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Cybils 2017 Finalists

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The finalists for the 2017 Cybils were posted on Monday! I’m proud of the work our Round 1 YA speculative fiction panelists did this year, and we’ve selected a great group of fantasy, science fiction, and other fun weirdness for your reading enjoyment. Here’s the link to the list with annotations.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Song of the Current by Sarah Tolcser

The Hearts We Sold by Emily Lloyd-Jones

The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths and Magic by F. T. Lukens

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

There were definitely a few books I loved that missed out on being on this final list: Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson, Dare Mighty Things by Heather Kaczynski, and Avi Cantor Has Six Months to Live by Sacha Lamb.

It’s all in the hands of Round 2 now – I can’t wait to see which title they pick as the winner.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part IV

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Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

This might be the first ever media tie-in novel I’ve ever read, and it’s a really good one. It features teenage Diana and her first adventure off of Themyscira and in the human world. It’s set in the present day, so I’m not sure how it actually aligns with the movie (it doesn’t seem like it does at all?) and whether this is actually canonical or if it’s just licensed fan fiction. Regardless, it’s a great story.

When a human girl named Alia washes up on the shores of Themyscira, Diana risks everything – including her right to live with her Amazon sisters on the island – to save her life. Alia is being hunted by powerful people who believe she is the Warbringer, a descendant of Helen of Troy who simply by existing has the ability to bring about a cataclysmic war. Diana and Alia team up with a few other human teenagers to elude Alia’s hunters, hoping to get Alia to a particular place in Greece that will nullify her warbringer ability.

The book is action-packed, funny (Diana learning about odd human customs never gets old), and quite deep. Alia is biracial, Greek on her dad’s side and Black American on her mom’s side, and this provides a real-life example of the metaphor that Diana represents: a fish out of water feeling in your own family and your own culture, of straddling two places and not really belonging in either. Romances are hesitantly formed, friendships are tested, and there’s a shocker of a twist near the end – but one that sharp-eyed readers who trust themselves will have seen coming. Bardugo is a fine writer and she was a perfect choice to tell this story.

 

The Ravenous by Amy Lukavics

This is Lukavics’ third novel, and it’s taught me that she can be relied upon to provide all the chills a good horror novel usually brings. The Cane family looks loving and tight-knit to the outside world, but in reality, their relationships are highly dysfunctional. The father is always away for work (he’s in the military), leaving the mother to take care of the five Cane sisters on her own. She’s depressive and spends days – or even weeks – at a time in bed, leaving the eldest daughter, Juliet, to take care of the other four. Resentment abounds. Things come to a head in an argument where the youngest daughter, Rose – beloved by all her sisters – falls down the stairs in a horrible accident and dies. Only in Lukavics’ world, death is not permanent, and when the girls’ mother finds a way to resurrect Rose, she comes back…different, with a hunger that can only be satisfied by human flesh.

There aren’t a lot of surprises in this novel, since what I wrote about above is all revealed on the jacket flap. This is essentially a zombie novel, but Lukavics makes it her own with the pitch-perfect depiction of the twisted relationship between the sisters (which only grows more twisted as the girls try to find a way to keep Rose alive the second time) and the no-holds-barred descriptions of murder and cannibalism. Lukavics does not shy away from the gruesome, and the penultimate chapter will shock even those readers who saw the events coming. The writing felt a bit weaker to me than in her previous two books; there were times when an awkward sentence drew me out of the story. But overall this is really solid horror for readers who like their scares explicit and messy.

 

A Few Cybils Reads – Part III

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Dare Mighty Things by Heather Kaczynski

Seventeen year old Cassie has been chosen to compete for a spot in an elite NASA program, one shrouded in mystery. All she knows is that there is room for a special mission to space – possibly further than humanity has ever gone before – for a young crew member, someone under 25 who will bring something special to the program. She and the other competitors must go through a rigorous set of trials which will test them physically, intellectually, and psychologically. Two people will be selected: the winner and an alternate. Cassie is determined to win, but of course, not all is what it seems.

This book ticks so many of my boxes: non-astronauts being sent into space, imaginative futuristic tech, the possibility of alien contact, and a plot full of twists and secrets. The cast is tremendously diverse, as it should be. If the program is truly gathering the best and brightest young people from all over the world, most of them are not going to be white. Protagonist Cassandra Gupta is an American of Indian descent on her father’s side of the family (her mother is white). She’s asexual, and there’s a really lovely conversation she has with a friend she makes during the competition, who is bisexual, about how both asexuality and bisexuality are totally normal and fine. Cassie is a great main character in general: she’s incredibly driven, and while she does develop deep friendships during the program (something she’s always struggled with), she never loses that drive that defines her; she just learns to balance it better. The competition, which takes up the majority of the book, is exciting and unique, and there’s a mega twist at the end that will make teens want the sequel right this second. Highly recommended.

All Rights Reserved by Gregory Scott Katsoulis

Speth Jime lives in a future America where everything is copyrighted, even words. This means that whenever a person speaks (or writes), the speaker must pay the copyright holder for each word, automatically deducted using a futuristic type of bracelet each person wears. Names are copyrighted, as are most gestures. The values of each fluctuate according to the market, much like the value of goods and services do today. There are a few things still in the public domain, but not enough to be able to communicate in any meaningful way without spending a fortune. Kids can speak freely until age 15, when they give their first speech and begin paying for their words. When Speth turns 15, something horrifying happens, and she decides to never speak again. This sets in motion a chain of events far beyond Speth could have anticipated.

While Katsoulis never quite succeeded in getting me to fully suspend my disbelief regarding his concept, which is taken to the most extreme of extremes, he does raise thought-provoking questions about intellectual property, freedom of expression, and how to balance the two. In Speth’s world, the Bill of Rights no longer exists, and the concept of freedom of speech is obsolete. The gulf between the poor, like Speth’s family (who have their debt for unpaid copyright infringement handed down from generation to generation), and the rich (who own the words and gestures and collect vast sums of money) is enormous. Teens who are still into dystopias will find a fresh and mostly relevant concept here, though the pace in the last third drags.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part II

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Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller

This was really fun! Sal is a thief who decides to try out for a position as part of the queen’s “left hand,” a group of soldier-assassins who protect the queen and carry out her wishes (mainly orders to kill enemies of the state). Each person is named for a ring the queen wears, and the past Opal has just died, which means there’s an opening. Tryouts are brutal: candidates are given free reign to kill each other, provided they don’t get caught, and they’re put to additional tests as well, like avoiding poisons in their meals. Sal tries out for Opal in order to escape a (likely brief) life as a thief, but also to enable them to take revenge upon the people who destroyed their home and family a few years ago.

Sal is gender-fluid, and to them (Sal’s preferred pronoun according to the author), this means some days they feel more female, and some days they feel more male. Sal directs the other characters to address them as “he” when wearing typically male clothing and “she” when wearing typically female clothing (gender roles are a thing in Sal’s world). Sal’s gender fluidity is an important part of the story, but it doesn’t dominate it, and Sal experiences acceptance as well as pushback (but no outright violence) by various characters when it comes to their gender identity. The story itself is exciting, fast-paced, and bloody. There are a few really fun ancillary characters, like Sal’s assigned maidservant, and a sweet romance between Sal and a noble girl. Sal’s world has an interesting (albeit not the most original) history, which I hope is expanded upon in the sequel (this is the first book in a duology). Recommended for fans of action-heavy fantasy and those seeking a window or a mirror to a person we don’t see represented much in fiction.

The Beast is an Animal by Peternelle Van Arsdale

I’ve been wanting to read a good horror novel lately (YA horror provides just about the right amount of scares for me), and this one – about two soul eaters and the teenage girl who must fight them off, even as she feels pulled to become one of them – seemed like a good prospect. When the soul eaters kill all the adults in Alys’ town, she’s taken to the town of Dafeid, where the Beast (which the townspeople believe is connected to the soul eaters) is an ominous, unseen presence. The people of Dafeid have reacted to the news of the soul eaters in the town over by embracing a strict religion, where people are frequently killed as witches and neighbor spies on neighbor. The setting is fictional, but it resembles a vaguely historical Wales, which is not something we see in YA very often.

The writing is often lovely, but I found the plot dragged a bit. Much of Alys’ struggles are internal, and while that works for some stories, it was just never as compelling as it could have been here. The ending was a foregone conclusion, which means I never felt the urge to continue reading – that need to turn the next page to see what would happen next. Still, the atmospheric writing will appeal to some teens, and the idea of the soul eaters is intriguing. Their introduction in the beginning of the book is especially creepy. (Also that cover is beautiful.)

A Few Cybils Reads – Part I

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The Adjustment by Suzanne Young

The Program, the government’s attempt to end the suicide epidemic among teenagers by forcibly wiping the memories of depressed or suicidal teens, has been exposed and ended. Teens who went through it are being reintegrated into society. One of these returners is Tatum’s boyfriend, Weston. He doesn’t remember her at all, but Tatum is sure that their connection can be rekindled. When she hears about the Adjustment, a system that uses donor memories to help bring back erased memories in Returners, she’s skeptical but optimistic. Of course, because this is a Program novel, nothing about the Adjustment is what it seems.

Suzanne Young knows how to write teens that act and speak like teens. At this point, her series has grown a bit stale for me (this is the fifth book in the series, which consists of three sets of duologies), but readers who love her style of writing and love the conceit behind this series (which has always felt a bit thin to me) will enjoy this installment. Familiar characters from the other duologies make important appearances, which is always fun for series regulars. I appreciated the direction Young ultimately took Tatum and West’s relationship, and a twist ending will spur readers to grab the next volume in their story as soon as possible.

 

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

I love a good fairy tale retelling, and this is a really good one. It’s a take on Snow White that divides its time equally between Lynet, the Snow White character, and Mina, the stepmother character. Lynet is the girl made of snow – she was crafted by a magician from snow and the magician’s blood in the dead queen’s image at the behest of the king. Mina is the girl made of glass – she was ill as a child and her father, the same magician who created Lynet years later, crafted her a glass heart to save her life. When Mina marries Lynet’s father, the two (woman and girl) become close. But the machinations of the men in their lives – the king and the magician – eventually pit them against each other.

This is an explicitly feminist reimagining of the classic story, with the men in power doing their best – both actively and passively – to prevent girls and women from realizing and acting upon their own power, even from forming deep and lasting friendships with other women. Both Mina and Lynet are told from an early age that if anyone ever loves them, it will be for their beauty. They internalize this message, and their actions are based alternately on accepting it and lashing out against it. Bashardoust’s writing is really beautiful, and she adds layers to each of her characters slowly and deliberately. Mina is no villain, and readers will desperately wish for a happy ending for both leads, even when it looks like one’s happiness can only be secured with the demise of the other.