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books

Independent Study by Joelle Charbonneau

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In The Testing, Cia underwent a series of grueling tests, ending in a Hunger Games-esque survival test that she and a few of her classmates made it through. Then, as is standard with the Testing, all of their memories were wiped, and they were simply told they had passed.

Cia is now a freshman at the university, having successfully passed the Testing, but she remembers nothing of it, at least initially. That means she remembers nothing of what she had to do to pass, and nothing of what her classmates did to each other, either. But she is not home-free yet. She still has rigorous classes which come with their own more standard tests, plus a series of more creative tests that will gauge her creativity, smarts, and ability to work with others. And then she’s assigned to the independent study of the title, which comes with its own surprises and challenges.

Meanwhile, Cia also has the nagging fear that not all is what it seems, and she slowly begins to take notice of an undercurrent of resistance – and it’s pulling her in.

While the first book was an edge-of-my-seat thriller, the sequel is more of a puzzle book. The stakes are still high, but Charbonneau focuses on a series of smaller puzzles rather than a large-scale survival trial. The puzzles are clever, too, both in the way they’re set up by the puzzle-makers and the way they’re solved by Cia and her comrades. Reading about these things is incredibly fun – I found myself thinking “oh, how cool (and also awful)!” several times. This series is full of terrible things happening to children, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me miss school a little bit. (Honestly, I could have just as easily said “High school is full of terrible things happening to children” and it would be just as accurate.)

There’s a whole heck of a lot of dramatic irony in this volume, as Cia and her cohorts’ memories have been wiped, but the readers’ have not (obviously). We know all about the betrayals that went down in the first volume, so for a good portion of this sequel, I was holding my breath, just waiting for other similar betrayals to happen here. I was glad that Charbonneau didn’t give me exactly what I was expecting.

For all its positives, Independent Study requires a bit more suspension of disbelief than its predecessor. For example, instead of a recorder in the students’ ID bracelets (as in the first volume), the adults in charge of their education/tests opted for a simple tracker. This allows Cia and some other students to talk freely, which is necessary to the plot. The problem is it makes no sense for those in power to decide they only need to track the students’ movements and not their conversations. It’s such a blatant plot contrivance and it bothered me.

Independent Study wraps up the main plot points introduced in the book, but it does end on a cliffhanger, as many second volumes do. If this bothers you, I advise you to wait until the third and final volume, Graduation Day, is published in the summer.

Review copy received from the publisher. Independent Study will be available January 7.

Freakangels by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield

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Usually I’ll write my own plot synopsis for reviews, but the one on the back of the book for Warren Ellis’ and Paul Duffield’s comic book series Freakangels hits all the right notes, I think:

23 years ago, twelve strange children were born in England at exactly the same moment. 6 years ago, the world ended. This is the story of what happened next.

There’s more to it than this, of course. Those strange children-now-adults have dubbed themselves the freakangels, and they’ve settled in a flooded part of London called Whitechapel. Most of them are usually focused on protecting the survivors in Whitechapel – I say “most” and “usually” because they’re not always united in their goal. Complicating things is the fact that they had something to do with the cataclysm. Exactly what they did is revealed slowly, over the course of the story.

The main cast is huge, since Ellis and Duffield focus on each of the 12 freakangels at some point in the story. It’s quite a feat that each is distinct, then, and doesn’t become a caricature. None of them are your typical superheroes, though some of them are trying. I wouldn’t even say any of them are the Robert Downey, Jr. Iron Man-type superheroes: flawed, tortured, but still larger-than-life. Rather, these people seem very much “same size as life,” if you can say such a thing – they don’t have the witty comebacks all the time, they can be hurt (and not just in the final showdown), they deliberately make bad choices along with good ones, over and over. The knowledge that they’re somehow the cause of the suffering around them adds an important layer – and the way each freakangel deals with this knowledge is telling, too. The characters are just plain interesting, with complex relationships and personalities.

Part of what makes the series so good is the art by Duffield. I find that characters in a lot of comics – particularly those that have been ongoing for many years – blend together, even within single volumes. It forces the reader to rely on clothing choices or hairstyles to keep them straight. That’s not the case with Duffield’s illustrations, which are not only lovely, but also detail-rich and consistent from panel to panel. His characters are easily recognizable and diverse in appearance as well as personality. I also love the slightly muted color palette, which fits the mood of the story perfectly.

This is an adult comic with adult themes and language (frank talk of sex and lots of f-bombs), but I can certainly see it appealing to more mature teens. It feels like what a lot of the popular teen post-apocalyptic stories would be if the characters were 23 instead of 17. In fact, it could be described as an adult sequel to the YA story of what these people did as 17-year-olds. Because it’s a full story contained in six easy-to-digest volumes, it’s also a great series to hand to someone who may just be dipping their toes into comics. (No decades of background knowledge necessary!)

Freakangels is available in six print volumes, but it actually first appeared completely free and legal on the web: www.freakangels.com.

Graphic Novel Roundup

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A few snappy reviews of some graphic novels I’ve read lately. Descriptions are from Worldcat, followed by my own observations.

Foiled and Curses! Foiled Again by Jane Yolen and Mike Cavallaro
Aliera is a star at fencing, but at school no one notices her–until her
new lab partner Avery begins flirting with her. Aliera’s mother just
bought her a foil from a garage sale, and it has a strange jewel
attached to the hilt. Will Aliera’s first date be ruined when magical
creatures try to steal her foil?

I wanted to love these books. I have fond memories of Jane Yolen’s novels from when I was a kid. Alas, these didn’t have the same magic. There’s a lot of telling, the pace is erratic, and the fantastical elements seem a bit jumbled. It should still be of interest to kids who like fencing (or are simply intrigued by it) – each section is headed with a fencing term and Aliera gets a lot of chances to use her weapon during the course of the story. (Cavallaro does an excellent job with the art; the writing doesn’t meet its quality.)

Sumo by Thien Pham
Scott, abandoned by his girlfriend and having lost his dream of playing
professional football, is offered a position in a Japanese sumo training
“stable,” where he seems to find himself again.

This is a short book that tells three parts of Scott’s story in alternating times, with a different color scheme for each time. Near the end, the switches between each of the three threads become more frequent, until they converge at a single point. At that point, the images and text parallel each other. The style is effective, though it doesn’t prevent the story from being a bit slight. It’s gorgeous to look at – the marriage of text and art is done very well. This is a good example of the format being right for the story.

Monster on the Hill by Rob Harrell
In a fantastical 1860s England, every quiet little township is
terrorized by a ferocious monster–much to the townsfolk’s delight! Each
town’s unique monster is a source of local pride, not to mention
tourism. Each town, that is– except for one. Unfortunately, for the
people of Stoker-on-Avon, their monster isn’t quite as impressive. In
fact, he’s a little down in the dumps. Can the morose Rayburn get a
monstrous
makeover and become a proper horror? It’s up to the eccentric Dr.
Charles Wilkie and plucky street urchin Timothy to get him up to snuff,
before a greater threat turns the whole town to kindling.

I loved this one. It’s a light-hearted action-oriented story with a lot of humor and heart. The concept is clever and a little bit cute; I love how it’s unexpected, but also plays with the idea that humans (including kids) love to be scared sometimes. It reminded me a bit of a cross between Giants Beware and the movie Monsters Inc. It’s a beautiful production all around – lovely full-color art that demands to be pored over.

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe and Benjamin Harper
Retold in graphic novel form, the narrator tells the reader about the murder he committed, and the terrifying aftermath.

I’m still not quite sure if this reproduces Poe’s text precisely or condenses it in some way, but the text itself isn’t the creepiest part of this adaptation. That honor belongs to the art. Though it isn’t quite my style, it does manage to convey a great mood. It’s got lots of shadows and a color palette consisting of mainly black and some blues. The eyes of both the narrator and his victim are particularly well-done (and integral to the story).

The 100 by Kass Morgan

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This book has gotten a bad rap on Goodreads, and I don’t think it’s deserved. The premise is killer. The writing is competent and flows nicely. The plot is fast and the characters are full of secrets. I really liked it – it’s sci fi candy and I gobbled it right up.

The 100 refers to a group of people – juvenile delinquents who have been sent to re-colonize an irradiated Earth. Humanity has been living on space stations for generations, ever since the Earth became uninhabitable. But their resources are dwindling, and the adult scientists need to know if Earth is truly ready for habitation again. The teens will be the test subjects.

“Juvenile delinquent” in this future world is a fuzzy term. Crime is punished very severely, and almost anything is a crime. Adults who commit crimes are usually executed immediately. Minors are kept in “Confinement” until they turn 18, and are then given a retrial. Except the retrials are mostly shams and the teens are usually then executed as well. So for the teens who know what’s likely coming, they look at the trip to Earth as a reprieve from death.

We get the story from four different third-person perspectives – two girls, two boys. They range in age from 17 to 20 (or thereabouts). They’re Confined and/or sent to Earth for various reasons, though one of our POVs actually stays behind on one of the space stations, giving us more insight into that environment and the Earth experiment from the adults’ perspective. Each of the characters has a secret (some have more than one); some secrets are easier to guess than others. The secrets are revealed in flashbacks, which I normally loathe, but they work well here – they’re short and full of action, just like the present-day sections.

What irritates a lot of the reviewers is something that happens very near the end. We realize something one of the main characters did, and it’s monumentally stupid. Not just “I can’t believe I did that, that was so stupid” stupid. I mean that it really strains credulity. Breaks it, even. It certainly broke a lot of other readers. It didn’t ruin it for me, though. I gave it a bit of a side-eye, sure. But I figured I was so far down the rabbit hole of believability, this one further step wasn’t going to ruin my enjoyment. And it’s followed very closely by another revelation that I found quite believable and sets the book up nicely for a sequel, which I will certainly be reading.

So, world-building. There’s not much of it. If you want a lot of world-building that’s creative and makes sense and actually uses science that maybe, possibly could exist in the future, look elsewhere. This is not your book. If you have a very, very healthy ability to suspend your disbelief and prefer to digest your sci-fi at a breakneck pace, you might consider giving this a shot.

This is an Alloy (book packager) title, and it feels like it. It bears a lot in common with a few other packaged titles I’ve read – short chapters, multiple characters (often multiple POVs), lots of secrets that are teased out over time, an emphasis on plot, a concept that can be described in a snappy sentence or two. What surprised me is that the author essentially acknowledges that it’s a packaged title in the Acknowledgments (see what I did there?), at least in the arc version. She credits the idea for the story to someone else in the first sentence, and thanks several people, mentioning Alloy specifically, later on. As someone who looks for these sorts of things, this obviously caught my eye. I wonder how many teens 1. read the Acknowledgments, and 2. would care one way or another.

The CW has picked up this as a midseason premiere and I’m excited to have a look. I hope it’s as fun as the book.

Review copy picked up at Kidlitcon.

Ink Is Thicker Than Water by Amy Spalding

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Kellie Brooks thinks she knows herself, thinks she knows her best friends, and thinks she knows her family. But everything she thinks she knows begins to fall apart when her adopted sister Sara turns 18 and has the chance to meet her birth mother. And everything changes again when Kellie joins the school newspaper and realizes Adalaide, the girl she’d always thought was a dork, is actually not that dorky after all. And it changes further when her best friend Kaitlyn begins to drift away.

And Oliver, the brother of her sister’s boyfriend Dexter, only complicates Kellie’s life even further. After their awkward encounter last May, wherein he tried to get Kellie to have sex and she backed out, she thought his presence in her life was gone forever. But now it seems like he’s interested again.

Amy Spalding’s Ink Is Thicker Than Water is an excellent example of a true YA novel. It’s coming-of-age, but it’s coming-of-age through a perspective that’s quite minute and not world-shattering. What Kellie is going through and experiencing is entirely within the contours of her own life and her own experiences. She’s navigating a tricky situation in her family life, a change in what she thought were forever friendships, and an opportunity to pursue a romance with a boy who she thought would never again be a part of her life. Despite the fact none of the things that happen impact the greater world, they each play a huge part in impacting Kellie’s own world. And each of the things she encounters leads to her coming to better understand her role in her own life and in the lives of those around her — as well as her role in the greater world.

Family is the biggest aspect of this story, and Spalding isn’t afraid to look at a very complicated family dynamic that isn’t interesting because of its complexity and challenges, but rather, is interesting because it does work. Sara is Kellie’s older sister, but she’s adopted. Kellie’s mother and father were told the chances of them ever conceiving a child naturally were slim to none, and they chose to adopt Sara to start their family. It was no time before they conceived Kellie without a problem — though in no way are Sara and Kellie at odds with their places within the family. In fact, they’re as close as two sisters can be.

But the family gets more challenging, as Kellie and Sara’s parents are also divorced. Mom has remarried, and after a significant life reevaluation in the past, she also left her job as a paralegal and started working at The Family Ink — a tattoo shop — with her new husband. Mom and her new husband have a child together, a boy named Finn, who both girls adore and take turns taking care of. Kellie and Sara’s dad lives nearby, and though he doesn’t admit to being in a relationship with anyone else, he does have a girlfriend. Both girls spend time with dad, even though they live with mom. Despite being divorced, mom and dad get along, and both have their girls best interests at heart. So when Sara chooses to meet her biological mother, it’s not a surprise that both mom and dad support her decision to get to know her better, even if it does hurt them. But, of course, it’s a hurt that’s less about feeling abandoned and more a hurt of knowing their daughter’s growing up and learning how to make life choices and relationships for herself and her best interests.

Which is where this story really veers into something memorable. For Kellie, Sara’s decision to spend more time with her biological mother feels at times like a personal insult. Kellie’s not selfish, but she IS a teenager: Sara’s lack of time being spent with her feels like it’s done with the intent to make Kellie jealous and hurt, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with Kellie. It has to do entirely with Sara coming to learn how to be herself. This is something that Kellie eventually will figure out, as she, too, learns how to navigate these family relationships and the shifting that they can go through.

Kellie’s friendship and subsequent change in connection with Kaitlyn is really believable and it’s really honest. As Kellie begins to spend more time with the newspaper and honing her skills as a humor columnist (and yes, some of those columns are in the book to read), she’s spending more time with those who share those interests with her. Kaitlyn is doing precisely the same thing, though her interests aren’t in the newspaper or in writing. As a result, the girls begin drifting apart, even though it’s not in a nasty or mean way. Kellie takes it as an affront, though, as Kaitlyn spends more time with her new friends, and as readers, we see the loneliness this leaves her. She doesn’t want to hate Kaitlyn and she doesn’t want to be mad at her, but she can’t help feeling sad and lost as both Kaitlyn and herself throw themselves into new experiences and one of the consequences is their friendship changes. It doesn’t end. It just changes.

Change, if it hasn’t been obvious, is a key theme in Ink Is Thicker Than Water, and it might be argued that it’s through her relationship with Oliver that Kellie figures out change doesn’t need to be scary. Back in May, Oliver and Kellie were having a good time together and almost had sex — but she didn’t want it to happen and it didn’t. She wasn’t ready. Since then, Kellie worried that she and Oliver never had another shot, so when he pursued her again, she didn’t believe it. She didn’t believe someone could want to get to know her after she’d let them down before. But the truth was, Oliver appreciated that aspect of her.

From the outside, their relationship look great: Oliver loves to be in touch with Kellie, he wants to make things “Facebook official” quickly, and he’s always willing to be around for her, even if sex is something she’s not ready to enter the equation (and he’s incredibly respectful of this). The thing is, Oliver is a little bit . . . clingy. Desperate, even. And as much as Kellie loves the attention and loves the ability to reach him any time she wants to and needs to, she’s also a little wary of how much he wants to ensure their solidarity as a couple. Of course, there’s a reason for his actions, and Kellie will discover what it is when she’s out with his brother Dexter. But more than discover what it is causing Oliver to act as he does with her, Kellie will realize that she’s not too different from him, but in her relationship with her sister. It’s this ah ha moment when Kellie not only appreciates Oliver even more, but it’s in this moment when Kellie comes to understand that people can and do change and that change doesn’t have to be scary.

Change can be a good thing.

One of the most enjoyable parts of this story for me has to do with Kellie’s relationship with sex and virginity. As noted, she almost had sex with Oliver upon meeting him for the first time months ago, but she backed out, saying she wasn’t ready for it. So when he returns to her later, she’s worried that that choice will forever be the reason he would not be the reason he’d want to be in a relationship with her. If she hurt him once, the potential to do it again and again exists. But Oliver doesn’t believe that. When their relationship develops, sex remains in the back of Kellie’s mind regularly: she’s not ready for it. But rather than keep that voice at bay, she’s open and honest about it with not just herself, but with Oliver as well. At times it comes out awkwardly, but it’s that awkwardness that’s honest and real. It’s a tricky topic, and Spalding handles it in a way that’s funny and incredibly authentic. Kellie does eventually decide she’s ready, and in the process, she takes steps to protect herself and Oliver in a very non-preachy, non-message-y manner. Once the two of them do engage in sex, Kellie’s reactions and desires are true to her coming to understand herself, coming to understand relationships and what and how physicality plays in, and more than that, Kellie discovers that she as a person has autonomy. She can do what it is she wants to do in whatever manner she wants to do it, as long as no one gets hurt in the process. Even though she thinks sex is the scary part, she learns after sex that the really scary part is owning that freedom and the responsibility that comes with it.

Ink Is Thicker Than Water is equal parts funny as it is heartening. Kellie’s voice is strong and memorable, and it is authentically teenage. There’s no doubt this is a 16-year-old character who is discovering how tough and how exciting it is to be a 16-year-old. Things are perfectly imperfect, and it’s up to her to make the decisions of what to pursue and what needs to be let go.

While the ending feels a little neatly wrapped up, it fits the story and it fits the characters. I enjoyed how Spalding worked the tattoo shop into the storyline, and I felt like she did a great job making the mother’s storyline work for Kellie — we know mom learned too late what it was like to pursue her passion, and now she gets to be not just an example, but she gets to be one of Kellie (and Sara’s!) biggest advocates. It’s refreshing to see such a dynamic, supportive family in YA fiction and moreso to see it within the context of change and challenge. This isn’t a textbook family and it never could be. But because they love and support one another through thick and thin, they make things work. Likewise, Spalding’s knack for capturing friendship and relationships is noteworthy.

Readers who loved The Reece Malcolm List will find as much — if not more — to enjoy in Ink Is Thicker Than Water. Without doubt, this is the kind of book that will resonate with readers who dig contemporary realistic fiction, particularly in the vein of Sara Zarr and Siobhan Vivian. Kellie is easily one of my favorite protagonists this year because she’s imperfect and real in her imperfections. Her less-desirable qualities aren’t insurmountable, but they’re also not masked or made pretty. They’re just a part of who she is, and as she works towards an understanding of who she is, she doesn’t reject those things. She accepts them.

Ink Is Thicker Than Water will be available next Tuesday, December 3 from Entangled. Review copy received from the author.