, remain unclear), and she's so miffed by his inept and condescending advances that she runs away to fly her personal aircraft out in the wilderness to seethe and pout.  Out there on her own she hears a faint distress beacon from the restricted islands which are connected to the missing species, finds a crashed ship, and the rest of the story proceeds according to exactly what you're thinking it will, discovering the "missing" species and their purpose and value, establishing a love-interest, and putting very shaky legs on a mystery/conspiracy.  There are random detours and red-herrings that spawn at random intervals, flap around wildly to be sure to be noticed, and then are utterly ignored.

So, good story?  Not exactly.  It was a bit frustrating, and more amusing to read than actually good or interesting, but it was a fun experience, and there were those excellent zany illustrations to pore over!

The Mirk and Midnight Hour, Jane Nickerson

The Mirk and Midnight Hour

Jane Nickerson

ISBN: 9780385752862

YA: Civil-War gently creepy fantastical novel of manners.

This is a companion-book of sorts to the author's first book, Strands of Bronze and Gold, and where that one gently tweaked the Bluebeard tale, this one has Tam Lin at heart.  

The story begins with our focus character Violet reeling from the loss of her twin brother, dead in a Civil War battlefield.  Her father is preparing to head to war himself, leaving her behind with the family slaves, Laney and Michael, and baby Cubby.  Violet's household is soon filled to the brim with a stepmother (more pathetic than wicked), a stepsister (excellent character development there, shattering expectations), and a set of cousins - one, the fae and sensitive child heir to a luxe plantation, and the other, a swaggering blockade-running showboat of a young man, from the cadet branch of the family, raised on the plantation, and expected to be the heir himself until the unexpected birth of his young cousin.  The variety of relationships (and neighbors) made the story really flow like a novel of manners, gently showing relationships building and changing over time.  The discovery of an injured Union soldier in an abandoned lodge nearby, cared for by the enigmatic and creepy VanZeldt "family" of a white doctor and a set of haughty Africans changes everything, and the ripples of her discovery will impact every corner of Violet's life.

As in the other story, I was very happy to see that abusive characters are shown clearly, with no excuses made for their behaviors, even when other characters don't see (or remain willfully blind) to those faults.

I also liked the way that the author presented the question of slavery - slowly showing Violet becoming aware of how her way of life was impacting people that she loved or respected.  It could have been corny or harsh, but it was almost natural.

I especially enjoyed the tension set up by the VanZeldts.  They exist somewhere on a range from casually evil to amoral to totally alien, which is an interesting path to take with your main "villains" and I think only works as well as it does for me because of the association with the unknowable fae of the traditional Tam Lin tale.  Relatedly, I thought that the integration of houdoun and voodoo and grisgris and rootworking was done nicely (even the shoutout to traditional zombies!)  I especially enjoyed reading all the various interpretations and justifications that the different characters used to make their non-Christian practices fit into the dominant culture and belief system.

The storyline didn't grip me quite as hard as the first one did - I think partly because of familiarity.  I've encountered lots of variants on Tam Lin, some good (as this one was) and most really wretched, where I don't recall ever reading a novelization of Bluebeard other than Fitcher's Brides (which I liked, but felt like the fairy-tale association was a bit forced into the cult setting).

I'm happy to see Nickerson writing another novel so soon, and I hope that she continues - her take on the Civil War south is a nice change of pace and setting from usual fantasy works.

 

Renegade, J. A Souders

Renegade
J. A. Souders
ISBN: 9780765332455
Read January 2014?
YA dystopia, girl power (except not really)

I was really put off by this book.  It started with such a strong premise, and then it all just went pear-shaped.  I'm not going to go into details, but suffice it to say that the worldbuilding and narrative structure did not stand up, even under the insubstantial weight of the cliffhanger story that was set upon them.  Add in cliche relationships, a convenient set of powers, and memory loss that isn't dealt with realistically, and the whole read was just really frustrating to experience.

Listing here because someone had asked about it, and I had a hard time remembering the title.  Mileage may vary, and just because I didn't enjoy it, doesn't mean that you wouldn't.

(Edit: helps to actually include a brief synopsis, doesn't it?)

Heroine is a kept girl chosen at birth and raised essentially in a utopian seraglio because of her "perfect genes" and destined to inherit the leadership of her underwater commune from the current Mother.  Everyone has blonde hair and blue eyes, and Mother is really quite strict about genetic purity, and proper behavior.  People are manipulated through having their memories wiped when they do things wrong, or through simply being "vanished."  Our heroine, not able to be vanished, keeps getting her brains wiped as she's incapable of actually acting in accordance with Mother's wishes for longer than about half a day.  That's perfect genes for you, I suppose.  In addition, there is a brute squad of very young girls who have been trained and mentally conditioned into being ruthless emotionless (or alternatively rage-filled - consistency isn't really great here) assassins.

Our heroine has begun to make the foggy realization that all is not dandy in utopia, aided in her discovery by a boy - an outsider from Above who arrives via a really stupid reason.  After that, everything goes downhill pretty quickly, devolving into long chase scenes through secret districts of the city (remember this is a smallish underwater commune here), hidden lower city levels (again, where?), mutants, fraught history lessons (spoiler, Mother is a liar), and more gory shambling zombie mutants before the inevitable cliff-hanger ending that sets up for the next book.

 

The Flame in the Mist, Kit Grindstaff

The Flame in the Mist
Kit Grindstaff
ISBN: 9780385742900
middle-grade fantasy: red-haired child escapes her evil ruling family to discover her true heritage, uses light to combat mist and murder.

Immediate Bonus Point Awards: Stand-Alone Fantasy, (Mostly) Competent Female Lead, No Mary Sues, (Almost) No Stupid Love Triangle, and Not-Dead Parents.

I feel like if I had read this when I was much younger - say around the time that I was devouring The Blue Sword, or The Hero and the Crown - I would have been way more excited about this.  As it is, it's very similar to both of those, to my (admittedly fuzzy) memories of Taash and the Jesters, to the spirit of the Bracken Trilogy... I could go on.  I just felt a little like I was riding a sightseeing train around a theme park.  Drive by this thing, drive by that thing, no sharp turns, no sudden drops or corkscrews, just a nice solid ride around the park.

The atmosphere is pretty solid, which is good, considering the conceit of an evil, enveloping, sunlight-blocking Mist, but the habit of inserting important capital letters  (Mist and Marked and Quest), odd portmanteau words (Approjection) and having a quaintly misspelled old book from history filled with anagrams to decipher (despite it being noted that they are quaintly misspelled - really good anagramist, that girl) all irked me personally a bit.  That's just a matter of taste.

On the other hand, I do have some niggles about the actual story and characters.

The ruling family is weak and infighting and decaying, and this is made obvious from the start.  This was probably on purpose to make them seem more an appropriate "challenge rating" for a 13 year old girl, but all it did was make me wonder what would have happened if everyone just moved away or into hiding and simply let the family go on for a few more years until they rotted out from the inside?

While I'm very happy to see the real parents not dead, I'm not so happy with the cloying super happy super supportive super loving family ideal that appears out of nowhere with a person they don't know, and haven't seen for 12 years, and who they've been living in pain and suffering and weakened ability waiting on her to get her act together and rescue not only herself but their Power (again with the capital letters) from the bad guys.  I just didn't buy it, and spent the entire book alternately gagging and waiting for the other shoe to drop.  (It never did - they really were that nice.)

Likewise, a post-climactic scene was resolved way too easily (trying to avoid real spoilers here) with the main characters using reason and appeals to humanity and morality.  Nope.  Especially in that situation, it rang entirely too false and trite and easy, and it soured the entire book up until then, which had been doing fairly well in that department by specifically talking about good and bad actions, and people being more complex than simply good or evil (not that it actually impacted the characterizations of the bad guys, who had at least a couple of solid one-note-villains present, and some late-arriving development for another that again rang pretty hollow.)

Finally, (and this one may also be a matter of taste) I get a little unhappy when our hero gets obsessed or taken over/literally possessed, or driven by dreams of hazy characters from the past who drive the protagonist towards the final confrontation (sometimes against the protagonist's will or personal judgment) who grant the protagonist the power and experience needed to combat evil, and who sometimes literally step into the final fight (either by possession or ghost presence or other methods) to "assist" and end up being the big guns in the fight.  Yes, it's a solid way to reasonably explain how a pre-teen manages to take down the evil empire where no one else could before.  Yes, it has great precedent: Star Wars (Use the Force, Luke!) and even in my previously referenced Damar novels.  I just feel like it takes away the agency and decision-making from the protagonist, and lets them off the hook too easily for the consequences (even the positive ones) of what are arguably NOT their own actions, being that they are under the influence or even outright control of other characters.  It bothers me especially when that protagonist is a girl, and then it gets into even more squicky territory of free will and agency as well as traditions in fantasy of silencing women and of characters getting "used" by more powerful forces.

So those are my really nitpicky irritations.

Despite all my griping, it was a well-paced and well-written stand-alone with a happy ending and a red-headed girl protagonist who is strong and brave and decently competent for her depicted age.
  

How to Catch a Bogle, Catherine Jinks

I haven't read any middle-grade fiction recently, so I snagged this one off of a recommended reads list, and I'm glad I did.


How to Catch a Bogle
Catherine Jinks (author of Saving Thanehaven, which I also enjoyed)
ISBN: 9780544087088
Read May 9, 2014
Juvenile/Middle-Grade alternate Victorian London; urchins and magical creatures

This one goes right along that same alley as Kieran Larwood's Freaks, Y.S. Lee's Agency series, or for a more gritty "literary" take, Berlie Doherty's Street Child.  Birdie is an orphan, but she's better off than most.  Unlike the mudlarks digging in the filthy and dangerous Thames for shillings'worth of scraps, or the professional beggars getting rousted by the police, or the ragged street-thieves risking prison-time, or even the poor unfortunate souls getting used and abused at the workhouse, Birdie is a Bogler's Apprentice, and that gets her a good day's work, extra spending money (sometimes) and what's most important - a degree of respect in this hard-knock world.

And what's a Bogler's Apprentice?  She works with the Bogler, to lure out and kill bogles.  These nasty slimy dark nightmares like nothing more than a tasty child to eat, and only Alfred and Birdie can find them, lure them in, and destroy them.

Birdie loves her life, loves her job, and loves being important and needed.  She very resolutely does not think about how dangerous her job is, but Alfred does.  (Making this obvious is a very nice grace-note in the story.)  It doesn't matter how dangerous it is, there's no real alternative for Birdie in the slums she calls home.  Until the duo meets an eccentric armchair naturalist, who follows them out on a bogle hunt, and is promptly scandalized and terrified.  Miss Eames is determined to save Birdie from her most likely fate as bogle food, but Birdie is equally stubborn.

The book jacket and the press indicate that this is the first of a trilogy, and I'm deeply satisfied with how they did it, because this is a totally complete story - none of this cliffhanger nonsense.

Parts of this are pretty creepy in the "things sneaking up behind you" sort of way.  Otherwise, it's a delightful romp through the poor muckridden slums of London, with a totally accurate (and colorful) vocabulary.

An excellent read, and I'm looking forward to A Plague of Bogles, out in January.

Sorrow's Knot, Erin Bow

Sorrow's Knot
Erin Bow
ISBN: 9780545166669
Read January 12, 2014

YA/Fantasy, indigenous cultures in a world of dead shadows and the power to 'bind' with knots or words.

I can't really improve on the jacket copy without spoiling the story, and I find myself strangely averse to spoilers for any part of this story.  All I feel I can safely say is that Otter, Kestrel, and Cricket are caring friends, that family relationships can be both loving and twisted, and that this beautiful and unsettling story made me cry.

I find myself this next morning wanting to hug my mother and my grandmother.

Sally Slick & The Steel Syndicate, Carrie Harris

Sally Slick & the Steel Syndicate: A Tale of the Young Centurions
Carrie Harris
ISBN: 9781613170632
Read January 2, 2014

YA: FATE role-playing system tie-in novel, first of a planned series (sequel: Sally Slick and the Miniature Menace).

Sally is the only girl in a family of 7 boys, and she's an inventor to boot.  She's proud of her inventions, especially her racing tractor.  She's less proud that the town bully and his gang continue to beat up her best (only) friend Jet while she stays out of their way.  When her eldest brother returns from Chicago and tries to secretly bury a broken mechanical man in the family graveyard, Sally gets mixed up in more danger and excitement than she'd ever imagined.  The mechanical man is the focus of a turf-war between Chicago gangsters.  The Steel Don and a strange inventor, her brother's employer Doktor Proktor, both want the power this invention will grant them.  As Sally tries to keep her family, especially her brother James, safe, she realizes that her own skills are in demand as well, and that her opponents will stop at nothing to secure her talent. 

This was created as a "stretch goal" for a Kickstarter campaign for the FATE system, and it shows a little.  The book is softbound, with those glare-white pages and really narrow margins that scream "self-published" but the content is thankfully not subject to the usual low self-publishing standards.  I didn't notice any typographical or grammar mistakes, no great jumps in narrative, or strange railroading or mystical decisionmaking.  The plot was funny and quick, the characters quirky and individualized (except for the 7 brothers, of whom I know of the sick baby, the twins (one of whom is a prankster, and the other a tactical genius) and the eldest brother.  4 out of 7 isn't bad, right? 

The only real complaint I have with this one is that more times than not, the dialogue is stilted and somewhat off.  People don't really talk to each other the way that the author has them do here, and it's a little bit of a detriment to the story, especially when the characters themselves are pretty nifty, and well-drawn.

Cute, fun, clean, and in the same excellent early-century inventor breed as Tom Swift, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and The Rocketeer, but specifically geared towards younger readers.  Not quite Jules Verne, but amusing and inventive.  I only hope that Calamity the tractor will play a slightly larger role in the next book.

Short Reviews: April 2013. The Vine Basket, Josanne La Valley

The Vine Basket, Josanne La Valley.  ISBN: 978-0547848013
April 2013
Interesting but emotionally flat tale of an ethnic-minority Chinese girl in northwestern China attempting to balance loyalty to the Party, the traditions of her own people, and the limitations on what daughters are good for.  Plot and characters alike could have been MUCH better with a stronger author.