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books

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

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lie tree hardingeFaith Sunderly and her family are moving temporarily to the island of Vane, where her natural scientist father has been hired to help excavate a dig site. The Reverend Erasmus Sunderly made headlines years ago when several of his fossil finds appeared to verify Biblical stories, something much of the British public desperately needs in this time when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is making waves in the scientific community. But more recently, Faith’s father’s work has come under more scrutiny, and though he tries to hide it from his family, most scientists now consider him a fraud.

Faith is fourteen and hungry for two things: scientific knowledge and her father’s affection. The former cannot come with the latter, however, because Faith’s father is of the common mindset of the time that women and girls are incapable of deep thought and scientific study. So Faith collects her knowledge in private, secretly opening her father’s trunks and sneaking out at night to see what mysterious plant he is keeping in the cave by the sea.

But then the unthinkable happens – Faith’s father is found hanging limply over a tree limb, dead. The people of Vane begin to whisper that he killed himself, but Faith is sure it was murder, and she’s determined to prove it – to unmask the murderer herself and get justice for her beloved father. And she means to do it with the assistance of the plant in the cave, the Lie Tree, a tree that thrives in the dark and will give hazy truths to anyone who feeds it – and the world – lies.

Faith is smart, sometimes scarily so, and her scheme begins as planned. She wants the Tree to reveal the murderer of her father, but in order for that to happen, according to her father’s papers, she must convince the world of a lie. The more people who believe it, the bigger the truth that will be revealed to the liar. Faith is an astute observer of men, so she knows that the easiest lie is one that people want to believe. But Faith is blind about many things too. This book is not just about the lies we tell others, but the lies we tell ourselves.

It’s also about women and girls, then and now. Faith is not an astute observer of women, and watching her interactions with her mother are often painful as an adult reader. Faith herself has bought into the mindset of her father in subtle ways, though she does not realize it. And while the rest of the world has underestimated her, to their detriment, she has underestimated its women, to her cost.

It’s about relationships, too, not just those between parents and children, but between friends, in particular the burgeoning friendship between Faith and a local boy named Paul. It’s such an interesting friendship, one that begins antagonistically and slowly transforms into a partnership, with neither person particularly caring if the other likes them. One of the book’s greatest scenes is between Faith and Paul near the end of the book, where what they’ve shared together has finally bonded them in a lasting way and they reveal their own truths – pieces of themselves – to each other.

The Lie Tree, aside from exploring these often heavy themes I’ve described above, is also a cracking good mystery and revenge story with a fascinating fantasy twist. I was unsure about the identity of the murderer (and even the murder itself) up until the final reveal. It’s a satisfying ending that puts all the pieces together and gives greater meaning to all that came before. And by the end of the book, Faith is fundamentally different from who she was at the beginning, though she is still inimitably herself.

The Lie Tree won the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Book of the Year Award in the UK, one of the few book awards I know of that pits children’s books against adult books. With all the trash articles about young adult literature being published now, it’s not hard to surmise that few adult readers would place a children’s book above an adult book, no matter its quality. But The Lie Tree was chosen, and this fact further illuminates how truly remarkable it is, beating out books by Kate Atkinson and Anne Enright, among others.

I’ve been participating in my workplace’s Mock Printz considerations, and this one is at the top of my list right now. It’s a masterpiece of a book, one that shares something new with each page turned. It’s a book I wish I had written, a book I wish I had read when I was fourteen. Hand this to readers who want a feminist book, who love their genres well-blended, who want their leisure reading to make them think deeply while also telling a hell of a good story.

A Wicked Thing by Rhiannon Thomas

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wicked thing thomasI don’t think I’ll ever get tired of fairy tale retellings. I loved the premise for Rhiannon Thomas’ A Wicked Thing, which focuses on what happens after Sleeping Beauty wakes to find that 100 years have passed and everyone she knew is dead – oh, and she’s supposed to marry the stranger who woke her up.

Aurora’s happily ever after doesn’t start when the prince kisses her. Rather, she’s bewildered by the fact that everyone believes he is her true love, since that was never a part of the story she knew. The story has been embellished over the 100 years she’s been sleeping, and now everyone expects her to marry the prince and help stabilize the kingdom, which has seen many, many kings since Aurora pricked her finger. The current king and queen essentially put her under house arrest, giving her no choice in the matter.

The royal family aren’t the only ones who want to use Aurora for their own ends. There’s a visiting prince who suggests another path for Aurora, but she’s not sure it’s the right one either. She meets a revolutionary boy who wants to overthrow the king (who is quite heavy-handed in his villainy) and use Aurora to help make that happen. And then there’s the evil witch who cursed her in the first place, who has her own designs on Aurora. She’s being pulled in so many directions and she’s not sure she can trust anyone – only herself.

Thomas does a good job portraying just how alone Aurora feels. No doubt many people who know the original or Disney story of Sleeping Beauty have wondered how Aurora must have handled the realization that her entire family and all her friends are dead, and Thomas provides a good explanation. There’s a little bit of magic beyond the initial curse here, too (the “wicked thing” reference in the title), that I felt was a little underdeveloped. Ultimately, the main conflict is what Aurora will decide to do – who will she side with? Is there anyone she can ally with who wants what is best for her, not just to use her to accomplish their own goals? Is it possible for her to have any true friends?

The path Aurora eventually chooses is the only right one, and I was satisfied by it, though it does leave things a bit open-ended. Luckily, there is a sequel! I wouldn’t call this an outstanding example of a fairy tale retelling, but it’s an intriguing one, it’s competently written, and it should satisfy most readers. I look forward to seeing where Thomas takes Aurora next.

Assassin’s Heart by Sarah Ahiers

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assassin's heart ahiersSarah Ahiers’ debut novel, Assassin’s Heart, features a girl who belongs to a culture where murder is worship – provided it follows the correct procedures. Lea Saldana is seventeen years old and already practiced at killing people in service of her death goddess, Safraella. She belongs to the Saldana family, one of nine families in Lovero who are assassins for hire. They often kill people who most would say “deserve” it, but the reasons don’t actually matter in Lovero: as long as the price is paid, the assassins will do the job.

The premise of this one is similar to Robin LaFevers His Fair Assassin, but it is much more difficult for me to swallow. The morality of the characters is pretty foreign to most of our societies, I would say. Even in the His Fair Assassin books, the murders that the girls commit are ostensibly ordered by their god and therefore just. In Lea’s world, all that is required is money. It is the act of killing, not killing for the right reasons, that is the worship. Mitigating the harshness of this somewhat is the belief by Loverans that people killed as worship of Safraella will be reincarnated by her later. Therefore, death is not really permanent, though reborn people will have no memory of prior lives.

When Lea’s family is killed by the Da Vias, one of the Saldanas’ rival families (the families mostly kill each other too, forming and dissolving alliances repeatedly), Lea goes on the run to another country and formulates a plan for revenge. She seeks out a long-banished uncle who did something unspeakable (at least according to the Saldanas) and teams up with another young assassin-in-training, Les, both of whom assist her to different degrees.

The religion of the book is messy, though certainly unique. And the fact that it’s messy isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since most of humanity’s religions are pretty messy in real life too. It’s one of those religions in fantasy books where it seems like it may just be a set of beliefs the characters hold and then morphs into the kind where the gods and goddesses actually appear on the page and do what the characters believe they can do. It’s interesting and nuanced in some ways.

But.

Ahiers never got me to fully suspend my disbelief – that such a powerful culture would exist where this kind of thing was de rigeur and generally accepted. Real people certainly use religion to justify all sorts of terrible things, including murder, but I would say such people are generally fringe and condemned by the majority of believers. Of course, the fact that the culture Lea belongs to is not a copy of a real one can be argued as a positive, and Ahiers does provide a counterpoint in the culture of the country Lea escapes to, where her form of worship is considered barbarous. But I just never bought into it, and I think a lot of teens will have a hard time with it too.

That said, this book does have a lot going for it. The premise, while not perfect, is an engaging one. It’s a revenge story with a lot of action, a little romance, and a few twists. Ahiers’ writing is solid throughout, and while I had a hard time buying into the idea on the whole, I did believe that Lea’s motivations were real, and I didn’t have a hard time rooting for her, despite her contradictions (at one point in the story, someone points out to her that the murder of her family was also an act of worship, and shouldn’t be OK with that considering her own beliefs?). This is an interesting, imperfect book that may find a divided readership.

Book borrowed from my local library.

Fairest by Marissa Meyer

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fairest meyerRebecca Soler is my new favorite audiobook narrator, but only for stories with a certain kind of character – the defiant, no regrets girl who slowly moves from shades-of-gray to all bad (or nearly so). She reads Marissa Meyer’s story about Levana, the evil queen in the Lunar Chronicles series, and she does such a fantastic job that I listened to the ending twice, which gave me chills both times. She also narrated Violet in Nova Ren Suma’s The Walls Around Us, which I highly recommend on audio, in large part thanks to Soler’s narration.

I was surprised by how much I liked Fairest, mainly because I’m not a big fan of short stories or novellas and I didn’t find Levana all that compelling in the series proper. But she is quite compelling here. Meyer gives her character depth that’s largely missing from the previous three novels, but not in a way that necessarily garners overwhelming sympathy. She just becomes interesting in her badness. I was able to see both how Levana became the person she is, as well as how she was, in many ways, already that person. She’s not a good person and doesn’t much care about being a good person in the first place. She’s wholly concerned with her own happiness and slowly cares less and less about how the pursuit of that happiness affects others – in part because no one else ever cared about how their actions affected her.

Soler’s narration perfectly captures this. Levana is hesitant at first, desperately wishing for love and affection, from one man in particular. It develops from a young girl’s crush into something much more sinister, moving beyond a need for love to a need for control above all, and Soler’s tone grows darker to match this change, until she reads the final line that ends Levana’s final terrible act, the aforementioned ending that gave me chills.

I was concerned that Meyer would milk Levana’s sad background to develop sympathy, but that’s not the tack she takes, for which I’m grateful. There’s definitely some sympathy there, but not so much that we can’t still root against her in Winter, or claim that she’s merely misunderstood, or isn’t responsible for her own actions. We can, she’s not, and she is. This is a fascinating read for Lunar Chronicles fans, as well as a great example of how to write an interesting villain – I hope Levana continues to be just as interesting in Winter.

Cybils 2015 – The Ones That Got Away

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ones that got away

A History of Glitter and Blood by Hannah Moskowitz

This book is bananas, and I mean that in the best way. It’s about a war between fairies, gnomes, and creatures called tight-ropers in which humans are completely absent, and it’s told by an unreliable narrator in such a way that you’re never quite sure what really happened – until it all begins to come together. Moskowitz took a ton of risks with this story, both in the way she chose to tell it and in its content, which is violent and at times macabre (for example, the fairies are immortal, which means that when they’re eaten by their natural predators the gnomes, they continue to feel the bits of themselves being digested). Her risks paid off. This book is utterly entrancing from beginning to end. It’s rare to see a fantasy written with this level of creativity, especially one that is so successfully executed, and I’ll be recommending it for years to come.

Lois Lane: Fallout by Gwenda Bond

Bond’s book is just plain fun. It’s about a teenage Lois Lane, who tends to get into scrapes wherever she goes, and she goes a lot of places thanks to her general father. At her new school, she’s promised to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble – but we all know that’s not going to happen. On her first day there, she witnesses a brilliant girl being bullied by a strange group of students whose behavior is eerily in sync. When the principal refuses to do anything about it, Lois decides to leverage her new job as a reporter for the Daily Scoop – the junior version of the Daily Planet – to figure out what’s really going on. The mystery is interesting and lightly flavored with science fiction. Superman makes brief cameos as Lois’ online friend SmallvilleGuy, and knowing that he’s Superman when Lois doesn’t adds to the fun. Fallout is full of action and personality, just like its main character; the comparison to Veronica Mars is apt.

Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge

I love Hodge’s writing and her unique way of manipulating the fairy tales we all know in interesting, and frequently dark, ways. This story, which uses elements of Little Red Riding Hood, is a bit grimmer than Cruel Beauty and lighter on romance. I wrote more about it here.

Burning Nation by Trent Reedy

Considering the recent events in Oregon, it’s accurate to say there’s no YA writer more prescient than Trent Reedy. This is the sequel to Burning Nation, which I also really liked. The audiobook makes this a standout. I wrote more about it here.