Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

I have this little thing, called a blog? And I used to write about books? And then one day I just stopped.

And then one day I just started again. So here we go. Bear with me, I'm incredibly rusty.

Fangirl
by Rainbow Rowell
St. Martin's Griffin, 2013
422 pages

Once upon a long time ago I read a book called Fangirl. It was one of the first books I read this year, in fact. And I loved it. The end.

No no, there's more - and I'm not going to do the book justice, of course, because I read it nearly a year ago, but here's the thing: I read this nearly a year ago, quite quickly, and I still think about it regularly and with a fair amount of clarity. The thing is, it's not just a nice book - and it is, a really nice book, where nice things happen and people are kind and awkward and lovely and maybe sometimes a bit mean but they aren't just awful for no reason. They all have reasons, and they are all sympathetic, even when they are not good reasons. There's no forced love triangle, there's no insta-love, there's no easy answers; there are just good people trying to work their way around being individuals and members of families and friends, which is not always easy and provides enough drama to make an engaging, charming, intelligent book.

More than just being a nice book, Rowell's writing makes the reading of it seem effortless. It's an easy read. It goes down smoothly. It's funny in the right parts, and tense in the right parts, and moving in the right parts. The pacing is absolutely dead on. I was worried that the excerpts from Cath's fanfic would stall things, or be uncomfortable to read (in the way that fiction-within-fiction can sometimes just be... weird) but those excerpts were delightful. I can see why people want to read more Simon Snow.

Me, I'll be reading more Rowell, regardless of whom she's writing about. Thoroughly enjoyed, highly recommended.

three great graphic novels

Daisy Kutter 1: The Last Train
by Kazu Kibuishi
Bolt City Productions, 2012
153 pages

So, I hadn't realized this was re-released. I first started following Kazu Kibuishi online years ago, before Amulet was a thing, by reading his Copper comics. (I've got those in printed form too, now, so that will be reviewed here at some point.) But by the time I realized I was in love with his style and his sensibilities, his first graphic novel, Daisy Kutter, was no longer in print and unavailable anywhere. I was always sad about that because it looked fantastic.

Well, it is. One of my local comic stores supported Kibuishi's Kickstarter to reprint Daisy and I got their last signed copy, which you can imagine made me feel like queen for a day.

It's a steampunk western. Daisy is an ex-con who owns and runs a general store. It's pretty clear she's bored out of her skull by it, but it's a legit living. Her excitement comes from playing poker. So when she loses the store in a high-stakes poker match, she has no choice but to take up the winner's offer to give her the store back - if she participates in one last heist.

There are a few plot holes and the ending wraps up incredibly quickly, but this is the first in (I hope!) a series, and it was extremely enjoyable. Daisy's got depth, as does Tom McKay, the local sherrif who also happens to be Daisy's ex-partner in crime, and ex-partner, period. There are lots of questions to be answered, lots of fleshing out to happen with both characters. The world, while somewhat sketched-in for this first instalment, has a huge amount of promise. Very much looking forward to the next book.



Friends With Boys
by Faith Erin Hicks
First Second, 2012
220 pages

I find it hard to write about this one because all I want to say is LURRRRVE. This is a sweet, funny, quirky, sensitive, wonderfully-drawn coming-of-age graphic novel about a girl who is starting high school after being homeschooled her whole life. She has three older brothers whom she adores, and hasn't really ever felt the need for any friends outside of them. But they've all got their own lives and challenges at school, so she's kind of on her own. Lucky for her, she's not the only one in need of a friend.

What's nice about this is that it's not really deep or difficult, but it's still a portrait of a kid trying to find her place and fit in, while dealing with stuff - some mundane stuff, like dealing her mother's decision to leave the family or her first year at school, and some not at all mundane stuff, like the strange ghost who keeps following her around. Maggie's got challenges but she's competent, and her family (with the notable absence of her mother) is loving and supportive. This makes the book feel safe and a bit gentle, which is sometimes a nice thing in a coming-of-age book about outsiders.

This book is also really funny. The art supports the characters' development in the best way possible. Hicks can express a huge amount about a character just with facial expression and small gestures, and she uses that to full effect. It's an easy-to-follow style, too, meaning this is a great entree into the world of graphic novels. Excellent amounts of geek humour and an affirming message that being "weird" - however one defines it - is okay.



Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal
by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
Marvel, 2014
120 pages

I'm not sure I really need to introduce this book. It's gotten a lot of attention because Ms. Marvel is Kamala, an American-born Muslim teenager of Pakistani decent, who in addition to having to deal with the sudden onset of superpowers and the appearance of a supervillain, has to deal with obnoxious, racist classmates, a fairly traditional family, a diet that forbids bacon, and a curfew. It could have smacked of diversity lip-service, but it was so well-written it didn't.

The book lives up to the hype. There are a lot of things to like here, from the fast-paced plot and the bright, stylized art, to the way it handles what shouldn't be a sensitive issue (Kamala's race and religion) but really is. But what I really appreciated was how realistic the whole thing feels from an emotional perspective, which is not something one can always say when reading superhero comics (or fantasy novels, for that matter.) While the title of the volume is "No Normal" what is refreshing is just how normal Kamala is, right down to the fights she has with her parents when she breaks curfew and is then punished for it. She's got superpowers and she handles their onset in a believable way. She's a teenager and she feels like a teenager.

Also, on a very frivolous note, I dare you to read this one and not fall a little in love with Boris.

Will definitely be following this series.

The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

The Shadow Speaker
by Nnedi Okorafor
Hyperion, 2007
336 pages

Okay. This review is so unbelievably overdue, given I read this book for Aarti's initiative, A More Diverse Universe. But maybe I can get it into the same year. I had kind of hoped that this book would grow on me when I left it, but unfortunately that didn't happen. I was really excited to read this story, and I think in the end I was disappointed partially because of that.

Ejii is growing up in what used to be West Africa - and still is, but not any West Africa we recognize. After a cataclysm of proportions we start to recognize only as we get further into the book, magic has returned in a big way to Earth. Portals between Earth and other worlds have opened in places, animals speak, and certain humans have magical powers. Ejii is one, a shadow-speaker. She communicates with the shadows, which gives her some powers of telepathy and precognition. She is also the daughter of a man who was a violent, dictator-like, fundamentalist chief of the village, before he was slain by Jaa, the Red Queen. When the shadows tell Ejii that she must follow Jaa to an important meeting between the leaders of Earth and the other worlds, Ejii is torn. She's afraid to go, but curious and determined. So she sets off on the back of her talking camel, Onion, and soon realizes that her journey is going to be stranger, more dangerous, and more important than she could ever have fathomed.

It's not that the whole book was disappointing. So I'm going to start with the disappointing bits in a bid to end on a high note.

This wasn't a good book for me, personally, and I think it basically boils down to the fact that I'm about twenty years too old to really appreciate it. When I'm reading, characters are a key component of my enjoyment; these characters were extremely plot-driven, as opposed to having a plot driven by the character's choices. Characters did things that were utterly in service to the plot and seemed bizarrely out of step with what I thought their characters would do, which meant I was constantly reevaluating my understanding of each character. Not in a good way. It felt very disorienting and I didn't end up very attached to any of the characters. This is usually a death-knell for any book for me.

The thing is, if I was thirteen years old I would have loved this. The characters are BIG - everything is very melodramatic. The teens act like young teens - which would be great, except that most of the adults did too. As an adult I tend to like my characters more nuanced and less shouty and more emotionally consistent, especially if they are supposed to be important and intelligent world leaders.

What saved it for me was that the concept and the world-building are top-notch and really interesting. The setting was gorgeously-described - the descriptions of the colours and the smells and the sights were fantastic and fantastical. I also absolutely loved the language Okorafor uses: there are untranslated words that add so many layers of sound and tone to the writing, and the words that Okorafor makes up for the fantasy elements are magnificent and playful. I liked how the magic worked, I loved that it was never fully explained (because it wasn't ever entirely clear to the characters how they were able to do what they did, or how it was supposed to work - this, however, didn't feel lazy on the author's part, but carefully considered) and I was really interested in how the technology and the magic met and negotiated each other in this world.

But unfortunately, I do prefer my books to be more heavily weighed towards the character than the plot, and this was backwards for me. I think as an angsty pre-teen I would have just eaten this up - I've always been a sucker for interesting world-building, and the cultural background, so different from my own, would have been a huge plus - but as an adult it fell flat for me. I would, however, read more Nnedi Okorafor - I've got both Akata Witch and Zahrah the Windseeker on my list. Those are both books written for a younger audience too, so I'll have a better idea of what I'm getting into this time. I like her ideas and I'm hoping I can find some more consistent characters.

Shadows by Robin McKinley

Shadows
by Robin McKinley
Nancy Paulsen Books, 2013
356 pages

Before I go too far with this review, I think it would be helpful to explain a bit about my relationship with Robin McKinley's writing. McKinley was the first fantasy author I read outside of Tolkien, and that book - The Hero and the Crown - made a huge and lasting impression on me. The lead character was female, she was an outcast, she was determined and kind and confused and smart. I devoured that book, and turned back to the beginning and devoured it again, and I have never stopped loving it, though the related book The Blue Sword is the one I love more and has become one of the books I've read the most over the years. I've also read Deerskin (and holy shit was that ever an eye opener when I read it as a young teen - it's not an easy book to read, subject-matter-wise), a number of her short stories, Beauty, The Outlaws of Sherwood, Chalice, and Sunshine - which is also my favourite McKinley book and one of my top three books of all time. I do fully intend to read her entire backlist at some point, with either Spindle's End or Rose Daughter being next on the list.

Suffice to say, I am fairly well-versed in McKinley's works. And while I like some of her books and stories better than I like others, I always respect her work, if that makes sense. She has really excellent characters, and very detailed, realistically flawed worlds, and she rarely wraps all the bits up by the end of the book, but she doesn't write sequels. Sometimes I don't love her endings, but unlike some books, when a McKinley ending doesn't quite work for me it doesn't generally ruin what came before (Chalice might be a slight exception to this rule; I really disliked the ending of that one, enough that I haven't read it since my first reading.) And another thing about McKinley is that each book is different; though there are common threads running through her body of work, the narrative voice is often wildly different between stories.

It's the narrative voice of the titular character that makes Sunshine such a hit for me, and it's that same voice that turns a lot of fans of her other books off that particular one too, I find. It's very unusual, a first person perspective that is almost, but not quite, given stream-of-consciousness rein. I love Sunshine. I love her, and I love the way I can almost become her when I'm reading that book. I love the way some of her expressions, idiosyncratic and odd as they are, bleed into my own personal stream-of-consciousness narrative when I'm reading that book and often for weeks after. I love her turn of phrase, I love the way she thinks. She, more than any other fictional character I have encountered, feels like a friend.

This is key to my feeling about Shadows, because Shadows is pretty much in the same vein. Maggie, the main character in Shadows, is younger and lives in a very different world from Sunshine (maybe?) but that next-to-stream-of-consciousness narration is there in full force. We are right there, inside Maggie's teenage head, as she's telling us the story, and she takes us on her tangents (some of which circle back to be important, and some of which are just flavour) and she flashes back and she uses a lot of slang.

By which I mean to say that I really, really liked this book, and it's probably not for everyone.

Maggie is seventeen years old, and her mother has just remarried after her first husband, the father of her two kids, was killed by a drunk driver seven years previous. Maggie feels she would probably be predisposed to dislike the guy - she's fair-minded that way - but she outright hates him, because he's not normal. He is an immigrant from Oldworld, where magic is still common, which is bad enough. In Newworld, where Maggie and her family live, magic isn't just not practiced, it's illegal. Anyone who shows any sign of being genetically predisposed to magic has their magic gene removed as a kid, and anything that seems odd is reported to the authorities immediately. There are still breaks in reality, completely unpreventable, but the army deals with those using advanced technology. Magic isn't necessary and it's destabilizing and unsafe. But Maggie's new stepfather, Val, has strange shadows that follow him everywhere and seem to move on their own, and Maggie can see them, and they terrify her.

There is a lot going on in Shadows, and part of what I love about it is that it's so easy to read anyway. We have a coming-of-age story. We have a society that might almost be a dystopia, but it's not, not quite, because there are some safeguards against completely authoritarian rule. But it's close, and over the course of the book we see how easy it might be for ordinary people (and even the not-so-ordinary ones) to just accept what they are told as truth, and how easy it might be for those who mean well to step over the line into despotism. What we have, in short, is a world that's unsettlingly familiar, in all its political chicanery and popular intellectual laziness.

We have a love story, but it's fairly secondary. We have a female friendship, between Maggie and her lifelong best friend Jill, that is realistically and beautifully portrayed; they're not catty, they're not mean to each other, they get each other, and sometimes they argue. We have a lot of diversity - Maggie is white, Jill is black, one of the love interests is Eastern European, and another of their good friends is Asian. We have a lot of parallels to our world - certain countries we recognize exist, like Japan, and there are cellphones and drunk drivers and pizza parlours and animal shelters and cliquey, slang-spouting teenagers muddling their way through high school and life. It's also absolutely not a world we live in, with its regularly occurring breaks in reality ("cohesion breaks" or cobeys) and magical gene splicing and "physics of the worlds" departments in local universities and a big army structure designed to clamp down on magic.

We also have a plot that develops surprisingly quickly and smoothly, given the roundabout narration, and that then proceeds with inevitable speed. This book moves once it gets going, and everything slots into its place, and while one's disbelief has to get suspended at one or two points, it mostly works. The end is a bit cheesy. But I've seen far worse.

Oh, and the book is funny.

I don't think this book is for everyone. Some of the slang is a bit overdone (for me, the parts where it worked amazingly well far outweighed the parts where it didn't) and as above, the ending didn't quite fit. But the detail of the world, and the enjoyment I got out of living in Maggie's head, and the fact that all the pieces don't always get explained (there's a bit about Val, the stepfather, that we never learn more about and it's BIG), and the fact that I used the word "cobey" in conversation without realizing in that moment that it wasn't actually a real thing that happens... You should read this, I think. It's not your ordinary young adult novel. It's not your ordinary adult novel. It's something McKinley does well, which is write something entirely, completely new, using bits and pieces of old, and throwing in a strong, vital, honest, and realistic female lead as a bonus.

Heriot by Margaret Mahy

Heriot
by Margaret Mahy
Faber and Faber, 2009
353 pages

There is something about Margaret Mahy's writing. The way this woman used words is special, and I always find myself feeling a little breathless and awed when I am reading her books - even her children's books, our favourite of which is Bubble Trouble. I don't think her writing is for everyone; I do think, occasionally, that the way the words are put together takes precedence over the story and the characters, and a perfectly marvelous little jewel of the English language will shine a little too brightly for the rest of the paragraph to support it. But I am in love with my language, and am okay to admire something that is just so beautiful, or apt, or beautifully strange that it pulls one away from the story it is telling for just the briefest moment.

Beautifully strange pretty much describes this book, as well. The titular character, Heriot Tarbas, is only one of three point-of-view characters in the novel, though he gets the majority of the book. We meet him as a boy, living on a farm built in the ruins of a much grander structure (love this) and surrounded by his industrious and loving, but somewhat puzzled, family. Heriot has always been a little strange, plagued by visions, vivid dreams, and terrible headaches and "fits." So he is marked as being different. But he loves his life on the farm, and when events conspire to pull him away from it, he is desperate to escape his destiny.

Heriot is inextricably tied, by magic and then by friendship, to Dysart, the third son of the King of Hoad, our third point-of-view character and considered "mad" because he too is plagued by strange visions and dreams, as well as extraneous because he has two elder brothers to be heirs to the throne. The second point-of-view character is Linnet, daughter of one of the Lords of Hoad, whose fortunes become tied to Dysart's and by extension to Heriot's when she and Dysart are thrown together in classes while Dysart's father is negotiating a peace with their warring neighbours.

It struck me as interesting that I've now read two novels in the past two months that are about how difficult maintaining a peace can be - more difficult, in some ways, than constant warring. In both it is the generation that grows up in peacetime, that is used to peace and understands their function in it, that can be the instruments of preserving the peace when it becomes strained. But this is only one of the themes in Heriot worth mentioning. The book also explores the dangers of seeing people as symbols, themes of love and friendship, the process of self-discovery and self-actualization. It looks carefully at the stories we tell ourselves and the stories others tell about us, and what those stories can mean to the teller and the told, and what powers one has and doesn't have over the stories told about oneself.

It is not a perfect book, despite my love for it. Frankly I thought Linnet was entirely underused, her storyline somewhat predictable and undeveloped, and that was disappointing. And all of the characters can be a bit slippery, hard to define, despite being distinct and interesting. There can be a distance between the reader and the characters, even the point-of-view characters. I was fascinated by Heriot and grew to love him; I loved Cayley, the fourth major character, from the start, but he's not an easy character to pin down, either. This is not completely unexpected with Mahy, though, I don't think. I feel the same distance from Sorry and his family in her book The Changeover and I think it is a bit of a function of the strangeness of the characters' abilities and situations. Because that's the thing: there is strangeness, and discomfort. The characters experience it and the reader does, too, and not just because the characters are experiencing it. There is something about Mahy's writing that can be uncompromisingly odd. I wish I could tell you how she does it.

The other thing that amazes me is that she can walk that line between being beautifully (sometimes viscerally, brutally) descriptive and can take a person out of the story with her language, and yet I have never considered her to be flowery or purple in her prose. It all seems to fit, or perhaps I am giving her a pass because passages like "What he could make out was the unfamiliar accent, much quicker and more clipped than the family voices, and more careful. Lord Glass polished every word a little bit before he let it out on its own in the world." delight me so much.

And if you are the sort of person who needs to have all the blanks filled in, this is not a book that will agree with you much; there are periods of time that go unexplored and many things that go unsaid. The reader has to do a bit of work, and it's not always easy work either. I have noticed, too, that some people find the ending too explain-y, but I didn't mind that particular bit at all. The clues were all there, and I found it cathartic to have someone finally lay it out, make the final important connections.

I can't say for sure whether this is the best introduction to Mahy if you've never read anything by her; to be honest, I've read a lot of her children's books (all of them? I hope not) and only two of her books for older readers. Between the two, I do think The Changeover is more accessible, because Laura's an easier character to grasp and to inhabit. But Heriot has a scope and a sweep that The Changeover does not, and lovers of high fantasy who are willing to give something a bit different a try, or who love it when an author revels in her facility with words and is able to share some of that joy with her readers, would do well to read this one.

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Seraphina
by Rachel Hartman
Doubleday Canada, 2012
499 pages

The positive review is a challenging thing; it is hard not to gush praise all over the page and undermine one's own recommendations by sounding too enthusiastic to be entirely trustworthy. Thus, I've given myself a couple of days of distance from the book and its ending and I'm hoping that will help me at least be balanced.

According to my notes, I first became convinced I needed to read this through Aarti's musings, as is often the case. It would likely have appealed to me anyhow, though, given the subject and trappings: a secondary world fantasy novel with a heavy emphasis on music and politics. Plus dragons. Throw interesting dragons into a story and I am usually pretty well caught.

And boy, are these dragons interesting. So. Seraphina is the assistant music mistress to the court composer in the country of Goredd, a very medieval place that borders, among other places, the northern Dragon Lands. For forty years, Goredd and the dragons have been at a hard-won peace, and the celebration of the fortieth year of the Treaty is upon them; Seraphina is up to her neck in trying to get various things organized for the celebrations and the visit of the Ardmagar, the dragon leader. Unfortunately, she's also up to her neck in trying to tread very fine lines: Seraphina is not what she seems to the greater world, and in a world where dragons and humans live side-by-side only uneasily if at all, she has to find a way to keep those she loves safe, and serve her queen and country without betraying herself.

That sort of covers it, though there is a lot more to this story than that summary covers. We've also got a murder mystery on our hands: days before the story starts, the queen's only son was discovered, headless, lying in a field after he got separated from his party during a hunting trip. We also have a bit of a romance - and even a love triangle, though this is far different from the sort I am used to seeing in young adult novels and was a refreshing change. The romance is only one thread in the story, though, and is so well woven into the story that anyone romance-shy shouldn't worry too much about it.

But for me, the component of the story that stuck out and made me sit up and pay attention was the investigation of racism and its consequences, both for individuals and for society. In fact, at the beginning, the book felt like the wrong one for me. Aside from the fact that I couldn't stop thinking about it (sometimes a bad thing, when you're thinking about it at two in the morning and need to get up in four hours) I was almost - almost - turned off by the violent, ugly racism exhibited by certain characters and groups, and the fact that Goreddi society is extremely religious. I find both things uncomfortable to read, and I was looking for an escape read, not one that was going to be making me squirm. But this is a case where fantasy sheds light on "real world" problems - it's hard to believe, for example, that anyone in this world was ever as virulently, blatantly, unashamedly racist as some of the characters in Seraphina. But they were. And they are. And when that racism hits close to the home of a character one has grown to love... well, fantasy once again provides an excellent lens through which to view everyday problems.

And the characters are where the strength of this book lies, I think. Seraphina herself is just marvellous. A good, strong, and flawed character, the story is narrated from her first-person point of view. It is not always a comfortable place to inhabit; Seraphina is not fond of herself. She is a bundle of contradictions. But she does her best to view things honestly, she has a [sometimes dark] sense of humour, and while she occasionally does cringe-worthy things, her motivations and reasons are never in doubt and they feel like the right thing to the reader at the time, too. She feels entirely real, and I became deeply, deeply attached to her without losing sight of the wider story.

Other characters - Orma, her tutor; the Princess Glisselda; Prince Lucian Kiggs, Glisselda's fiancee and Captain of the Guard; Lars, the mysterious bagpiper and machinist; Viridius, the court composer and Seraphina's master - are vivid and complex, even when viewed from a first-person narrator's point of view. Nice to know that can be done in a realistic way.

The world, too, is clearly described and delineated, and rich in detail and substance. The religion that so turned me off at first is actually pretty interesting, with Goreddis and others worshipping a pantheon of Saints, some contradictory and all with their own place and purview. It permeates the entire book, but it is complex enough to bear that weight, which is not generally my experience with fantasy religions. The politics are tangled and high-stakes. Seraphina's father is a lawyer. She is well-versed in the laws of her land governing dragons and dragon-human interactions. Even more, these things are interesting when she tells us about them.

This is not to say that there aren't issues with the book. There are a few. Seraphina occasionally gets away with things that seem a little brazen for an assistant music mistress. I wanted more music; I didn't think she spent enough time at her actual job, and far too much time poking her nose in things where it really had no place (and not getting called on it often enough, either.) But overall, these issues are mild and don't distract from the quality of the tale.

Oh so recommended. If you like fantasy, you should read this book - even if you're sick of romances in your fantasy, even if you're wary of it usually being designated young adult, don't let those things scare you away. This story transcends its targeted age group, and its take on certain genre cliches is fresh and often fascinating. A really, really enjoyable read, and I'll be curious to see where Hartman goes next. This debut deserved the accolades.

The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti

The Secret Life of Prince Charming
by Deb Caletti
Simon Pulse, 2009
336 pages

Having been working on this book for ages (it was my "at work book" -- read during fifteen minute breaks, mostly, with the occasional half-hour lunch thrown in), once I finally finished it I put down in writing that I'd like to read pretty much everything else Deb Caletti has written. This is not my usual response to YA books, which generally get me all excited to read them and then end up disappointing me something fierce. It is even less my usual response to contemporary lit, and even less my usual response to reading a book targeted so squarely at females only (my fondness for romance novels notwithstanding). I mention that this was my at-work-book only because those books have to hit a particular, rather challenging niche: they have to be light enough that reading them in fifteen minute chunks is not a detriment to understanding the story and getting things out of the book, but engaging enough that I a) remember what happened last time, and b) want to use my precious break time to read it.

Quinn Hunt's parents are divorced, and she and her little sister Scout live with their mother, their mother's sister, and their mother's mother. After a significant period of time not seeing him at all, Quinn pushed her mother to allow her to reconnect with her father, a performer/manager/owner of a Vaudevillian stage act. The divorce was messy and the relationship between their parents continues to be acrimonious, but Quinn is desperate for a relationship with him, wants to know him and be known to him, so her mother allows it. Five years later, seventeen-year-old Quinn is generally happy with the way things are going -- she thinks. But then, during one visit, something happens. Something that changes everything, even though she desperately wants to ignore it. And suddenly Quinn finds herself on a mission with Scout and her estranged half-sister Frances Lee to meet the women of her father's past, and hopefully discover the truth of who her father is.

So we have here a tale generally about love and integrity. I've seen some people around the webs complain that it's "anti-male" and a bit heavy-handedly negative, and I find I can't quite agree. It's not even that obviously didactic in most places -- though it is didactic, and occasionally does slip a bit into blunt-force. But overall the story is so well done, and the characters so vivid, that the message(s) that Caletti wishes to convey are pretty well incorporated. That is, this is an Issues book that doesn't feel so much like an Issues book that I couldn't read it for the story and the characters. It's also the sort of Issues book I'd like every young woman in my life to read.

The topic of "love" doesn't just extend here to romantic love, though that is something of a focus, particularly of the didactic bits. But it's also a lot about familial love -- love between sisters, between parent and child, between absent parent and child. It has a lot to say about what constitutes a family. It has a fair bit to say about divorce (neither pro- nor con-, though it's clear that Caletti would like to encourage young women to avoid divorce by the dint of not letting a relationship that isn't working or isn't healthy get so far as marriage in the first place). As someone who has been extremely fortunate to grow up with an intact, generally very functional nuclear family, I learned -- grew to understand -- a lot about the challenges of kids of divorced parents. Granted, in this case, one of the parents is a tremendous asshole, and that's not always the case, but there are things I think must be common to kids who have two parents who split amicably, too. In particular the way Quinn describes the way children of divorce are expected to cope with their parents' new relationships and all that comes with them really struck me.

As to "anti-male," it's not terribly. There are a couple of examples of good, healthy, lovely relationships in the book, too -- each different from the other, but present. But anti-asshole this book definitely is. It's also very clear that while some guys are assholes, women need to take responsibility for their relationships, too. Not in a shaming sort of way, but in a way that recognizes that everyone makes mistakes -- it's about correcting that mistake, and not letting it define you or ruin your life out of some misplaced sense of obligation, fear, or shame. The book is pretty clear on the kind of damage a bad relationship can do, the consequences it can have, even when it's not technically "abusive" in the obvious meaning of the word. I wondered, as I read, where the line between just being a bad father or husband and being emotionally or psychologically abusive is. There is no answer to this in this book, but the damage done is clear and present.

Quinn is a great character; a bit of an every-girl, with a professed love of math (not explored nearly enough for my taste, barely makes a dent in the book proper) and a deep desire to do things right. She's also one of those people (I know this, because I am one) who desperately needs approval, even when its source isn't necessarily the right one. She wants people to like her, she wants to be a good daughter, she is absolutely a good sister. But she's also brave, in an accidental kind of way, and I like that it is accidental, and then she just goes along not necessarily for bravery's sake but because she's committed and doesn't want to back down. She is relatable, but not completely without her own personality; she has a strong voice, at times humourous, at times raw, always easy to read.

Not a perfect book, and not for everyone, but highly enjoyable if you enjoy contemporary women's fiction and don't mind a young adult narrator. Low-key romance, and occasionally a bit didactic, but never dull. Often funny, often touching, often thought-provoking. And both heavier, and lighter, than I've made it seem here. Looking forward to more Caletti in the future.

The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

The Body Finder (Body Finder 1)
by Kimberly Derting
Harper, 2010
327 pages

Don't you just love that cover? I love the covers for this series. I have wanted to read this series for ages, just based on the covers. Sadly, it's not quite going to work out between us, but I still love the covers.

I am trying to think about how to talk about this book without sounding like I disliked it. Because overall I quite enjoyed it, in the same way I quite enjoy scarfing down half a bag of delicious kettle-cooked potato chips when I get home from work sometimes. I don't even take off my shoes. Sometimes I don't even hang up my purse. I just stand there in the middle of the kitchen and hoover.

I should be embarrassed by that, but I'm not.

So in the same vein, I'm not particularly embarrassed that I essentially hoovered this book. I really did read it in the same way that I eat those chips: extremely fast, sometimes even without tasting it, and occasionally just standing or sitting in terribly uncomfortable positions, but not really noticing. I am realizing that this is the way I read novels with significant suspense or thriller elements. I don't even necessarily enjoy them, at least not in the way that I enjoy other books. "Enjoyment" is maybe not the right word for the emotion that accompanies the above actions. But I absolutely need to know what happens. And I need to know as fast as possible, and I am in this crazy, uncomfortable mind space until I finish the damn thing, either while I'm reading it or especially while I'm not.

It makes it difficult to write anything coherent or interesting about the book, I think. Because I am in the weird position of having... maybe?... liked the book, but also kind of detesting it for what it did to me.

So, summary: Violet Ambrose, sixteen years old, is dealing with two major dilemmas: her sudden more-than-friend feelings for her absolute best friend in the world, Jay, who grew from a gangly teen into an incredibly handsome young man over the course of a summer; and her ability to sense dead bodies. This ability starts to cause her significant problems when a serial killer shows up practically on her doorstep, and girls and young women start disappearing and dying. Violet can find their bodies -- and it turns out she can find their killer, too.

And let's see. I liked Violet; she's a strong character, with a great voice, and a good balance of strength and vulnerability and flaw. I liked the way her paranormal sensitivity is dealt with -- it's well done, consistent, and kind of a cool ability in the sense that boy am I glad I don't have it. I liked her parents, her close and supportive relationship with them, her relationships with her friends. I really enjoyed the relationship with Jay, and was incredibly relieved that the vague appearance of a love triangle went absolutely nowhere, as I particularly hate love triangles and YA is rife with them. The dialogue was entertaining and snappy and felt realistic anyway. In fact, if this hadn't been a thriller, but just about Violet and Jay and their friends and their relationship, I think I probably would have enjoyed myself more. I'd have taken my time. I'd have savoured things.

But alas. The action was movie-scene larger-than-life, which I expect from a suspense novel; Violet gets into scrapes and generally needs a bit of rescuing, which is a bit frustrating but again, kind of expected. She's a little bit horror movie heroine -- for god's sake, tell someone where you're going, you moron, or better yet don't go at all -- but again, kind of expected.  In fact, a lot of things were just as expected, and maybe that's where I start to feel a little... bloated? The suspense kept me reading, but not because I really felt like I was loving the book.

The convention Derting uses, of setting some scenes from the point of view of the killer, is used quite effectively here in a certain way; sometimes villain p-o-vs get a little campy or ridiculous. Here, he is really awful and creepy. For that reason, it's a convention I don't really like; I don't feel any sympathy for the guy, reading from his perspective doesn't increase my understanding of him, really, other than to build suspense when we know that things are just going to go from bad to worse. Actually, what bothers me about books that include scenes from the villain's point of view, when the villain has nothing to offer or to recommend him, and the scenes from his perspective are just to show the reader how truly evil he is, is that they're manipulative.

I am an easily manipulated reader. I don't tend to notice when I'm being manipulated, always, so it takes a bit of a clumsy hand to tip me off -- and I was tipped off a couple of times in this book. There was one really egregious example, where a villain's p-o-v section and a Violet p-o-v section coincide closely in a way that is clearly intended to make you think that maybe Violet's in serious, serious trouble. She's not. I knew that pretty much immediately. And I found it irritating that I wasn't deceived, that the trick was so obvious. It made the Violet scene not nearly as emotionally effective as it could, or should have been -- because when I know how I am supposed to feel (relieved? happy? I guess?) but I don't, the writer hasn't done their job.

And it's emphatically not that Derting is an ineffective writer most of the time. I think she's quite good for the genre, generally. I think that all that is wrong with this book is that it's a genre that is not really for me, or at least, it's not the best thing for me. Like a bag of potato chips, it leaves me feeling over-stuffed and under-nourished, which isn't a terrible thing once in a while, but it's also ultimately forgettable and leaves me feeling vaguely like I've just spent an afternoon doing something that wasn't quite worth my while.

Recommended as a try for fans of YA romance (it's a solid one, predictable and enjoyable for that aspect) and definitely suspense; it's not so much a mystery as a thriller. The fantasy aspect -- Violet's unusual ability -- is a part of the plot and the character, but is so well-done that it doesn't feel far-fetched or fantasy-like, and  therefore this might be a good entry for someone interested in reading a bit of the paranormal romance stuff out there without getting into a story where one would have to have an understanding of the genre and its conventions to buy what is going on. I probably won't be continuing with the series, although if I needed something for an airplane or a bus ride and the second book was handy I wouldn't be unhappy to pick it up.

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

Princess of the Midnight Ball

by Jessica Day George

Bloomsbury, 2009

197 pages

Ha! How's that for reading quickly? Granted, this read is not really of the same density that Bird Sense was, not by a long shot, and shorter, but still. It proves to me that I can still read and read fast. I am not sure why speed is so important to me; I think it's that old feeling that there are a lot of books out there that I want to read, so I'd better get at it. My reading time is finite. The faster I go, the more I can read. Fast doesn't always translate to a good experience, though. Overall, I think Bird Sense was a better reading experience -- but this was a lot of fun, and that's a good thing too.

The key here is that I was looking for a book specifically like this. I wanted something light, something fantasy, something entertaining, with nothing terribly dark or dangerous to distress me. Sometimes that can translate into almost unbearable fluff. And this is a fairytale retelling, which can go horribly, horribly wrong. Happily, neither is the case here.

Galen is a soldier through and through. Born to a career soldier and an army laundress, he was fighting on the front lines from the time he was fifteen and his father was killed. Now he's nineteen and the war is over, and he's done with killing. His mother had family in the capital city, and he has come to search them out, hoping to find decent work and a place to live. He finds both with his aunt and uncle, and becomes a gardener in the extensive and elaborate gardens of the King of Westfalin.

Rose and her younger sisters are the twelve princesses of Westfalin, doomed to dance their shoes to tatters every third night to fulfill a bargain their mother made. They cannot speak of their curse to anyone, and their father is driven to distraction by their disobedience and their distress. In desperation he proclaims that the prince to discover where his daughters go to dance at night can choose a princess to marry and become heir to his kingdom.

Sound familiar? Yes, this is the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. It's been a peculiar favourite of mine for a long time, and I'm happy to say that this is quite a good, occasionally ingenious retelling; well-fleshed and convincing.

When I was a kid, there was a picture book that I believe took the tale pretty much straight from Grimm in one of its forms; I was always distressed by how the clever soldier chose the eldest princess despite the fact that it was one of the younger ones who twigged to the fact that he was following them and was obviously the smarter one. As I grew older, I came to the conclusion that the soldier and the haughty eldest princess deserved each other; he was clearly a dolt. Not the case here. Galen is clever, kind, and generous, humble and noble of heart. And he knits! (This, I thought, was a very nice, very historically accurate touch, and it ends up playing a central role in the plot.) He makes a very convincing fairytale hero. Perhaps even a little too convincing; next to the other men his age in the story, he looks practically superhuman.

Rose, as the eldest princess, is the best-drawn of that group. She is brave and practical, but also (and this is due to both the source material and the take George went with) in need of rescue. I am not always put off by this in a novel; sometimes a good rescue makes for a lovely and compelling story, and while Rose is relatively helpless, she is not constitutionally helpless. She's in a really crappy situation, she's exhausted, and she's a seventeen-year-old bearing the responsibility for eleven younger sisters, all of whom are as doomed as she and some of whom are less capable of dealing with it, mentally. She bears a lot of grief, too, and she does the best she can. I think I would have been far less convinced by this story if she'd been all warrior-princess, as fun as that might have been, and as much as I'm a fan of female characters not needing to be rescued.

I've been trying to decide why I enjoyed this book in a throwaway kind of way, but didn't love it. I think where this book fell a little short of what I would consider a stellar read was the flatness of some of the characterization. The villains, for example: there are two. The King Under Stone, the supernatural villain of the piece, was irredeemably evil, and actually fairly creepy. I thought this was quite impressive, because irredeemably evil villains are not my favourite sort. But he did creep me the hell out. It was the human villain of the piece, Bishop Angier, who didn't really do much for me. He was a strawman villain, and his vibe was less dangerous than irritating. This is a shame, because there could have been interesting, nuanced things to say with him, and there were hints of it, but we never got there. That storyline is resolved in a way that is somewhat empty, if satisfying and even a bit cathartic on the surface.

Many of the characters aside from Galen, and Rose to a certain extent, are very one-note. Unlike other books I've read where that would be a fatal flaw, it didn't destroy the whole story for me. George knows how to plot, and has added such engaging detail to the bare fairytale while keeping the heart and particular detail of the original intact (not always an easy thing to do, but beautifully done in this case) that I was happy to go along for the ride. Also, and this is possibly the overarching saving grace, it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's not trying to be something it's not.

In fact, it's such a well-done faithful fairytale retelling that I'll be on the lookout for her retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which is my favourite fairytale of all time. I've yet to encounter a retelling of this one that I think does it justice, so I'm looking forward to seeing what she did with it. She has several other fairytale retellings that will be on my radar as well. I wouldn't suggest someone go out of their way to read this, perhaps, but if you're a fan of light fairytale retellings, you'll be in for a fun couple of hours with this one.

Spud by John van de Ruit

Spud
by John van de Ruit
Razorbill, 2007
331 pages

It's late and I probably shouldn't be writing this right now, but I doubt I'll sleep until I get some of this out of my system. This book has done its level best to destroy me, and I'm fighting back. Talk about reading outside one's comfort zone.

It's hard to talk about this. Did I love this book? Certainly parts of it. Did I hate this book? I'm not sure, but there were parts I think I can fairly say I hated. And whether I love it or hate it, this book has caused me no end of trouble since I picked it off the shelf, a lot of that my own damn fault.

To begin with, I did a thing that no librarian should do: I recommended this book to my brand-spanking-new after school club without having read it myself first. Now, to be fair, it is highly recommended by many whose opinions I respect, and its "target age" is between 12-18, which puts it right about in the ballpark for a book club of 12-13 year-olds. What I should have recognized, and did pretty much from the outset once I had started reading it is that my particular group of 12-13 year-olds isn't ready for Spud. I am a proponent of reading fearlessly, I am not a fan of censorship, I think there is space for controversy in every librarian's job. I also think that reading the right book at the wrong time can be a disaster for the reader and the book. (See: my long-held hatred of Bridge to Terabithia.) My librarian-spidey-senses are telling me that for at least five of the nine kids in the group, this is really not the right time.

So now, of course, I have to go back to them with a mea culpa. I plan on being totally honest with them: I recommended this book based on the information I had, but I hadn't actually read it, and now that I have I'm not comfortable with the choice. They're welcome to read it on their own, but I've got a couple other options for our book club that will scratch the same itch. (Schooled by Gordon Korman will be arriving just in the nick of time, I hope.)

And that's just the first bit of trouble that Spud has caused me.

Summary time!

John Milton is a very bright thirteen-year-old prepubescent boy heading off to a very prestigious all-boys boarding school in South Africa in 1990. While he is there for his first year, Nelson Mandela will be released, apartheid will start to unravel, he will fall in love with two different girls (not counting Julia Roberts), and encounter sex, great literature, death, cricket, theatre, vicious enemies, and good friends. And we have access to it all, because John "Spud" Milton is a crack diarist.

And when I say all, I mean all. Spud lets us in to his very deepest thoughts and desires, as well as chronicling everything he sees around him, leaving nothing out. It's crass, tender, brilliant, occasionally sad, often completely horrifying, and wickedly, wickedly funny. It's easy to read, even when Spud is going places I fear to tread, and he makes such an engaging, sympathetic narrator that right from the first entries the reader is rooting for him.

It's an interesting book to read right now with the bullying issue so prevalent in the media. As with Spud's friend Gecko, I cannot imagine a worse Hell than an all-boys boarding school; Spud is far more resilient than I could imagine being, far more brave (despite seeing himself a coward), and far more humane than I could imagine being under the conditions he describes. This isn't the happy boarding school world of Hogwarts. This is a viciously mean-minded place, where your friends are just as likely to turn on you as your enemies and going for help is considered a punishable betrayal. There's chronic physical and sexual assault, verbal taunts, daily humiliations... it's foul. And reading about it leaves one vaguely horrified because one knows that it's not really made up. This stuff happened. Happens. What is amazing is that anyone can come out of a situation like that and not end up a sociopath. It does become abundantly clear why kids in bad situations like this don't stand up for the bullied, though, or go to adults for help. They simply can't.

It's not all terror and misery, and Spud manages to walk just this side of the line of being the smallest and most pathetic, easiest to pick on. He's got characteristics that give him some street cred, despite his size and beautiful soprano voice. He's likable, he's clever, he's brave enough. He's a good cricketer and he's got some sort of attraction for the female sex, which while being more trouble than it's worth is also his ticket to being accepted by his peers. And it's refreshing to read a book directed at kids between 12-18 that deals so frankly and honestly with the physical as well as the mental aspects of budding sexuality. Spud doesn't think about sex all the time, but it's not that far from his thoughts ever, which feels about right for both males and females of his age.

Happily for the reader, Spud is really, really funny. Not always on purpose, but he's generally pretty good at seeing the amusing side of things, too, so the reader is laughing with him rather than at him, as he incredulously reports the madness of events around him. His family is utterly dysfunctional; his father is a drunken, paranoid wannabe who is somehow fairly harmless in spite of himself. (Talking point for book club discussion: his father is pretty racist, and I use the word "harmless" -- but even if his father is totally ineffectual and a laughing-stock, is he truly "harmless" in his bigotry?) His grandmother, "affectionately" called Wombat, is convinced everyone is stealing from her -- things like her yoghurt. As Spud says, he's pretty capable of taking what school throws at him because he's used to the complete insanity of the world. And Spud is also compassionate and considerate, trying to do the right thing while maintaining his own grip on sanity, which he (not unreasonably) tends to think he's losing at various points.

John van de Ruit, as one might guess, has inhabited Spud so thoroughly that he disappears into the text. There doesn't seem to be an author, just a kid writing in his diary. Which is mostly good, but can also be a bit difficult in that Spud sometimes can't or won't go places an author could; the depth and seriousness sometimes gets undercut or ignored. Sometimes it feels like it gets undercut for laughs, but one could read that as Spud trying to use humour to cope.

The ending, which I absolutely will not spoil for you, felt very sour compared to the rest of the story because the crisis event happens so close to the end of term that Spud doesn't really get a chance to work through it to this reader's satisfaction. Sitting back a bit, I realize that it would be unfair to ask Spud to be more thorough in his analysis and recovery, because he's a 14-year-old kid writing in a dairy. So it's authentic, perhaps, but it's abrupt. I felt like I was left hanging. And not in a way that leaves me clamouring for a sequel; it's not that kind of hanging. I'd say more but I'll start to give things away. However, I'm writing this review at midnight even though smallfry is asleep and I should be too, because I needed some time to deal with what happened.

Do I think you should read this book? Yes. Read this book and then come back here and talk to me about it. This is a great, refreshing, darkly funny, extremely-well-written book. As you can probably tell from the length of this entry, I want to talk about this book. I think there's incredible amounts of fodder for discussion here, and perhaps someday I will take a crack at it with a book club, when the time is right.

UPDATE: Since writing this, I've had my book club meeting, and explained my discomfort to the kids; they promptly asked why, so I explained that too. Then instead of telling them we weren't doing the book, I said I wasn't going to tell them they had to read it, but they could choose to read it or Schooled. Of the seven at the meeting, two took Spud home, and five took Schooled. Kids are the best judges of their own comfort levels. I'm looking forward to our discussion!

perhaps an annotated list will do?

I have come to the reluctant conclusion that I am never going to catch up on my book reviews. So let's at least have a list, and maybe a few words, about the books I've read since... gulp... July? Really? Sigh. I have been reading, at least, sometimes re-reading, sometimes picking up things and dropping them, sometimes skimming through something so fast I'm not even going to bother putting it down here.

(On a personal note: since I've been away, smallfry has hit one year old and is now over six times her birth weight and everything is great. She loves reading, particularly anything with a rhythm. She also ate her first library book this week, full on chewing and swallowing the spine of a not-that-good counting book. I was so proud and also dismayed. At any rate, I'm also back to work, which I'd blame for the lack of blogging, except I've only been back a month. If anything, being back at work is getting me back to wanting to blog again.)

So, starting with the books I read shortly after Lakeland and moving forward to the one I've most recently finished:

Silver Phoenix and Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon
Fun, Asian-inspired YA fantasy that I've been meaning to read for ages. Lightly romantic, very creative in most ways, and pulling on traditions I'm not as familiar with. Enjoyed, though they weren't as memorable as I might have hoped; good for a light, entertaining read but probably not a re-read.

The Story of Saiunkoku by Sai Yukino
Okay, this is not one book, but seven volumes of manga. And if you are a manga fan and haven't read this series, what on earth are you waiting for? Really, really wonderful, smart, funny, sweetly romantic, and beautifully well-drawn. Sometimes a bit predictable, but in a really good way, and sometimes unpredictable in a really good way too. Volume eight is out this month. I am purchasing it. I am actually purchasing the whole series, and I don't buy a lot of manga because it's so damn expensive to buy whole long-running series. It's that good. Have already re-read a couple of times and it hasn't lost its luster yet.

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle by CLAMP
Unfortunately for this series it came after The Story of Saiunkoku. Still really enjoyable, but I haven't even finished it (I read from the beginning to volume 18) and I'm not in a big rush to get there. It's very involved, the art is great if occasionally a bit frenetic and stylized as to be expected from this group, the dynamics between the mains fantastic. I am a big Fai D. Flowright fangirl and would read several volumes of just him.

Sorcery and Cecelia and The Grand Tour by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
Yes yes, I read Sorcery and Cecelia yet again. Still very fond. Finally made it through The Grand Tour and enjoyed that too, though it's really not anywhere near as good as the first one; I don't quite know why, because I can't pull out any major deficiencies. Will eventually make it to The Mislaid Magician and am hoping that it lands somewhere between the two as far as enjoyment.

Bird by Rita Murphy
I am really sorry I'm not going to write a full review of this, but I've got to get the slate cleaned. Really understated, a little deliciously creepy (but not too creepy for my faint heart) and just a fantastic all around read. Highly recommended for those looking for something short but well-written, should appeal to anyone from about grade three or four up. Consider it for a Hallowe'en read, even. It won't take you long.

Reaper Man by Sir Terry Pratchett
Okay, I am even more sad that I'm not going to write a full review of this, and so maybe that one I will get to, because it will be the first in my quest to read all the Discworld books that doesn't get the full review treatment. A surprisingly sweet, heartwarming story about everyone's favourite skeleton in a black robe. Also very funny. Also, Death of Rats. Enough said. For now.

Ill Wind by Rachel Caine (Book 1 of the Weather Wardens series)
Fast, highly entertaining and sexy read. I like Caine's world here, I like the comfortable paranormal plot, I love Joanne as the main character, and I liked the break-neck pace. I could see picking up the next book in the series, though I've got to be careful as this one kept me up well past my bedtime, when sleep is a very precious commodity around here. Felt a bit like eating a fast-food hamburger: not terribly good for you, but I couldn't regret it all the same.

Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn
Reminded me why I like Sharon Shinn so much. Smart female protagonist who feels real, and makes stupid choices that make the adult me wince but would have made a lot of sense to the pre-teen me. Extremely realistic relationships and choices, and a plot that feels sensible while still being pure fantasy and has a lot to say about the way our world is. Writing very serviceable. Had a scene that was deliberately really troubling and it upset me a lot, but it was supposed to. May not be able to re-read because of that though.

Mystic and Rider by Sharon Shinn
After the above book, had to have more Shinn. This is also excellent: a very solid high adventure fantasy set in a very solid world. Again, characters feel really real, relationships make total sense, choices are not always correct but come from a reasonable place. This is the first in a series and I could totally see reading the rest of it, though I spoiled a bunch of it for myself by accident so that kind of sucks. Might try reading her newest book instead.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
It troubles me that I've never reviewed this here either, but I love this book. Have for a long time. Gets better on each re-read and I have finally buckled and bought myself a copy out of fear because the two library systems I have access to have one really crappy old copy between them. Also find that the Studio Ghibli movie, which is only vaguely related to the book, actually makes me enjoy the book more (I love the movie too, but for very different reasons.) This is a smart, funny, clever fantasy that I have read since my middle school days and will happily read again and again as a comfort book.

***

And there! Maybe this will allow me to start up again in a rather more regular fashion? I have started reading for my book clubs again (though for the adult club this month we're reading Stephen King, and I have already chickened out) and I'm also reading for myself somewhat more. It goes up and down, and I have to keep it light and I have to keep the pressure off myself, but I'd like to start blogging more regularly again.

Next step: take a look at my Google Reader. For the first time in months. Consider it marked as read...

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson

The Name of the Star
by Maureen Johnson
G.P. Putnam, 2011 
270 pages

Oh my lord, I thought I was never going to read anything again. It has been exactly two months since I finished a book. I've started a few, but can't seem to keep the focus or the interest up long enough to finish anything. The idea of writing a review right now is daunting, I won't lie. (Full disclosure: I am not getting much more than than three hours sleep in a row at night -- three hours if we're lucky.)

And now we come to The Name of the Star, which is an interesting case. I had started this before, quite some time ago. It didn't grab me then, for reasons I can't quite figure out. Because this time around it grabbed me good, and I finished it in two days.

I am a Maureen Johnson fan. I follow her on Twitter, which has been one of my better social media moves ever; she's informative, and endlessly entertaining. I believe I reported that I even purchased Suite Scarlett stone-cold solely based on her social media presence, completely on impulse, and did not regret it one bit. I've been eager for The Name of the Star since she announced it was coming; I wanted to see her take on the supernatural. And who is not a little intruiged by Jack the Ripper?

In brief summary: Rory is from very small-town Louisiana, travelling with her lawyer-professor parents for a year's sabbatical in England. While her parents are off to Bristol, she has been accepted to Wrexford, a residential school in the heart of London. In the heart of Jack the Ripper's territory, to be precise, which turns out to be a bit of a problem when a copycat killer appears the day before Rory arrives. What's worse is that Rory sees the killer -- and discovers that no one else can. 

And I like it. That maybe goes without saying. The thing is, if you like Maureen Johnson's other stuff, you will like this, even if you're not a fantasy fan. Because what makes this book great is not the interesting world-building things she's done (which is all seamlessly integrated, and works quite well) but the things that she does best: characterization and just damn fine writing.

Maureen Johnson makes writing look easy. (It's not, I know -- this Nanowrimo pep talk being one of my favourite bits of writing about writing). The story, from plot to characters to incidental detail, appears effortless, making for an easy read without being a brain-dead one. I don't think I picked out a clumsy exposition or clunky sentence in the lot. I like her style, too; I'm not sure I can point out why, exactly, because that would require more brain power than I have currently. Suffice to say that her turn of phrase is concise and clear, often funny, perfectly descriptive without being purple, and never cliched.

And her characters. In Rory, our main character, we have a sympathetic protagonist, an outsider who is friendly with most but not popular, who is smart but not a genius, who is not preternaturally brave or capable. In other words, she's very ordinary, but with enough flavour that she's not a blank slate. I like her development and her responses to the things -- sometimes very strange, frightening things -- that happen to her; it feels organic and realistic. She doesn't roll with the punches, because that would be unfaithful to the character even if it might have furthered the plot; she is traumatized and Johnson handles that beautifully. I also love Rory's wry, observant inner monologue. The other characters that crop up are necessarily not as well-developed as Rory, since [the lion's share of] the book is from her limited perspective, but they're distinct and interesting and feel like real people.

As I noted for Suite Scarlett, too, Johnson manages to comment quietly on some social and cultural things without being preachy -- here, her target being both the CCTV surveillance culture in London and 24-hour sensational mass media. She never investigates either thing explicitly or deeply, but it's an integrated part of the story, leaving the reader to ponder these things without feeling like she's been delivered a blatant public service message.

The start is slow; we spend a lot of time getting to know Rory and her friends, which works really well -- it makes the increasing threats to Rory and her world that much more alarming. It allows us to get settled into place, with just hints of the tension that absolutely explodes somewhere around the last third of the book. While the trademark MJ humour is still present, it takes a back seat to the suspense as the tension ramps up, never entirely disappearing but the seriousness of the situation is never undercut. I won't lie: this book kept me, a sleep deprived human being, up past my (admittedly fluid) bedtime even after I'd stopped reading for the night, worrying about what was coming next. Perhaps not the smartest choice of reading material for me to make. No regrets, though -- this book was definitely a good ride and a great read.

... Aaand, now to bed, I think, since apparently writing about the book is going to keep me up too. No promises as to when the next review will come up, and I'm really barely online these days to even comment on other blogs. I miss you all, and plan to be back when I can.

Across the Great Barrier by Patricia C. Wrede

Across the Great Barrier

by Patricia C. Wrede

Scholastic, 2011

352 pages

I have to report that I did re-read Thirteenth Child in preparation for this one. I don't think I would have had to; there was recap enough to make it fine to read Across the Great Barrier without reading Thirteenth Child first, but it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of days. And I think Across the Great Barrier is a much better book for having known Eff, Lan, Wash, and some of the other characters ahead of time. I'm not sure that Across the Great Barrier is as good as Thirteenth Child, either, although I am wondering why I think that. I think it does feel slightly less focused in its plot, though that's not necessarily a terrible thing, just different. It may also be that Thirteenth introduces such a novel new world, a world I was so enchanted with and excited to discover, that it has a slight shine over its sequel. The absolute strength of these two books is the world, particularly both the systems of magic and the natural history.

In this installment of Eff's story, she is trying very hard to find her place in the world. She knows what she doesn't want to do: go out East for more schooling, like her brother Lan. But she doesn't quite know what to do with herself beyond that. Frankly, I think most people who have been 18 and faced with Big Life Choices (that one feels, at the time, are going to either make or break the rest of one's life) can understand Eff's frustration and discontent -- there are options, she just doesn't want any of them, but she recognizes she has to make a choice at some point and soon. However -- an option does present itself that gets her excited, and that is to assist the new natural sciences professor at the college with a survey of the plants and animals in the dangerous lands west of the Great Barrier. While on the survey, Eff, Wash and Professor Torgeson (another excellent, strong, interesting female character from Wrede) discover many things, some unique, some tied in to the grubs that created the crisis in Thirteenth Child, and some more sinister that point to trouble ahead in what I hope will be a third book in this series.

Eff remains an excellent character, an honest mix of competence and anxiety, still working through some of the pain and nervousness associated with being a thirteenth child while recognizing logically that it doesn't matter. She still has a deep and important relationship with her twin Lan, and a warm and loving relationship, though complex, with the rest of her family too. We see much less of their friend William in this book, which I understand but feel is a lack -- he was one of my favourite characters from the last book, and I think there are some avenues to be investigated there, including his very rocky relationship with his father.

That said, I've never expected deep, serious, cathartic investigation of Emotional Issues from Wrede; not that she glosses over things, but they're not the focus of her tales, so much as the world and the plot. She writes a good character, but they're not terribly introspective. I think Eff might actually be the most introspective Wrede character I've ever encountered.

A worthy followup to Thirteenth Child, with more fantastic world-building and characters I enjoy spending time with. I would recommend reading the other first, as I think this book builds on that one. This series is fun and interesting, and though I did buy an electronic copy I'll be buying the paperback when it comes out -- just for a little more permanence.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

The Thief

by Megan Whalen Turner

Puffin Books, 1996

219 pages

I have been hearing about this book, and this series, for years. As long as I've been reading book blogs. It crops up throughout the blogosphere every once in a while, which is a fair bit of staying power for a YA book; when I first heard about it, I expected it to be a recent publication. Turns out it was a Newbery Honour book in 1997, which is about the time I would have read it happily as a teen if I had known it existed.

I think, unfortunately, there were a few expectations in play here. I have not heard anything from anyone who dislikes this book, and plenty from people who adore it and Gen, the main character, unreservedly. The praise is well deserved, as the book is excellent. It's not that there was anything wrong, or bad. I just didn't fall in love with it the way I had hoped to, which is always a bit of a disappointment.

So. We meet Gen as he is called out of prison into the magus' office, where he is recruited for a secret mission to steal a jewel so old as to be mythical. He has made a boast to the wrong people: "I can steal anything." And he backed that up with stealing something he shouldn't have on a dare, and then bragging about it publicly. After a too-long stint in the king's prison, he and the magus, the magus' two apprentices, and a soldier head off into the mountains, into the wilds of the enemy country of Attolia, to find and steal the jewel.

It's a simple adventure/quest storyline, and its success is in the telling and the world-building. The world is based, we are told in the author's note (which happily appears after the story, as is always preferrable), on ancient Greece. Reading this so shortly after reading Libraries in the Ancient World made the world seem almost sharper and more real to me; the smells, the sights, the baking heat, all of which I already had on the brain. I suspect that the world is strong enough to stand on its own without help, though, strengthened by the myths sprinkled liberally throughout the text. These are given to us as stories told to the characters by each other, and it worked really well.

It's hard for me to write a lot more about this book without spoilers, and believe me, you do not want spoilers. I had carefully avoided reading any myself, and I'm not about to ruin anything for anyone reading this. Suffice to say that what Turner set out to do, she accomplished magnificently with me, leaving me at the end of the book to admire her skill and forethought with what I can only describe as awe.

Despite the fact that I didn't love it the way I wanted to, I do recommend this book to anyone, really. It will be enjoyed by teens through adults, particularly those who like either history or fantasy, but I don't think either are a requirement. Gen is a bit of a prickly, slippery character, but a fascinating one without good analogues in other fantasy I've read lately. It's always good to discover something new, and I'm glad I did. This book deserves the accolades it gets, and I am not surprised at all at its staying power.

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour
by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Oni Press, 2010
245 pages

I made the mistake of starting to read this one in bed before work one morning. Forty-five minutes later, I had a grand total of ten minutes to get up, eat breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed, and get out the door in order to be at work on time. And I still hadn't finished the book.

I find it hard to know what to say about this last book of the Scott Pilgrim series. I don't want to spoil anyone, of course, and further, it's hard to wrap up a series I've enjoyed so much. So, before I get into a slightly deeper discussion, let me just say I think this book was a good end to the series. It wasn't a horrid disappointment, nor did it blow me away; it just fit. I don't think it had the shiny-new, silly and charming wit of the first two books; I didn't think it was as clever. But it went in the direction it had been set up to go for the past three books, fully committed and very entertaining.

fishy summed up this volume as "everyone realizing they're dicks." Which... um, yep, that does it. One of the reviews I've seen put it this way: "Scott realizes he's not as harmless as he thinks he is." I like that a lot, because I think that comment gets at the heart of Scott Pilgrim's character. He doesn't have a very high opinion of himself and therefore can't conceive that he might matter enough to hurt someone else. Scott is often very immature, to the point where sometimes, despite his charm, he is unlikeable. But by the end of Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour he starts to realize that, and one actually has some hope for him. Part of what I love about this series is the fallibility of all of the characters. None of them are perfect and most of them have both good and bad characteristics. Except maybe Gideon and most of the evil exes.

There were parts of this volume that were confusing, never fully explained, and not in a good way. I think I figured most of it out, but some stuff was left unsaid that confused me, as opposed to entertained me. And in some cases, the explanations I came up with from the text were pretty lame, as opposed to what I was hoping for -- so it's possible that I just decided that those parts were more mysterious than they actually were, if that makes sense. I did like that the ending gave us closure on a couple of stories that O'Malley had started for other characters. I liked that things were still somewhat ambiguous for everyone else.

I probably can't talk too much more without getting into spoilers. I enjoyed this book; it wasn't everything I'd hoped it would be, but it was good and I'm satisfied with it as an ending. I'm looking forward to the movie, actually -- which is a rare thing for me. I don't look forward to movies as a rule and I really don't look forward to movies based off of books. I'm still very skeptical about Michael Cera being Scott, but I think I can get over that.

Is it indeed Scott Pilgrim's finest hour? I'm not sure about that, but it's a good end to a great series.

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

I love these days off I have. I can finish a book in a day, when I get going. Nothing much else gets done, mind you, but I always feel quite satisfied to have finished a book, and a little lost once it is done. Today, in addition to getting the most fantastic haircut ever, I have finished my first book by Shannon Hale. It has been a good day. I could maybe deal with a thousand days like this one, but I might get bored. I would be decidedly less happy with a thousand days locked up in a dark tower with only one other person I don't really know and nothing but my own writing to read.

Hale is one of those authors I keep hearing about and wondering why I've never read; she seems to be right up my alley. So I grabbed this off the shelf. It seemed like the right time. I'm trying to do less "I should read this" and more "I feel like reading this today" and that seems to be working very well for me. As did Book of a Thousand Days.

Inspired by the Grimm fairytale "Maid Maleen," this story is told in the form of a journal. Dashti is a lady's maid, and her lady is Saren, a slip of a sixteen-year-old girl who is being bricked up into a tower for defying her father's order to marry Lord Khasar, a man she desperately fears. They are to stay in the tower for seven years, a thousand days, or until Saren repents and agrees to be married. Dashti agrees to be bricked up with Saren, having sworn an oath to stay with her; and Dashti, being able to read and write, keeps a record -- a book of a thousand days.

That summary is just the starting point, and does not encompass the incredible detail of the backstory and world that Hale has provided Dashti with. What's even better is the way this backstory and world and the current plot is revealed to us: the journal format is used perfectly. Sometimes we see events, sometimes we see Dashti's innermost thoughts and feelings, sometimes we get Dashti's history, sometimes we get conversations reported faithfully. Dashti even sketches, and her art is very simple but exactly the sort of thing one might find in a young woman's journal, and I think it really adds to the story.

Something else the summary doesn't get across, and something I wasn't prepared for, was Lady Saren. Who was not what I expected at all. What's interesting, though, is that she rang true, if slightly melodramatic, and after adjusting my expectations I thought the dynamic between Dashti and Saren was very well done. Dashti's optimism and fearlessness were refreshing, particularly in the face of the obstacles; her faithfulness and kindness were also lovely. Dashti bends, but she doesn't break. Additionally, the contrast between Dashti and Saren makes for very interesting characterization for the two of them.

The magic and the religious aspects were also really interesting. There was a kind of magic, but it wasn't flashy or overstated, and in fact seemed quite organic. Dashti swears by her gods, and she doesn't waver from that, either. But whether or not they hear her is something for the reader to interpret. There are never overt signs, which I think is a nice touch. Another nice touch: the culture and society of Book of a Thousand Days is based on an Eastern model, rather than a Western one. Hale lists ancient Mongolia as her big influence here, and I like that a lot. I like that she's willing to take us fantasy readers outside of our regular comfort zone and stretch a little. I like that she's willing to step out of the pack of fantasy writers to try something different, and I hope that soon becomes enough of the norm that I don't feel I have to comment on it. Until then, this book stands out as a great example.

Something else that I think is interesting is that there are a lot of wince-worthy moments; this book is occasionally like watching a train wreck, in that one can see the bad things coming, but one can't help but watch. The romantic portion of this story is a bit like that. I don't usually enjoy that sort of thing. It stresses me out. But Dashti was such an engaging narrator that I couldn't help but like this tale.

I'll be recommending this one. Oddly enough, I don't see myself immediately rushing out to buy everything Hale has written. I liked this book, but I wouldn't say I loved it. It was readable, intelligent, an interesting fantasy and a good tale with engaging characters. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more Hale, but I've got a little ways to go before I'm convinced that Hale is an author I absolutely must read. That said, I'm keen to try out Princess Academy and/or the Books of Bayern at some point sooner rather than later.

I have one of my co-workers, largely, to thank for bringing this book to my attention. The co-worker in question is rapidly becoming as bad for my TBR as the entire blogosphere combined. She talked Book of a Thousand Days up to all of us children's programmers at one of our sharing meetings. Since then, we've been taking turns with the "Hey! Have you read this yet?! Ooooh, or what about this?" It's getting rather drastic.