STACKED

books

Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama

|

Monstrous Beauty is a story set in two time periods. In the late 19th century, naturalist Ezra falls in love with mermaid Syrenka. Their romance sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy. In the present day, 16 year old Hester decides to investigate the curse that has plagued her family for generations – each woman gives birth to a daughter and dies immediately afterward. The book alternates between the two time periods, and it’s slowly revealed how the past story informs the present one.

The paragraph above greatly simplifies what is actually a very complicated novel. Hester’s family’s curse has its roots in Syrenka’s story, which involves her desire to live as a human with Ezra, the prejudice of the local people in the small Massachusetts town, and the other mermaids, who won’t let Syrenka have her happiness without paying a price. (There are also ghosts, but that didn’t negatively impact my enjoyment of the novel.)

The writing in Monstrous Beauty is mature and lovely, making it the book’s standout feature. It’s clear that Fama took great care in deciding which words to use and when. She’s written a moody, immersive story that creates terrific atmosphere without sacrificing plot to do so. When you combine that level of writing with the complex and layered plot, you’ve got a book that is leagues beyond others of its kind in terms of craft.

The mythology here is something to be celebrated. It’s complicated and usually not very pretty. Some of Fama’s mermaids may be beautiful, but they’re also deadly, with immense physical power (plus sharp teeth and fins that kill). The magic they hold is powerful but also frightening and gruesome, with repercussions that echo for decades. It makes for a pretty dark story (and I mean that in a good way).

Syrenka is an especially intriguing character. She is simultaneously gentle and brutal, not adhering completely to either the mermaids’ sense of morality or that of the humans. Her story is so beautifully tragic that it sometimes overshadows Hester’s. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does make Hester’s story the less interesting of the two. Additionally, since the reader gets the past story before Hester figures it out in the present, Hester occasionally seems a bit slow. This is really my only quibble – sometimes Hester’s ignorance went on a bit long and I just wanted her to figure out what I already knew. But otherwise, this is a completely engaging and unique novel.

This book won’t be for everyone. Readers who enjoy fluffy paranormal romances will be disappointed. Monstrous Beauty is not full of happily ever afters, and it’s got some pretty dark stuff in it. But for readers who crave something a little different in their fantasies, who yearn for beautiful writing and a plot that makes them think, Monstrous Beauty is just what they need.

(It is impossible for me to review Monstrous Beauty without mentioning its original cover, which is just a travesty. Suffice to say, Fama’s mermaids would never submit to being photographed for Sports Illustrated. The current cover much more accurately represents the book’s contents.)

Review copy provided by the publisher. Monstrous Beauty will be published September 4.

Guest Post: Fair Coin by E. C. Myers

|

Matthew Jackson returns for a guest review of the YA fantasy/science fiction novel Fair Coin by E. C. Myers. Jackson has been sporadically guesting for us for a while now, most notably his series on Horror Lit 101. An avid reader and reviewer, he reviews adult fiction for BookPage, is an entertainment journalist at Blastr.com, and will have a short story published in the forthcoming issue of Weird Tales Magazine. You can visit him online at his tumblr and Twitter. (Full disclosure: he also happens to be my boyfriend, and I am proud to say that I have significantly increased the number of YA books he reads.)  

I’m not one of those reviewers who groans at genre classifications. Sometimes I think we have too many of them, and sometimes it frustrates me when readers refuse to venture outside of their “paranormal romance” or “urban fantasy” or “contemporary YA” comfort zones, but overall genres are fun for me. That’s all by way of saying I’m a devotee of numerous genres, but it still makes me happy when I find a truly genre-bending book that manages to cleverly blend conventions while going its own way. It makes me even happier when the book in question is shelved in the young adult section, an area which – in the age of countless paranormal melodramas and dystopian rebellion adventures (neither of which I mean any offense to, by the way) – could use all the genre-bending it can get.

Sixteen-year-old Ephraim’s life is plunged into chaos when he comes home one day to find his mother slumped over the kitchen table after a suicide attempt. That’s problem enough, but things get even more harrowing when he discovers why his mother tried to kill herself: earlier that day, she was called to the hospital to identify the body of her dead son. A boy who looks just like Ephraim is dead, and among his belongings (which Ephraim’s mother brought home from the morgue) is a mysterious coin.

Curious and scared, Ephraim takes the coin and accidentally discovers that it seems to grant wishes. The wishes start small, little experiments to test the object’s power. But as the wishes grow, and as Ephraim learns what the coin is capable of, he realizes that every time he changes something voluntarily, something else involuntarily shifts along with it. There’s more than simple magic going on, and as Ephraim tries to hold it together with his best friend, his crush and his mother, he realizes that unless he can come to understand what the coin really is, everything will fall apart.

I’ve talked about this before, and I’m never really sure that I’m making sense when I say it, but I like stories that unfold. There’s nothing wrong with a predictable, direct tale if it’s told well, but my favorite stories are always the ones that feel like every chapter is a discovery rather than a signpost on some big story map. It’s more fun when the story is revealing itself to me rather than pushing me on to the ending. Of course, I want to get to the ending, but I want to feel like I’m experiencing something along the way. Fair Coin is that kind of book. Myers deftly and gracefully weaves fantasy, science fiction, mystery, romance and teenage uncertainties into one tight, compelling package. It’s a page turner that also packs real weight into every chapter, and that’s always a worthy book.

If I have a complaint, it’s the dialogue, but I’m not necessarily blaming Myers for that. His prose is direct yet vivid, his pacing is wonderful and his story is fascinating, but the dialogue never quite feels real to me. There’s too much exposition packed into the mouths of the characters in places, and the human moments sometimes stumble a bit over clumsy lines. But in all fairness, that might just be me. It might ring completely true to teen readers, but even if it doesn’t, the dialogue doesn’t get in the way much.

Fair Coin might not have the same kind of instant appeal that some YA genre novels pack, but if you’re willing to make the leap it’s worth the investment. It’s a tale that twists genres without breaking the rules of any of them, told with fire and confidence and a sense of humor. E. C. Myers has quite simply done something wonderful here, and if you’re frustrated with predictable genre fiction you’ll be glad this book exists.

Finished copy received from the publisher. Fair Coin is available now.

Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott

|

Have I mentioned I like re-tellings of fairy tales? Maybe once or twice (or a dozen times)? I never seem to get tired of them. Cinderella is among my favorite, and Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott is a great example of a stand-out re-telling in a very crowded field.
The setting is feudal Japan – if feudal Japan were a place where a young woman like Suzume, our protagonist, could transform her appearance with a thought.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story is divided into three parts and begins with Suzume at age fourteen at home. It starts violently: her family is killed on the emperor’s orders and Suzume is only able to survive thanks to the help of a kind servant and a clever hiding place. Her mother, who had been away at the time of the attack, soon returns to find her family destroyed. Luckily (?), Suzume and her mother are taken in by a friend of her father’s, whom her mother soon marries – but if you know anything about Cinderella, you know this newfound stepfather is anything but good.
Parts two and three delve into Suzume’s newfound abilities as a shadow weaver, which gives her the ability to change her appearance. This ability comes in handy when she’s on the run from those who mean to do her harm (including an evil stepfather), and it paves the way for her plan for revenge. Suzume means to get back at those who killed her family and ruined her life, and she plans to do so by becoming Shadow Bride. As Shadow Bride – the mistress of the Prince – Suzume would be granted the ear of the Prince and therefore an enormous amount of power. She plans to use this power to rain down vengeance on her stepfather and those who conspired to have her father killed.
Intertwined with all this is a romance with a male shadow weaver, a visiting noble from Africa. There’s the expected tension between Suzume’s need for vengeance and her desire to abscond with her love and forget about what happened in the past. The end is never really in doubt, but it’s a terrific read getting there.
There’s so much of interest here that sets it apart from a standard re-telling. Marriott has created a unique culture in Suzume’s world as well as that of Otieno, her love interest. It was lovely to read a story that was not only NOT set in a Western locale, but that also featured two non-Western leads.
The mythology surrounding the Shadow Bride was particularly fascinating. The young woman selected as Shadow Bride must demonstrate physical grace and perfection. She is almost always a virgin, dances impeccably, says just the right thing, and ingratiates herself with the right people to win an invitation to the ball that will determine if she is selected. This culture is not only interesting, but is also ripe for discussion about the meaning of physical “perfection” and the toll it takes on a person who pretends to be someone she is not.
A little while into the story, Suzume teams up with a previous Shadow Bride (such brides are given this status for a year only) who promises to help Suzume achieve her goal. This Shadow Bride, however, is very different from what she seems – which makes her a thoroughly fascinating ancillary character.
Shadows on the Moon is an easy book to recommend to fantasy lovers. The writing is lovely, the story unique, the themes well-developed, and the voice authentic. It should be at the top of the list for anyone interested in fairy tale re-tellings or anyone looking for a good fantasy.
Review copy received from the publisher. Shadows on the Moon is available now.

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis

|

Sunday Woodcutter is the youngest of seven daughters, all named for days of the week. She is supposed to be “blithe and bonny and good and gay,” but what she really wants is to be interesting. She enjoys writing, but her stories have a nasty habit of coming true in the worst ways, so she writes only about things that have already happened. She’s busily scribbling in her journal in the forest when she encounters a frog. The frog, naturally, can speak. Sunday knows she lives in a magical world, so at the conclusion of their first conversation, she gives him a kiss as a courtesy to try and break the spell. Nothing happens.
Despite this initial disappointment, the two continue to meet each other and a friendship grows. It should come as no surprise to you that the frog does eventually turn back into a man – and it happens rather early on in the story. The rest of the book is concerned with the man-turned-frog-turned-man-again wooing Sunday on his own terms while trying to prevent her from finding out just what happened between him and Sunday’s (now dead) older brother, which could doom their relationship. There’s also a bit of political maneuvering with the king and a couple of fairy godmothers plus some interesting back story about Sunday’s very odd, very magical family.
Enchanted is a strange little book. While it’s predominantly inspired by The Frog Prince, it’s got elements of almost all major Western European fairy tales, including Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, and more. It became a fun sort of game to spot as many as I could. Kontis juggles it all well: it could have seemed like a hodgepodge without any real cohesion, but she neatly avoids that pitfall. Mostly it just seems clever.
I liked that Kontis used The Frog Prince as her springboard but did not limit herself to a mere re-telling. By that I mean she created a new mythology with new magic, injecting some originality into these very old stories. Unfortunately, this is also the story’s weakness. The fairy tale aspects were so easy to understand, but the new elements were often confusing. I suspect that I needed a bit more explanation of the magic as well as Sunday’s family history for it all to really crystallize in my mind.
Still, Kontis’ novel is an overall winner. It’s got some lovely writing, a fun mix of new and old, and an interesting protagonist in Sunday (and her sisters are equally interesting – I particularly liked the one that eloped with a pirate, even though I think she actually gets no physical page time). Hand this to readers who like their retold fairy tales to remain plainly in the fairy tale realm – no modernization required. I suspect it would go over well with fans of Ella Enchanted, but as always, it nowhere approaches that book’s greatness (in fairness to Enchanted, nothing ever does).
Review copy provided by the publisher. Enchanted is available now.

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen

|

This is a really hard book for me to review. Not because I didn’t enjoy it (which I did), but because I think the discussion about it needs to involve a major spoiler. Without discussing the spoiler, the review doesn’t get the chance to say a whole lot of substance (in my view), so I’m going to bite the bullet and weave the spoiler in. Not right at the beginning – I’ll warn you in bold before I start discussing it, so if you’d like to avoid the spoiler, you’re safe reading the first part.
Fourteen year old Sage is an orphan in the country of Carthya. He’s got no family and no money, although he does have a home in a sad little orphanage run by a woman who doesn’t like him (or any of the orphans, really). He gets by in life by stealing: food, money, whatever he can get his hands on. Except one day, someone steals him. That someone is a noble by the name of Conner, and he has big plans for Sage and three other boys he’s taken.
Prince Jaron of Carthya, the heir to the throne, disappeared during a pirate attack at sea a few years ago and has been presumed dead since. Conner intends to make one of his boys into the picture of the prince and place him on the throne. All in the name of patriotism of course: with no apparent heir to the throne, the late king’s advisers are chomping at the bit to be named the next ruler, and it could send the country into civil war, which would in turn make Carthya susceptible to attack by neighboring countries.
None of the boys resemble the dead prince too closely, but Conner is convinced that with the proper training, clothing, and hair dye, he can pull it off. Of course, only one of the boys can be his choice. As to what would happen to the others – well, Conner can’t let anyone talk about his plans to anyone else, can he? Sage isn’t sure if he’s down with this competition, but when the alternative is death, there really isn’t a choice.
WARNING: SPOILER BELOW
I’m an avid review-reader. Before I pick up a book, I go to Goodreads and see what people are saying about it. Sometimes it will convince me to give the book a pass, and sometimes it will make me more excited to read it. In this case, reading reviews helped me spot the spoiler, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. I don’t read reviews with spoilers deliberately, and none of the reviews I read actually revealed the spoiler, but they revealed enough. Really, all they had to do was tell me that the book reminded them of The Thief.
If you’ve read The Thief and you’ve read this far in my review, I bet you can call the ending of The False Prince without even reading the first page. I sure could. Every time I think about this book, I wonder if I would have discovered the twist at the end if I had not read that comparison, and I honestly can’t say. Perhaps. But it would have been harder, it would have taken me longer, and I wouldn’t have been so sure until I got there.
When I first read The Thief, the twist ending is what elevated it from a book I really liked to one I would remember forever. It was all good, but the real joy came in re-reading and determining just where Turner had dropped those hints. In The False Prince, I looked for those hints right from page 1, and they seemed so easy to spot. It makes me struggle to determine the true quality of the book – is the twist a gimmick because it’s predictable and too similar to another middle grade fantasy novel? Or is my experience with The Thief clouding my judgment?
I don’t know the answer to those questions. What I do know is that despite my foreknowledge, I still raced through the book and was completely engaged the entire time. Even though I knew how it would end, I wanted to see how Nielsen got us there. So I can safely say it’s a good book, but I don’t know about great. It’s got plenty of excitement, a lot of action, and a good voice in Sage. Sage’s fellow prince contenders are quite well drawn, as are the two female ancillary characters, though they don’t get a lot of page time. And I definitely plan on reading the sequels. Nielsen can’t use this same trick in them, so I’m interested to see where the story goes.