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A Few Cybils Reads – Part IV

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Burn Out by Kristi Helvig
Part of the reason I love SFF so much – and always have – is how fun it can be. Authors can really let their creativity fly and not worry so much about trivial things like “Could this actually happen?” Burn Out is probably the most fun Cybils nominee I’ve read so far. It’s set 300 years in our future, after an asteroid that was heading for Earth was deflected and hit the sun instead, causing it to advance much more rapidly through its life cycle. It’s now a red giant, all the oceans on the planet have dried up, it’s too hot to go outside for more than a minute or two at a time, and most humans live underground or in protected pods, using a machine to drag the last bit of moisture out of the air in order to survive. (You could ask me if this could actually happen and I could honestly say I don’t know, but my first guess would be “probably not.”) Tora lives underground, alone, after her mother and sister were killed by the sun and her father was murdered by the people he worked for after he refused to hand over the powerful weapons he built for them.

Tora has resigned herself to probably ending her own life eventually. The air soon won’t have enough water left in it and she figures it will be less painful to overdose on pain pills than die of dehydration. Then an old family “friend,” Markus, comes knocking on her door. He says the Earth’s leaders have found another planet where humanity can live. He can take her there. The price is her dad’s weapons, left in Tora’s safekeeping. Tora knows they were made to be used on other humans, which is why her father refused to give them up in the end. Tora says no. Markus leaves, but he returns, and he brings friends. Not the nice kind.

This is an action-packed story, told in Tora’s funny, sarcastic voice that kept me flipping through the pages. The plot has a hole big enough to drive a truck through, but that didn’t dampen my enjoyment. The setting is unique and the futuristic concepts are interesting, including a gun that can be keyed to a person’s particular vibrations, allowing only that person to use it. Each of the characters have ulterior motives, and Helvig teases these out over the course of the story, providing the plot with plenty of twists and turns. Some questions are answered by the end, and some aren’t, clearly leaving an opening for a sequel. You can bet I’ll be reading it.

The Truth Against the World by Sarah Jamila Stevenson
Olwen Nia Evans, Wyn for short, is moving with her family for a few weeks to Wales, to a little town called Cwm Tawel. The trip is her great-grandmother’s dying wish. She grew up in Cwm Tawel and wants to die there, among the peaceful scenery and familiar surroundings. Before the move, Wyn starts to have strange dreams of her great-gran and a little girl, which she blogs about. Another boy, an English boy with his own family ties to Cwm Tawel, stumbles across Wyn’s blog after a recent visit to his great-grandfather in Wales, where he found a headstone bearing Olwen’s name – and had his own run-in with a strange little girl. The two eventually meet up in Cwm Tawel and set about solving the mystery of the ghost Olwen Nia Evans, which involves digging up painful family history that some residents of the town would prefer stayed buried.

Stevenson’s book is unique for its setting; Wales doesn’t get a lot of love in the YA world, especially compared to its UK counterparts. I can easily see the descriptions of the country’s natural beauty encouraging readers to seek out more information or dreaming about visiting themselves. This is a gentle story, perhaps too gentle, as the stakes never seem very high. The solution to ghost Olwen’s mystery is too simple and will be easily deciphered by readers familiar with ghost stories. This would be a good pick for younger, patient readers who may not guess the connection between the ghost and Wyn’s great-grandmother from the start. (A pronunciation guide would have also been helpful for the nerdy readers.)

Messenger of Fear by Michael Grant
Grant’s latest is a series opener, though it stands on its own easily. Mara wakes up without any knowledge of who she is, other than her name. (Yes, it’s another amnesia book.) She’s greeted by someone who tells her he is the Messenger of Fear, and that before she lost her memories, she agreed to be his apprentice. Their duty is to confront those who have done wrong and present them with a choice: play a game, win it, and go free; or refuse or lose the game and face their worst fear. Messenger starts by showing Mara a teenage girl’s suicide, then rewinds time and shows her the events leading up to it. None of the events can be changed, but they must learn from what happened in order to present an appropriate game – and mete out the appropriate punishment if the wicked person loses.

This is not as much of a horror novel as the title or the cover would have you believe, despite a scene where a person is burned alive (described in detail). Fear is not really its goal. Instead, it’s more of an exploration of guilt and atonement, of the choices we make and how – if – we can make reparations. The idea behind the Messenger is to restore balance to the universe. Those who have not been punished by a human court must suffer a visit from the Messenger of Fear, in hopes of preventing the wicked from committing the same actions in the future. The situations Mara and Messenger view are realistic and presented with shades of grey. More often than not, multiple people are at fault rather than a single individual. It is left up to the reader to determine if the wrongdoer’s interactions with Mara and Messenger have set the balance right – if such punishment is justice or if it’s merely cruelty.

There’s a twist to the story that sharp readers will see coming, though the hints sprinkled throughout start light and grow heavier as the story progresses. It will take a truly eagle-eyed reader to spot the truth from the beginning, keeping tension high through most of the novel. Picking out the twist before the end isn’t always a bad thing, provided it doesn’t happen too soon (as I think it would in the book above). There’s a certain satisfaction in putting the pieces together yourself over several chapters and then learning you were right in the end. At times gruesome, the book is also thought-provoking and smoothly written, easily absorbed in an afternoon.

Review & Giveaway: Loop by Karen Akins

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Bree Bennis attends a school for Shifters, those who were born with the ability to travel backwards in time. Her goal at the book’s opening is to travel to the 21st century, complete her midterm, and carry out a little side project that will earn her the money to ensure her sick mother is able to get the care she needs. It should be doable, except that Bree runs into a bratty kid named Finn and accidentally takes him hostage while trying to complete her tasks. Oops.

She eventually escapes the 21st century and goes back to her home time, the 23rd century, knowing she’ll have to return to the 21st to somehow convince Finn not to talk about her little visit. Only when she does return, she lands three years later, and Finn is no longer a bratty kid. He’s her age, he’s pretty hot, and he claims to have been in a relationship with her for some time. It doesn’t take long to figure out he means a future version of Bree. Of course, he can’t tell her about her own future, for fear of disrupting the timeline. (Picture River Song saying “Spoilers” to the Doctor here.) In true Bree fashion, in trying to extricate herself from this situation, she accidentally brings Finn along with her to the 23rd century, something that shouldn’t even be possible. Oops again.

Now Bree must unravel not only how to return Finn to his own time without anyone the wiser, but also how exactly he came to know future Bree so well, and what it all has to do with the strange things going on in her boarding school.

Karen Akins’ debut Loop really embraces how fun time travel can be. This is a time travel book for readers who love time travel. Do you have certain websites bookmarked whose sole purpose is to speculate on the possibility of time travel? This book is for you. This is a true speculative novel, one that continuously asks what if. What if we could time travel? What would the rules be? What would the consequences be? For readers who love those kinds of questions, this is a gem. For readers who get headaches thinking about it, it might be best to pick up a different book.

It’s not just the time travel that makes this book so much fun. Bree and Finn have great snarky chemistry, and there’s a slew of futuristic 23rd century technology that is fascinating to read about. The 23rd century feels real, chock full of fun little details and new slang terms. The plot itself is fast-paced and complicated, but makes sense in the end, as good time travel books should. Often when I read a book with multiple moving plot parts, I’m a little hesitant to reach the end; I’ve been burned with unresolved subplots and details left dangling before (seemingly unintentionally). This is especially true for time travel stories, which can be more complicated than most. Trust in Akins – it all comes together in a satisfying way.

St. Martin’s Press is giving away a finished copy of Loop to one lucky reader (US residents only). Enter using the form below. The giveaway closes November 14.

A Few Cybils Reads – Part III

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The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman
Rowan Rose has grown up relatively happy in her small town where not much happens. Then a few of the king’s men, visiting for unknown reasons, are found dead in what appear to be brutal animal attacks; at the same time, another young girl, Fiona Eira, moves to the town with her stepmother and her stepmother’s new husband. Fiona has a connection to Rowan beyond what she is told. When Rowan’s best friend falls in love with Fiona, it sets in motion a violent chain of events that will change Rowan’s life forever.

This one was on my radar long before the Cybils got underway. The cover is eerily beautiful and the story is a re-working of a few different fairy tales, though in a more suggestive than literal way. Even without the nod to Snow White via the title, the story feels very much like a fairy tale, albeit much closer to the darker original versions than the more lighthearted Disney versions. And despite the fairy tale aspect, the story – and the way everything unfolds – is unique. Templeman creates an atmospheric mood with her writing. It’s not horrifying, per se, but it is somewhat chilling, buoyed by the fact that she does not shy away from describing some of the more grotesque things that happen. The story is a little rough around the edges at points, but overall thoroughly engrossing. I look forward to what Templeman does next.

A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn
Marni is half-human, half-dragon. Her mother, once a princess of the kingdom, ran away to live in the magical woods and took up with a dragon who could change into the shape of a man. Marni was the result. Her mother then left the dragon, taking Marni with her. When the woods start to encroach upon the kingdom, Marni’s uncle, the prince, hunts down her mother, thinking her the cause – the dragon trying to reclaim her. In order to save Marni’s life, Marni’s grandfather – the king – abdicates to his son, but not before Marni’s mother is killed.

Now a young woman, Marni constantly feels the pull of the woods, though she knows its danger. She lives with her grandfather, and when he dies, she journeys to the castle, hoping the king will take her in, despite his propensity to murder her family members. Still, the woods call to her, and they soon start to move in on the town once again. It’s only a matter of time before Marni answers the call.

Hahn’s writing, much like Templeman’s, is dreamlike. She uses her words to paint a picture for you, and it’s easy to feel sucked into the rich settings of her book. I’ve read reviews that call her writing poetic, and that’s a fair assessment. But what I often find missing from a book of poetic writing is a strong plot, and that’s the situation here. It doesn’t feel like much happens. In fact, just when it appears that something exciting might happen, the thread of that particular plot point kind of fades away. You could call the story “character-driven,” or you could simply say it doesn’t have much substance. I tend to go with the latter. Best for readers who don’t mind lovely language at the expense of plot.

Pandemic by Yvonne Ventresca
This is a standard modern-day disease story that focuses on a very specific regional area – teenage Lil’s hometown in New Jersey. The pandemic of the title is a flu-like disease that spreads rapidly across the globe. Unlike most flus, this one is most fatal to younger adults, who soon start dying, leaving the old and the young (including people Lil’s age) without caretakers.

Ventresca doesn’t really do anything new with the idea, but she does throw in some details that keep interest up throughout the book. Both of Lil’s parents are out of town when the worst of the pandemic hits, meaning she has to handle everything that happens mostly on her own. This includes the care of an infant whose parents have both died. She gets together with other teenagers to organize assistance for those who can’t help themselves. She has to learn how to get food for herself and contend with looters. She also has to deal with a teacher who sexually assaulted her several months before and now has greater access to her due to the breakdown of the town’s governance. It’s certainly not a bad story, and would be fine for those eager for more along the lines of Amber Kizer’s A Matter of Days – both are relatively gentle books where the stakes never seem very high (even when they should). Ventresca’s writing is a bit amateurish, weakening what could have been a devastating story and keeping it from being entirely satisfying.

Trial by Fire by Josephine Angelini

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Josephine Angelini’s new series has a unique concept, one that marries science fiction and fantasy (into what she calls “sci fantasy”). I’ve seen the melding of these two genres bandied about the past couple of years as the “next big thing,” but I haven’t actually seen a lot of published stories that truly fit the description. Usually, the story falls pretty firmly on one side of the SF/F line, so I was really excited to give this one a shot.

Aside from the SFF combo, the concept is unique in other ways: the storyline involves female witches whose magic is derived from the energy within their bodies, activated by certain foods and other stimuli. However, this magic only works the proper way in one of the two parallel worlds featured in the book, which is tough for our protagonist. Lily lives in our world and has suffered terrible allergies most of her life, crippling her socially and ensuring she’s always in danger of suffering some life-threatening attack. When she’s unwittingly taken into a parallel world where witches rule, she learns that her allergies are actually side effects of her magic, which has been held dormant within her body so long without release that it’s causing her harm. In this alternate world, she’s immensely powerful. Unfortunately for Lily, this kind of magic doesn’t work in our world – but that doesn’t stop her from trying to get back to it.

Lily didn’t get to this alternate world on her own. She was brought there by Lillian, an alternate version of Lily, also a powerful witch. Because of her power, Lillian rules over Salem, and she’s not kind or fair. She’s set up magic as the one true way of doing things, meaning that doctors and scientists as we regard them are persecuted. According to Lillian, there is no room for science in a world ruled by magic.

Lily isn’t sure why Lillian brought her to this other Salem, but she knows she wants to get back home. She’s taken in by Outlanders, a group of people who live outside the walls of Salem. They don’t have any of the protections offered by Salem and its ruler, meaning they’re at the mercy of the Woven, terrible creatures that started out as animals but have now become something else. The leaders of the Outlanders want Lily to develop her own magic so they can use it to make a better Salem for themselves. Some of the Outlanders have counterparts in our own world (like Tristan, Lily’s best friend) and some don’t (like Rowan, a boy who once worked for – and loved – Lillian before joining the Outlander cause).

It’s difficult for me to communicate how complex the concept and world-building are here. In some ways, the story is set up as a basic good vs. evil tale, with the Outlanders as the righteous rebels and Lillian as the power-hungry despot to be taken down. It’s complicated, though, because we get some of the story from Lillian’s perspective, and it’s clear she has goals that are not entirely selfish. She brought Lily – a person who could theoretically be powerful enough to defeat her – to her world, after all, and she must have had a reason for doing so. The matriarchal society of alt-Salem is also fascinating and something not commonly seen in SFF. What will draw a lot of teens, though, is the idea of Lily meeting herself – Lillian – in this alternate world. They’re like and unalike in various ways that fluctuate over the course of the story. At first, Lily believes she’s completely different from her alt-self and tries to convince the Outlanders of it; but after some time, she starts to doubt it. This comes at about the same time we as readers start to doubt Lillian’s characterization as entirely evil.

I really liked the ideas behind this story. It’s so creative and so fresh, even when it’s using some common tropes (romance, witches, tearing down a despotic regime). The magic system and world-building in particular are standouts. I don’t think the story is entirely successful in its execution, though. Lily as a character is a bit flat. She’s immensely powerful in alt-Salem, but her actions are mostly reactive (things happen to her, she doesn’t make things happen). That’s not a criticism of Lily as a person (I think a lot of us mostly react to things), but it’s not great for a character in a novel. For a lot of the book, I felt like I was stuck in exposition, even while the characters battled Woven. Lillian’s motivations remained murky up to the end, which is too bad, because she is by far the most fascinating character. This is a series, so perhaps Lily will come into her own a bit more in the sequel – and we’ll get to spend more time with Lillian.

My review copy came with a letter from Angelini stating that the magic system she writes about is based on actual science, which is clearly a marketing ploy, but it’s also fascinating to consider. This would be a good pick for fans of both science fiction and fantasy who want something new and something that makes them think. It’s also a worthy entry into the growing parallel worlds subgenre.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Trial by Fire is available now.

The Vault of Dreamers by Caragh O’Brien

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The year is 2066. Rosie Sinclair attends the Forge School, the premier place for creative teenagers to hone their skills and get ahead in subject areas like filmmaking, acting, dancing, and fine art. Graduation from the Forge School is a guaranteed ticket to the good life.

But the Forge School is also a reality television series. All students who attend are on camera for twelve hours of the day. The other twelve hours, they’re put into a drugged sleep, a sleep they’re told will enhance their creativity. As any reader of dystopias (and this is a sort of micro-dystopia, if we consider the school to be its own community) will realize right away, everything is not as it seems at Forge.

Vault of Dreamers opens with Rosie fretting over the “fifty cuts,” the point in the television series (and the school year) at which the fifty students with the lowest “blip rank” (meaning popularity with the viewers at home) will be cut and sent home. Rosie is nearly number 100 (out of only 100 students), and she’s pretty resigned to not making it past the cuts. But it wouldn’t be much of a story if it ended with her going home, so I’ll give a grand non-spoiler and tell you that she makes it.

Rosie is a bit of a rebel, and because she figured she had nothing to lose, she decided to forgo her sleeping pill one night before the fifty cuts. She pretends to swallow it, then sneaks out of her sleeping pod and goes up to the roof, just for kicks. She also sees one of the doctors putting an IV in the arm of a sleeping classmate, which alarms her. Sneaking out one night is a relatively small act of rebellion, but it kicks off a series of similar acts. She starts skipping her pill more frequently, meeting up with a non-student who works in the cafeteria, and planting her own cameras around the school to determine what exactly is going on at Forge – because she knows the school administrators are not simply encouraging creativity in the students by making them sleep 12 hours at night.

This is an odd duck of a book. The premise is actually quite creative, particularly when the sci-fi reason behind the existence of the school and its enforced sleep is fully discovered (the title is kind of a spoiler, but it’s fairly complex, so there’s lots to puzzle out even if you already know it involves dreaming). At the same time, its creativity hampers it a bit. Because the explanation is strange, it’s harder for the reader to grasp, and I left the book feeling a bit confused still. The last pages – and I do mean the very last ones – take the book to a new realm entirely, and that’s where it finally lost me. I don’t need my endings tied up with a neat bow (nor do I need them to be happy, which this one isn’t), but I do think it’s important that the reader is not left saying “huh?” after she turns the final page.

2066 is probably still considered the near future, at least in terms of SF writing, but it’s far enough in the future that the references to Youtube and Facebook sprinkled throughout the book are jarring. They seem very out of place mixed in with references to new and unusual technology we’ve never heard of, and I think teens will rightly question O’Brien’s assumption that such things will still be around 50 years from now. Won’t they be replaced by something newer and shinier? How long did MySpace’s popularity last?

Those were my two biggest hangups with the book, one pretty major and the other relatively minor. There’s a lot this book does right. Rosie’s voice is done very well; she sounds like a teen, not like a world-weary adult (a lot of teens in futuristic sci-fi seem middle-aged cynical to me). This doesn’t mean she’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed all the time, it just means she sounds her age: young. She’s naive, and even when it’s clear that the adults aren’t looking out for her best interests, she clings to the idea that they are still the ones to be trusted. It’s heartbreaking.

The fact that the school is also a reality series is an intriguing twist. There’s an explanation given for it partway through – at least an explanation for the public, not necessarily the real reason. The concept is relevant for today’s teens and explored fairly well. The students are encouraged to speak directly to the camera, and viewers at home can pull up their favorite students’ feeds whenever they like (there’s not a single camera creating a single story; each student can help shape their own story). Students use the cameras to their advantage in various ways, particularly as the fifty cuts approach, to gain popularity with viewers, which is also directly to “banner ads” that make them money they can cash upon graduation. There’s also the claustrophobic feel the cameras create: Rosie is sure she’s always being watched, but she can’t let that stop her from her quest. It just means she has to get more creative with it.

This is a thrilling read, fast-paced, with a lot of secrets for our protagonist to unearth. There’s a small dash of romance and a couple of subplots (a strange fight with a friend, Rosie’s rough home life) that add layers. The unsuccessful ending notwithstanding, this is a worthwhile read for fans of near-future SF and would make a good readalike for Lauren Miller’s Free to Fall or Rae Mariz’s The Unidentified, both also tech-heavy books set in highly-monitored schools where the adults turn the students into consumable products.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Vault of Dreamers will be published September 16.