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The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas

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I went to the Austin Teen Book Festival several days ago, and Sherry Thomas was one author in attendance. She described her book, The Burning Sky, as “Harry Potter with cross-dressing,” which is certainly pithy, but may actually set up many readers for disappointment.

Nothing is Harry Potter. And that is OK.

The Burning Sky is actually quite different. Yes, there is a boarding school, but the whole story is set in 1883, immediately setting a very different tone. (Historical fantasy! I love historical fantasy!) The boarding school (Eton) is also set in the non-magical world, and our protagonist Iolanthe has to pretend to be non-magical herself (as well as a boy) in order to not give herself away. She’s an elemental mage, you see, and she’s been coerced by Titus, the prince of the Domain – also a magical teen pretending to be a normal, though royal, person in the non-magical boarding school – into training with him at Eton, honing her powers, in order to one day bring down the Bane, a powerful, possibly immortal being who rules Atlantis, which in turn subjugates Titus and Iolanthe’s homeland.

It’s a classic fantasy storyline, but told very well. What I found particularly engaging was the world-building, which is quite creative and left me with a feeling that I really knew the place when I finished the book. Like in Harry Potter, the magical world exists alongside the non-magical one, unbeknownst to non-magical people. That’s pretty much where the similarities end.

In Iolanthe’s world, there’s an Inquisitor who works for the Bane, able to worm her way inside someone’s brain, not precisely reading memories, but getting what she needs nonetheless. There’s also a diary full of visions that only shows certain pages depending upon what the reader needs to know. The spells are interesting – there’s one that Titus casts which makes it impossible for Iolanthe’s image to be reproduced in any way, as well as one called an “otherwise” spell that makes it seem like a person named Archer Fairfax had been attending Eton for several months before Iolanthe arrived, when in fact no such person even existed up until that point. My favorite bit, though, is the Crucible: a book that training mages can go inside in order to train with copies of past rulers and great mages, learning how to fight dragons without any danger to their actual selves…most of the time.

I love reading about cool things like this. It reminds me of the possibilities of fantasy. Creativity needn’t be earth-shaking. Even small-ish details like these lend the book uniqueness amidst its often-trodden storyline.

Over the course of the story, Iolanthe and Titus do fall in love. It’s rather slow-burning, which is nice. There’s deserved and long-lasting bitterness from Iolanthe toward Titus. Titus is wonderfully tortured, and Thomas never makes it seem melodramatic. Her career as a romance author is in evidence – she’s very good at it.

I wish I knew more about what exactly Atlantis is. (I was fascinated by the legends of Atlantis as a teenager and am eager to see if Thomas just liked the name or if there is some connection.) We never learn how Atlantis came to power, what it is exactly they do to the citizens they control, or anything about the Bane other than he’s possibly immortal. There’s also a bit near the end that I hoped was more than a plot convenience, but turned out to be just that. It was lazy writing and seemed out of place with the quality of the rest of the book.

All in all, this is very well-done high fantasy and should please fans of the subgenre. It fits very neatly into the list of books we covered in our high fantasy genre profile – magic, mages, new lands, strange creatures, a fight against evil. I’m eager for the sequels, and I hope to see more like it in the future.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Burning Sky is available now.

Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst

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Eve doesn’t know who she is. She only knows what people tell her: that her name is Eve, that she is in witness protection, that a serial killer from another world is out to get her. She learns she has magical powers, but whenever she uses them, she suffers more short-term memory loss. Despite her memory problems, she begins to discover that the people who work for witness protection may not actually have her protection as their primary goal. What’s more, she’s seeing visions of a storyteller and a magician at a strange circus, and they’re torturing her in these visions. She wonders if these visions could be her memories coming back to her.

Most of the book focuses on Eve’s struggle to remember what happened to her in the past, whatever it was she had to do with this mysterious serial killer. That’s what the people in witness protection want, and it’s what she wants, too, really. She wants her memories back. She wants to know who she is. The problem is, everyone around her is lying to her. She finally finds a boy she can trust, and together they set out to determine the truth.

I had hopes for this one, but they didn’t pan out. The book is slow, and not much happens for the first two thirds aside from Eve doing magic, passing out, and seeing visions. It makes for a pretty dull book. Leisurely-paced books aren’t inherently bad, but when the pace is so glacial that you contemplate simply skipping to the end so you can be done with it, that’s not great. It didn’t help that for most of the book, the plot seems so very pedestrian.

Despite its common elements (visions, amnesia, witness protection), this is actually a pretty original book. But you won’t know that until the end, when the nature of Eve’s visions is revealed. I’m not sure the payoff, which is intensely weird (but not in a bad way, really), is worth the slog to get there. I wonder if hints to this big revelation at the end could have been threaded through the earlier parts of the novel more successfully. Then again, I wonder if the only way to do this is through more visions, and I certainly didn’t want any more of those.

Much of my aversion to this book is subjective. I dislike reading about visions, dreams, flashbacks, or anything related. (The Harry Potter books, for all the love I bear for them, drag whenever Harry has his prophetic dreams.) Truth be told, my attention wanders and I find myself skimming those sections. So the creepy descriptions and neat turns of phrase that populate those sections were largely wasted on me. Perhaps others get more out of them.

I also have to admit that I have a big aversion to circuses. You may be thinking “Kimberly, why did you read this book? It is full of things you know you do not like.” Well. That is a valid question. I loved Vessel. I like Sarah Beth Durst’s writing. I like that she doesn’t stick to certain types of fantasy and branches out, writing a bunch of different subgenres. I hoped this one would work for me, despite the warning signs. Alas, it did not.

I read an arc of this book, and the point of view changed from third person to first person abruptly near the end of the book. At that point, the book became much stronger, though that also may be due to the fact that the plot also picked up at the same time. I’m very curious to see what the POV is in the final copy, as this strange shift seems like an editing mistake rather than a deliberate stylistic choice.

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

Mini-Trend: Seven Kingdoms

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I love maps in my fantasy novels. There was a period in my teen years when I wouldn’t check out a book unless it had a map. A detailed, colorful one, preferably. Looking at so many maps over the years, I’ve picked up on a few trends. The most recent one I’ve noticed: seven kingdoms, seven realms, seven countries.

Often the number is included in the official name of the world. Sometimes it’s just a descriptor. Seven has always been popular with fantasy writers, I think (J. K. Rowling has said the number has always held a special magic for her, and she’s not alone), so I suppose it’s not surprising to see. But a reader can’t be blamed when the worlds all blend together in her head as a result.

Links lead to places where you can see the official maps. I feel certain there are some I missed – let me know in the comments.

The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros
from the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin

I suspect some of the popularity of the seven kingdoms/realms/countries can probably be traced to Martin. Despite the much-used phrase “the seven kingdoms,” even some fans are confused as to what the seven kingdoms really are – the seven countries of the region before they were conquered and united by Aegon, which happens before the book series begins.

The Seven Kingdoms
from the Seven Kingdoms trilogy by Kristin Cashore
It’s not only the name of the world, but the name of the book series as well.

The Seven Realms
from the Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima
Same for Chima’s series, which I’m sure I’ll get around to reading some day.

The Seven Kingdoms
from Prophecy by Ellen Oh
By the time I got to this book I was thoroughly confused (though Oh’s series is refreshingly based on a historical culture of the East rather than the West).

The Seven Kingdoms of Annar
from the Pellinor series by Alison Croggon
I’ve had the first book in this series sitting on my shelf for a while, but haven’t dug in.

The Lumatere Chronicles barely escapes this list with eight countries in its world of Skuldenore (though it can be argued that with Lumatere in such an ambiguous place for most of the book, it essentially only has seven).

Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick

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Becky Randle has always considered herself pretty plain. Not an uggabug, mind you, but nothing special either. She lives in a trailer with her mother, an obese woman whom everyone else seems to write off, but who Becky knows is the kindest, most wonderful person in the world. 
But then her mom dies, and Becky is left rudderless. She’s just graduated high school, she has a part-time job at a corner store that she hates, she’s not going to college, and her mom was the only bright spot in her life – aside from her best friend, Rocher (named after the candy). Shortly before her mother died, she cryptically told Becky to embrace the magic when it’s offered to her – and sure enough, it is. She’s contacted by Tom Kelly, the world’s foremost fashion designer, who promises to make her three dresses which will magically transform her into the most beautiful woman in the world.
Sure enough, the first dress she puts on – a hot red number – does just that. When she’s alone, Becky looks in the mirror and sees her average self. But when anyone else is with her, she looks like Rebecca, the knock-out, the stunner. Tom Kelly and his dresses take Becky on a wild ride – the cover of Vogue, a starring role in an action movie opposite the hottest actor, and even a meeting with the prince of England. Then Tom Kelly reveals the catch (you knew there would be a catch, didn’t you?). Becky is not so sure of her transformation, not so sure of Tom Kelly, and very afraid of what being permanently Rebecca would do to her life.
The standout of this novel is Becky’s voice. She’s sarcastic, funny, self-deprecating, and vulgar (though not nearly as vulgar as Rocher). Her story is told in first person, so you really get a good feel for who she is through her own eyes. It’s obvious her self-esteem isn’t very high. It’s also obvious she’s in over her head with this whole situation. Her friend Rocher is a breath of fresh air. I fully expected Rocher to be written as initially supportive but eventually envious, complete with a falling-out and ultimate reconciliation at the end of the book. That’s not at all what happens. Rocher is beside Becky’s side the entire time, and Becky never abandons Rocher for any of her new, more famous, acquaintances. Plus, Rocher is freaking hilarious.
The weakest part of the book is Becky’s romance with the prince, which is fun but not very well-developed. It seems he and Becky go from meeting each other to being an acknowledged couple with no steps in between. It seems rushed, like perhaps Rudnick just wanted to skip ahead to the good stuff. For all that the prince is a good-looking, funny, kind-hearted, famous, and very wealthy man, I never felt the swoon that I felt I should have.
I haven’t been as involved in the new adult discussion as Kelly has, but I think Gorgeous fits the bill pretty well. It features a protagonist who is 19 for the majority of the story. She’s no longer in high school. She’s concerned with marriage (in a mostly non-romantic way), with finding a job that will allow her to make a living, with how the world perceives her as an adult and what her legacy would be. For people who don’t go to college after graduation, these are very realistic concerns. (As an aside, I think it’s nice to see a teenager who makes the valid decision to not go to college.) There’s also quite a bit of strong language, which doesn’t make a book NOT young adult, but it does contribute to a more mature tone.
So is it a good read? Definitely. Is it Printz-worthy? Probably not. The pacing isn’t perfect. More than that, though, the message is just kind of murky. When you write a book about a self-professed “plain” woman who is magically transformed into the most beautiful person in the world, how do you resolve that neatly? How do you make the story true to its world, which values physical beauty, but also prevent it from being total wish fulfillment or a complete downer? I’m not sure Rudnick got it totally right, but then again, I’m not sure it’s possible to get it totally right. And of course, there’s no reason there needs to be a message at all. He gets points for grappling with it in the first place.

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

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Etiquette and Espionage is Gail Carriger’s first novel for teens, set in the same world as her much-acclaimed Parasol Protectorate series for adults. I went into this book pretty blind, not having read any of Carriger’s adult titles or knowing much about the world she created in them. What I did know is that they are funny, romantic, historical, and not your usual paranormal fare. That appealed to me, and the premise of her YA book – about a girl sent to a Victorian finishing school that teaches the traditional womanly arts as well as espionage and murder, covertly – was enough for me to want to read it, despite my general avoidance of paranormal stories.
And Etiquette and Espionage is a lot of fun, mostly. It features a fourteen year old girl named Sophronia who loves to get her hands dirty playing about with the various mechanical creations in her steampunk-y world. This is seen as very unladylike and gets her into trouble. Her mother is fed up with her daughter’s behavior and ships her off to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. There, Sophronia learns that the school is not all that it seems: she’ll learn how to curtsy, but she’ll also learn to kill. 
This information is presented to Sophronia in a very matter of fact way, though she learns a lot of it on her own. The girls and teachers at the school all take it for granted, treating their topics of study as quite natural, and therefore it comes across as quite funny to the reader, who witnesses Sophronia’s bewilderment and dismay. The main plotline, though, involves the theft of a mysterious prototype. Sophronia and her close friend at the school, Dimity, get themselves involved in figuring out just what this prototype is, why it’s so important to so many people, who has stolen it, and where it’s been hidden. 
Etiquette and Espionage is a very funny book. Here’s a line that made me giggle: “A mustache was perched above his upper lip cautiously, as though it were slightly embarrassed to be there and would like to slide away and become a sideburn or something more fashionable.” It’s full of writing like this, so it’s certainly no boring read.
But.
It’s a little uneven. The plot featuring the prototype isn’t terribly exciting (I kept on wanting to go back to Sophronia’s classes and learn more about poisoning people), and the worldbuilding left a lot to be desired.
I think I would have gotten a lot more enjoyment out of the book if I had read the Parasol Protectorate series first, which is concerning, since they target different audiences. I know that the vampires and werewolves play vital roles in the adult series, but here they felt extraneous and not very well-incorporated into the world. Sophronia’s friendship with two other girls at the school, Sidheag and Agatha, is built up pretty late in the book and then dropped. I believe one of those girls has important ties to characters in the adult novels, but again, I wouldn’t know. The prototype, too, remained a mystery to me, though the characters themselves seemed to understand it eventually. Perhaps there is more information about it in the adult novels, too. 
I know many, many YA books are being bought and read by adults now, and maybe some publishers and authors are playing into this, hoping fans of the adult series will buy the YA as well. But it doesn’t sit quite right with me. I want teens to be able to read books targeted for their age group without needing to  read “up” first.
That said, I did have a lot of fun reading Etiquette and Espionage, and I think a lot of teens will too. It’s frequently hilarious, even if the plot and world-building are a bit weak, plus it features a group of girls being taught to spy and kill while also learning the proper way to curtsy. Historical institutions that outwardly teach respectable topics to their female participants while covertly instructing them in violent, dangerous, and/or and illegal pursuits tend to go over well (think of the assassin nuns, Victorian spies, and others that have populated YA books recently).
Review copy received from the publisher.