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Me, while reading The Kiss of Deception: Hey, this is so much fun! It's got the same feel as The Girl of Fire and Thorns books and since that series is over, it's so awesome to find another one that OH MY GOD I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING.
GOOD SHOW, MARY E. PEARSON.
Yeah, this one's got me all caps-happy.
Proof via the FB:
Rather than be forced into an arranged marriage to a prince from another country who A) can't be bothered to even MEET her before getting hitched, let alone even CORRESPOND WITH HER, and B) expects her to have a magical ability that she DOESN'T HAVE, Princess Arabella Celestine Idris Jezelia, First Daughter of the House of Morrighan, runs away with her maid.
They travel hundreds of miles, doubling back and leaving false trails and doing everything they can to avoid being followed—disobeying the king, after all, is an act of treason, and punishable by death—and eventually make their way to a small fishing village on the coast, where they settle down and get jobs as barmaids. It's hard work, and a very different life than either girl is used to, but they're both very happy there.
But despite their best efforts at avoiding detection, there are at least two men on their trail: one is the prince, who is partly angry about Lia's flight but MOSTLY curious about her, and the other is the assassin who has been ordered to kill her.
Pros:
EVERYTHINNNNNNNNNNG. There's action and romance and romantic complications; the characters are smart and strong and the emotions are palpable; the focus seamlessly shifts from Lia to the Prince to the Assassin and back again; the worldbuilding and creation of multiple cultures is super; the details about daily life are just as compelling as the action sequences. As you'd expect from a girl who's grown up a princess, Lia is capable of being QUITE imperious when roused as well as QUITE bossy, but she's also wonderfully stubborn and hugely empathetic and even if I didn't always AGREE with her decisions, I understood them. There are threads about family and duty and friendship, and OH MY STARS, IF YOU LIKE HIGH FANTASY, THEN JUST READ IT.
Cons:
Very occasionally, the dialogue would veer from Semi-Olde-Fashionedy-Formal-Fantasy ("You serve the Kingdom of Morrighan well on this day, Arabella.") to Modern-Day-American ("Pull your royal head out of your ass and get used to it!"), but that is a TOTALLY minor quibble in the face of SO MUCH AWESOME.
Nutshell:
OH MY GOD DO I SERIOUSLY HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL 2015 FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT?
What with the popularity of steampunk, there are a WHOLE LOT of books that feature airships. As there are SO MANY, I've tried to focus on stories in which the majority of the action takes place ON AN ACTUAL SHIP.
In Emilie and the Hollow World, which I wrote about over at Kirkus, Emilie stows away on a MAGICAL SUBMARINE and has a very Jules Verne-y adventure. It is an AWESOME book, perfect for readers who're always looking for old fashioned adventure stories. Shipwrecks, sunken cities, action, adventure, different cultures and species, politics and family drama, a plucky heroine (who, by the way, is described as having "brown skin and dark eyes," as are most of the other people from her region), a super blend of fantasy and science fiction elements, a strong emotional core, humor, heartache, and even a smidge of romance.
In Emilie and the Sky World, our heroine—who is now employed by the folks she stowed away with in the last installment—heads into the sky (duh), where she has ANOTHER adventure, this time involving a patchwork planet, a missing expedition, an intelligent plant-based lifeform, and yes, there's another stowaway. Like the first book, it's super-fun in every way, and this one has the added excellence of multiple storylines about trust, friendship, and family dysfunction that play off of and complement each other really nicely.
I LOVE THIS SERIES, AND WANT MORE PEOPLE TO READ IT.
In this book—I still haven't read Curtsies & Conspiracies, so I can't speak for that one—Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality is located on a bunch of connected dirigibles. Which adds even more entertainment value to a world and plot that is already bursting with it.
How have I not written about these? Traction cities! Pirates! And yes, LOTS OF AIRSHIP ACTION! Just looking at the cover art makes me want to read them all over again.
Okay, these were actually published for the adult market, but there were some sexytimes that OCCURRED on an airship in the first book, and one of the main characters in the second one is an airship captain, so I'm including them.
Girl stows away on an airship to avoid an arranged marriage, but it turns out to be a smugglers' ship; adventures and romance ensue. This one is due out next week, and is the first in a SIX-BOOK SERIES.
I know, I KNOW. I'll get to them! (Especially the Oppel series, as the comparisons to Verne and Stevenson are PULLING ME IN. I think I might even have Airborn on my Kindle. But then again, Josh loved Leviathan, so I should probably buy the other two so that we have them in the house...)
Multiverse story about a boy from our world who hooks up with the crew of the airship Everness (and gets romantically involved with the captain, I think?) and proceeds to have lots of adventures. The cover art of the first one, especially, doesn't do much for me, but the book itself sounds SUPER, so I'm bumping this one right up the list.
A society girl is accused of unlawful magic and is headed for a live of slavery as an airship battery... or something like that. Every description I've read has been slightly different.
This is actually the sequel to Innocent Darkness, which appears to be a futuristic-steampunk-faerie-reform-school mashup. After the events of the first book (which, based on the descriptions I've read, sounds ridiculously fun), the heroine joins the crew of an airship. SO ONTO THE LIST IT GOES.
ANOTHER airship hijacking, this one was apparently at least partly inspired by A Night to Remember. It's had pretty mixed reviews, but I'm curious enough that I'm planning on giving it a try.
Did I miss your favorite? Let me know in the comments!
They LOOK intriguing, with cover art that somewhat reminiscent of Cassandra Rose Clarke's Assassin's Curse books, and they deal with magic and faery in the Regency Era, which oooooooooo.
...I wrote about Jennifer Donnelly's Deep Blue, which, well, I hated:
In reading the Prologue to Jennifer Donnelly’s Deep Blue—a description of a group of water witches swimming around, chanting rhyming couplets about six chosen ones with disparate talents who will have to band together to save the world—I got the distinct impression that not only had the book been specifically written with a film adaptation in mind, but that I had already SEEN said movie many, many times before.
It's rare for me to walk away from a book without anything nice to say.
If you've got readers clamoring for the gruesome, then look no further: This book is so gross! SO GROSS! Lots of gore, lots of poop, lots of hideous goings-on at the local slaughterhouse and meat-packing plant. I wouldn't be surprised to see a few young omnivores go vegetarian after reading it.
What would you do if the zombie apocalypse started in your own town? Middle school baseball players Rabi, Miguel, and Joe don't just fight for their lives, they try to follow in the footsteps of their hero Spider Jerusalem—the fact that they were Transmetropolitan fans made me shriek with joy—to reveal the corruption and greed that caused it, as well as the people who are still trying to cover it up.
Holy cow, for a small book, it deals with a LOT of stuff, and it deals with it in depth. The banter between the boys is excellent and funny, as are the dynamics of their friendship: they always have each others' backs, there's complete trust and affection there, and they all know how to play to each others' strengths.
They all have large issues to contend with—Rabi is the main target of a racist bully on their team, Miguel's parents have been deported due to their immigration status and lives in fear of the rest of his family being picked up next, and Joe's father is a mean drunk—but while the issues certainly have a bearing on the storyline and on their worldviews, they're dealt with in a pretty matter-of-fact, non-preachy way. The immigration storyline, especially, was well-handled: Bacigalupi doesn't get into the politics, he just tells a story in which a kid has to deal with a situation that is (and has always been) completely out of his hands, but that has a direct impact on his future. Basically, Bacigalupi focuses on people, rather than on policy. Interwoven into all of it is a dark thread about money equaling power, but it does end on a hopeful note that suggests that information, knowledge, and—this is so awesome—STORY will eventually punch through it all.
It won't be for everyone—like I said, SO GROSS—but I really enjoyed it.
These books are new to me: according to the website, it's a series of stand-alone horror/romance graphic novels. In this first one, high school softball star Dicey Bell and science geek/gamer Jack get paired up for a class project, sparks fly, and then they have to team up to fight a zombie uprising. So it looks like it's the old Opposites Attract And Have To Find A Way To Contend With Their Differences Amid Unrelated Chaos storyline. Of which I am a fan, so I'm going to pick it up soon.
I have a soft spot for Norse mythology, and believe it or not, said affection DOES predate Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston's respective portrayals of Thor and Loki. Maybe it's because our childhood dog was named Loki? Or because of all of the shenanigans in Douglas Adams' Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul?
Wherever and whenever the affection stems from, it's made me happy to see more and more of it trickle into the YA section.
So, here are a few that are on my radar, some that I've read, some that I'd like to read:
These—or at least Loki's Wolves, I haven't read Odin's Ravens yet—are geared more middle-grade, but they're totally crossovers, so I'm including them. Despite being natural enemies, a descendant of Thor teams up with two descendants of Loki to roadtrip around South Dakota, looking for other young descendants of the gods in order to prevent Ragnarok. Understandably, Loki's Wolves gets cited as a Percy Jackson readalike pretty often, though it's worth mentioning that it doesn't have nearly as much humor as the Riordan books. While I found Matt's Must Protect Laurie Because She's A Girl mentality grating, it was in keeping with his personality and upbringing and worldview. (Less explicable was this line—He supposed if a girl that pretty was checking Baldwin out, the guy must be good-looking.—because, come on. Just because someone is straight doesn't mean that he is incapable of gauging whether or not another dude is conventionally attractive.)
There's lots of action, though, the full-page black-and-white illustrations complement the text well, and I loved how Armstrong and Marr incorporated historic spots (Deadwood) and other landmarks (Mount Rushmore). I'll be reading the second one at some point.
If this book hadn't been by Tessa Gratton, I'd have never picked it up due to the atrocious cover art. So here's hoping it gets redesigned at some point. (Oh, look, I got my wish. Still not great, and the model is either at a really weird angle or the image was created by just Photoshopping Matt Bomer's disembodied head onto someone else's shoulders, but it's an improvement over straight-up Skeet Ulrich. I think?-->)
Fan of Gratton's work—if you haven't discovered her yet, you're in fora treat—have probably already read this one. It's another roadtrip story, this one about a berserker and a prophetess searching for Baldur, who's gone missing. While the relationship dynamics and the family secrets are totally compelling, and while Gratton does a great job of integrating familiar myths but keeping the plotting unpredictable, for me, this one was all about the worldbuilding, which was FANTASTIC. I'm really looking forward to the sequel.
And that does it for the ones I've actually read! But there are so many more...
Despite having bought it ages ago, I'd been putting this one off because I'm a little bit afraid of it—I've heard that it's gut-wrenching—but no one told me that the faith system of the characters is based on Norse myths! So that, combined with my love of Catch & Release, means I'm bumping it waaaay up the TBR pile.
This trilogy sounds pretty light-hearted, which is understandably unusual in books dealing with Norse mythology. A girl moves from LA to Minnesota and discovers that she's a 'stork': a woman who pairs unborn souls up with their mothers-to-be. Bonus: In addition to the Norse stuff, there's some Snow Queen action!
I haven't read this one, but it sounds so awesome that I just ordered myself a copy. It's about twin sisters, born conjoined, now separated. One of them who has magical abilities, one of them who doesn't.
“Abby, I’d swear it really did talk. A crab apple tree in that park at Queen and Sherbourne. I think it asked me where Dad was. Said it hadn’t seen him in a long time.”
Abby whipped her head around from the window to glare at me. “Stop it. Just stop it. Why are you always saying things like this? You’re embarrassing yourself. And me.”
“But—” Why did I say things like that? Because I couldn’t help myself. Because I craved more than anything else to have a little mojo of my own.
I like drawings that make me laugh. When I inherited a traditional Blue Willow-pattern plate, I just had to redraw it and add a dinosaur. As I drew more plates and added more calamities—UFOs, Sasquatch, and volcanoes—folks urged me to produce real dinner plates. A Kickstarter project was born.
The first two Kickstarter projects went well (flying monkeys and giant robot), so here is the third project in what might turn out to be a long series. This design includes a hungry sea monster who appears to have escaped from the wild areas of an early Renaissance map.Imagine finding that bad boy behind your fish sticks!
This is part of White's Echo Company series, and while it looks like 'Tis the Season also features Lieutenant Rebecca Phillips, The Road Home seems like it's more up my alley, as it's about her return back to the United States from Vietnam, and about the post-war healing process. I have to say, though, while I'm not usually drawn to war stories, I've been meaning to read the Echo Company books for ages: Ellen Emerson White is a treasure.
A seventeen-year-old girl with precognitive powers—she sees the impending deaths of loved ones, but no one believes her, making her a WWI-era Cassandra—joins a volunteer nursing corps and heads off to France in an attempt to save the life of her one remaining brother. Love Sedgwick, so I'm a little bit horrified that I haven't gotten around to this one yet.
...I wrote about Jaclyn Dolamore's Dark Metropolis, which was a mixed bag for me, but which ultimately had a silver lining: it allowed me to revisit Madonna's Express Yourself video.
A New Hampshire resident was handcuffed and led out of a school board meeting on May 5 after he protested the fact that his ninth-grade daughter was assigned the novel “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult.
According to police, Gilford father William Baer “spoke out of order,” said Lt. James Leach. “Someone else was given the floor and was speaking. He interrupted them and continued after being asked to stop. He was then asked to leave and refused to leave unless he was arrested, so he was arrested.”
Considering the amount of press he's getting out of this, that he was told he'd be arrested if he didn't stop disrupting the meeting, and that he TOLD THE ARRESTING OFFICER TO ARREST HIM, it sounds to me like getting arrested is EXACTLY what he wanted. So the shock/horror/dismay he has been exhibiting in interviews comes off as a tad disingenuous.
"It was basically, you make a statement, say what you want and sit down," he said. "Sit down and shut up, basically, and that's not how you interact with adults."
Baer said he believes what happened at the meeting was a violation of his First Amendment rights. The board said it imposed the two-minute rule to give everyone a chance to be heard, but Baer refused to stop when his time was up.
Enforcing the rules of order at a public meeting? Is not a violation of someone's First Amendment rights. I suspect that if he'd been in the audience, listening to someone go on and on and on—especially if it was someone he disagreed with—that he'd have been ALL ABOUT enforcing the rules of order.
The school department sent WBZ a statement explaining it has revised its policy for letting parents know about books being read. “The district will take immediate action to revise these policies to include notification that requires parents to accept controversial material rather than opt out. Furthermore, the notification will detail more specifically the controversial material,” wrote Sue Allen, Chair of the Gilford School Board.
2. I've read the passage in question—according to WMUR, it's on page 313—and while it showcases the words "erection", "pumping", and "semen", it doesn't come close to reading like "...the transcript for a triple-X-rated movie". IN FACT—and keep in mind that as I haven't read the book, I read it out of context—it reads as pretty damn rapey to me. At the VERY LEAST, while it is certainly a depiction of sex, it doesn't come close to being titillating.
All of that is beside the point, though, as judging a 455-page book on less than a page of text isn't helpful, reasonable, or intellectually honest.
I ADORED Eliza Crewe’s Cracked. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s full of action and bare-handed decapitations. Meda’s voice is hilarious and snarky and brash and inhuman and original. She’s an art lover with a wonderfully morbid sense of humor, a monster who takes joy in brutal violence but who secretly hates herself for giving in to her mindless rage, and she’s a girl who’s all alone and just wants to know who she is. She's a quick thinker who considers every angle of a situation, and she doesn't yearn for humanity or, as Buffy’s Spike so wonderfully puts it, exhibit any of “that Anne Rice crap.” She's a mostly unrepentant killer who doesn't shy away from playing the damsel in distress card—even when she's the most dangerous thing in the room.
"And you have the record for frowning." AHAHAHAHAHA.
Also, the Jasper stuff.
Okay. I didn't see Eclipse, so I just Googled "edward cullen tambourine" to make sure that there wasn't actually a tambourine scene. There wasn't, right? Because if there was, clearly I'm going to have to watch it.
...which sets out to be a love story, a ghost story, a story about abuse, and a story about family. Of the four, the ghost story comes the closest to being successful. The idea of a ghost that can travel via and control water is scary in and of itself, and Ward really makes great, cinematic* use of it, sometimes with powerful, gushing torrents, sometimes with insidious, creeping mold. Ghost Rob’s growing strength is rivaled only by his malevolence, and Carl’s deteriorating mental state—despite clear signs of an actual haunting, at times I wondered if it really might all be in Carl’s head—adds to the tension.
As it sadly didn't do a whole lot for me, I went ahead and recommended some OTHER books that I enjoyed much more...
INCLUDING A CERTAIN SERIES STARRING MISS SHIRAZ BAILEY WOOD.
And also one that I haven't read yet, but that LOOKS really super.
Sidenote: Due to the water and the palette, this cover is pretty ambiguous... but if the girl on the cover is supposed to be Neisha Gupta, with her "big brown eyes" and skin with "honey tones", then it looks like the UK cover has been whitewashed.
Ten years ago, Corinthe made a huge mistake. Since then, she’s been exiled from her sister Fates, living on Earth among the humans. To earn her way back into the good graces of the Unseen Ones and be allowed to return home, she is tasked with helping humans achieve their destinies: whether that means facilitating meet cutes, making someone late for work, preventing an accident, saving a life...or ending one.
(I couldn't post the link earlier due to the Typepad debacle.)
I'm really not into having the whole Which One Is Better debate, because I don't have a strong aversion to any genre: if it's a good book, it's a good book, yay books. YAY BOOKS.
Anyway! Despite the title, ultimately, the essay is more about the differences between the two genres, and more especially about the strengths of SF/F:
You absolutely cannot obscure underlying weakness with waffle. Otherwise the emails will arrive, picking up on discrepancies. Not just for the sake of point-scoring or nitpicking but because fans become so engaged with imaginary worlds and so passionate about their characters.
That passion, so easily mocked by laughing at Trekkies and Whovians, is another thing that distinguishes SF and fantasy from literary fiction. Mocking that passion is missing a key aspect of speculative fiction. By drawing readers in large numbers, contemporary fantasy becomes a platform to debate key, current social and political challenges, while science fiction continues to explore the impact of technological developments, for good and ill, before we have to tackle these things in reality.
