Recent Reads That Didn’t Work for Me

March 2, 2016 |

I’ve gotten a lot better at giving up on books that just aren’t working for me, but occasionally I persevere, pushing through to the end. In the case of these two titles, I recognized that the writing was technically good and the plots were interesting to me on paper (pun intended), but I just never got sucked in the way I normally do with a great book.

The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 1: At the Edge of Empire by Daniel Kraus

This is a book in search of the right reader. It’s about seventeen year old Zebulon, and it begins with his life in the latter part of the 19th century. Raised in privilege, he rails against his absent father and his coddling mother who wants nothing for his life that he himself wants. He runs away and becomes…a gangster, in a bit of a roundabout way. It starts small, with petty theft and impersonation of members of the Black Hand, but then grows much larger, until he’s committing regular acts of violence for a living. This way of life gets him killed. Only he doesn’t die, not quite. He continues to exist, in a sort of zombie-like way, but without the need to eat brains. He doesn’t need to eat anything, actually. Or drink. Or breathe. He can’t have sex, either, which is a bit of a downer. And he can’t heal, allowing Kraus to imbue the story with a bit of a horror touch. But he continues to exist.

This makes him a curiosity, and it brings him to the attention of all sorts of unsavory people. He becomes part of a freak show, participates in experiments with a mad doctor, fights in World War I, spends time as a bootlegger, and on. He himself is an unsavory character, which makes him interesting; it’s not yet clear whether his story arc will be redemptive, but I don’t think it needs to be. Kraus gives Zebulon a distinctive voice and a vibrant personality, and his adventures should have been more interesting to me than they were. Instead, I grew tired of the episodic nature of the novel. It’s a catalog of Zebulon’s life, and that life is certainly a unique one, but I prefer my stories to go places, and to get there a little more quickly. This is a book for patient readers who like the weird and have contemplated what it would be like to live for a hundred years and never grow old.

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

It’s possible that Jennifer Donnelly’s books just aren’t for me. I read A Northern Light, her book that garnered a Printz Honor, and was underwhelmed, contrary to the opinion of pretty much everyone else. But she writes historical fiction about girls trying live independent lives in times when it was much more difficult, and that’s always been one of my genre kryptonites. Jo Montfort is from a wealthy family and anticipates that she’ll soon be engaged to a young man from another wealthy family, a friend whom she actually does like – but doesn’t love. What she really wants, much more than getting married, is to be a journalist like Nellie Bly. When her father dies, supposedly in an accident, her life is thrown upside down. She soon discovers that it wasn’t an accident at all – he was murdered. She teams up with another journalist, Eddie, and the two grow closer as they unravel what really happened.

My main issue with this book was its length. Some books deserve to be 500 pages, but I don’t feel like this one warranted it. There was a lot of repetition as Jo fretted over the danger of what she was doing, over her new feelings for Eddie, over her desire to be a journalist versus her family’s pressure to make a good marriage, over the thought that her father could have been betrayed by someone close to her. These are all valid things to fret about, but so much time is spent on it that it slows the pace of the novel. It felt tedious instead of exciting. Additionally, I knew who the culprit was pretty soon in the novel, but it’s likely teen readers who have less experience with historical mysteries won’t. This is another novel for patient readers (perhaps I’m less patient than most?) who would love getting sucked into 19th century New York. It’s got a little bit of everything for them: murder, mystery, romance, friendship, and lots of period detail.

Audiobook Roundup

February 17, 2016 |

George by Alex Gino

Jamie Clayton narrates Alex Gino’s debut children’s book about a girl who everyone thinks is a boy. George – or Melissa, as she’d prefer to be called – really wants to play the part of Charlotte in her school’s production of Charlotte’s Web, but she doesn’t know how her teacher or the other students would react. Luckily, her best friend is supportive (though not initially understanding that Melissa is trans), and there is a happy ending for Melissa. This is a gentle story about a trans child that also doesn’t shy away from some of the unpleasantness associated with being trans – Melissa experiences gendered insults, bullying, an insensitive teacher, and a mother who is open to a lot of things but not that thing (at least at first). This book single-handedly attempts to fill a giant hole in kidlit – books for elementary age kids about trans kids – and it does so wonderfully. Told in third person through the perspective of Melissa, George provides both both a mirror for trans kids like her and a window for cis children. Clayton, herself a trans actress most recently known for her work in the Netflix series Sensate, does a fantastic job narrating with sensitivity and bringing Melissa to life. I was crying at the end and you probably will be, too.

The Winner’s Crime by Marie Rutkoski

Justine Eyre narrates one of my favorite audiobooks of all time (Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover by Sarah MacLean), so when I saw she did this production of The Winner’s Crime, I knew I had to read it on audio. The Winner’s Curse was pretty much my number one book of 2013 and it took me way too long to get around to its sequel. I knew it would tear my heart into a million pieces – and that is just what it did. Arin and Kestrel are separated for much of this book, both not saying what they really should say to each other either because they want to keep the other safe or because someone is always listening, always watching. Kestrel is being paraded about as the soon-to-be consort to the next emperor, and Arin is kept occupied as governor of Herran. Both know that the treaty Kestrel arranged by her betrothal is tenuous at best, and there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. Misunderstandings are rife and romantic tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Eyre evokes real fear during some really tense scenes, particularly with Kestrel, and the cliffhanger ending made me salivate for the next book. This is no second book in a trilogy slump. Eyre’s narration is good, but she invented an accent for the Valorians that seems inconsistent and grating; it sounds invented, which the best fake accents shouldn’t do. The rest of the narration is top-notch.

Sold by Patricia McCormick

Justine Eyre also narrates Patricia McCormick’s National Book award finalist about a 13 year old Nepalese girl named Lakshmi sold into sex slavery in India. Normally I don’t read books like this. Much of my reading as an adult focuses on pleasanter topics with happy endings, but I saw that Eyre narrated it, and it was short, and it was a National Book Award finalist. It’s a hard, extremely well-written novel written in first person free verse vignettes from Lakshmi’s perspective. What happens to Lakshmi is made explicit, though McCormick doesn’t linger on details. It’s a heartbreaking book made more wrenching by Lakshmi’s extreme naivete; she didn’t even know prostitution or sex slavery existed until they were forced upon her. Once she discovers that she’ll need to make enough money by sleeping with enough men to buy herself out of the brothel-owner’s debt, she starts keeping careful tally of what she earns. It’s only when she presents these figures to this woman many months down the road that she learns there really is no way out. Her debt will only grow, no matter how much she earns. Still, the book does end on a note of hope. I love Eyre’s narration in general, and she does a good accent to my ear (I haven’t heard a lot of Nepalese people speak), but I do wonder that a Nepalese narrator wasn’t chosen.

All Fall Down & See How They Run by Ally Carter

February 10, 2016 |

Ally Carter’s Heist Society series is one of my favorites, so I knew that I’d want to give Embassy Row a whirl. Her books all promise twisty plots peopled with interesting characters, and they’re led by girl protagonists who are smart and a little prickly. All Fall Down introduces us to Grace Blakely, who is the prickliest of them all so far (and I mean that in a good way). Her mother was shot and killed three years ago, and Grace knows that it was a scarred man who did it – she saw him do it. The only thing is, no one believes her. She spent some time in a mental hospital, and now she’s been sent to live with her grandfather in Adria, a fictional European country. He’s the American ambassador to Adria and it’s important for Grace to be on her best behavior when living on Embassy Row with him. This, of course, is something Grace is not particularly interested in.

Carter does a really good job of portraying Grace, who narrates the story in first person. She’s traumatized by what she saw, she’s frustrated that no one believes her, and she sticks to her guns, though she does try to downplay it a bit since she’s supposed to be “healed” by now, three years later. But ultimately, she’s not someone to be controlled, and I love that about her. The setting is fascinating, allowing Carter to explore some real-world international politics while also inventing some her own. Much of the supporting cast is multinational (kids of other ambassadors and their staffers), which adds to the interest. And because this is an Ally Carter series, there’s plenty of mystery and intrigue. The central plot of All Fall Down involves Grace trying to find the person whom she believes killed her mother. She discovers it has to do with some fishy things that are going on in Adria on Embassy Row, and before too long she’s caught up in something way over her head. There are plenty of surprises, and the reveal at the end of the first book is heart-wrenching.

See How They Run (I love these titles) finds Grace still reeling from the revelations of the first book, but Carter wastes no time plunging her into another mystery, this one involving a centuries-old secret society of Adrian women. We learn a lot more about Adria’s history and there’s some good stuff about how women are often left out of the history books – and how the Adrian women have combated this over the years. This one is a bit slower than the first, but it makes up for it with a killer ending that I really should have seen coming but didn’t. I had to listen to it twice because I was so dumbfounded.

Narrator Eileen Stevens does a fantastic job. She makes Grace sound like an actual teenager – her voice isn’t so high that she sounds like an eight year old, but neither does she sound like a mom. When Grace is on an emotional edge, she makes us feel that too; it’s easy to get inside her head. Stevens is also great at voicing older women (and men too!). Much of the humor in the book (and Carter always laces her books with a hefty dose of it) is derived from the way Stevens reads some of the dialogue; this is one I definitely recommend on audio.

I think teens who liked Jennifer Lynn Barnes The Fixer would find a lot to like in the Embassy Row series (the covers are even nearly identical) – they’re both teen-oriented political thrillers with hefty doses of old family secrets that make great page-turners. I wonder if these two series will give rise to more teen political thrillers.

Fairest by Marissa Meyer

January 27, 2016 |

Rebecca 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

January 13, 2016 |

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.