STACKED

books

A Memoir, a Novel, and a Graphic Novel

|

Triumph by Carolyn Jessop
My interest in religious cults continues, apparently. This is Carolyn Jessop’s continuation of the story she began in Escape. It focuses largely on her involvement with the raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas in 2008. While the children taken in the raid were eventually all returned to their families (which Jessop believes was the wrong move to make), the raid did result in several prosecutions and convictions of FLDS men for allowing underage marriages to occur. Jessop testified at some of these trials/hearings and talks a lot about how trying it was for her and her family, but that she also found courage and power in it. The second part of the book goes into how she found the strength to succeed as a single mother with eight children in a world that didn’t understand her (and vice versa). She writes about what she learned from her grandmothers and how she leaned on the welfare system as well as how she drew from her own well of strength and believes others can learn from her example. She prefaces this by stating that at her speaking engagements, many people asked her about these things and she thought it was worth exploring. I agree, but the number of Goodreads reviewers who lambast her for being full of herself or “inserting too many of her own opinions” are alarming. She believes she is strong and extraordinary, and she is. It reminds me a lot of that social experiment that went around the internet a few weeks ago where women accept compliments and then get hate for it. People tell Carolyn Jessop she is extraordinary but then expect her to declaim it. I’m glad she doesn’t.

Audiobook borrowed from my library.

Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen
I read Hellisen’s YA book, When the Sea is Rising Red, a few years ago and was impressed by the lovely writing but let down by the story. The blurb for her middle grade, Beastkeeper, was intriguing and the book was short enough that I felt like I wouldn’t be wasting too much of my time if I ended up not enjoying it. It’s about a girl, Sarah, whose mother leaves her one day, and whose father slowly starts turning into a beast. He leaves her at her grandmother’s house and she learns of a curse going back two generations in her family that causes a person to turn into a beast when they fall in love – or something like that. The mythology is interesting but it just never really came together. I’m still a little puzzled by it. Moreover, the characters always felt like they existed at a remove from the reader, something that may just be characteristic of Hellisen’s writing, as I felt this way about her other book as well. Promising, but ultimately just OK.

Review copy received from the publisher. Beastkeeper is available now.

Dragons Beware by Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado
The first book in this graphic novel series for kids, Giants Beware, was a favorite of mine in 2012, and I was part of the judging panel that chose it as a Cybils winner that year. Dragons Beware brings back all of the delightful characters – fierce fighter Claudette, her little brother Gaston who has a fondness for baking (but has resolved to give it up until he too can learn to fight), and her friend princess Marie. This time, they take on the dragon that maimed her father in order to reclaim his sword. This book chronicles yet another funny, exciting adventure with full-color, expressive artwork. The characters genuinely care about each other, they’re all brave in their own way, and Aguirre and Rosado clearly respect their individual strengths. While Claudette is a tomboy, the book handily dismisses the notion that a girl who want to be a princess and loves frilly dresses (Marie) can’t also fight and be brave and save her friends. And Gaston is precious as ever as he learns to accept his own uniqueness rather than trying to emulate others. Another home run.

Finished copy received from the publisher. Dragons Beware is available today!

Old Books, New Titles: Cynthia Voigt’s (Tales of the) Kingdom Series

|

One of my most favorite books from when I was a child is On Fortune’s Wheel by Cynthia Voigt, the second book in a loosely-connected non-magical fantasy series called the Kingdom. The other books in the series are Jackaroo, Wings of a Falcon, and Elske. While they’re all fantastic, On Fortune’s Wheel occupies a special place in my heart – it was the first I read and it fundamentally changed my idea of what a book could be. It was set in a made-up land, but it didn’t have any magic. It dealt with slavery in a way that seemed very frank to me at the time. I learned what an amanuensis was and how to pronounce it. It made me see personal identity in new ways (I read certain sections of the book centering around this idea so often I have them committed to memory). The protagonist had sex (the fade-to-black kind, but it was there). And it ended with the girl deciding what was best for her, what she really wanted, and then doing it. And she was happy. I was in middle school when I read it, and I think these books are just right for that age group.

Voigt has always garnered much (deserved) recognition for the Tillerman cycle (Homecoming won a National Book Honor, Dicey’s Song the Newbery Medal, and A Solitary Blue a Newbery Honor), and those books tend to eclipse a lot of her other work. I always wished that her fantasy books were discussed a bit more, which is why I was so pleased to see that Atheneum is re-releasing the Kingdom books with a new look and new titles in May of this year.

With the re-release, the titles have been homogenized and simplified greatly. Jackaroo is now The Tale of Gwyn, On Fortune’s Wheel is The Tale of Birle, Wings of a Falcon is The Tale of Oriel, and Elske is The Tale of Elske. The entire series has been renamed The Tales of the Kingdom to match. I’m of two minds about the title changes. On the one hand, I like that they match each other, that it’s immediately apparent they belong in the same series. I also like the legend-like feel they give to the stories. This works especially well for Jackaroo, which is about a Robin Hood type of figure and the legends told about him. It also works well for the series as a whole: the books are loosely connected not by re-use of characters, but by stories – legends – passed down about these characters generations later.

On the other hand, the titles are a bit boring. Voigt’s fantasy character names aren’t terribly original (they’re kind of cliche, actually, but I forgive her) and so I don’t think they feature all that well in the titles. I think the original titles are more interesting and – with the exception of Elske – better reflect the meaning of the stories themselves.

I actually really loved some of the older covers for the books. At one point, they featured Vermeer paintings, which I found terribly romantic. Vermeer is one of my favorite painters and a big reason is because he is forever connected to these books in my mind. Here are three of the Vermeer covers (I don’t think Wings of a Falcon ever had one):

The 2015 releases aren’t the first time the covers have been redesigned. Simon Pulse published some paperbacks in 2003 that still look pretty modern to me, in that a lot of current fantasy novels feature an object central to the story on the cover. Again, Wings of a Falcon seems to have been left out.

I like the new designs, pictured at the top of this post, though I think they’re pretty generic (much like the titles). They skew a little more middle-grade for me, probably because they’re illustrated. On Edelweiss these books are listed as YA – grades 7 and up. When I read them, the books were located in the J section (though to be fair, YA sections weren’t really around much then), and I’d say the writing is more of a middle school YA than a high school YA. The cover for the Tale of Elske is the most interesting by far. Frustratingly, Edelweiss doesn’t have the cover for the Tale of Birle up yet. Don’t they realize that’s the one I’m most interested in?

Have you read these books? What’s your take on the new titles and new designs?

A Couple of Quick Reviews

|

Stray by Elissa Sussman
Elissa Sussman’s debut novel reworks the Cinderella story in a pretty unique way. Rather than focus on the orphan girl or her stepsisters, Stray focuses on the fairy godmother. In Sussman’s world, young ladies are to keep to The Path – a strict set of rules for behavior – and if they don’t, they’re exiled. All girls have some level of magic within them, but The Path mandates that they exercise tremendous control over it and basically never use it. Aislynn, unfortunately, can’t keep her magic contained, and at the ball where she hopes to meet a prince and fall in love, she loses control. She’s sent a school to learn how to be a Fairy Godmother to some other princess, a school where The Path is enforced even more strictly. It’s Aislynn’s last chance. If she fails at this task, she’ll be exiled – she’ll be a stray.

I really liked the premise of the book, and thought the main idea behind The Path – that girls must always restrain what makes them unique, what makes them magical – was an interesting one that rings true even in our own non-magical world. Magic is a fantastic metaphor for so many things: girls’ voices or bodies or talents or smarts or humor or anything else that might make men uncomfortable, and therefore must be locked away. I also liked the twist on the fairy godmother, which was quite creative and not something I’d seen before.

There were also some pretty major problems: sketchy world-building (I never quite understood how the magic system worked), a lot of loose ends that just seem dropped rather than deliberately unresolved, and rough, unpolished writing. Stray has some great ideas, but I don’t think anyone would be surprised it’s a debut. Still, the faults don’t completely outweigh the good stuff; this is a worthwhile read. Recommended for readers looking for feminist fantasy or fairy tale re-tellings.

Review copy provided by a friend.

Starlight’s Edge by Susan Waggoner
I am such a sucker for alien books, so I was immediately drawn to Susan Waggoner’s first novel in this series, Neptune’s Tears. Though it had a terrific concept, the book as a whole was pretty mediocre. And yet, there I found myself several months later, reading the sequel, eager to find out what happened next to the characters. That’s the problem (can you call it a problem?) with books with great ideas – even when they’re executed poorly, the ideas are still great.

This is a big spoiler for those of you who haven’t read the first book – it turns out the “aliens” that landed on Earth in the 23rd century were not aliens at all. They’re humans from 1,500 years in the future, sent back to rescue Earth’s literature and art before it’s mostly destroyed in a series of imminent meteor strikes. I was a bit bummed that there weren’t any aliens, but I didn’t care that much because instead I had time travel, and that’s nearly as awesome. In this sequel, Zee travels to David’s home time, leaving everything behind that she’s ever known.

There are a fair number of time travel books around in the YA world, but not many that take it as far as 1500+ years in the future. The opportunities for futuristic technology are really exciting to think about, and Waggoner does provide some cool stuff. Reading about Zee’s acclimation to this unfamiliar time is intriguing. There are other time travelers from the past and they form a sort of support group, giving the reader a window into lots of different time periods, not just Zee’s and David’s. The story takes a turn in the later part of the book, where David travels back in time to Pompeii – another idea that I loved.

The problem with this book, and with its predecessor, is that not much is fleshed out. The books are very short and there’s a lot of plot. They feel more like an outline than a novel. I never got a great feel for the characters and what made them tick. There are interesting details in both time periods, but neither feels fully-formed and alive. There’s just too much shoved into not enough pages. Still, I enjoyed the read, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of hours. Readers who can’t get enough of time travel may find this worth their time.

Book borrowed from my library.

Cybils Wrap-Up: Stats and the Ones That Got Away

|

I read 91 books this year as a panelist for Round 1 YA speculative fiction. Out of those 91, I finished 68 and left 23 unfinished. Of those 68 I finished, 21 were books I had read prior to the start of Cybils season. This means I read 47 books in their entirety (and about 25-50 pages of an additional 23 books) in about three months, which works out to a whole book every two days. That’s quite a lot of reading!

I love our shortlist for YA speculative fiction this year, and I think it’s nearly as perfect as it can get. That said, there were some great reads that I loved but didn’t make the cut. I wish we could have put 15 books on the shortlist! Alas, I will comfort myself by blogging about them and telling you why they are fantastic. I hope you’ll give them a shot and recommend them to the teens in your life.

The Islands at the End of the World by Austin Aslan
I loved this story of survival in a worldwide power blackout featuring a teenage girl with epilepsy set on the islands of Hawaii. Leilani is half Native Hawaiian, half white, about to begin a medical study for an epilepsy treatment when the blackout hits. She and her father must try to make it back to the Big Island from Oahu and reunite with the rest of their family amidst the chaos and danger. The first portion of the novel is pure survival, with a few hints at the source of the global catastrophe. Later on, it becomes clear what’s causing the blackout, and it’s completely unique and very much science fiction. The writing during this portion is particularly lovely and I read it several times over because I loved it so much. There’s also a great portrayal of a positive father/daughter relationship that I don’t see much of in YA fiction.

Not only is this a fast-paced survival story with a really fresh SF twist, it also features a protagonist of color with deep ties to the environment of Hawaii and her Native Hawaiian culture. Being half-white, half-Native, Leilani often feels caught between two worlds, never belonging completely in either. This crisis allows her to explore that tension and eventually determine that she does have a home and a purpose in Hawaii as she’s always wanted. It’s obvious Aslan has a great love for Hawaii as a place and for its people and their culture (he is not Native but lived there for some time). There’s a solid end to this with room for a sequel, which I very much look forward to reading.

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Intense romance, an often-cruel heroine, a unique re-telling of a beloved fairy tale, and lovely writing all combine to make this debut a complete winner. It’s lush and creative and I loved every minute of it. I wrote about it more in February of last year.

Dissonance by Erica O’Rourke
This is a world-building lover’s dream with lots of details about parallel/alternate worlds and how Walkers like protagonist Del travel between them. It’s also partly a thriller featuring a conspiracy and plenty of flawed characters with secret motivations. It’s not a particularly fast read, but it’s creative and deep. More here.

The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson
Well, you all know this is a book of my heart. It’s terrific high fantasy with a spirited heroine who is determined to claim a life of her own. You can read more about my love for it here.

Divided We Fall by Trent Reedy
This is not normally a book I’d pick up my own, but I’m glad I did for the Cybils. It tells of a near future that seems so plausible it’s scary (a showdown between the federal government and a state government over a federal ID law that blooms into full-scale civil war). National guardsman Travis is caught in the middle after his gun discharges at a protest. Travis has a great voice; I feel like he exists in so many of today’s small-town, semi-rural high schools, and voices like his aren’t heard enough in YA fiction. The audio production is one of the best I’ve ever listened to. More here.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part X

|

Cybils season is almost over. I really enjoyed participating in Round 1 this year, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about a few of the nominated titles each week. As it does every year, the Cybils force me to read books I never would have read otherwise, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by many of them. That said, it’s going to be really nice to kick off 2015 reading books that I’ve been so eager to dive into but have neglected due to Cybils duties (The Winner’s Crime, I’m looking at you).

Here’s my last roundup of Cybils titles for the year.

Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
I generally don’t read short story collections. They’re usually uneven, with some stories that are fantastic, some that are awful, and most that fall somewhere in between. Monstrous Affections is no different, though I’m glad I got a chance to read the standouts.

Out of the fifteen stories in the anthology, I really dug two of them: Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (the Successful Kind) by Holly Black and Wings in the Morning by Sarah Rees Brennan. Black’s story is set in outer space and has a sort of Firefly feel, but it’s a touch darker and uses the second person perspective in a clever way to great effect. Plus it has aliens! Brennan’s story is set in a world populated with humans, harpies, elves, and other magical creatures who must keep their border safe from invaders. It opens with our protagonist’s mother telling him he’s half-harpy because she has needs when his father is away and she hooked up with a harpy once because she’s rather adventurous and well wouldn’t you know, the harpy is his biological father and not the human man who raised him. It’s done in such a funny way, I was hooked immediately – there’s so much character and voice in the story. The bulk of the story is a romance between the main character and his best (male) friend/enemy, but there’s also some interesting stuff with the elf culture, whose gender roles are the opposite of humans’ traditional roles. I would definitely read a novel-length book about these characters and their world.

Honorable mentions go to Patrick Ness and Joshua Lewis, whose stories I liked but didn’t love. Also of note is the Introduction, which may be my third favorite “story.” It includes a fun, funny little quiz that sets a great tone for the collection. The book itself is beautiful, slightly oversize with a unique cover and designed with ample white space. It would sit very pretty on your shelf.

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
Sixteen year old Ava narrates this book, telling first the story of her grandmother, then her mother, focusing mainly on the way love has destroyed their lives. This family has always been foolish when it comes to love, and Ava – a girl born with wings – is perhaps no different. The events of the story, beginning with Ava’s grandmother and her doomed siblings, all lead up to a terrible tragedy hinted at by Ava’s brother in cryptic language that becomes clear much too late.

This is a beautifully-written book, using magical realism in a way that makes you hurt. It’s also a tremendous downer. It’s certainly unique and ambitious – it tells a three-generation story in about 300 pages, and it feels fully developed. I think it’s successful in what it tried to do, but it also gave off a very strong adult feeling to me rather than YA. Perhaps that’s because the teenage narrator never felt like the main character – she has an omniscient POV and narrates in a somewhat detached way. It’s her mother, whom we see as a child, then a young woman, then a middle-aged woman, who feels like the most central character. She’s also the one who seems to grow the most. The Goodreads description is a little misleading since Ava herself (as a character, not a narrator) doesn’t enter the picture until pretty late in the book. This is a Candlewick book, which doesn’t surprise me in the least.

Death Sworn by Leah Cypess
Ileni was a magical prodigy, brought to a magic school that promised to sharpen her talents. Key word: was. She’s been losing her magic steadily, trying to hide it from her teachers. Ileni supposes they’ve suspected this, because she’s sent to be the new magic tutor for a group of assassins with whom the magicians have an uneasy alliance. The last two magic tutors died mysteriously, and Ileni figures they were probably murdered. Though Ileni figures her assignment is a death sentence, she’s determined to survive as long as she can, and hopefully figure out what happened to her predecessors.

This is a high fantasy novel with a very strong sense of place. The assassins live in a set of caves, giving the book a claustrophobic feel and enhancing Ileni’s sense of being trapped. It also features a complicated backstory, with shifting alliances, exiled magicians, assassins who may be rebels, and lots of political maneuvering – off the page and on it. What is said is not always what is meant. Ileni must learn to listen for subtext; her life depends on it. She also must learn to defend herself without the aid of her magic, and hide the fact that her magic is disappearing as long as she can. As a reader, I felt Ileni’s persistent danger keenly, and I appreciated that Ileni showed fear and didn’t always know how best to protect herself. There’s a minor romance here, but the real highlight is the plot, whose pieces fall together so neatly and brilliantly at the end. I’m a sucker for a well-plotted book, and this one fits the bill. This is a great read for fans of high fantasy – it’s got magic, kingdoms, royalty, war, and all the other good stuff we love so much.