Denton Little’s Death Date by Lance Rubin

Denton Little lives in a world where everyone knows the date they will die, and it’s never been wrong. Unfortunately for Denton, his death date is the day of his senior prom. In the day leading up to it, he’s focused on cramming as much into what remains of his life as he can – have sex with his girlfriend, tell his classmates what he really thinks about them, and so on. But things don’t go quite as planned – he gets a strange purple rash, for starters. And he notices that he’s being watched.

In order to enjoy this one, you’ve really got to suspend your disbelief. Don’t interrogate the concept too closely – or at all, really. The book isn’t much interested in how the death date technology works, or, assuming we buy that such a thing is possible, what that means for the idea of free will. The characters have accepted it, and if you want to get through this book, so should you.

If you’re able to move beyond the problems with the concept, this is a pretty fun book. Denton has a great voice – he’s sarcastic and an asshole at times, but he has moments of genuine heartfelt goodness too. I wouldn’t call the book laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s amusing throughout and I always looked forward to listening to more of it when I could. Rubin narrates the audiobook himself and he’s actually quite good at it, which is pretty unusual for an author-narrated book. It’s fast-paced and all takes place in about 48 hours, and it leaves you with a big cliffhanger at the end. There’s another bit of “science” that may as well be magic near the end, and Rubin doesn’t really bother trying to explain it. My advice? Just do your best to accept the hand-waving and enjoy this book for what it is: a fun ride propelled by a ludicrous concept.

 

The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey

This was my second book about bird people, which is…a bit odd. Actually, a lot of the Cybils YA speculative fiction nominees this year have something to do with either birds or feathers, whether literally or metaphorically. This one is more the literal kind.

Echo’s parents treated her poorly when she was a child, so she ran away and was taken in by the Avicen, a race of bird people who live underneath New York City. Think mostly human-looking, but with feathers. She had been surviving as a thief and she keeps it up once she starts living with the Avicen, though she does it more for the thrill or to help out her adoptive family rather than for survival. The Alla, an elder of sorts of the Avicen and the one who took Echo in, asks her to locate (steal) something called the Firebird, an entity which will help the Avicen defeat their long-time foes, a race of dragon-like people. Of course the task is not easy, and Echo must soon team up with the very people the Avicen are fighting, including a newly-deposed dragon prince. Romance and violence ensue, naturally.

The marketing describes this as a readalike for Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which is very accurate, though my love for that book makes this one pale in comparison. There are a lot of similarities: a human living with a found family of monster-like beings (though the Avicen aren’t terribly monstrous like the chimera are), portals that take you to big and interesting cities across the globe, a centuries-old battle between two powerful races. There’s a bit at the end of the book that is perhaps a bit too resonant of Daughter of Smoke and Bone and made me go “hmm.” The idea is not new, but having read Daughter of Smoke and Bone certainly makes what happens here easy to predict. Despite the plot similarities, this is a well-written novel with good characterization and interesting world-building. Julia Whelan narrates the audiobook and she does a fine job. This would be a good pick for urban fantasy fans who want a story that feels epic.