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STACKED

books

  • STACKED
  • About Us
  • Categories
    • Audiobooks
    • Book Lists
      • Debut YA Novels
      • Get Genrefied
      • On The Radar
    • Cover Designs
      • Cover Doubles
      • Cover Redesigns
      • Cover Trends
    • Feminism
      • Feminism For The Real World Anthology
      • Size Acceptance
    • In The Library
      • Challenges & Censorship
      • Collection Development
      • Discussion and Resource Guides
      • Readers Advisory
    • Professional Development
      • Book Awards
      • Conferences
    • The Publishing World
      • Data & Stats
    • Reading Life and Habits
    • Romance
    • Young Adult
  • Reviews + Features
    • About The Girls Series
    • Author Interviews
    • Contemporary YA Series
      • Contemporary Week 2012
      • Contemporary Week 2013
      • Contemporary Week 2014
    • Guest Posts
    • Link Round-Ups
      • Book Riot
    • Readers Advisory Week
    • Reviews
      • Adult
      • Audiobooks
      • Graphic Novels
      • Non-Fiction
      • Picture Books
      • YA Fiction
    • So You Want to Read YA Series
  • Review Policy

My Most Anticipated YA Fantasy and Science Fiction of 2020

February 12, 2020 |

Fantasy and science fiction were my first reading loves, and YA writers have produced some of the most creative and immersive works within the genre. (Check out the most recent Cybils shortlist for seven examples; the winner will be announced this Friday.) Here are a few of the forthcoming titles that I’m excited to read.

 

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (April 14)

Nothing is more important than loyalty.

But what if you’ve sworn to protect the one you were born to destroy?

Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar to compete with other children to be chosen as one of the Crown Prince’s Council of 11. If she’s picked, she’ll be joined with the other Council members through the Ray, a bond deeper than blood. That closeness is irresistible to Tarisai, who has always wanted to belong somewhere. But The Lady has other ideas, including a magical wish that Tarisai is compelled to obey: Kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust. Tarisai won’t stand by and become someone’s pawn—but is she strong enough to choose a different path for herself?

With extraordinary world-building and breathtaking prose, Raybearer is the story of loyalty, fate, and the lengths we’re willing to go for the ones we love.

 

 

Forged in Fire and Stars by Andrea Robertson (May 12)

Ara has always known about the legend of the Loresmith: the blacksmith who served alongside the kings and queens of every generation to protect the kingdom. It was her fate to inherit the title–though she never truly believed it would come to pass since the monarchy’s downfall years before.

But when the lost Princess Nimhea and Prince Eamon steal Ara from her quiet life with a mission to retake the throne–and take her place as the Loresmith–her whole world turns upside down. Their journey will take Ara on a dangerous adventure to discover new truths about her family’s legacy, and even to face the gods themselves. And with a mysterious thief as an unexpected companion, Ara must use all her skills to figure out just who she can trust, and forge the right path forward–for herself, her kingdom, and her heart.

 

The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna (May 26)

Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.

But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.

Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.

Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she’s ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be–not even Deka herself.

 

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (June 9)

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie up some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

 

The Kinder Poison by Natalie Mae (June 16)

Zahru has long dreamed of leaving the kingdom of Orkena and having the kinds of adventures she’s only ever heard about in stories. But as a lowly Whisperer, her power to commune with animals means that her place is serving in the royal stables until the day her magic runs dry.

All that changes when the ailing ruler invokes the Crossing: a death-defying race across the desert, in which the first of his heirs to finish—and take the life of a human sacrifice at the journey’s end—will ascend to the throne and be granted unparalleled abilities.

With all of the kingdom abuzz, Zahru leaps at the chance to change her fate if just for a night by sneaking into the palace for a taste of the revelry. But the minor indiscretion turns into a deadly mistake when she gets caught up in a feud between the heirs and is forced to become the Crossing’s human sacrifice. Zahru is left with only one hope for survival: somehow figuring out how to overcome the most dangerous people in the world.

 

Hunted By the Sky by Tanaz Bhathena (June 23)

Gul has spent her life running. She has a star-shaped birthmark on her arm, and in the kingdom of Ambar, girls with such birthmarks have been disappearing for years. Gul’s mark is what caused her parents’ murder at the hand of King Lohar’s ruthless soldiers and forced her into hiding to protect her own life. So when a group of rebel women called the Sisters of the Golden Lotus rescue her, take her in, and train her in warrior magic, Gul wants only one thing: revenge.

Cavas lives in the tenements, and he’s just about ready to sign his life over to the king’s army. His father is terminally ill, and Cavas will do anything to save him. But sparks fly when he meets a mysterious girl–Gul–in the capital’s bazaar, and as the chemistry between them undeniably grows, he becomes entangled in a mission of vengeance–and discovers a magic he never expected to find.

Dangerous circumstances have brought Gul and Cavas together at the king’s domain in Ambar Fort . . . a world with secrets deadlier than their own. Exploring identity, class struggles, and high-stakes romance, Hunted by the Sky is a gripping adventure set in a world inspired by medieval India.

 

Goddess in the Machine by Lora Beth Johnson (June 30)

When Andra wakes up, she’s drowning.

Not only that, but she’s in a hot, dirty cave, it’s the year 3102, and everyone keeps calling her Goddess. When Andra went into a cryonic sleep for a trip across the galaxy, she expected to wake up in a hundred years, not a thousand. Worst of all, the rest of the colonists–including her family and friends–are dead. They died centuries ago, and for some reason, their descendants think Andra’s a deity. She knows she’s nothing special, but she’ll play along if it means she can figure out why she was left in stasis and how to get back to Earth.

Zhade, the exiled bastard prince of Eerensed, has other plans. Four years ago, the sleeping Goddess’s glass coffin disappeared from the palace, and Zhade devoted himself to finding it. Now he’s hoping the Goddess will be the key to taking his rightful place on the throne–if he can get her to play her part, that is. Because if his people realize she doesn’t actually have the power to save their dying planet, they’ll kill her.

With a vicious monarch on the throne and a city tearing apart at the seams, Zhade and Andra might never be able to unlock the mystery of her fate, let alone find a way to unseat the king, especially since Zhade hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with Andra. And a thousand years from home, is there any way of knowing that Earth is better than the planet she’s woken to?

 

 

 

Filed Under: book lists, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Young Adult

A Few Cybils Reads – Part 4 (2019)

December 11, 2019 |

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Power’s debut is a bestseller and I know a lot of readers have loved it, but it didn’t work for me. It’s a dystopia-type story set in the near future at a school for girls called Raxter. It’s not much of a school anymore since the island where the school is located was hit with the Tox, a mysterious illness that causes body deformations (like an extra external spinal cord) and erratic, violent behavior in its victims. The girls have been promised that the Navy and the US government are working on a cure, but in the meantime they’re restricted to the island and sent a few meager supplies every so often. When Hetty’s best friend Byatt disappears, she and her other friend/new love interest Reese team up to find her, discovering a few secrets and lies along the way.

Many other readers have praised the writing as well as the plot, but I found neither particularly engaging. I’m surprised this has garnered so much positive attention this long after dystopian YA’s heyday. There’s nothing especially interesting or revelatory about the girls’ situation at Raxter, and the hand-wavey explanation for the Tox at the end is almost insulting in its generality.  The only really fresh thing it offers in terms of plot is the body horror, which doesn’t do anything for me as a reader but I’m sure fascinates others. Contrary to other reviewers, I didn’t really observe anything particularly feminist about the story (though it’s not anti-feminist either). I did appreciate that Power included a romance between two girls (Hetty and Reese).

 

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Instead of attending the draft where he would be able to handpick his team for the Aurora Legion, a futuristic spacefaring version of the United Nations, Tyler Jones followed a wayward distress signal and rescued Aurora O’Malley from the the space fold.  She had been trapped there in stasis for the past two centuries, the only survivor from a ship on its way to colonize one of the many new worlds that had been discovered thanks to fold technology. As a result of missing the draft, Tyler – the top Alpha at the Academy – was stuck with the dregs, the recruits no one else wanted. His twin sister Scarlet, the designated diplomat, stuck with him, as did his best friend and pilot Kat, but the other three members of his new team (including two aliens of separate species) are…less than stellar. Things get off to a rocky start when the team is sent on its first mission, a throwaway job that appears almost meaningless. And then Aurora shows up, an unwelcome stowaway who not only seems to have uncontrollable superpowers, but is also being hunted by a group of truly scary Earth enforcers who will stop at nothing to get to her.

This is a high-concept, high-action thriller of a space adventure that doesn’t skimp on its characters. As readers will expect, the prickly team bonds over time, eventually becoming each others’ found family. I loved a lot of the world-building touches, like the fact that just before first contact with aliens, religion on Earth had pretty much died out, but the discovery of so many different alien species (and their remarkable similarities to humans and each other – all bipedal, all carbon-based, and so on) prompted humans to create a new unified religion. Kaufman and Kristoff do a really solid job with the two main alien cultures, too, which are distinct and have their own complex culture and histories.

The audio production is pretty great. Told in rotating point of view chapters, each team member (including Aurora) is voiced by a different reader, and the voices of the masked villains are modulated so they sound mechanized and extra-creepy. One main character, Kat, is Australian, and while the reader for her does a good job with the accent (at least to my ears), the others are pretty bad at it, to the point that it drew me out of the story a lot. Other than that, though, this is an above-average audiobook, a real treat for listeners who enjoy full cast productions.

 

Filed Under: cybils, Reviews, Science Fiction, ya, ya fiction, Young Adult

Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton

May 29, 2019 |

Arwen Elys Dayton’s Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful is one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a while. It’s a cross between a novel and a short story collection, consisting of six interconnected stories, each subsequent story set further in the future than the last. The characters in the stories never meet each other and aren’t related, but they share a common thread: all stories deal with physical manipulation of the body, including organ transplants, robotic implants, and gene editing.

The first story begins in the near future, where a pair of teenage twins are struggling to survive. One is soon to succumb to her illness, and the other is pressured to try a radical new experimental medical procedure that just might save his life. The catch is that it requires using the body of his sister – after she has died – to work. Further in the future, a teenage girl who survived a horrific car accident thanks to robotic implants must endure the bullying of other teens who mistrust this still-new kind of technology, who wonder if she is even human anymore.

As Dayton moves her readers further and further forward in time, the ways humans change themselves – right down to the DNA – become more and more extreme. Factions develop on each side of the debate: those who think these advances are a net good versus those who believe humans have gone too far. Spurring the debate on is a religious man who initially urges his followers to eschew any kind of advanced (to us in 2019, at least) medical or physical transformation, including those that would save someone’s life. He pops up for a time in most stories, often as a throwaway reference, but he serves only as a tenuous connecting thread – the stories belong to the characters, not to this representation of the eternal argument over what makes us human.

I am in love with Dayton’s concept of using a series of interrelated short stories to examine a timeless science fiction topic that feels more immediate (and perhaps less science fiction) than ever. It will thrill science fiction fans new and old, who will be treated to not just one vision of the future, but six of them. Dayton’s imagination is on full display, and it’s clear she’s thought through each of her premises and rooted her ideas deeply in human experiences and human relationships. Her characters propel the stories; this is not just a sketchy concept of the way humans might use advanced technology, but a fully realized exploration of human behavior, feelings, and perceptions when building, using, fighting, and simply existing with such technology. Each character is memorable and each story is unique.

I listened to the audiobook version, which uses six different narrators, one for each of the stories. Christopher Gebauer does a particularly good job in the fourth story, about a teenage boy whose own body modifications were thrust upon him before he was even born – and who was then discarded when they didn’t produce the desired results. It might be the most creative of the stories with the most memorable protagonist, and it doesn’t end in quite the place I thought it would (a good thing).

This is a great entry point for science fiction newbies, as the stories are handily divided into easily digestible bites and start out pretty familiar, only growing exceptionally weird at the end, when the reader has had a chance to warm up a bit. It also provides some good food for thought for more seasoned readers, who should be intrigued by the format and the exploration of how the tech we’re just getting used to today will impact humanity centuries from now.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction, ya, ya fiction, Young Adult, young adult fiction

Readalikes for Station Eleven

January 30, 2019 |

Ever since I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect readalike for it. I never expected to love it as much as I do. I checked it out on a whim in 2016 because I wanted to read something written for adults, and I had a hankering for science fiction (I had been reading a ton of other genre fiction and needed something different). This was available on audio and read by one of my favorite audiobook narrators, Kirsten Potter, so I checked it out.

I was immediately blown away. I couldn’t stop listening. This book is how I learned that I love literary science fiction, science fiction that has a speculative backdrop but isn’t necessarily about that backdrop. It’s science fiction that’s driven by character and not plot. Teenage me is giving adult me the side eye right now because for sixteen year old Kimberly, plot was king. No swoony romance? No intriguing plot twists? A story focused on relationships? Teenage me: no thank you. Adult me, though? It turns out I can’t get enough.

Since Station Eleven was a big critical success, many books published since then have been compared to it, so finding recommended readalikes isn’t too difficult. Whether they’re actually good readalikes is another story, though, and it depends on what the reader liked about Station Eleven. For me, it was a number of things: the futuristic/post-apocalyptic backdrop that was detailed but not actually the most important thing about the book, the characters whose stories intertwined, the narration from multiple perspectives, the quality of the writing, the quality of the audiobook narration, and a thoughtful pace that is slower than most without being glacial. This was a story I fell into and never wanted to leave.

I’ve read a bunch of books since then (and went back to a couple I read in previous years) that I’d recommend as readalikes based upon these factors. None of them quite match the quality and feel of Station Eleven and the enjoyment I derived from each has varied, but they get close, and they’re worthwhile, fascinating reads. If you, too, are on a quest for thoughtful, literary science fiction, usually about the end of the world, you might enjoy these as well. I’ve also listed a few titles that have been recommended to me by others and are currently on my TBR. My own opinions are on the first list; the Goodreads synopses are on the second.

Books I’ve Read

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I first read this book in a class in college over ten years ago, and it’s stuck with me. I like it better than The Handmaid’s Tale, which to me at the time I first read it felt hyperbolic and now just feels too real/prescient to be enjoyable. Oryx and Crake is about the end of the world, or at least the end of humanity’s rule of the world, brought on by out of control genetic engineering. It features a man named Snowman, who was called Jimmy before the cataclysm and who might be the last person left alive. The novel alternates between the “present” day (post-cataclysm) and the past (which would read more as our present), showing how the world got to be the way it is as well as Jimmy/Snowman’s role in it and the two lives he led before and after.

Atwood’s science fiction premise is fascinating and detailed. I loved reading about the futuristic society pre-cataclysm, its excesses and technological advances, and how it all fell apart. Equally intriguing was the landscape of the world afterward, which is unique enough that it doesn’t really compare with any other post-apocalyptic novel. And while all of this is intriguing and a big part of why this is my favorite of hers, the book is actually primarily about the relationships between Snowman, his best friend Crake, and the girl they loved called Oryx. This may sound like the setup for a melodrama, but it doesn’t read that way at all. This is a book that continually surprised me when I first read it, and I’m looking forward to a re-read soon.

 

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

When the world comes to an end, astronomer Augustine is in the Arctic conducting research. Dedicated to his work and not wanting to leave it, he declines to follow his fellow researchers back home as they anticipate the cataclysm, wanting to spend the remainder of their time with their families. But he’s not alone there: he finds a little girl, Iris, who has somehow also been left behind. He anticipates a parent will come get her soon, realizing their mistake, but time goes on and no one does.

During the same time frame, astronaut Sully is on a spaceship on a return voyage from Jupiter when communication from Earth suddenly cuts out. For the remainder of the journey, which has several months left, she and the rest of the crew are unable to receive any messages from any human on the planet. After they determine that there is no error or malfunction on their end, they come to the inevitable conclusion: there is no one left alive on Earth.

Brooks-Dalton follows these two characters over the course of the novel, exploring their failed past relationships, their burgeoning new relationships, and what they come to value at the end of the world. Personalities change and priorities shift. What was once so important is now meaningless. Unlike some of the other books on this list, the connection between Sully and Augustine will likely be apparent to most readers early on. But even if it’s not a surprise, the connection is meaningful and moving. Augustine in particular is unpleasant to read about for a lot of the book – he’s selfish, hyperfocused on his career to the detriment of the well-being of others, and relates how he often willingly hurt other people in order to learn how they would react. But Brooks-Dalton adds depth to him over time, and while my feeling toward him near the end wasn’t exactly sympathy, I felt his regret for his various mistakes – both intentional and not – keenly. The final reveal will likely make your heart squeeze painfully too. The two different settings – the cold loneliness of the Arctic and the emptiness of space – are also exceptionally well-realized.

This is the lightest on plot of all the books I recommend in this post. What precisely has wiped out humanity is never explained. It’s barely even alluded to, with a short reference to whispers of war as the only real clue. The book ends before any of the astronauts land back on Earth, deliberately preventing the reader from discovering what happened. I’m not even sure Brooks-Dalton herself knows; it could be anything. For Brooks-Dalton, it really is completely beside the point. Readers of science fiction may be frustrated by just how nearly irrelevant the SF backdrop is here, but for those who crave the literary more than the SF, this is a good pick.

 

The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

Byrne’s book, set entirely in non-Western countries, features two young women at two different points in the future. Meena is making a forbidden journey across an energy-harvesting Trail in the middle of the Arabian Sea, a road not meant for human travel, and Mariama is journeying across Saharan Africa toward Ethiopia, running from an act of violence she witnessed. Their journeys eventually converge, and like many of the characters in Station Eleven, the ways in which these two women are tied to each other will resonate as well as surprise.

I loved reading about the Trail and how Meena survived on it (it’s not easy). I also loved that this was set entirely in Asia and Africa, two continents I don’t read much about in my fiction. While it’s not a strictly post-apocalyptic novel, Byrne’s near-future world is much more inhospitable than it is now, and there are signs that a cataclysmic turning point may be fast approaching. The story and its setting are imaginative and deep with lots to discuss.

 

The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones

In the near future, the United States has been nearly overrun by Shreve’s Disease, which is carried by ticks that burrow into the skin. Once bitten by a tick, you have thirty seconds to burn it off with a device called a Stamp. After those thirty seconds, they’ve laid their eggs inside your body, and you have about a 50% chance that they will be carriers of the disease, which is fatal. The country has coped by creating something called the Salt Line, which cuts off the majority of the landmass, leaving it to the ticks, while the rest of the country is divided into strictly-regulated zones that are tick-free. Wealthy daredevils who live in the Atlantic Zone will sometimes pay vast sums of money to go on special excursions past the Salt Line, and Jones’ book follows a group of these people. Each person in the group has their own motivations for taking such a risky journey, which takes a very fast turn into even greater danger soon after they cross the Salt Line. This book is a combination dystopia, survival story, and crime novel, and it mostly melds all three together well.

Like Station Eleven, The Salt Line also alternates perspectives between multiple interesting, flawed characters. The apocalyptic backdrop is creative and probably the most different from any other on this list. Also like Station Eleven, it’s interested in the relationships between its characters, which are complex and often surprising. Jones is mostly interested in the relationships between mother and child, and occasionally father and child, as most of the characters’ motivations involve their children or their desire to not have children. She also delves deep into surrogate parent-child bonds. I particularly liked the focus Jones placed on one character’s decision to not have kids. This character’s reasons go beyond the stereotypical and dig into themes of sacrifice and how a person claims ownership of her life. It’s rare to find a book that treats lack of motherhood as an equally fulfilling avenue for its female characters.

 

Version Control by Dexter Palmer

Physicist Philip Steiner has been working on a Causality Violation Device for the past decade. This is really a fancy phrase for time machine, but he hates it when anyone calls it that. A time machine is fiction; the CVD is real. Or it would be, if it worked. He and his assistants are on test number three hundred something and the result is always the same: nothing.

On the surface, Palmer’s novel is about Steiner, his wife Rebecca Wright, Steiner’s lab assistants (also respected scientists), and Rebecca’s best friend Kate. It traces Rebecca and Philip’s meeting and marriage, their respective jobs (Rebecca works for the dating site where she met Philip), their relationships with their friends, and the fallout from Philip’s obsession with the CVD. Like Station Eleven, there are POV shifts at times between all characters, though Version Control focuses mainly on Rebecca (with Philip a close second). The primary relationship explored is the marriage between Philip and Rebecca, which is now falling apart.

But this is science fiction, so that isn’t the whole story. From the beginning, readers will notice small details that are different about the world Rebecca and Philip inhabit. It’s the present-day, but self-driving cars are ubiquitous. The president will pop up on people’s electronic devices every so often, addressing them by name and complimenting them on a particular detail of their dress, for example. It’s…weird. Off-putting. Intriguing. Rebecca has a general feeling that something isn’t quite right, and when others start to feel this too, psychologists put it down to a side effect of the overuse of technology like smartphones. But because this is a science fiction novel, readers will know right away it has something to do with the Causality Violation Device, that folly of Philip’s that has never shown any evidence of actually working.

Palmer’s novel is clever in many ways. It’s divided into three parts, each more intriguing than the last. The finale is elegantly perfect, reasonable in context of the “physics” Palmer has created for his story, and satisfying in a story sense as well. This is the most cleverly plotted of all the readalikes on this list, but it’s still plenty literary, with the focus squarely on the characters and how the extraordinary circumstances they find themselves in change them and their relationships with each other.

 

The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

This is the weirdest book on the list, I think. It’s set in the near future when people start losing their shadows, and soon after, their memories. Humanity learns that our shadows are what held our memories, and there’s no way to stop the loss of the latter once the former is gone. But there is a tradeoff: the Shadowless gain the power to physically change the world around them using their quickly fading memories. When a Shadowless forgets a wedding ring, for example, the wedding ring is suddenly no longer there. It can be very dangerous to be around a Shadowless because of this, and as the phenomenon spreads, so too does violence. The two main characters are Ori and Max, a couple who become separated when Max loses her shadow and decides to save Ori the pain of watching her completely lose herself by setting out on her own. Ori goes after her, and the two eventually fall in with different groups of people, unwittingly heading toward the same destination.

The Book of M has a lot of very close parallels to Station Eleven: the end of human society as we know it, multiple POVs, small groups traveling separately that eventually meet up with each other, dual narratives about the characters’ pasts as well as their presents. At the same time, it’s completely different. Unlike St. John Mandel’s story, this is not something that could actually happen. Memories are not tied to people’s shadows, and shadows cannot be lost like we’re in a horror novel version of Peter Pan. It gets a heck of a lot weirder close to the end of the book, too. Readers will need to cultivate a healthy suspension of disbelief to get into Shepherd’s book, but for those who manage to do so, it’s a worthwhile journey. The end is particularly effective, surprising but also inevitable. Through her fantastic premise, Shepherd explores if and how our memories define us – and how the loss of them can change us and the ones we love.

 

Books on My TBR

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.

Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.

There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe.

A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

 

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. Now his wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.

But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.

 

The Wanderers by Meg Howrey

In four years Prime Space will put the first humans on Mars. Helen Kane, Yoshi Tanaka, and Sergei Kuznetsov must prove they’re the crew for the job by spending seventeen months in the most realistic simulation every created.

Retired from NASA, Helen had not trained for irrelevance. It is nobody’s fault that the best of her exists in space, but her daughter can’t help placing blame. The MarsNOW mission is Helen’s last chance to return to the only place she’s ever truly felt at home. For Yoshi, it’s an opportunity to prove himself worthy of the wife he has loved absolutely, if not quite rightly. Sergei is willing to spend seventeen months in a tin can if it means travelling to Mars. He will at least be tested past the point of exhaustion, and this is the example he will set for his sons.

As the days turn into months the line between what is real and unreal becomes blurred, and the astronauts learn that the complications of inner space are no less fraught than those of outer space. The Wanderers gets at the desire behind all exploration: the longing for discovery and the great search to understand the human heart.

 

California by Edan Lepucki

A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind’s dark nature and deep-seated resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they’ve left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can’t reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they’ve built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she’s pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.

 

Severance by Ling Ma

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.

 

Filed Under: Adult, readalikes, readers advisory, reading lists, Reviews, Science Fiction

Top 10 Reads of 2018

December 27, 2018 |

My annual Goodreads goal is 100 books, which I normally hit with no problem. Alas, this year was an off year for me in terms of pure numbers. By the end of the day on December 31, I estimate I’ll have read 80 books total. Still, my 2018 reading year was full of really great stuff. Here, in no particular order, are the ten titles I loved best, the ones that most affected me and that I find myself recommending to friends, family, and library patrons over and over again.

Books for Teens

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

McCullough’s debut novel is about Artemisia Gentileschi, a real painter from 17th century Rome who was raped as a teenager by a painter her father hired to tutor her. She  chose to prosecute her rapist, participating in the trial – an even more rare and difficult thing then than it is now. The transcripts of the trial survive to this day. Blood Water Paint is mainly a verse novel, but McCullough skillfully threads prose sections featuring Artemisia’s mother, who died when she was a small child, telling her the stories of Biblical heroines Susannah and and Judith throughout. The real Artemisia painted these two women many times, in ways that show their strength and autonomy rather than their victimhood or vulnerability. The technique is successful, placing Artemisia in a context where she believes she, too, can choose to embrace her power where she can find it.

The book is not all about the rape, though. It’s also about art, specifically painting, and about Rome in the 1600s and how women and girls navigated the limited paths available to them. Artemisia’s voice is young, sometimes naive, but never oblivious. She’s intelligent, angry, unsure, and enormously talented. McCullough never makes her too “modern;” she was really as remarkable as the book makes her out to be. McCullough’s verse is a just reflection of Artemisia’s artistic ability: technically excellent, expressive, and innovative. Readers who finish the book wondering what happened to Artemisia afterward will be happy to know that she lived a long time, that she continued to paint, and that her work hangs in museums all over the world.

 

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X. R. Pan

This book is so good, it’s the only title that can be found on both my and Kelly’s lists. I loved Pan’s writing, which is so lovely and lyrical and literary without becoming so dense that it’s a struggle to read. Her protagonist Leigh’s story of grief, infused with magical realism amidst her search for family and identity, is beautifully drawn. This is a thick book that flies by, a good crossover pick for literary-minded teens who don’t normally read genre fiction and vice versa.

 

 

The Place Between Breaths by An Na

An Na’s book is an example of the idea that the shorter a novel is, the more difficult it can be to unpack. The Place Between Breaths has a lot in common with The Astonishing Color of After on the surface: it’s about a mother with mental illness who disappeared or died, and the daughter left behind to heal. Na’s protagonist, Grace, helps her father in his work at a lab that’s dedicated to finding a cure for schizophrenia, the illness that took her mother away from her. But the story is also about a lot more, and it’s told by Na in pieces, out of order, from contradictory perspectives that require the reader to re-read and puzzle things out. The book’s structure is meant to be a reflection of the illness itself, and while I don’t have any personal ties to anyone with schizophrenia (that I know of), the feedback I’ve received from readers who do have the disease is positive. This is a book for someone who likes a challenging read, one that will surprise them and move them in equal measure.

 

Mirage by Somaiya Daud

I loved so much about this book: the irresistible hook (a girl from a conquered people is taken prisoner to be the body double of a hated princess), Daud’s lovely writing, the gradual deepening of the relationship between protagonist Amani and the princess Maram, the Moroccan-inspired setting in space and Amani’s people’s culture (clearly drawn from Daud’s own experiences but still unique to this story). It manages to be an exciting story that also tackles big themes of the evils of colonization and the possibility of redemption and change. And that cover is a stunner.

 

Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer

When it comes to horror, I’m much more likely to read books for teens than adults. I’m a bit squeamish (no horror movies for me at all!), and I find that YA horror novels usually have the right amount of scares for me. Rebecca Schaeffer did her best to prove me wrong – Not Even Bones is pretty gruesome, and it doesn’t shy away from describing in detail its setting of a market that sells body parts of unnaturals (humanoids with special abilities) and how those body parts are removed from and then used. The book is essentially an escape plot as our protagonist, Nita, finds herself imprisoned, awaiting sale in the market after freeing an unnatural her mother had planned to kill and sell for parts. I loved the relationship between Nita and her sometimes-ally Kovit, an unnatural who must eat human pain in order to survive. The plot is tense and exciting, with a fantastic twist near the end. Read my full review here.

 

Give the Dark My Love by Beth Revis

Revis’ book, a fantasy about an alchemist-in-training named Nedra who desperately searches for a cure to a wasting plague that is decimating her homeland, is a meditation on grief, and it’s heartbreaking and tragic and beautiful. Her writing is gorgeously mournful, telling the story of a good person’s descent into darkness in the midst of almost unbearable pain. Good speculative fiction always functions as a metaphor for things that are real, and Give the Dark My Love is a prime example of this. We as readers follow Nedra’s journey from hardworking girl with a purpose into obsession and finally into a darkness from which she cannot return. All the while, she is propelled by something very real and very human that affects all of us. Revis’ writing is such that we feel everything right alongside Nedra – and alongside Revis herself. Don’t skip reading her acknowledgments at the end. Read my full review here.

 

Black Wings Beating by Alex London

I loved this fantasy about a culture that reveres falconry and birds of prey and the pair of twins caught up in a treacherous quest to capture the Ghost Eagle, the most majestic and valuable bird of all. Their quest is fraught with many different dangers: a matriarchal society of Owl Mothers that live in the mountain they must traverse who want the twins for their own purposes; the de facto rulers of their town who threaten them with death if they fail in their quest; a warring sect of religious killers who intend harm upon anyone who worships the birds; and more. The relationship between the twins, a brother and sister who are very different from each other but are bonded by love and common experience, is well-wrought, as is the culture that has developed around the birds, whom readers will come to respect almost as much as the characters in the story. Read my full review here.

 

 

Books for Adults

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware has published four books so far, and she’s yet to write a dud. Her mysteries are nail-biting thrillers with compelling characters and twists I almost never see coming. The Death of Mrs. Westaway, her most recent, might be my favorite of hers to date. It’s about a woman, Hal, who receives a letter in the mail stating that her grandmother has died, and she is to report to her grandmother’s house to learn what she’s inherited, along with her other relatives. The only problem is, Hal knows that she’s not the intended recipient of the letter; it’s an unfortunate mistake due to a mix-up with the names. But Hal is desperate, unable to make ends meet on her own, and decides to impersonate this other person and see if she can claim the money after all.

Ware’s latest requires a lot of careful thought on the part of the reader. One main plot point relies heavily on the way certain things are said by certain people, and judging from some of the Goodreads reviews, it threw a lot of readers for a loop, and they’re still trying to puzzle it out. But for the careful reader, one who is perhaps willing to flip back and analyze and try to figure things out on her own as she reads, this is a real treat. I recommend this for fans of intricately-plotted mysteries.

 

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright published this in 2006, five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. I was a teenager when the attacks happened and in college when the book was published; at the time, the whole event was so awful for me, I avoided most mentions of it for years aside from very surface-level mainstream news sources: brief reports on nightly news, headlines on CNN. But this is not a great way to learn about any topic with any sort of depth or nuance, particularly one so important and world-changing as 9/11. Seventeen years later, I found myself able and willing to read Wright’s book, the standard-bearer in scholarship on 9/11 and a very readable, challenging, and even fascinating book. I read this on audiobook, which Wright himself narrates, and he does a good job. I got the sense that he was telling me the story of 9/11 as he wrote it, as he discovered it, and it drives home just how much the United States government and its various intelligence agencies knew, how inadequate the attempts were to prevent such an attack (when the focus was on it at all), how much misinformation was spread afterward, and how catastrophic the United States’ response was. This should be required reading for all Americans.

 

The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones

Ever since I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, I’ve been on the hunt for a great literary sci-fi novel that matches it. While The Salt Line doesn’t quite measure up, it comes close. Jones is a master of the ensemble novel format. She gives multiple characters their own third-person points of view, engendering sympathy on the part of the reader even for those characters who are hard to like or commit detestable acts. She’s interested in the themes of parenthood or the lack thereof (motherhood most strongly, but fatherhood as well), as most of the characters’ motivations involve their children or their desire to not have children, as well as surrogate parent-child bonds. As someone who isn’t particularly interested in having children myself, I liked the focus Jones placed on one character’s decision to not have kids. This character’s reasons go beyond the stereotypical and dig into themes of sacrifice and how a person claims ownership of her life. It’s rare to find a book that treats lack of motherhood as an equally fulfilling avenue for its female characters.

 

Filed Under: best of list, Fantasy, nonfiction, novels in verse, Science Fiction, ya, ya fiction, Young Adult, young adult fiction

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