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Dual Review: Ask the Passengers by A. S. King

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Kimberly’s take:

There are very few contemporary realistic novels that I seek out. At this point in my life, I know what I like to read, and I stick to it, mostly.
But for some reason, I picked up Everybody Sees the Ants last year (a book that straddles the line between fantasy and reality anyway) and it was all over from there. I was hooked on King’s writing, on the way she gets readers into her characters’ heads and makes us love them even when we’re exasperated by them.
Ask the Passengers is another winner from King, and I loved it even though it is the lightest on fantasy elements of the three of hers I’ve read.
Astrid Jones is a girl who is falling in love with another girl. She keeps it a secret for a long time, not only because of pressure from her family, friends, and schoolmates, but also because she just isn’t sure what it means to her. When she does let people know that she’s been dating another girl, the reactions are varied: disbelief, anger, hatred, and some happiness, too. What sets this apart from other books about a girl exploring her sexuality is the way King handles it. She’s an expert at her craft – I knew Astrid, I felt her struggles, and I related to her need to be accepted, to be loved for who she is. It’s a well-trod theme but such an important one. It could have seemed stale in anyone else’s hands, but in King’s hands, it was fresh.
Astrid’s family is by turns loving and cruel, and
King is so good at getting us as readers to see these ancillary
characters as whole people, who are often hateful out of fear. Astrid’s
sister in particular does some truly awful things, but realistic things, things that Astrid must accept and get past for the sake of her relationship with her sister. I saw a very strong theme of forgiveness here: forgiveness when it’s not asked for and perhaps not deserving, but necessary nonetheless.
The metaphors King excels at are here too, in the form of the passengers in the planes that fly over Astrid’s town. Astrid will “send her love” to the passengers above, and we as readers get the passengers’ stories in return. They’re varied, some happy, some not, but they’re connected to Astrid and to each other and allow the meaning of the story to expand. The passengers are also a way for Astrid to express herself fully to others, since she feels so stifled by the people around her.
Stories about “coming out” are being published with more frequency lately, but I wouldn’t call this story a coming out story. It’s about Astrid’s relationships with her family and friends as they realize she loves another girl, yes, but it’s even more about Astrid’s relationship with herself. She’s frustrated when her gay (and straight) peers demand a definition for her sexuality: Is she gay? Is she straight? Astrid comes to accept that she just is, and she demands that other people not put her in a box too.
Kelly’s take:

A. S. King gets better with each book. There’s no question in my mind that Ask the Passengers is her best to date.

Astrid Jones feels alone and confused and lost, but rather than wallow in that, rather than try to figure herself or her family out, she sends her love to everyone around her. She loves sending it up to the passengers in the planes who fly over her tiny, rural town. It’s her escape from this place, from herself, and from her life. It’s her way to feel connected and to feel accepted for who she is without ever having to face it head on. Except, of course, she will have to. 

This is a story about sexuality and about love and acceptance — all of the self, not of anyone else. Astrid struggles to figure out where she fits in, when the truth is, she just needs to keep a little bit of that love she’s sharing for herself. It’s also a story about people and individuals and how amazing it is we even exist. That that in and of itself is worth appreciating and loving. King deftly tells a story about how important it is to be yourself and understand and love yourself for who you are while also emphasizing how you do that through doing the same for other people. Because human existence and the diversity of experience is mind-blowing. 

Amid Astrid’s narrative are snippets of stories from the passengers in the planes above. These are the people to whom Astrid sends her love, and even though it doesn’t necessarily seem like it, the passengers’ stories all fit perfectly with her own struggle. Likewise, the plane metaphor in and of itself was brilliant without being over the top. We’re all our own pilots but we all carry other people with us. Our destines are our own to control but we aren’t alone. 

There’s plenty of philosophy in this one, and there’s the voices in Astrid’s head which operate a bit like the ants do in Lucky’s mind in Everybody Sees the Ants. What I love about King’s work is how internally focused it is, how much it’s about the individual and what’s going in in their minds. When Astrid breaks out though, she breaks out. 

Readers won’t walk away with a story about sexuality or a message about it, even though it’s part of what the story’s about. That’s where this is a smart, smart book — it’s dense and meaty, but it’s not done in a way that feels like it’s a lesson nor in a way that feels condescending to readers. There aren’t going to be a whole lot of labels tossed around or a real in-depth exploration of bisexuality or homosexuality. This is a story about being a person, not a label. Good readers will see that. I think defining this as simply a book about sexuality belittles the depths to which King aims to talk about the varied human experience. 

King nails small town life like few are able to do. This book had a number of similarities to M Molly Backes’s The Princesses of Iowa, down to the way the family operates, the mother-sister relationship, the facade and image needing to be presented to have status in a small town, the need for tolerance and respect for people, sexuality. These would be incredible read alikes not because Astrid and Paige are similar to one another, but instead, because the two of them are so different from one another. I also think this would be an interesting read alike to The Sky Always Hears Me But the Hills Don’t Mind by Kirsten Cronn-Mills. Astrid is almost a perfect hybrid of Morgan and Paige and their situations and stories. 

This book walks a fine line between being utterly sad and utterly hopeful and because of that, I held my breath many times, with the goal of not shedding a tear. But then I read the last couple of pages and knew what side of that sad/hopeful line the story fell and, well, I needed some kleenex. This is one of my favorite books this year, and I think it’s a masterpiece of YA fiction. Ask the Passengers is contemporary YA done right. 

Review copies received from the publisher. Ask the Passengers is available now. 

Ashen Winter by Mike Mullin

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I really dug Mike Mullin’s Ashfall, more than I thought I would. Survival stories aren’t usually my thing, but Mulllin turned me into a fan. The sequel, Ashen Winter, picks up where the first left off: Alex and Darla are at Alex’s aunt and uncle’s place, a passable refuge from the changed world. But Alex’s parents had set off to find him, and now Alex wants to find them and bring them back, reuniting the family. Darla decides to accompany him, and they’re off.

It’s a really simple premise, if a little stupid on Alex’s and Darla’s parts. Maybe it’s just because I knew I was reading a survival story, but two teenagers setting off into this post-volcano world on their own is a recipe for disaster. Let me tell you just a few things this new world has in store for our intrepid couple: cannibals (called “flensers”), rapists, kidnappers, never-ending winter, a desecrated landscape, an incompetent government response, and mercenaries. But both Alex and Darla are headstrong characters, so it’s not entirely unbelievable they would have made this decision, and their family wouldn’t have been able to stop them if they tried.

Ashen Winter is quite similar to Ashfall in a lot of ways: it’s a chronicle of how Alex and Darla survive, heavy on action. Unfortunately, I liked it significantly less due to the fact that it’s chock full of sexual abuse. A very large plot point (actually, the main plot point) focuses on the real and potential sexual assault women and girls undergo in this new world. Sexual assault was a part of the world pre-volcano, as it’s a part of our own world, but it’s practically a way of life for a much larger segment of the survivors post-volcano. Most of the book is spent trying to infiltrate a group of gangsters who steal and/or buy women and girls to use as sex slaves.

Some people don’t have a problem reading about this type of thing in fiction. Some people would say it’s realistic. I’m just tired of reading about it. There’s a particularly icky point near the end of the book that made me feel very uncomfortable as a reader, and I wished I hadn’t read that section at all. I finished this book before reading this thought-provoking post (about dystopias, not post-apocalyptic stories, but there is common ground), which really crystallized my feelings about this book. I want to read about resourceful teens surviving terrible cold, hunger, fatigue, even violence. I like those kinds of survival stories.

Maybe it’s because I frequently read to escape, and I know I won’t be going hungry anytime soon, that I have a shelter that keeps me warm, that my family is healthy and safe, that I won’t be eaten by cannibals, so I don’t mind putting myself in the shoes of a character who has to fight against those things. I do, however, fear sexual assault. I don’t like to read about it.

I guess that was just a really long warning that Ashen Winter focuses much more on this topic than its predecessor, which touched on it only slightly. It’s still well-written, exciting, and interesting. But I didn’t like most of it.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Review copy received from the publisher. Ashen Winter is available now.

Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst

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Vessel is the most unique fantasy novel I’ve read this year, and its execution is worthy of it.

Liyana has trained her whole life to be the vessel for her tribe’s goddess, Bayla. When Liyana dances and a magician speaks the correct words, Bayla will be called and inhabit Liyana’s body, displacing Liyana’s soul. The ritual kills Liyana, but Bayla needs a body to work the magic that will bring rain to the desert and save the lives of everyone who calls it home.

Liyana is prepared to sacrifice herself to save her tribe, but although the ritual is performed flawlessly, Bayla doesn’t come. Her tribe decides that Bayla decreed Liyana unworthy of her, and they abandon her to the desert. Liyana survives on her own for a bit, but her prospects are bleak.

And then a young man approaches her, claiming to be the trickster god Korbyn. He tells Liyana that the various tribes’ gods and goddesses have been trapped in false vessels, and they must team up together to rescue them or the desert people will perish. So Liyana joins Korbyn on his trek through the desert, gathering up the other tribes’ failed vessels of other gods and goddesses and heading east, toward the Crescent Empire, where Korbyn says the deities have been imprisoned.

The desert setting Durst has created is wonderful. Liyana loves her desert, though it is a harsh place to live. In one scene, she defends it to another character, and her words inspire love for the desert in the reader, too. Durst makes the desert a unique, fully-realized place, not a thinly-veiled copy of Middle Earth.

I loved many other things about the book, too. The magic system has rules that make sense, and it’s never used as a deus ex machina. On their journey, Liyana and Korbyn swap stories about the deities that we would normally call fables or folklore, but they also have an impact on the story and its characters. Liyana herself is protective of her people and her culture, but she’s not blinded by faith, either. Durst balances these two aspects of her personality well – she is neither blindly obedient nor the stereotypical rebel. The supporting cast all have distinctive personalities as well, even those who do not get much page time.

Many books start with a unique premise, but then execute that premise in a predictable way (Crewel is a recent example). Durst adeptly avoids this pitfall. Vessel isn’t a book full of twists and turns, but nor does it lead exactly where I thought it would. It’s believable and interesting throughout, and I never felt that I had read the story a hundred times before.

Lastly, I liked how the religion in the book wasn’t mythical (in the way that we consider ancient Greek religion mythical – fun, untrue stories that people used to believe). Liyana’s gods and goddesses are real, and they truly inhabit the bodies of others to work their magic. A lot of fantasy doesn’t go there, which is fine, but it’s more unusual to see it actually presented as the characters believe.

I know the cover doesn’t change what’s inside, but Vessel has a particularly striking one. I love the combination of pinks, oranges, and browns, and I love how powerful Liyana looks on it. The cover seems to depict her in the midst of her dance to draw Bayla to her, meaning that while it does depict a pretty girl in a pretty dress, it’s also relevant to the story. (And I’ll admit that I love looking at pretty dresses.)

Vessel is a great example of new territory fantasy can mine. One of the things I love most about reading fantasy is that anything is possible. The author has the whole world plus all imagined worlds to work with. Durst has done a terrific job with her imagined world.

I’d recommend this for fans of Girl of Fire and Thorns (for the hero’s journey aspect), For Darkness Shows the Stars (for the unique/believable world-building aspect), Shadows on the Moon (for the non-Western fantasy aspect), and possibly older readers of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon/Starry River of the Sky (for the folkore/mythology aspect). Its appeal should be wide to fantasy fans in general, but it’s a good example of story and writing that can draw in tentative fantasy readers as well.

Because I was curious and I figured you all might be too, below is a video of Sarah Beth Durst discussing the development of the idea behind Vessel. You can also read the first two chapters of the book at her website.

Finished copy received from the publisher. Vessel is available now.

Source

Giants Beware! by Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado

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Giants Beware! is another home run for First Second. It’s got lively full-color art, an adventurous plot, and a dash of humor that all add up to a supremely entertaining read for the middle grade set.
Claudette has grown up hearing stories about her father, who lost his legs fighting a fearsome dragon (and survived). She’s also heard stories about how a threatening giant was chased from her town, and she’s very disturbed to learn that no one bothered to kill it – they just let it get away! Claudette decides to fix this mistake. She tricks her younger brother Gaston and her best friend Marie into pursuing the giant from the story, and the three encounter all sorts of danger and cause all sorts of mayhem on their adventure.
I liked how Aguirre played with gender roles. Gaston is your typical scaredy-cat (and also an accomplished pastry chef) while Claudette is the brave one, but neither character is a stereotype. Marie aspires to be a princess when she grows up, and Claudette respects her for it (“Wanting to be a princess is a weird career choice, but if anyone’s smart enough to pull it off, it’s you”). But that doesn’t make Marie a standard fairy tale princess. In fact, each of the supporting characters is given time to shine, since their unique talents help get them out of scrapes. And by the end of the story, all three kids have learned how to be braver, or less impulsive, or more honest. And their friendship has grown and matured, too.
Giants Beware is part of a growing trend of full-color adventure graphic novels, and I’m glad for it. It stands up well with Zita the Spacegirl, Bone, Earthling, Jellaby and the like. It’s its own unique story, too – the French feel makes it stand apart, and Claudette’s energy and bloodthirstiness aren’t matched by any other heroine I’ve read (that’s a good thing).
The art is so good, too. It’s full of terrific facial expressions that add character and make you laugh out loud. Each character is distinctive, even the ancillary ones. And it’s in full color, making the entire thing beautiful and just wonderful to pore over again and again. There’s no cliffhanger, but at least one of the characters hints at further adventures to come, meaning we can hopefully expect a sequel sometime soon.
There were a couple of things that struck me as odd. There were quite a few typos that nagged at me after a while. Unfortunately, these stand out more in a graphic novel than they do in a regular novel, there being fewer words to work with. And Gaston may be a poor choice of name for kids who are probably only familiar with it from Beauty and the Beast (although it is amusing to juxtapose the two characters).
But I’m nitpicking. This is such a fun read, and a great example of what the format can do. Highly recommended.
Book borrowed from the library.

Blood Roses by Francesca Lia Block

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I’ve actually only ever read one other book by Francesca Lia Block – Pretty Dead, a slim vampire novel that was published in 2009. In anyone else’s hands, the story may well have been a generic vampire romance, but in Block’s, it was something else entirely.

Several reviews of Blood Roses, a collection of nine (very) short stories first published in 2008, call Block’s writing “prose poetry,” which I think is a good descriptor. The stories, which each take under five minutes to read, are loosely connected to each other and focus on teenage girls undergoing some sort of transformation – physical, sexual, magical. There’s a thread of fantasy that connects them all, sometimes dark, sometimes restorative, sometimes both. Block’s fantasy in these stories is a metaphor for adolescence and coming of age, and I loved nearly all of them.

In one story, a girl tells the reader that her boyfriend is an alien and explains how she knows. In another, a girl suddenly develops tattoos all over her body after becoming infatuated with a tattoo artist. In another, a girl meets a centaur and takes him home with her. Many of them are sexual in some way, and many involve other mature topics like drugs or family violence. While all of the stories are fantastical, Block doesn’t let her characters dwell on the fantasy aspects – the fantasy is simply a part of their world. (One review claimed that the characters may not all be quite sane, which is possible, I suppose, but it’s not how I prefer to think of it. It’s too literal an interpretation for me.)

Block’s use of language is always imaginative and always beautiful. She’s a fan of short, impactful sentences, unusual story structure, and interesting metaphors. The result is very moody, atmospheric writing you can get lost in. It can also result in some confusion as to what really happened, but that seems purposeful, and it doesn’t detract from the stories, which straddle the line between fantasy and reality anyway.

Due to the nature of Block’s writing, which is very different from most everything else, her books won’t be for everyone. Personally, I love them. She takes risks with language and trusts that her readers are mature enough to understand her. I often have a hard time with short stories, but these were a treat, and I think other readers interested in unusual, edgy fantasy writing will enjoy them too.

Book purchased.