A Few Cybils Reads – Part VI (2015)

December 16, 2015 |

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 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)

December 9, 2015 |

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.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part IV (2015)

December 2, 2015 |

The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle

The premise of Fowley-Doyle’s debut novel is intriguing. Each October, Cara’s family becomes accident-prone: “Bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom.” A couple of her relatives have died during previous accident seasons, and it’s become a natural part of their lives to be wary around that time. But no matter how many precautions they take – covering up the hardwood floors with rugs, for example – the accidents always happen. Cara’s first-person narration takes us through this accident season and delves into her family’s past, bringing at least two explosive secrets to light, one of which might explain why the accidents happen each year – or if they’re accidents at all. Magical realism is really hit and miss with me, and this book was a bit of both. The writing is lovely, literary without sacrificing Cara’s teen voice. But the plot meandered and the pace was overly slow. Not perfect, but a good pick for fans of magical realism and literary YA.

Burning Nation by Trent Reedy

This is the sequel to a book I read for the Cybils last year, Divided We Fall. The audio production on that one was so good, I opted for the audio for its sequel as well, and I was not disappointed. Burning Nation picks up where its predecessor left off, with the United States growing more and more fractured and Danny caught in the middle of it all. Initially Danny is very pro-Idaho, burning for revenge for his mother’s murder by “the Fed.” As more states follow Idaho’s example, officially seceding from the rest of the country due to the mandatory federal ID law, Danny becomes their emblem – somewhat willingly, somewhat not. This one is more violent than the first, with a prolonged scene of torture by an agent of “the Fed” that may be hard to take for some readers, but is essential to the story.

Reedy does an excellent job painting both sides of the conflict in shades of grey: he brings up the likelihood of racist and other extremist groups supporting the secession (something missing from the first book) and ends the novel with a disturbing scene that demonstrates no one may be truly in the right. The effect of violence – both as victim and perpetrator – on one of Danny’s friends is particularly well-done. Reedy also does a good job portraying more conservative Americans (including teens like Danny and his friends) as not all being raging racists, a stereotype I sometimes find in YA fiction. The focus is on current events (invasion of privacy by the federal government is cited as the reason for the conflict) and the book feels unsettlingly prescient as a result. Like the first book, this audio version includes fully-voiced snippets of radio broadcasts, social media, and blog posts with lifelike sound effects that make the story come alive. Listen to it in your car for a really authentic experience

Illusionarium by Heather Dixon

The concept of Dixon’s second YA novel (after the acclaimed Entwined) is fascinating. It’s set in an alternate 19th century England where London has been renamed Arthurise and airships dot the skies, giving it a bit of a steampunk feel. The venen, a terrible disease, has just infected the queen, and the king comes calling on Jonathan’s father, a great scientist, to cure it. As his apprentice, Jonathan feels he can help, especially with a new substance called fantillium that Lady Florel, another scientist working on the cure, has just introduced to him. Fantillium causes group hallucinations that allows Jonathan and his father to try out various cures and speed up time without actually harming anyone. But Jonathan’s father feels that something isn’t right about it, or about Lady Florel, and refuses to use it, even to save his own wife and daughter who have come down with the illness. Jonathan decides otherwise, and it takes him on an adventure to another alternate world where fantillium is a way of life.

Dixon’s novel is heavy-handed with the message – the consequences of fantillium use are horrific and Jonathan’s father’s metaphor of a compass as a way to tell him what is morally correct is woven throughout. It feels a tad preachy as a result, but the ideas are interesting, particularly how fantillium works and what these two alternate worlds look like (and how they got that way). Ideas aren’t good enough for a great story, though, and Illusionarium never completely comes together writing-wise. It’s choppy and feels a little juvenile for its intended age range, with exaggerated dialogue and unsubtle characterizations. Still, fans of parallel worlds and fast-paced adventure stories should find a lot to like here.

Dare to Disappoint by Ozge Samanci

November 26, 2015 |

We are taking part in the blog tour for Ozge Samanci’s Dare to Disappoint today. You can and should check out the entire schedule for the tour here and visit those sites for even more peeks into the book and process behind it (it’s neat!).

I know very, very little about Turkey. The only history I know is what I learned in my Western Civilization course freshman year of high school and a little bit from European History my senior year. Even in those cases, the bulk of what’s taught is very historical — centuries past — with little or no exploration of more contemporary events.

Ozge Samanci’s Dare to Disappoint was a really worthwhile read for me, since it was and is a reference point for this particular area of history now. This personal memoir looks at what life was like growing up in a country that itself was learning to grow up and find an identity.

Samanci is a second child in a family where her older sister excelled. This was the case in school and in other venues, and her parents were pleased with her. Ozge, on the other hand, was far less interested in her studies. Sure, she completed them — this is a key element of the story, as the Turkish education system is very different than the US system — but she didn’t excel nor quite have the passion for it in the same way her sister did.

The bulk of this story centers around Ozge coming to terms with what it is she wants to be doing with her life. Does she want to become an explorer? An actress? Go on to a good college to make her parents happy at the expense of her own happiness? Can she work to make both her dreams in theater and her parents dreams for her education happen simultaneously? These questions frame the entirety of the story in a way that any reader, no matter where they live, wrestles with. But what makes this stand out beyond that is the historical context. We learn along the way the values and systems that exist in Turkey and how they shift over the course of Ozge’s childhood and adolescence. Where once few choices existed, the growth in consumerism and imports meant that choices one had in every arena from eating to clothing to one’s future shifts and adjusts. It’s in those cultural changes that Ozge further marinates on the questions of what to make of her own life.

This should easily explain the book’s title Dare to Disappoint.

What’s most standout in this particular graphic novel, though, is the art. Samanci utilizes mixed materials to create her story. While the bulk of art is what you’d expect in terms of drawings, there are a lot of unexpected surprises that go in to creating an image:

On the bottom right-hand page, you can see how Samanci weaves polished rocks into the art. There are other examples of this throughout, including found art collages, buttons, and even some unexpected surprises (which you’ll see further down this post!). This design is really friendly and appealing, which makes it a nice contrast to some of the heavy political elements in the text itself. Which isn’t to say those parts are hard to read or unnecessary; instead, what Samanci is able to do is balance those topics with her own personal, singular, teen experience. It’s relatable, rather than above her head — except when it is!

My biggest criticism, though, is that a lot of Ozge’s own experiences post-realization of what it was she wanted to do with her life is given short shrift in the end. It wraps up almost too quickly. I found myself wanting much more than I got, in particular because I saw so much of her growing up process along the way. There were pages and chapters dedicated to her education and her experimentation, but her wake up call that she wanted to be an artist and draw comes very late in the story and the journey through that realization — rather than the journey to that realization — isn’t here. I suspect this might be so there’s room for a second memoir that goes through that journey, but I wouldn’t have minded another chapter here, just to give me more of a taste for how this happened.

Readers who love graphic memoirs will want to pick Dare to Disappoint up. It’s not necessarily a straight read alike to Persepolis, as the angle on this particular book is much more about the journey to finding one’s passion in life, but readers who want to be better global citizens or read stories about real people in other parts of the world will find those elements interesting to think about in comparison. Readers who are fascinated by the art here will want to spend time at the artist’s Tumblr, too, which showcases her unique style of mixed media. This book is perfectly fine for younger teen readers and has great crossover appeal to adults, too. The toughest elements for younger readers may be some of the political elements, but they’ll skip over them to follow Ozge’s personal story and lose nothing for it.

***

One of the unique elements of Samanci’s style is she’s not only working in illustrations, but she also creates collages out of various items throughout the book. This adds a whole new layer to the story. Here, she’s sharing a little bit about an unusual — but brilliant — item that found its way into the finished edition of the book.

Miniature Muffin Cup

There was an amazing store where I lived: Tom Thumb Hobby and Crafts. Unfortunately, they moved somewhere far. This store was full of paper, beads, miniature houses, model making materials, sewing and baking supplies, and many more. Tom Thumb was so mind opening for a comics artist like me who combines comics with collage. While wondering in the store I saw the miniature muffin cups. I thought, I can make skirts with these in my collages. As if my editor Margaret Ferguson read my mind, a couple days after I bought the muffin cups she suggested me to put a skirt on the main character in one of the frames. My miniature muffin cups took its place in Dare to Disappoint.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part III (2015)

November 10, 2015 |

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.