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...I talk about Kathryn Lasky's The Extra, which has a cool premise, but didn't do a lot for me beyond that:

Kathryn Lasky’s The Extra has a fascinating—if depressing and revolting—premise, which is made only more so by the fact that it’s based on a true story. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that the rest of the book is only semi-successful. For the first 50 pages—the pre-film segment—much of the dialogue and narration is stiff; the prose flip flops between a historical feel and a modern feel; and the historical facts and details are just plopped in, rather than worked in naturally. The last third of the book—after the film—feels rushed and uneven, just a way to wind out the war and finish Lilo’s story. That, compounded with Lilo’s Everygirl persona and other characterizations that were more tell than show, led me to wonder if Lasky was less invested in her fictional characters than in her portrayal of the very-real Leni Riefenstahl and the story of the making of Tiefland.

Portland, Maine, 1892.

When a young woman is found—half-naked, run through with a pitchfork, missing her right hand, and extremely dead—surrounded by ritualistic implements and a line of seemingly incomprehensible chalk letters on the wall, Deputy Marshal Archie Lean, poetry aficionado, family man, and reluctant nicotine addict, gets stuck with the case.

Other than being 100% certain that this is not a case of Prostitute Gets Accidentally Killed By An Overenthusiastic John—an explanation the Mayor would be only too happy to accept—he's kind of at a loss.

Enter Perceval Grey. He's dapper and cultured, highly educated, a former Pinkerton, and known for being an extremely "modern, scientific" detective... all of which some people find difficult to reconcile with his Abenaki ancestry. (Because, you know: some people are racist jackasses.)

After a bit of awkwardness, the two men join forces—rounding out their team with an older doctor and his historian niece—and hit the murderer's trail together. The Temperance Union, the Church, and a long-lost book... all of these things factor in, but again and again, everything points back to one thing: witchcraft.

As I've been trying to re-familiarize myself with Adult Land, this was an easy pick: with a premise like that, how could I not, right?

Here's what worked for me:

The setting: Great atmosphere, lots of visual detail about the places and even about traveling between the places. I'll look at Portland differently after reading this, for sure. 

The historical tidbits: Lots and lots of anecdotes about the Salem Witch Trials, about Maine history, and the politics of the day. They are often relayed in a way that is More Infodump than Deftly Woven In, but at the very least, they're always interesting. I did wish that the Acknowledgements—which did include a list of sources the author referenced—had been more specific about what he pulled from history and what was fictionalized, but I almost always want more of that.

The humor: Pretty early on—after the headbutting—Archie and Grey slide into the sort of relationship where each mocks the other pretty regularly, and they're both comfortable with it. 

Here's what didn't:

Perceval Grey: He's basically Sherlock Holmes, in terms of psychology—he's more focused on logic and fact than on personal relationships or emotion—and deductive techniques, even down to his knowledge of different mixes of tobacco. Yes, OF COURSE there are lots of characters who are basically Sherlock Holmes (House, Monk, Shawn Spencer, Oscar Wilde in those Gyles Brandreth books, Artemis Fowl (to a degree...)), but this was SO OVERT that it made me crabby that there was no nod to Doyle anywhere—I mean, unless I missed one.

The Girl Historian: At first, I loved her. I loved that she was a single mother, that she had good instincts and that she was fully capable of going off on solo investigatory missions. I loved that, in time, she was regarded as a full member of the team, rather than as someone to be coddled.

HERE'S WHERE SHE/THEY/IT LOST ME: [SPOILER] SHE GETS KIDNAPPED BY THE VILLAIN, RESCUED BY GREY, AND THEN, EVEN THOUGH HE COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO, LIKE, TELL HER THAT HER DAUGHTER (WHO WAS ALSO KIDNAPPED) WAS ALIVE AND WELL, ONCE SHE IS FREED FROM HER BONDS, SHE IS OVERCOME AND PLANTS A BIG SMOOCH ON HIM. [END SPOILER]

Basically, she morphed from Independent Woman into Classic Damsel in Distress, and it really cheesed me off. Was it as offensive as Gwyneth Paltrow's role in Se7en*? No. But it was still annoying.

THE EYEBROWS, OH GOD, THE EYEBROWS. Even when I turn to adult fiction, I can't escape them. "Grey cocked an eyebrow." "Lean cocked an eyebrow." "...his right eyebrow arched upward, like the hammer of a rifle being drawn back..." "Grey looked at him with one eyebrow pointing up to heaven." "...Grey standing nearby, peering at him with an arched eyebrow." "Lean raised an eyebrow." "Grey arched an eyebrow." "Grey raised a sharp eyebrow." "Lean arched an eyebrow in puzzlement..." "...a thin smile and a slight arch of one eyebrow."

Overall?

Meh. I might still give the second one a try, though.

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*In which her character was LITERALLY only there to get killed off and provide a reason for Brad Pitt to embody Wrath?

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Author page.

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Amazon.

Publisher.

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Book source: Borrowed from my library.

...I talk about Eric Gansworth's If I Ever Get Out of Here:

If I Ever Get Out of Here’s Lewis isn’t the only kid from the reservation at his school. He is the only kid from the rez in the advanced-track classes, though, so he’s still the odd man out. He doesn’t have anyone to commiserate with in the moment, to compare notes with, to collaborate on decoding white culture. At the same time, he can see how his peers are faring on a daily basis: most notably, his sort-of friend Carson, who deals with the situation by passing as white AND becoming friends with the biggest bully—who is also a huge racist—at school.

Lots of good stuff, but this bit about Bliss really jumped out at me:

Oh, you have made my heart squishy. Those are two of my fave novels (that I wrote), too. And they were HARD to write!!! But right now--as much as I'd love to write another (and I have a third planned to wrap things up)--I doubt it'll happen. Why? Because Bliss and RWW didn't sell so well. My guess is that the girls who like the "sweeter" books, like the Winnie books and the ttyl books, saw Bliss and RWW and read the jacket flaps and were like, "Nnnnoooooo thanks," and so...yeah. That is a potential peril of writing whatever the heck you want to write instead of "branding" yourself by always writing the same sort of thing. Not that branding yourself is necessarily a bad idea. Just not for me.

I FIND THAT SO DEPRESSING BECAUSE OH MY GOD I LOVED BLISS SO HARD.

From Comic Book Resources:

The school board in the Japanese city of Matsue has restricted student access to Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, the autobiographical story of a six-year-old boy who survived the Hiroshima bombing.

The board ruled that the book will remain in elementary and junior high school libraries but only teachers will have access to it; students will not be allowed to check it out.

Crocodile on the Sandbank—yes, THAT'S RIGHT—CROCODILE ON THE FREAKING SANDBANK, the first in Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series, is currently $2.99 at Amazon.

I mean, if you're anything like me, you probably already own 47 copies. 

But I figured I'd mention it, JUST IN CASE.

Josh: Oh, you like that author, don't you?
Me: Jacqueline Wilson? YES. So much. I'm surprised that you recognized her name, I haven't read her in ages.
Josh: Well, her books all kind of look the same.
Me: Fair. They are pretty wonderfully branded.
Josh: How is it so far?
Me: Well, this is going to sound awful, but it's about this orphan, but so far she's too young to live in the orphanage, so she's living this kind of idyllic existence in a small village with a loving family, and...
Josh: ...you're totally just waiting for her to go to the orphanage and for her life to GO ALL TO HELL, aren't you?
Me: Yep.
Josh: You are a terrible person.
Me: RIGHT??

I am SO behind in my Jacqueline Wilson reading. I think the last time I wrote about one of her books was in, what, 2010? Yikes.

Anyway, Hetty Feather is the first in—judging by the full-color reproductions of two other book covers printed on the inside of the front and back of this one—a series about the trials and tribulations of the titular character. As it was inspired by Jacqueline Wilson's tenure as the Foundling Museum's Coram Foundling Fellow, Wilson obviously did loads of research into what life was like for the children who grew up there, and it's very clear that she made a very concerted effort to be fair: most of the adults who worked there aren't portrayed as particularly warm and fuzzy, and some of them definitely use behavior modification techniques that wouldn't fly nowadays, but they certainly don't come off as one-dimensional sadists, which, in my experience, is way more common in books set in orphanages. They read more like harried and overworked women who see their job as a job, rather than as a calling—the foundlings are their charges, not their foster children.

Beyond that, how is it? On one hand, sometimes the descriptions of and facts about life at the Foundling Hospital overshadow Hetty's personal story—it occasionally veers into Shoehorning ALLLLLL Of The Research Into The Story territory—but on the other, one of the things I love most about Jacqueline Wilson is her ability to create believable, original voices, over and over and over again. So despite some moments of Too Much Information, despite feeling a bit bloated, Hetty's totally voice saves the day:

I do so hope that I was bald when I was newly born in 1876. Suppose I came into the world with little red tufts. Oh, dearie, what a shock for my poor mother. Maybe she was tempted to call me Carrot or Goldfish or Marmalade.

She's plucky and bright and funny and loving and yes, fiery, and her yearning to be loved and to belong to a family is both heartbreaking and heartwarming.

It's very definitely worth considering that some of the issues that bothered me are likely to sail right over the heads of the intended audience—while I found the historical information a bit overbearing, much of it is EXACTLY the sort of thing that would have mesmerized me as a tween.

Oh! And! It would make a great readaloud, as the chapters are quite episodic in nature.

NUTSHELL: Minor issues, but I'll definitely be reading the sequels.

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Author page.

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Amazon.

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Book source: Finished copy from the publisher.

How much do I love this book cover? So much.

I love the color scheme—and I especially love that the color scheme isn't confined to the dust jacket: take it off, and the boards and endpapers are that same hot pink, and the title on the spine is that same bright yellow. Awesome.

And the actual photo is super: it screams '80s to me (which is when the book is set); it incorporates music and dance, which are both hugely important to our heroine; and it looks suitably New York-y. (At least to my untrained, rural Mainer eye. And, yes, I doubt that she would REALLY be wearing a tutu while waiting for the train, but it makes for a striking image.)

ALSO I LOVE THE TITLE BECAUSE I AM A DORK.

Anyway, ON TO THE ACTUAL BOOK.

Dancer Daughter Traitor Spy begins in Moscow, in November of 1982. Seventeen-year-old Marina is a student at the Bolshoi Ballet's advanced repertory academy, and she's a gifted dancer, but to a degree, she'll always live in her mother's shadow. And really, that isn't an issue. Svetlana Dukovskaya is a world-renowned ballerina, a treasure of the state. Her status, her fame, is the reason that Marina has grown up a child of privilege in a country where people are all supposedly equal but everyone knows that that's a lie.

Then, one day, Sveta disappears.

Marina and her father are informed that she's had a nervous breakdown, and that she's been institutionalized. But that isn't the truth, and they both know that it won't be long before the government comes for them, too.

So they escape to America, leaving Sveta behind. Once there, they begin to rebuild their lives: learn a new language, navigate a new culture, find new friends and new vocations. But they don't—they can't—give up hope of saving Sveta, and their past can't stay hidden for long...

What works:

• Marina's voice, which is just plain wonderful. Her first language is Russian, and her voice reflects that in the rhythm of her narration, her vocabulary and word placement:

Then she tosses a hat at me. It's one of those movie hats. Like the men wear in black-and-white, when they spend the whole film putting out cigarettes without smoking them and running up and down the hills of San Francisco with pistols in their hands.

Cultural references are appropriately unexplained: "He's as relaxed as the rabbit in the folktales."

The occasional profanity is fabulous and adds to the flavor: "Shut your mouth, you fucking goat, I think."

And, to top it all off, she's funny: "There is no creature as narcissistic as a teenage ballerina."

• The details about life in the Soviet Union's twilight years. Example: when Big Events Go Down, the news is pre-empted by recording of old ballet performances... and the government just keeps playing them until they've decided on what to say to the people. The language of the official State communications is so hideously over-the-top bureaucratic that it almost reads like Douglas Adams-style satire, but as the author has a background in Russian Studies and spent years there shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, I suspect that it's depressingly accurate. And then, later, the comparisons between Moscow and New York City are also super, as are the descriptions of 1980's era NYC.

• The descriptions of the grotesque side of ballet, the blood and pain behind the artistry and beauty: Anya is sitting in the corner unwinding tape from her toes, gingerly peeling each bloody digit from its neighbor. Her shoes are new and not broken in. There are only actually a few ballet scenes—although ballet is a necessity, not just a want, in Marina's life, it isn't the true focus of the book—but even with the blood, they're gorgeous.

• The romance. It's so nicely understated and subtle. The emotions are palpable—you can feel the attraction between Marina and Ben—but there is no angsting or moaning or does-he-like-me-ing. Neither of them says a word about it until close to the end of the book, and that was a hugely refreshing arc.

What doesn't:

• Marina's precognitive visions. They feel more like a plot device than a Real Thing. The visions themselves are nicely vision-y, in that they're scary and confusing and atmospheric, but... as a part of the larger whole, they didn't work.

• Considering the slow pace of the rest of the story, the end felt rushed and unsatisfying.

Overall:

Is it realistic? Who knows? It certainly strikes me as more realistic than, you know, Alias, but what I know about actual spy stuff would fit into a waaaaaay shorter post than this is turning out to be.

It's a book that has more in common with Le Carre than the Gallagher Girls: the spy stuff is mostly quiet, there aren't car chases and explosions and gadgets and no one gets yanked into a black van, blindfolded, and then interrogated in a scary, leaky pipe-filled warehouse. It's more fish-out-of-water story than action thriller, more family drama than romance, more historical fiction than paranormal adventure. I really, really liked it, but I have no doubt that some readers will slap the dreaded "BOOOOORING" label on it.

Anyway, long, long, looooong story short, the strengths WAAAAAAY outweigh the weaknesses. Looking forward to whatever Kiem writes next.

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Author page.

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Amazon.

Publisher.

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Book source: Finished copy from the publisher.

According to Twitter, one of my all-time very favorite authors has died:

Sad to hear Barbara Mertz (Elizabeth Peters) has died (85). I had the pleasure of attending her last birthday party: http://t.co/pofEFDJ7Dq

— Ron Charles (@RonCharles) August 8, 2013

I haven't seen the news pop up anywhere else yet, but I trust the source.

Rather than incoherently going into all of the reasons I loved her, I'm going to point you to the Elizabeth Peters Lovefest I arranged earlier this year. I think the fact that I put that all together speaks to the level of my devotion.

So sad.

...I wrote about The Beautiful and the Cursed, which...

...marks the first time I've seen a gargoyle as a romantic lead, and the fact that the heroine is almost more drawn to Luc Rousseau’s gargoyle side than to his human side gives it a nicely gothic flavor. There are some steamy scenes that are quite effective, the sense of time is interesting—a scene that focuses on one character is often followed up with one about another character during the same period of time—and...wow. I’ve run out of nice things to say.

Sigh.

I feel like I've hit a patch of disappointing reads.

Me?

I'm Lizzie Bennett.

YESSSSSSSSS.

Let me know who you are.

...Alexander London letter, let's about-face and guffaw over the Smart Bitches' review of the Jude Deveraux, The Raider - Barbie® and Ken® Doll Giftset.

SO. MANY. PICTURES. DEPICTING. SO. MUCH. HILARIOUSNESS.

...I wrote about Dianne K. Salerni's The Caged Graves, which I LOVED.

LOOOOOOOOOVED.

Glamour in Glass: Glamourist Histories, #2, by Mary Robinette Kowal

I loved Shades of Milk and Honey, the first book in Kowal's Regency era fantasy series, and I mostly loved this one, too. Like, 95% loved it.

Pros:

I continue to adore the magic system: It's quiet and somewhat sedate, but in creative, inventive hands, allows for WICKED COOL USAGE.

I love that in addition to the fantasy, it works very much as historical fiction—Jane and Vincent are in Belgium for their honeymoon, and Napoleon figures in heavily—and as a romance.

More pluses: The language and the writing, the attention to detail and the pure, awesome geekery of the author. In the Author's Note—DO NOT MISS IT—Kowal talks about how she created a dictionary comprised of Jane Austen's books and ran her manuscript of Glamour and Glass against it. She researched the history of every single word that the dictionary didn't contain, and she lists some that surprised her (and some that she kept anyway). She also talks a bit about how her world diverges from our own, and about what anachronisms she knowingly included. (Which is so much cooler than a blanket "IT'S ALT-HISTORY, ANYTHING GOES!" attitude. Ahem. In my opinion, anyway.)

Cons:

You know that storyline where the heroine gets deliriously happily married and everything is awesome and so on BUT THEN she starts thinking OH NOES, MAYBE HE DOESN'T ACTUALLY REALLY LOVE ME? It's one of my least favorite storylines, and that's much of what goes on with the romance thread in Glamour in Glass. To be fair, Vincent is EXTREMELY withdrawn and irritable and distracted—which is especially bad considering they're on their honeymoon—so it's understandable that Jane would have those feelings, but it's not my fave. That is, of course, MY STUFF, and it totally works in terms of characterization—even drawing on the first book, because for various reasons, Jane doesn't have loads of confidence in herself as A Lovable Person—so really, unless you also dislike that storyarc, it's not much of a Con at all.

Also, while I love that the cover art incorporates bubbles (there's a whole important thread about using spheres of glamour), I can't help but feel that the model is WAAAAAY more conventionally attractive than Jane. I loved the cover art on the first book because I felt that it really captured that. Her dress, though, is BEAUTIFUL, and I have no beef whatsoever with it. Except that I don't own one.

Recommended to:

Fans of the first one, fantasy-loving fans of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, anyone who likes fantasy that really delves into the mechanics of magic systems, fans of any of the above who also have an interest in artists and their techniques.

Sapphique: Incarceron, #2, by Catherine Fisher

I finally, finally got around to the sequel to Incarceron! Finn is now outside the prison, but is not really any less of a prisoner: he's suddenly living in a world of strict social protocol and every misstep he makes acts to further convince everyone—including Claudia, who until now has been his strongest supporter—that he's an impostor, rather than a long-lost prince.

Meanwhile, Finn's allies within Incarceron are still searching for a way to escape: they're hunting for Sapphique's magic glove, which might not even exist... but the prison is working against them, and it wants to find a way to escape itself.

Pros:

Like the first book, the world-building is HUGE and RICH and DARK and COMPLEX. The cultures on the inside and the outside of Incarceron are distinctly different, but it's always clear that regardless of what side of the wall each character resides on, every single one of them is a prisoner in some way. Including Incarceron itself, which is a mindbleep and a half.

In addition to the world-building, the storyline is exciting, and the characters are worth caring about, the pacing is, like, BREAKNECK, and the whole thing is BANANAS in the best kind of way. Incarceron was super, but Sapphique was even better.

Cons:

Erm. None for me, though it's not going to be an across-the-board crowdpleaser: see above about the DARK and BANANAS.

Recommended to:

Fans of the first one. I wouldn't recommend it as a stand-alone.

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G&G: Amazon, Publisher.

S: Amazon, Publisher.

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Book source:

G&G: ILLed through my library.

S: ARC provided by the publisher a looooong time ago.

After all of the descriptions of Emily's 'red ropey hair' in the first book, the model on the cover doesn't really jive with the image of her in my mind. Ah, well. Anyway.

It could be argued that I was hard on the first two books in Kady Cross' Steampunk Chronicles. So in the interest of being all fair-minded and whatnot, I will say that they do have some attractive qualities:

• They're fast-paced and often quite exciting.
• While the characters haven't moved beyond their basic trope-types (see my column about the first one for more on that), they are mostly quite likable and enjoyable to be around. (I could do without Finley and Griffin, but I suspect that that's more due to a personality conflict on my part than on anything objective.)
• Cross' use of similes are generally entertainingly in keeping with the world and the genre: A sound like breaking ice followed as pressure from the outside pushed against the glass, demanding to get inside like a rowdy drunkard at a tavern door. (That one's a bit long for my tastes, but you get the drift.)
• There are rapid and regular switches in perspective, which speak to some amount of confidence in the reader's ability to keep up.
• Automatons are always cool, and there's a thread about What It Means To Be Human that will appeal to anyone who's spent far too much time combing through Data fanfic. (I ADMIT NOTHING.)

Fans of the first two books are likely to like this third installment which, as you've probably gathered by the cover art and the title, focuses mostly on Emily, the Girl Genius Who Can Control Automatons With Her Mind. She gets kidnapped by a Bad Robot (<--heh) who wants her to use her Mechanical Prowess to move the Machinist's brain out of his mostly-dead body and into a fancy new automaton-human hybrid.

It's an undertaking that, not-so-surprisingly, she has issues with beyond the whole abduction thing: bringing the Machinist back would be bad enough, but worse for soft-hearted Emily is the fact that the automaton-human hybrid is a sentient being whose mind, personality, and soul will be destroyed when her body is co-opted by the Machinist. (All of which also serves to allow Emily to come to terms with the sexual assault she survived back in Ireland.)

Yet again, for me, the major issue—beyond the lack of character development—is the repetitive language. Emily continues to 'wee' this and 'wee' that, which is grating, but once again, it was the eyebrows that killed me. I read The Girl with the Iron Touch in review copy form, so I double-checked the following quotes against the Google Books preview and the Amazon preview, and it looks to me that they all made it into the finished copy:

Jack arched a brow at her bad manners. (p. 37)

Mr. Isley arched a brow but wisely remained silent. (p. 51)

She arched a brow, and didn't care that he saw it. (p. 149)

Jack raised a brow at Sam. (p. 157)

Jack raised one brow ever so slightly as his gaze locked with hers. (p. 161)

Emily's heart skipped a beat even as her brow gave a dubious lift. (p. 170)

She arched a brow. (p. 180)

Emily arched a brow. (p. 206)

He arched a brow. (p. 247)

She arched a brow. (p. 256)

Finley arched a brow. (p. 299)

He arched a brow. (p. 321)

Now she was the one whose brow rose. (p. 321)

Griffin swore—the kind of language that made Finley arch a brow. (p. 326)

And, of course, keep in mind that I didn't count any of the 'lowering' or 'pulling together' or 'shooting up'. All in all, these characters expend more energy waggling their eyebrows around than you or I would while working out to a Jillian Michaels DVD.

So, there you have it: if that sort of thing drives you bananas, I'd say give the series a miss and wait for the (hopefully inevitable) CW show.

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Author page.

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Amazon.

Publisher.

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Book source: Review copy via Netgalley.

Oh.

OH.

OH MY GOD, I LOVE THIS BOOK.

And I have no idea how to write about it.

Ten pages in, I was all, "HEY, COOL! THIS IS SO WICKER MAN-Y! I LIKE."

Then, I came to the end of the first part. And my eyes got all big and round and I was all (much more subdued, but no less blown away), "Oh, hey, this is VERY Wicker Man-y."

And then, partway through the second segment, I thought, "Wow. Hello, Cloud Atlas."

After that, I stopped thinking about anything except the story—stories—in front of me, and I read and read and read until there were no more pages to read. And I was crying.

I still feel dazed.

It's not going to be for everyone. I GUARANTEE that some readers are going to want to throw it at the wall. (Perhaps you have already done so?) But something about it resonated with me. It's not just that I'm impressed by the structure—I am—or that I love Sedgwick's writing and skillful atmosphere creation—I do—or that I was blown away by how each segment was so different, but how (even discounting the physical details: the names, the flowers, the hare) each one was also so clearly part of a larger whole.

All of those things are a part of why I loved it, but there was something... BIGGER, yet less tangible beyond that. I think it was that even though the premise doesn't jive with my own personal, in real life worldview—I'm one of those who can't wrap my mind around anything beyond conceived/born/live/die/dead*—that the idea of these two people finding each other over and over again was genuinely, heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

Even though [SPOILER] it was a tragedy almost every time.

But, compared to the love that began—and ultimately ended—their story, the tragedy that followed them felt inconsequential. [/SPOILER]

Or something.

As the footnote below explains, I have a hard time with the metaphysical.

It's just a gorgeous, gorgeous book.

So good that it has apparently made my brain implode.

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*Which reminds me of a conversation I had years ago:

Family Friend Who Is Way Into Astrology: And so since you have so much Libra in your chart, that means that etc., etc....

Me: I dunno. I just have a hard time buying the idea that I am who I am because of where the planets were when I was born.

FFWIWIA: Oh, that's just because you're a Gemini. You're all about the intellectually concrete.

Me: So I don't believe in astrology because... I'm a Gemini?

FFWIWIA: Yes.

Me: But...

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Author page.

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Amazon.

Publisher.

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Book source: ILLed through my library.

In Out of the Easy, Ruta Sepetys had me at hello. It begins:

My mother's a prostitute. Not the filthy, streetwalking kind. She's actually quite pretty, fairly well spoken, and has lovely clothes. But she sleeps with men for money or gifts, and according to the dictionary, that makes her a prostitute.

Seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine doesn't want to follow in her mother's footsteps. She's known that for years, and even though she still works at the same brothel as her mother—cleaning rooms, mind you—and even though she's on good terms with Willie Woodley, the woman who owns it, she's independent enough that she's kept her own apartment since she was eleven years old.

She works part-time at the bookstore below it, and she dreams of going to college. But when Josie dreams, she dreams big: she wants out of New Orleans, to start over somewhere up North, somewhere where she can reinvent herself—where no one knows who she is or what her mother does.

LOVE: THE DIALOGUE. Out of the Easy is set in 1950, and Sepetys' characters sling slang without sounding phony or overblown, and the dialogue zings back-and-forth like in an old movie. The characters speak in distinctive voices, and unlike in Strands of Bronze and Gold, those differences in vocabulary, rhythm, and diction are affected by economic class, vocation, and education, rather than being purely dictated by the color of one's skin.

LOVE: JOSIE. Her narration has a touch of the noir hero: deadpan, world-weary, and with an understanding of ironic humor. Unlike a noir hero, though, she is open about being emotionally affected by... things that are emotionally affecting. She's smart, she's canny, and rather than blushing and wanting to melt into the ground in embarrassing situations, she treats them as opportunities—I cheered out loud when she turned one around by becoming an impromptu blackmailer, and I swooned during another when she threw herself into a cute boy's lap to save herself (and him, to a degree) from some catty mean girls. 

LOVE: HER MOTHER. Well, no, actually, I loathed her mother. But I loved that she wasn't the Pretty-Woman-hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, I loved that she wasn't secretly sympathetic, or selfless or particularly smart. She was completely self-absorbed, and while her behavior makes her come off as rotten and somewhat stupid, it's important to remember who's telling the story: Josie isn't exactly an objective party. The other women who work for Willie are a mixed bag of funny/serious/witty/quiet/ruthless/rude/mothering/mean/sensitive and everything in between, and it's easy to imagine that if another person had told the story, Louise would have come off as more human. Maybe. Then again, SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST TERRIBLE.

LOVE: THE BOOKS. Josie works in a bookstore, and she and her best friend Patrick have an ongoing game where they predict what sort of book customers will want. There are references to Dickens and Keats, Capote and even L'Engle. And, tangentially, Poe: Josie ends up with a dead man's watch—THAT'S RIGHT, ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, SHE INVESTIGATES A MURDER—under her floorboards, and she swears she can hear it ticking, ticking, ticking. Which, of course, evokes The Tell-Tale Heart.

LOVE: EVERYTHING ELSE. Sepetys is true to the era and her characters in how Patrick's story plays out; the romance is sweet and heartfelt; the details about 1950s life and culture work themselves in fluidly; Josie wants what she wants so badly that I was never quite sure about how far she'd go to get it; and while the ending certainly has some fairy-tale elements, there's enough bitter in the sweet to keep cynics (like me) from getting all up on their high horses.

Oh, I loved this book. As it's got the same combination of fantastically-rendered historical atmosphere—the dialogue is TO DIE FOR—and mystery elements, I highly, HIGHLY recommend it to fans of Judy Blundell's What I Saw and How I Lied.

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Book source: Review copy from the publisher.

I love Lydia Bennet.

I can't help it. I know I shouldn't, because SHE IS SUCH AN ASS. 

But I love her BECAUSE she's such an ass.

So, when I found out about The Bad Miss Bennet, a novel STARRING Lydia, obviously I HAD TO READ IT.

It's set three years after Pride and Prejudice, and a few months after Lydia's husband, George Wickham, died at at battle of Quartre Bras. Not due to any dashing act of heroism—that would have been totally out of character—but because he got thrown and then trampled by his own horse. Which seemed fitting*.

So, now Lydia is stuck living with boring Lizzie and pompous Mr. Darcy and, worst of all, the insufferable Miss Georgiana. After three years of relative freedom—Wickham wasn't a particularly good husband, but he wasn't particularly concerned with his wife's habit of flouting social conventions, either—staid life as an impoverished relation at Pemberley chafes.

Also, mourning is a HUGE DRAG. Black is just NOT. HER. COLOR.

So, the moment that opportunity strikes, Lydia heads out on her own, determined to live life on her own terms.

Sadly, The Bad Miss Bennet did not live up to my expectations. It was extremely scattered, in that it didn't seem to know if it wanted to be a sex romp or a mystery or a romance: it had elements of all three, but never settled on one long enough to dig in, so the plotting wasn't particularly strong. The story would meander in one direction for a while, and then it felt like the author just... got bored, switched gears, and meandered in another direction for a while, and then got bored again. And the end of the story felt the same way, just: BORED NOW, THE END.

Which, to be (possibly excessively) blunt, was pretty much my attitude by the time I hit the halfway mark.

So, the plotting didn't do anything for me. But what about the voice, right? I mean, if ANY of the non-Lizzie Bennet sisters ought to have a strong (if asinine) voice, it's Lydia. Not so here. She's got a few super lines, but overall, it certainly wasn't strong enough to carry the entire book.

Characterization? There's no growth whatsoever, and while that made sense in the context of the original text—everything got fixed for Lydia in Pride and Prejudice, so while she had the opportunity to learn lessons, she was never forced to—I found it hard to believe that she wouldn't have matured at all during her three years of marriage, and especially hard to believe that she wouldn't mature at all over the course of her independent adventures. Basically, she started the story as a caricature, and she ended the story as a caricature, and while that can make for a hugely entertaining secondary character, it doesn't work so well in a heroine.

TL; DR: Overall, totally forgettable. Lydia deserves better.

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*That said, I did love that Lost in Austen made him out to be a nice guy.

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Book source: ILLed through my library.

From the St. Louis Beacon:

But her dream soon became his dream and one of the nation’s most prolific and successful writing teams was born.

They set out to fill the void of missing African-American history and to counter stereotypes of popular children’s books such asThe Story of Little Black Sambo. "These images,” Mr. McKissack said, “last a lifetime.”

Via cynsations, where there is an excellent round-up of remembrances and appreciations.

Image via the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance.

The first book in Rick Yancey's Monstrumologist series is $1.99 today, so if you don't have it, I'd TOTALLY suggest snagging it.

If you haven't read it, DO. After all, like Arrested Development, it has such devoted and vocal fans (not to mention stellar reviews) that the series survived cancellation. (More on that here and here.)

Oh, and Artemis Fowl is $2.99 today. I almost didn't bother mentioning it, because A) I'm not a particular fan and B) it's not like the series needs a push from me, but C) I figured that since I was writing this post anyway, I may as well throw it in here, too. So there you go.

[ETA: Huh. Variant, by Robison Wells, is also $1.99. Worth a purchase? The description makes it sound like Lord of the Flies in boarding school.]

...I wrote about Jane Nickerson's Strands of Bronze and Gold, which I'd been really, really excited to read... but which ultimately left me cold, cold, cold:

Historical fiction fans are likely to be bothered that Sophia’s language and diction—as well as the rest of the dialogue spoken by the white characters—is anachronistic, in that it sounds more 2013 than 1855: I smashed a mosquito against my neck and my own blood spurted out. Because of that modern feel, the dialect spoken by the black characters—He been beat before. He tougher’n he looks.—is somewhat jarring. Sophia also has a tendency to tell us how she feels, rather than letting us feel it through her...which is what ultimately leads me to what this book is missing.

I used to post about older books a lot more. Somewhere along the way, though, in an effort to keep up with the never-ending supply of review copies, new books at the library, and new books that I buy, I've gotten away from that. And I feel like I'm missing out.

So, for the foreseeable future, anyway, I'm going to start covering older titles on Fridays.

This week's book is—obviously—Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which I've been meaning to read ever since it came out. I remember pestering my former library director to buy the series for the library, and she did, but somehow—despite all of the factors that make it a perfect ME book (obnoxiously smart girl detective, philatelic mystery, sisterly squabbles, impoverished British upper class, small town gossip, boys' school hijinks)—I've never made the time for it until now.

June, 1950. When we first meet eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, she's tied up, gagged, and locked in a dark closet. Not for long, though: her older sisters Ophelia and Daphne may have her beat in terms of pure physicality, but they'll never be a match for her brain.

So when a real tangle of a mystery arrives at Buckshaw—quite literally at the front door—Flavia isn't just intrigued: she's ecstatic. She doesn't know what the dead jackdaw means, or why it has a Penny Black postage stamp impaled on its beak. But she does know that it means something to her philatelist father: and whatever it is, it isn't good. When she finds a dying man in the cucumber patch later that night—a man who she saw arguing with her father just hours before—the mystery becomes that much more intriguing... and with her father as the most logical suspect, her need to find out the truth becomes that much more urgent.

Surprisingly enough, this book didn't win me over until about the halfway mark. Before that, despite Flavia's obvious charms—she's bright, enchantingly vicious, a great liar, and impressively obnoxious—she felt more like the idea of a person than an actual person. Also, and more off-putting, Bradley's third-person narration was slightly condescending towards her, like, "Oh, look at this child who thinks she's so clever. Let's titter at her innocent obliviousness." Sadly, I can't identify anything specific, but SOMETHING put my back up, clearly.

But! There is a distinct turning-point for both problems: after a long conversation with her father—well, it's more of a monologue on his part—there's a shift, Flavia suddenly blooms into a real, three-dimensional person, and there's a subtle change in the narrative voice as well: it starts treating her as an equal. To be fair, before that conversation, Flavia had been looking at the mystery as a game of sorts, and after it, she begins detecting in earnest. So, to a degree—even though it made me uncomfortable—the condescension in the beginning was warranted. Or at least understandable in hindsight.

Other thoughts: I pegged the murderer immediately, but that didn't bother me, since the whys and hows were still left to untangle. Flavia's interactions with Inspector Hewitt are wonderful, the class issues are nicely handled, as is the depiction of post-WWII life. By the end, I had developed some serious affection for almost all of the characters, and I'll definitely be reading the sequels.

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Book source: Personal copy.

...that 'Great Horn Spoon' was an actual saying.

AND EVEN BETTER, AN ACTUAL OBSCENE SAYING:

Something you can swear by, used in a way similar to "by God!" It seems to have come from seafaring slang, and might refer to the Big Dipper. But you don't need to know the origin to find it useful. Today the strange randomness of the words makes it feel mystically satisfying to shout.

If you haven't read that book, btdubs, YOU ARE TOTALLY MISSING OUT. BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME.

...Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop, by Reginald Bakeley.

And so, in honor of that (or something), I shall point you back to last year's review of Maureen Doyle McQuerry's The Peculiars, which stars a heroine who suffers from what her grandmother refers to as 'goblinism':

The Peculiars, as you may have guessed from the cover, is set in a steampunk-y version of our past. So it's the Victorian era—Lena loves Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain—but one with dirigibles and aerocopters. It's also a frontier novel, in that the majority of it is set on the edge of civilization, and much of the storyline and plotting involves a wilderness area—populated by outlaws, convicts, and supposedly, Peculiars—called Scree. Like some (and in my opinion, too few) other alt-histories, McQuerry includes a historical note at the end that describes some of the real-life people she included in her world, as well as some of the changes she made (for instance, in her world, the Pony Express is still up-and-running in 1888, whereas in our world, it was only in operation until 1861).

Alyxandra Harvey's Haunting Violet is $1.99 today.

From my Kirkus column, which focuses on how it diverges from the classic formula of the romantic historical mystery:

Traditionally, Our Fair Heroine finds the rules of polite society somewhat chafing, but, as she was born into them, she understands them. Even if her behavior causes gossip, she is almost always still easily accepted.

Violet, on the other hand, is pretending. She wears the clothes and receives the invitations, but despite her manners and her appearance, she’s still a girl from Cheapside. Her position forces her to lie—through word and action—to everyone she meets. She doesn’t know the rules of high society very well, and she’s always aware that one misstep will expose the entire charade.