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A Few Cybils Reads – Part IV

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Burn Out by Kristi Helvig
Part of the reason I love SFF so much – and always have – is how fun it can be. Authors can really let their creativity fly and not worry so much about trivial things like “Could this actually happen?” Burn Out is probably the most fun Cybils nominee I’ve read so far. It’s set 300 years in our future, after an asteroid that was heading for Earth was deflected and hit the sun instead, causing it to advance much more rapidly through its life cycle. It’s now a red giant, all the oceans on the planet have dried up, it’s too hot to go outside for more than a minute or two at a time, and most humans live underground or in protected pods, using a machine to drag the last bit of moisture out of the air in order to survive. (You could ask me if this could actually happen and I could honestly say I don’t know, but my first guess would be “probably not.”) Tora lives underground, alone, after her mother and sister were killed by the sun and her father was murdered by the people he worked for after he refused to hand over the powerful weapons he built for them.

Tora has resigned herself to probably ending her own life eventually. The air soon won’t have enough water left in it and she figures it will be less painful to overdose on pain pills than die of dehydration. Then an old family “friend,” Markus, comes knocking on her door. He says the Earth’s leaders have found another planet where humanity can live. He can take her there. The price is her dad’s weapons, left in Tora’s safekeeping. Tora knows they were made to be used on other humans, which is why her father refused to give them up in the end. Tora says no. Markus leaves, but he returns, and he brings friends. Not the nice kind.

This is an action-packed story, told in Tora’s funny, sarcastic voice that kept me flipping through the pages. The plot has a hole big enough to drive a truck through, but that didn’t dampen my enjoyment. The setting is unique and the futuristic concepts are interesting, including a gun that can be keyed to a person’s particular vibrations, allowing only that person to use it. Each of the characters have ulterior motives, and Helvig teases these out over the course of the story, providing the plot with plenty of twists and turns. Some questions are answered by the end, and some aren’t, clearly leaving an opening for a sequel. You can bet I’ll be reading it.

The Truth Against the World by Sarah Jamila Stevenson
Olwen Nia Evans, Wyn for short, is moving with her family for a few weeks to Wales, to a little town called Cwm Tawel. The trip is her great-grandmother’s dying wish. She grew up in Cwm Tawel and wants to die there, among the peaceful scenery and familiar surroundings. Before the move, Wyn starts to have strange dreams of her great-gran and a little girl, which she blogs about. Another boy, an English boy with his own family ties to Cwm Tawel, stumbles across Wyn’s blog after a recent visit to his great-grandfather in Wales, where he found a headstone bearing Olwen’s name – and had his own run-in with a strange little girl. The two eventually meet up in Cwm Tawel and set about solving the mystery of the ghost Olwen Nia Evans, which involves digging up painful family history that some residents of the town would prefer stayed buried.

Stevenson’s book is unique for its setting; Wales doesn’t get a lot of love in the YA world, especially compared to its UK counterparts. I can easily see the descriptions of the country’s natural beauty encouraging readers to seek out more information or dreaming about visiting themselves. This is a gentle story, perhaps too gentle, as the stakes never seem very high. The solution to ghost Olwen’s mystery is too simple and will be easily deciphered by readers familiar with ghost stories. This would be a good pick for younger, patient readers who may not guess the connection between the ghost and Wyn’s great-grandmother from the start. (A pronunciation guide would have also been helpful for the nerdy readers.)

Messenger of Fear by Michael Grant
Grant’s latest is a series opener, though it stands on its own easily. Mara wakes up without any knowledge of who she is, other than her name. (Yes, it’s another amnesia book.) She’s greeted by someone who tells her he is the Messenger of Fear, and that before she lost her memories, she agreed to be his apprentice. Their duty is to confront those who have done wrong and present them with a choice: play a game, win it, and go free; or refuse or lose the game and face their worst fear. Messenger starts by showing Mara a teenage girl’s suicide, then rewinds time and shows her the events leading up to it. None of the events can be changed, but they must learn from what happened in order to present an appropriate game – and mete out the appropriate punishment if the wicked person loses.

This is not as much of a horror novel as the title or the cover would have you believe, despite a scene where a person is burned alive (described in detail). Fear is not really its goal. Instead, it’s more of an exploration of guilt and atonement, of the choices we make and how – if – we can make reparations. The idea behind the Messenger is to restore balance to the universe. Those who have not been punished by a human court must suffer a visit from the Messenger of Fear, in hopes of preventing the wicked from committing the same actions in the future. The situations Mara and Messenger view are realistic and presented with shades of grey. More often than not, multiple people are at fault rather than a single individual. It is left up to the reader to determine if the wrongdoer’s interactions with Mara and Messenger have set the balance right – if such punishment is justice or if it’s merely cruelty.

There’s a twist to the story that sharp readers will see coming, though the hints sprinkled throughout start light and grow heavier as the story progresses. It will take a truly eagle-eyed reader to spot the truth from the beginning, keeping tension high through most of the novel. Picking out the twist before the end isn’t always a bad thing, provided it doesn’t happen too soon (as I think it would in the book above). There’s a certain satisfaction in putting the pieces together yourself over several chapters and then learning you were right in the end. At times gruesome, the book is also thought-provoking and smoothly written, easily absorbed in an afternoon.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part III

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The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman
Rowan Rose has grown up relatively happy in her small town where not much happens. Then a few of the king’s men, visiting for unknown reasons, are found dead in what appear to be brutal animal attacks; at the same time, another young girl, Fiona Eira, moves to the town with her stepmother and her stepmother’s new husband. Fiona has a connection to Rowan beyond what she is told. When Rowan’s best friend falls in love with Fiona, it sets in motion a violent chain of events that will change Rowan’s life forever.

This one was on my radar long before the Cybils got underway. The cover is eerily beautiful and the story is a re-working of a few different fairy tales, though in a more suggestive than literal way. Even without the nod to Snow White via the title, the story feels very much like a fairy tale, albeit much closer to the darker original versions than the more lighthearted Disney versions. And despite the fairy tale aspect, the story – and the way everything unfolds – is unique. Templeman creates an atmospheric mood with her writing. It’s not horrifying, per se, but it is somewhat chilling, buoyed by the fact that she does not shy away from describing some of the more grotesque things that happen. The story is a little rough around the edges at points, but overall thoroughly engrossing. I look forward to what Templeman does next.

A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn
Marni is half-human, half-dragon. Her mother, once a princess of the kingdom, ran away to live in the magical woods and took up with a dragon who could change into the shape of a man. Marni was the result. Her mother then left the dragon, taking Marni with her. When the woods start to encroach upon the kingdom, Marni’s uncle, the prince, hunts down her mother, thinking her the cause – the dragon trying to reclaim her. In order to save Marni’s life, Marni’s grandfather – the king – abdicates to his son, but not before Marni’s mother is killed.

Now a young woman, Marni constantly feels the pull of the woods, though she knows its danger. She lives with her grandfather, and when he dies, she journeys to the castle, hoping the king will take her in, despite his propensity to murder her family members. Still, the woods call to her, and they soon start to move in on the town once again. It’s only a matter of time before Marni answers the call.

Hahn’s writing, much like Templeman’s, is dreamlike. She uses her words to paint a picture for you, and it’s easy to feel sucked into the rich settings of her book. I’ve read reviews that call her writing poetic, and that’s a fair assessment. But what I often find missing from a book of poetic writing is a strong plot, and that’s the situation here. It doesn’t feel like much happens. In fact, just when it appears that something exciting might happen, the thread of that particular plot point kind of fades away. You could call the story “character-driven,” or you could simply say it doesn’t have much substance. I tend to go with the latter. Best for readers who don’t mind lovely language at the expense of plot.

Pandemic by Yvonne Ventresca
This is a standard modern-day disease story that focuses on a very specific regional area – teenage Lil’s hometown in New Jersey. The pandemic of the title is a flu-like disease that spreads rapidly across the globe. Unlike most flus, this one is most fatal to younger adults, who soon start dying, leaving the old and the young (including people Lil’s age) without caretakers.

Ventresca doesn’t really do anything new with the idea, but she does throw in some details that keep interest up throughout the book. Both of Lil’s parents are out of town when the worst of the pandemic hits, meaning she has to handle everything that happens mostly on her own. This includes the care of an infant whose parents have both died. She gets together with other teenagers to organize assistance for those who can’t help themselves. She has to learn how to get food for herself and contend with looters. She also has to deal with a teacher who sexually assaulted her several months before and now has greater access to her due to the breakdown of the town’s governance. It’s certainly not a bad story, and would be fine for those eager for more along the lines of Amber Kizer’s A Matter of Days – both are relatively gentle books where the stakes never seem very high (even when they should). Ventresca’s writing is a bit amateurish, weakening what could have been a devastating story and keeping it from being entirely satisfying.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part II

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The public nomination period for the Cybils closed last week. I have 32 print books and 4 e-books checked out from the library currently scattered at various parts throughout my house (well, I guess the e-books aren’t really scattered), in addition to the books I already own (easily another dozen or so). You’d think that a kitchen table would be for eating things, but right now it’s pretty much just serving as a surface upon which to sort books – this stack I’ve read, this stack I haven’t, and so on.

Here are a few more brief reviews from the stack I’ve read.

Strange Sweet Song by Adi Rule
This book lives up to its title. It is very strange, almost too strange, for most of its existence, and then it hits you with some sweetness near the end that makes for a very satisfying resolution. Sing da Navelli is the daughter of a famous soprano, a woman who made a name for herself in opera – not only because of her voice, but also because she died in the middle of an aria. When Sing starts at Dunhammond Academy, a boarding school for musicians, she feels the weight of her father’s expectations as well as the public’s. As luck (good or ill) would have it, the school is performing Angelique this year, the opera that Sing’s mother died singing.

Parts of the story are told from Sing’s point of view as she tries to gain the lead role in the opera, make friends, date the cute boy, deal with rude teachers, and so on. Other parts are told from the point of view of the Maestro of the school in his youth, his young apprentice, and a strange being called the Felix who inhabits the woods outside the school. The Felix – which kills almost everyone it meets, but grants wishes to a select few – is itself a part of the opera, used as inspiration by the opera’s composer long ago. Its life is tied inextricably to the history of the school. At times the school story and the mythical story exist uneasily side by side. It takes a patient reader to push through all the parts and learn how they join together, but the payoff is lovely and rewarding, very fairy tale-esque with a sweet romance and interesting magic. The writing is lovely, too, giving the book a dreamlike quality. This would be a good pick for readers fascinated with the opera, the lives of classical musicians, and the magic that music can create.

Amity by Micol Ostow
Ostow has written a seriously creepy horror novel that most readers could probably finish in a single sitting. It tells two parallel stories both set in a house called Amity, but separated in time by ten years. Connor’s story is the past story; Gwen’s is the present. Each story begins with the teens’ families moving into Amity and noticing that something is a bit off with the house. In Connor’s case, he develops an affinity for Amity; the house gives him a sort of power. He feeds off of it and vice versa. In Gwen’s case, the house frightens her; it starts to do strange things to her brother, and she becomes more and more disturbed as she learns more about what happened ten years ago with Connor’s family.

Each teen tells their own story, and both teens at first seem fairly normal, but it quickly becomes apparent that Connor brought his own disease with him to Amity, a disease that Amity recognizes and exploits. Gwen suffers from a disease, too, but of a different kind. Eventually, Connor’s and Gwen’s stories combine. The switches in perspective are frequent, chapters are short, and there’s a lot of white space. These stylistic choices create an urgency to the story, which is perfectly paced (if perhaps just a touch too short). I know next to nothing about the actual Amityville events, so I can’t tell you how much of the book pulls from them and how much springs completely from Ostow’s imagination. What I can tell you is that Ostow excels at creating a haunting mood, one that isn’t driven by gore or things that jump out at you. It’s a slow burn, and by the end, most readers should be deliciously scared. Keep the lights on.

The In-Between by Barbara Stewart
The voice is what makes this book stand out from other is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-ghost stories. Ellie is fourteen, depressed, and on her way to a new town with her parents to make a fresh start. On the way there, her family’s car is involved in a crash which kills one of her parents and her cat. Ellie herself is seriously injured, but she pulls through. In her new home, she meets Madeline, a beautiful, perfect girl who quickly becomes her best friend. But then Madeline is gone, and Ellie finds herself adrift without her, struggling once again to put together the broken pieces of her life – and mostly failing.

Ellie’s story is difficult to read sometimes – she’s in such pain, and her voice is so achingly fourteen. It would take a hard heart not to be transported back to one’s own adolescence while reading this. Though I didn’t experience the same exact problems as Ellie, Stewart’s writing made me acutely aware of just how everything felt at that time in my life. Fourteen year olds experience things differently than adults. Sometimes it hurts to remember that. This is a first person story, told through Ellie’s journals (though it doesn’t feel overwhelmingly like an epistolary novel) and we are close, so very close, to Ellie as narrator. It’s possible she’s unreliable. What’s more likely, at least to me, is that Ellie just doesn’t know what’s going on. She can’t trust her own experiences, so we as readers can’t either. This is a short, intense read that should resonate with a lot of teens, many of whom will see themselves in Ellie.

A Few Cybils Reads

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Cybils nominations close tomorrow (have you nominated your favorite YA SFF yet?), and all Round 1 panelists, including myself, are deep into their reading. Here are a few recent reads.

Dark Metropolis by Jaclyn Dolamore
I started off my Cybils reading with this atmospheric novel inspired by Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis. I don’t know much about the film – aside from the fact that it exists – so I went into the book pretty blind. Happily, I really enjoyed it. It’s told from the third person perspective of three different teens: Thea, a girl who works at a cocktail bar whose father died in the war and whose mother suffers from “bound sickness” due to her husband’s death; Nan, a co-worker of Thea’s who wakes up one day in an underground prison where she’s forced to do menial work for no pay; and Freddy, who has the ability to bring people back from the dead.

The three teens’ stories intertwine, coalescing to tell a story about a massive conspiracy featuring forced labor, dark magic, and the beginnings of a revolution. The plot is quite complex, and the shifting perspectives help to illuminate it piece by piece, making for an engaging read. The place and time of the story is never specified, but it feels a little 1920s, post- World War I-ish. (Dolamore has stated on Goodreads that she intended it to be 1927 Germany, which fits.) This is a moody, creative story that would be a good fit for fantasy readers looking for something a little different.

The Devil’s Intern by Donna Hosie
Mitchell was hit by a bus and now he’s dead. As luck would have it, he’s ended up in Hell, and he’s landed the prestigious position of intern to the Devil with a capital D (not to be confused with the lower-case devils as all other denizens of Hell are called). He spends his time hanging out with his three best friends – all teenagers who died in different eras of history, including a Viking warrior – and trying his best to please his immediate boss, Septimus, and avoid the Big Boss, the Devil. Things really get going when Mitchell learns that Septimus has a device that will take the user out of Hell and fling him – plus any tagalongs – to any point in history. Naturally, Mitchell decides to use the device to prevent his death. He initially tries to do it alone, but his friends insist on coming along.

This is a time travel story and it makes great use of the device. The reader visits each of Mitchell’s friends’ lives, at the point of their deaths, and it’s here that Hosie shows what a great plotter she is. It reminded me a little bit of the time travel in Prisoner of Azkaban. The tone is different, but the philosophy behind the time travel is the same. We even get a scene that calls to mind Harry saving himself from the dementors – though the end result is very different.

This is a really enjoyable, funny, and often moving read – just don’t think about the premise too hard.

Prince of Shadows by Rachel Caine
In her latest, Rachel Caine leaves modern vampires behind and instead tackles Shakespeare’s Verona. This is a re-telling of Romeo and Juliet from Benvolio’s point of view, though Caine does make some major adjustments to the original story. Benvolio is the titular Prince of Shadows, called such because he wears a disguise and robs the wealthy residents of Verona at night, stealing from them for the thrill of it – and occasionally for revenge.

Benvolio’s two best friends are Romeo and Mercutio. Romeo is just as insipid as Shakespeare wrote him to be, but his feelings for Juliet are the result of a curse rather than youthful foolishness. The biggest change to Shakespeare’s story is Mercutio, who is gay in Caine’s re-telling, a fact which propels much of the story’s conflict. It’s a wise change that adds a lot of emotional depth to the story. Benvolio himself pines after Rosaline (as Romeo does at the beginning), but that relationship is pretty underdeveloped. Rosaline doesn’t actually get a lot of page time. The book is at its most successful when it explores the thorny friendship between Benvolio, Romeo, and Mercutio. A bit of magic near the end makes this a fantasy story, though it’s fairly light. Caine incorporates some of Shakespeare’s dialogue in an unobtrusive way that feels natural. The story is a bit overlong but a worthwhile read for fans of classics retold.

Cybils – Thoughts & Considerations

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For the past three years, I’ve been a Round 2 judge for the Cybils, first for YA SFF, then graphic novels, then YA SFF again (renamed speculative fiction). This year, I decided to challenge myself by indicating in my application that while I’d prefer Round 2, I’d be open to Round 1 as well.

And the universe (well, Sheila Ruth, category chair extraordinaire) answered. This year, I’m a Round 1 judge for YA speculative fiction.

I certainly read more than your average person, but the number of books I read per year usually hovers around 100, and that includes graphic novels. This number pales in comparison to a lot of other bloggers. Round 1 judges will often read that amount of books just during the judging phase itself, a space of 2-3 months (this category received over 200 nominations last year). So I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to keep up.

Now that I’ve passed my first weekend of intensive Cybils reading (nominations officially opened Oct. 1), I can say my fears were unfounded. I’ve read five books in five days and am partway through three others. While I could always read whenever I liked during my leisure time before, I’ve found that holing myself up in my reading room at home with the excuse that this reading is required gives me a special kind of pleasure. It’s also great fun to see how many books and pages I’ve read compared to other Round 1 judges across all categories, which the Cybils database tracks. It’s not a competition (I keep telling myself), but it does help give me the kick in the pants I might need.

As always, the Cybils awards get me reading books I never would have picked up otherwise (like Prince of Shadows by Rachel Caine, a re-telling of Romeo and Juliet from Benvolio’s point of view. I hadn’t even heard of this one, but it was cleverly done and well-written). Knowing this, I’m excited to give new things a try, even – gasp – paranormal romance. The nominations are rolling in and my to be read list grows daily (or perhaps hourly), but there are still many worthy books that haven’t been nominated yet. I’ve created a list of titles – some I have read, some I haven’t – that I think should be considered by us Round 1 judges. Perhaps you have read some of the books below and think they deserve a shot? If so, all you have to do is visit this page, read the instructions, and nominate! You can only nominate one book per category, so pick your favorite.

  • Mortal Danger by Ann Aguirre
  • Trial By Fire by Josephine Angelini
  • Avalon by Mindee Arnett
  • Independent Study by Joelle Charbonneau
  • Of Metal and Wishes by Sarah Fine
  • Circle of Stones by Catherine Fisher
  • Half Bad by Sally Green
  • The Klaatu Terminus by Pete Hautman
  • While We Run by Karen Healey
  • Vitro by Jessica Khoury
  • Defy by Sara B. Larson
  • Stitching Snow by R. C. Lewis
  • The Young Elites by Marie Lu
  • Firebug by Lish McBride
  • Infinite by Jodi Meadows
  • V is for Villain by Peter Moore
  • The Vault of Dreamers by Caragh O’Brien 
  • Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch
  • Sekret by Lindsay Smith
  • Stray by Elissa Sussman
  • The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas
  • Of Monsters and Madness by Jessica Verday
  • Lark Rising by Sandra Waugh
  • In the Shadows by Kiersten White and Jim Di Bartolo