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A Few Cybils Reads – Part VI (2015)

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mortal heart

Mortal Heart by Robin LaFevers

I picked this up a long, long time ago and finally had the impetus to read it thanks to its status as a Cybils nominee. Why I waited so long, I don’t know. It’s a fantastic ending to the trilogy and an absorbing read throughout. This third and final volume focuses on Annith, who has been told by the abbess that she is to be the next seeress, a position that requires her to remain in the convent always. What she really wants to do is go out on missions like Ismae and Sybella have before her. She knows she has no latent talent for seeing, and when the abbess sends a younger and under-trained girl out before her, she knows something is up. So she leaves to figure it out. On her adventures, the secrets the abbess has been hiding come to light, and Annith discovers something surprising about herself in the process. Mortal Heart ties up all loose ends, but in a way that feels satisfying rather than pat. We learn more about Mortain and the other gods of the Nine, a fascinating mythology sprung from LaFevers’ brain but based in history. The political problems between France and Brittany also come to a head.

These books are so well-written, long but not dense, with some of the best world-building and long-term plotting I’ve encountered. I’m also impressed by characterization. Ismae, Sybella, and Annith are each wholly distinct, their own people, with their own voices in each book. Readers looking for a swoony romance like they found in the first two won’t be disappointed; in fact, the romance was one of the aspects I found most compelling, in part because it’s a bit more unique than Ismae’s and Sybella’s. This whole series is a winner, and Mortal Heart is a worthy conclusion.

stone in the sky

Stone in the Sky by Cecil Castellucci

Unlike Mortal Heart, this was a sequel I found a bit disappointing. It picks up a few months after Tin Star, when Tula has established herself on the Yertina Feray with a sweets, salts, and water shop, selling the three things all aliens want and need. But then Brother Blue returns, and so does Reza, and circumstances that arise as a result of their arrivals cause Tula to abandon the space station for the wider universe beyond. The world-building is interesting and the presence of the Imperium ratchets the stakes up several notches, but the writing felt a bit sloppy and disconnected. As a result, I didn’t get sucked into the story and I found myself not much caring about any of Tula’s Human friends, though I still did care about Tula. At one point Tula reunites with a character she assumed was long dead, and it was so awkward and anticlimactic that I felt nothing. The friendship between Tula and Tournour developed mostly off-page between the two books, which is a shame since it was one of the most interesting aspects of the first book. Stone in the Sky is a worthwhile read for fans of Tin Star, but I think many readers will ultimately be let down.

 

A Few Cybils Reads – Part V (2015)

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Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older

Sierra Santiago is a shadowshaper, meaning she can control spirits through art, including murals and music. Once she discovers this, she quickly learns that shadowshaping has been passed down through her family. It’s an ability others who don’t inherit would kill for (and that’s not a metaphor). Sierra’s abuelo tells her to team up with Robbie, another shadowshaper, and together they try and puzzle out just who is targeting shadowshapers and why. There’s a lot wrapped up in this story. Through the idea of shadowshaping and its misuse by the primary antagonist who wants it for his own, Older tackles heritage, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as more standard themes like romance, friendship, and family. Older also asks his readers to consider the field of cultural anthropology, particularly who gets studied and who does the studying. The setting feels alive, not the least because the murals on the building really do come alive thanks to Sierra’s abilities. It’s also incredibly diverse. I don’t think there’s a single white person (gasp!), and two of Sierra’s friends are lesbians. Sierra herself is proud of her heritage – she’s proud to be a shadowshaper and proud to be Puerto Rican, which is demonstrated in one particularly moving scene. I was especially impressed by the dialogue, which feels authentically teen – Sierra and her friends use current slang and rib each other good-naturedly in conversations that go from serious to silly and back to serious again. This is a mega appealing book with lots of twists and a smart, strong protagonist.

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma

This is a nearly perfect book, and that is no exaggeration. I normally avoid prison stories because they’re just so depressing, but I know I can rely on Nova Ren Suma to write a beautiful book. This one is both beautiful and terrifying, a sort of horror story without any gore or sudden frights, a psychological thriller that makes your heart race and your brain light up. It’s not fast-paced, per se, but it is intense and completely absorbing. It’s told from two different perspectives: Amber, locked up in Aurora Hills juvenile detention center for a crime she insists she didn’t commit; and Violet, an aspiring ballerina whose best friend was sent to Aurora Hills for a violent crime a few years ago. This friend of Violet’s is Orianna, and while she doesn’t ever narrate, she is the key to the story. For a few months, she was Amber’s cellmate – until all the girls at Aurora Hills mysteriously died of…food poisoning, perhaps. There are multiple threads that Suma teases out: what happened to the 42 girls at Aurora Hills? What did Orianna do to end up there, and how does Violet fit into it? Just who is guilty of what, and will the guilty parties ever be made to atone? It’s a book that tackles what it means to be guilty and what it means to be innocent, how justice is meted out and who can escape it. It’s a ghost story that gets creepier as it goes on, with an unsettling yet perfect ending. The characters live and breathe. Suma’s writing is haunting and gorgeous. The plot of this story should make it an easy sell to teens and the writing is deserving of its many critical accolades.

Atlantis Rising by Gloria Craw

When I was a teen, I was a sucker for all things Atlantis (one of my many fledgling stories I wrote took place there). I’m always interested to see how the myth is reshaped by writers today. Alison is a “dewing,” a member of the Atlantean race and a descendant of the people who used to live on the island before it sank. The dewings have been at war with each other, one side wanting to use their powers to subjugate humanity and the other side fighting against this idea. Alison was raised by humans, thinking she was one of them, though she always knew that her ability to impress thoughts upon other people and make them believe these thoughts were their own was not something normal people could do. Once she discovers her true heritage, she becomes caught up in the war between the two groups – and she is especially prized by both sides for her abilities as a thoughmaker. Craw has created a rich mythology surrounding the Atlanteans/dewings and an interesting, fast-paced story. Readers who can’t get enough of contemporary paranormal fantasy will enjoy this a lot, though it does drop a couple of story threads, which seems unintentional as there’s no real setup for a sequel. Refreshingly, despite the fact that dewings live to be 300 and look youthful for most of those years, Alison’s romance is with another 17 year old dewing.

 

Cover Talk: Swords

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I always loved seeing swords on the covers of the fantasy novels I read when I was a teen, particularly when it was wielded by a powerful-looking girl. The sword promised an epic story, hopefully one that included a few battles, and in the hands of a girl, it was a physical manifestation of a power that I always wanted for myself. With all the efforts to put out the next “Game of Thrones for teens,” swords have been everywhere in YA fantasy lately, and I’m loving them. Here’s a round-up of some of the most recent, plus several forthcoming in 2016.

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Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare (March 2016)

Los Angeles. It’s been five years since the events of the Mortal Instruments when Nephilim stood poised on the brink of oblivion and Shadowhunter Emma Carstairs lost her parents. After the blood and violence she witnessed as a child, Emma has dedicated her life to to discovering exactly what it was that killed her parents and getting her revenge. (description via Goodreads)

Traveler by Arwen Elys Dayton (January 2016)

Quin Kincaid is a Seeker. Her legacy is an honor, an ancient role passed down for generations. But what she learned on her Oath night changed her world forever. Quin pledged her life to deception. Her legacy as a Seeker is not noble but savage. Her father, a killer. Her uncle, a liar. Her mother, a casualty. And the boy she once loved is out for vengeance, with her family in his sights. Yet Quin is not alone. Shinobu, her oldest companion, might now be the only person she can trust. The only one who wants answers as desperately as she does. (description via Goodreads)

Truthwitch by Susan Dennard (January 2016)

On a continent ruled by three empires, some are born with a “witchery”, a magical skill that sets them apart from others. In the Witchlands, there are almost as many types of magic as there are ways to get in trouble—as two desperate young women know all too well. (description via Goodreads)

Legacy of Kings by Eleanor Herman (August 2015)

Katerina, on a mission to kill the queen, falls in love with Alexander, Prince of Macedonia. Jacob will go to unthinkable lengths to win Katerina, even if it means having to compete with Hephaestion, a murderer sheltered by the prince. And far across the sea, Zofia, a Persian princess and Alexander’s unmet betrothed, wants to alter her destiny by seeking the famed and deadly Spirit Eaters. (description via Worldcat)

02

Miss Mayhem by Rachel Hawkins (April 2015)

In the sequel to Rebel Belle, Harper Price and her new boyfriend and oracle David Stark face new challenges as the powerful Ephors seek to claim David for their own. (description via Worldcat)

Lady Renegades by Rachel Hawkins (April 2016)

Just as Harper Price starts coming to terms with her role as David Stark’s battle-ready Paladin, protector, and girlfriend—her world goes crazy all over again. Overwhelmed by his Oracle powers, David flees Pine Grove and starts turning teenaged girls into Paladins—and these young ladies seem to think that Harper is the enemy David needs protecting from. Ordinarily, Harper would be able to fight off any Paladin who comes her way, but her powers have been dwindling since David left town, which means her life is on the line yet again. (description via Goodreads)

Endure by Sara B. Larson (January 2016)

Alexa and King Damian are engaged to be married, but the kingdom of Antion is besieged, their friend Rylan is a prisoner of the enemy, and Alexa has not told Damian that she is at the mercy of the evil Rafe, bound to obey one command of his choosing–but now Alexa must travel deep into enemy territory and confront an army of black sorcerers to rescue Rylan. (description via Worldcat)

Sword and Verse by Kathy MacMillan (January 2016)

Raisa was just a child when she was sold to work as a slave in the kingdom of Qilara. Despite her young age, her father was teaching her to read and write, grooming her to take his place as a Learned One. In Qilara, the Arnathim, like Raisa, are the lowest class, and literacy is a capital offense. What’s more, only the king, prince, tutor, and tutor-in-training are allowed to learn the very highest order language, the language of the gods. So when the tutor-in-training is executed for teaching slaves this sacred language, and Raisa is selected to replace her, Raisa knows any slipup on her part could mean death. (description via Goodreads)

03

Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas (August 2013)

As the royal assassin to an evil king, eighteen-year-old Celaena Sardothien must decide what she will fight for–survival, love, or the future of a kingdom.. (description via Worldcat)

Queen of Shadows Sarah J. Maas (September 2015)

Everyone Celaena Sardothien loves has been taken from her. But she’s at last returned to the empire — for vengeance, to rescue her once-glorious kingdom, and to confront the shadows of her past. She has embraced her identity as Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen. But before she can reclaim her throne, she must fight. She will fight for her cousin, a warrior prepared to die just to see her again. She will fight for her friend, a young man trapped in an unspeakable prison. And she will fight for her people, enslaved to a brutal king and awaiting their lost queen’s triumphant return. (description via Worldcat)

The Vanishing Throne by Elizabeth May (June 2016)

Aileana Kameron, the Falconer, disappeared through the portal that she was trying to close forever. Now she wakes up in the fae world, trapped and tortured by the evil Lonnrach. With the help of an unexpected ally, Aileana re-enters the human world, only to find everything irrevocably changed. Edinburgh has been destroyed, and the few human survivors are living in an uneasy truce with the fae, while both worlds are in danger of disappearing altogether. Aileana holds the key to saving both worlds, but in order to do so she must awaken her latent Falconer powers. And the price of doing that might be her life. (description via Goodreads)

The Beauty of Darkness by Mary E. Pearson (August 2016)

Lia and Rafe have escaped Venda and the path before them is winding and dangerous – what will happen now? (description via Goodreads)

 

04

The Winner’s Crime by Marie Rutkoski (March 2015)

The engagement of Lady Kestrel to Valoria’s crown prince is the event of a lifetime, but to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making, so as she aches to tell the truth about her engagement, she becomes a skilled practitioner of deceit and as a spy passes information and gets close to uncovering a shocking secret. (description via Worldcat)

The Winner’s Kiss by Marie Rutkoski (March 2016)

War has begun. Arin is in the thick of it, with the East as his ally and the empire as his enemy. He’s finally managed to dismiss the memory of Kestrel, even if he can’t quite forget her. Kestrel turned into someone he could no longer recognize: someone who cared more for the empire than for the lives of innocent people—and certainly more than she cared for him. At least, that’s what he thinks. But far north lies a work camp where Kestrel is a prisoner. Can she manage to escape before she loses herself? As the war intensifies, both Kestrel and Arin discover unexpected roles in battle, terrible secrets, and a fragile hope. The world is changing. The East is pitted against the West, and Kestrel and Arin are caught between. In a game like this, can anybody really win? (description via Goodreads)

Ruined by Amy Tintera (May 2016)

Emelina Flores has nothing. Her home in Ruina has been ravaged by war. She lacks the powers of her fellow Ruined. Worst of all, she witnessed her parents’ brutal murders and watched helplessly as her sister, Olivia, was kidnapped. But because Em has nothing, she has nothing to lose. Driven by a blind desire for revenge, Em sets off on a dangerous journey to the enemy kingdom of Lera. Somewhere within Lera’s borders, Em hopes to find Olivia. But in order to find her, Em must infiltrate the royal family. (description via Goodreads)

The Skylighter by Becky Wallace (March 2016)

Joanna and Rafi are on the run, trying to protect the kingdom of Santarem from rogue Keepers. (description via Worldcat)

A Few Cybils Reads – Part III (2015)

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Denton Little’s Death Date by Lance Rubin

Denton Little lives in a world where everyone knows the date they will die, and it’s never been wrong. Unfortunately for Denton, his death date is the day of his senior prom. In the day leading up to it, he’s focused on cramming as much into what remains of his life as he can – have sex with his girlfriend, tell his classmates what he really thinks about them, and so on. But things don’t go quite as planned – he gets a strange purple rash, for starters. And he notices that he’s being watched.

In order to enjoy this one, you’ve really got to suspend your disbelief. Don’t interrogate the concept too closely – or at all, really. The book isn’t much interested in how the death date technology works, or, assuming we buy that such a thing is possible, what that means for the idea of free will. The characters have accepted it, and if you want to get through this book, so should you.

If you’re able to move beyond the problems with the concept, this is a pretty fun book. Denton has a great voice – he’s sarcastic and an asshole at times, but he has moments of genuine heartfelt goodness too. I wouldn’t call the book laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s amusing throughout and I always looked forward to listening to more of it when I could. Rubin narrates the audiobook himself and he’s actually quite good at it, which is pretty unusual for an author-narrated book. It’s fast-paced and all takes place in about 48 hours, and it leaves you with a big cliffhanger at the end. There’s another bit of “science” that may as well be magic near the end, and Rubin doesn’t really bother trying to explain it. My advice? Just do your best to accept the hand-waving and enjoy this book for what it is: a fun ride propelled by a ludicrous concept.

 

The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey

This was my second book about bird people, which is…a bit odd. Actually, a lot of the Cybils YA speculative fiction nominees this year have something to do with either birds or feathers, whether literally or metaphorically. This one is more the literal kind.

Echo’s parents treated her poorly when she was a child, so she ran away and was taken in by the Avicen, a race of bird people who live underneath New York City. Think mostly human-looking, but with feathers. She had been surviving as a thief and she keeps it up once she starts living with the Avicen, though she does it more for the thrill or to help out her adoptive family rather than for survival. The Alla, an elder of sorts of the Avicen and the one who took Echo in, asks her to locate (steal) something called the Firebird, an entity which will help the Avicen defeat their long-time foes, a race of dragon-like people. Of course the task is not easy, and Echo must soon team up with the very people the Avicen are fighting, including a newly-deposed dragon prince. Romance and violence ensue, naturally.

The marketing describes this as a readalike for Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which is very accurate, though my love for that book makes this one pale in comparison. There are a lot of similarities: a human living with a found family of monster-like beings (though the Avicen aren’t terribly monstrous like the chimera are), portals that take you to big and interesting cities across the globe, a centuries-old battle between two powerful races. There’s a bit at the end of the book that is perhaps a bit too resonant of Daughter of Smoke and Bone and made me go “hmm.” The idea is not new, but having read Daughter of Smoke and Bone certainly makes what happens here easy to predict. Despite the plot similarities, this is a well-written novel with good characterization and interesting world-building. Julia Whelan narrates the audiobook and she does a fine job. This would be a good pick for urban fantasy fans who want a story that feels epic.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part II (2015)

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The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough

It’s 1930s America, and Love and Death are playing a game. They each have chosen a player: Love has Henry, a white boy whose parents have died, leaving him in the care of a family who considers him not-quite-a-son; Death has Flora, a black girl who dreams of flying her own airplane across the ocean and sings jazz in a nightclub she partly owns. The rules of the game aren’t quite clear initially, but as readers we do know that these two teenagers will fall in love, and the implication is that their love will be rocky and affect Love and Death – and perhaps the world – in uncertain ways. This is a slow-moving and contemplative story, one that takes a considerable investment of time to appreciate. At first I found it difficult to connect with the story and its characters, which I think is deliberate. The narration is third-person omniscient (mainly), which can often lead to that kind of feel. Some portions are told from the perspective of Love and Death, and they’re both inscrutable entities, though they become a bit clearer as the story goes on. This kind of narration brings inevitable comparisons to The Book Thief, though the two didn’t seem very similar to me. By the time I got over halfway through, though, I felt like I knew the characters on a really deep level – and I felt like I knew Love and Death, too, despite their strangeness. This is a unique sort of book that should appeal to fans of historical fiction and those seeking something different.

A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray

This is a story about parallel worlds, which is one of my plot kryptonites. Marguerite’s parents are scientists who have been researching the possibility of travel to parallel worlds, and just as it seemed they had finally figured it out, one of their research assistants – Paul – kills Marguerite’s father and steals all of his research, running away to one of these parallel worlds. Marguerite teams up with another research assistant, Theo, and they go after him. Of course, all is not as it seems, and Marguerite begins to suspect that Paul was framed – but by whom, and for what reason? Fleshing out this mystery is a really fun series of adventures. Marguerite and Theo first travel to a world where technology has advanced at a much faster rate, so we get to see what a potential future would be like. Then they find themselves in Russia in a world where neither the Russian Revolution nor the Industrial Revolution happened – though both might be on the cusp of happening, putting Marguerite in exceptional danger. It’s tons of fun to see all of these possibilities play out, like the best combination of a parallel worlds and alternate history story. There’s a love triangle that adds a lot of appeal, and the question of who really killed Marguerite’s father and why propels the story forward. Exciting and well-written.

Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

Aza Ray Boyle has always been sickly. Since she was a small child, she’s had trouble breathing, and it’s sent her to the hospital many times. She wasn’t expected to live to see her 16th birthday, which is right around the corner. She’s been hearing something calling her name lately, and then something crazy happens with a bird, and Aza dies – maybe. She actually wakes up on a ship in the sky, surrounded by strange bird-people, though her body is being buried on the earth below. It turns out Aza is actually one of these bird-people, kidnapped at a young age, and her mother – a bird person as well – has finally found her and brought her “home.” This is one of the weirder books I’ve read. You’ve really got to buy into the concept of a race of bird-people living up in the sky unbeknownst to all the humans below, plus believe the explanation for how Aza’s body was buried but she isn’t really dead. The narration (I listened to this one on audio) is excellent, infused with all the panic and disbelief that Aza feels when she finds herself in a sky ship. Aza’s voice overall is pretty good, actually, and starts the book off really strong – she’s snarky about her illness and how people treat her because of it, and there’s a lot of dark humor in the early parts. Personally, I never fully connected with the bird-people living in the sky plotline, but I’m sure it’s just the right kind of weird for another reader.