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The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats

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I wasn’t really sure what to expect going in to The Wicked and the Just, J. Anderson Coats’ debut novel. It’s a historical novel about a period of history I know almost nothing about: British-occupied Wales in the late 13th century. 
Teenage Cecily is dragged to Wales by her father, and she’s sure her life is ruined. She sees the Welsh as barbaric and she’d much rather be lady of the house at Edgeley Hall, the estate that has been denied her father in favor of his older brother. Still, she’s pleased that she’ll have a domain to rule over, which includes bossing around the Welsh servant Gwenhwyfar and her brother.
Gwenhwyfar was intended to be the lady of the house before the British occupied Wales, and she is not happy about her current position. Portions of the book follow her story, and her narrative is bleak and desperate and angry. She and her brother are very poor, victims of the corrupt local British government (not to mention Cecily). They’re at the mercy of Cecily and her father, who are both deliberately and casually cruel on a consistent basis. 
Both girls’ stories show just how hard, dirty, and bug-ridden life in the Middle Ages was. Even Cecily and her father, who belong in the upper class, share a room divided by a sheet, and Cecily’s days are full of work. This makes Gwenhwyfar’s life seem all the more bleak by contrast.
The Wicked and the Just is mostly a character study of these two young women. Cecily is the primary narrator, and the story mostly belongs to her. She is a maddening character. She’s mostly awful – spoiled, bratty, often cruel. (And I mean truly, truly cruel.) As the story is told in her words, though, we develop an understanding and, later on, sympathy for her. While she may not end the book an angel, there’s a definite character arc, and she exhibits growth. 
Gwenhwyfar’s story gains greater importance later on, when the simmering tensions in the town boil over into violence. Now she has the opportunity to visit justice upon the wicked, but her actions are not obvious or easy to predict. The relationship between the two girls is complicated with many ups and downs. Just as you think the two have developed some sort of bond, someone (usually Cecily) does something to sever it.
I want to emphasize that this story is not a case of “mean girl sees the light thanks to the wisdom of the people she bullies.” That’s far too simple an explanation, and it doesn’t take into consideration the insurmountable barrier of class. But Cecily does change, and Gwenhwyfar is a major agent of that change. Coats ties this together nicely in her author’s note, explaining that the relationships between people like Cecily and Gwenhwyfar helped turn the tide of violence and corruption in Wales that flourished at this time.
This story is definitely very different from what’s hot right now. It also doesn’t bear much resemblance to the historical fiction I read and loved as a teenager – I wanted love stories and happy endings and a rosier view of the past than was really realistic. And The Wicked and the Just starts off seeming that way – Cecily’s first few sentences are dead ringers for Birdy in Karen Cushman’s Catherine Called Birdy. But it quickly changes into something much darker, dirtier, and more violent. This makes it more realistic, and it also means it’s a perfect fit for history buffs and readers who crave knowledge about time periods that are not their own. Moreover, the historical details are fascinating and the writing is excellent.
J. Anderson Coats is a member of the Class of 2K12, which means she stopped by STACKED for a guest post and twitterview earlier in the year.
Review copy received from the publisher. The Wicked and the Just is available now.

Yesterday by CK Kelly Martin

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The year is 1985, and Freya, her mother, and her sister have just moved from New Zealand to a suburb outside Toronto. Freya’s father died in a bit of a freak accident, and this is their opportunity to start over and be closer to her grandfather, who lives in the city. It’s far from an easy transition for her — she’s learning not only hot to fit in in a new high school and how to navigate a new country, but she’s also struggling with the fact things feel very distanced from her. Her memories are foggy and she’s experiencing pretty terrible headaches.

Things only get weirder when Freya is on a class trip to a museum in downtown Toronto and she sees a boy walk by who looks familiar to her. She has no reason to know him but she has a feeling she does anyway. So she follows him. The first time she does this, she doesn’t act upon anything, but days later, she returns to the home she saw him enter, knocks on the door, and approaches him, asking whether or not they know one another some how. Garren thinks she’s crazy.

That is, he thinks she’s crazy until she shows him a photo that ties the two of them together in ways neither of them could have expected. It’s in this moment of realizing they are connected that the story goes from being a contemporary novel to being a sci-fi adventure. See: Freya and Garren are actually from the future. They’ve survived 2063 and have seen what happened in the world then, and being in 1985 is how they survived their lives then. Now that they’ve figured out they have each other and that they’ve got this shared experience, other people who have survived from the future do not want them to know this, and they’re out to wipe Freya’s memory of all she remembers. It’s not that her knowledge is a danger to today’s world. It’s a danger to the world of 2063.

Yesterday by CK Kelly Martin hooked me immediately, and it kept me hooked throughout the entire story. Freya is an average teen, and her struggle to figure out how to fit into her new high school and make new friends is every bit as realistic as any contemporary novel. She’s a bit hard headed, but she’s that way as a sort of defense strategy and as a way to get to the answers she needs. Freya knows in order to get to the bottom of what’s going on with her memory and with her headaches, she has to go after it herself. This involves some level of deceit and dodging responsibility. She not only has to lie to those who she’s closest to, she has to lie to those who she doesn’t really know. As for Garren, he’s a much more skeptical character and for good reason. He’s being dragged into Freya’s world reluctantly. Everything he learns about her and learns about his connection to her makes him a little more frustrated because the world he’d finally come to learn and accept continues crumbling. See, Garren is also fairly new to Toronto, and he, too, just lost his father in an accident. And now, thanks to Freya, he’s caught up in a scandal much bigger than himself. Much bigger than 1985, too.

This is a plot-driven, rather than a character-driven story, but never once are Freya nor Garren flat characters. As things in their world shift, they adapt as needed. Garren’s initial reluctance to follow Freya and his reluctance to be her partner in getting to the bottom of their world changes, but it’s not without a lot of work on both their parts. They have to form a real team here, but it’s not easy. The challenges they face on the human level gives them the opportunity to bond in a meaningful way and in a way that’s beyond just their circumstances.

Since I don’t want to spoil how Freya and Garren come to discover they’re from the future because that’s part of the payoff in the book. But what is important to know is that the future is terrifying — it’s a dystopian society. The government has taken over, and it controls everything. Because of a lack of natural resources and the threat of hostile invasion, the United States and Canada have become one country, and the capital is located in Montana (strategically, that makes sense). There is constant surveillance, and children are designed, not produced. More importantly, and perhaps most terrifying, is that the world of 2063 is lived through virtual reality. Everyone is equipped with a mesh that feels and experiences anything in the world without requiring any human interaction. It’s a way to protect individuals and a way to keep the government in control. One of the experiences the virtual reality machine excels at is the sexual one — individuals can have the physical sensation of pleasure any time they want to, by themselves, via the machine. This allows them to avoid the hassles of having to find a mate, avoid the emotional aspect of physical intimacy, and more importantly, it allows them to avoid the messy consequences of sex. It keeps the government in control, since there is no need for things like, oh, sexual education. In addition to squelching all things human from the individual, the world of 2063 is terrifying because of how much the world has disintegrated; the environment is trashed. There’s also the fact that the bulk of society is unemployed, the social classes are more divided and fractured than ever before, and the government exploits these things to further its own causes.

In seeing this future, and knowing they’re from it, Freya and Garren have their biggest awakenings. They realize they can’t solve the problems of the future in the future, but they must instead live their lives now and appreciate and nurture they things they do have. More than that though, both come to realize that nothing in the world is guaranteed, and it’s essential to live in and appreciate the moment while they can. And it’s right here during this realization that the 1985 setting is crucial. I’m not a fan of books set in the 1980s because it feels like a workaround to modern technology but that’s the entire purpose of Yesterday: this is a world where the scary, dystopian-like technology has yet to set in. It’s a world that’s familiar and foreign to the reader — it’s both close enough to today’s world that everything feels familiar, yet it’s far enough away to cause the reader to pause and reflect upon the fact that the technology we have today (including the very blog you’re reading right now) simply didn’t exist. Martin excels at making 1985 Freya relatable to today’s teens without swerving the narrative into one of nostalgia, rather than relevancy. Sure there are moments of indulgence — particularly through the wealth pop culture references — but it’s forgivable because were Freya a 2012 teen, she’d be immersed in today’s brands and bands.

There is a romance here between Freya and Garren, but it’s never once guaranteed. I think this subplot might be my favorite in the story because it is so tentative. I found myself so pulling for these two characters to have the ending they deserved. Martin has a skill in writing romantic tension in a way that’s authentic and that begs the reader to care. At one point, the two of them are both so scared and worried about their future that they seek solace in one another. They’re together, both of them naked and vulnerable, and they’re seconds away from their first sexual experience. Except, when the moment should happen, it doesn’t. It’s awkward for both of them, and they’re shy and nervous about approaching one another afterward. But when they do, they realize the reason they felt that way and acted the way they did was because of their experiences in the future — they’d been robbed of those raw, human emotions and confronting them together was overwhelming. They didn’t know how to act because the government wasn’t giving them the instructions to do so. More than that, though, they realize they aren’t sure what happens if they do engage in intimacy. They actually have to educate themselves about the consequences — something they didn’t have to do in the mesh of the future. What’s scariest to them and to the readers is that the world where they aren’t allowed to share pleasure with one another, the one where their bodies don’t at all belong to them but instead belong to the government, isn’t all that different from our world today. It’s scary that the things serving as warnings in the novel are things we hear and see right now, everyday. Because we DO tell teenagers they can’t act on their feelings and that they don’t own their bodies and their experiences. But it’s beyond that — we tell this to adults, too. We do a lot of denying of human experience, both the good and the bad.

Yesterday is not perfect, though. I had a lot of trouble with the world building aspect in particular, and I found that at times, the explanation for time travel came out a bit more information-dumpy than as smooth and plot-driven. Although it made sense how Freya and Garren were connected and found one another, I found myself with a few more questions at the conclusion of the story. It’s not a solid ending, nor should it be, but I wanted to know a bit more about the grandfather they shared in 1985 and what he did or didn’t know about the future. I do give Martin mad props, though, because this is her first foray into this genre, and it’s her first heavily plot-driven novel. The things that didn’t work for me did not keep me from appreciating everything else she did her.

This isn’t a didactic novel, and the messages woven throughout the story are ones the readers choose to pull out. There is a lot packed into this, and I think this is the kind of book I’ll read again and see what else I can tease out. One of my favorite moments is one of the simplest, and it’s one I keep thinking about in terms of the time travel aspect, in terms of the dystopian future, and in terms of the historical aspect of the novel. Freya and Garren are talking about their dreams and what they want to do with their lives, and Freya says simply that she wants to see the whales in the Pacific Ocean. Her goal is to see this beast of nature in the wild. It’s so simple — so so simple — but it gets at the heart of not only the notion of living in the moment and in appreciating the moment, but it gets to the heart of the environmental and social messages of Yesterday, too. And really, it gets to the whole heart of being human. It’s not an earth-shattering goal but it’s an important and worthwhile one nonetheless.

Hand Yesterday off to fans of fast-paced, action-oriented, and plot-driven novels, especially those who love science fiction and time travel novels. It doesn’t follow all of the rules of any genre, so readers who like the challenge will dig this. The flap copy compares it to James Dashner’s The Maze Runner and I can definitely see this appealing to that crowd. The secondary comparison to Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, though, is a comparison I’m not sure I agree completely with, except when it comes to things like pacing and character development. This book further cements the fact that CK Kelly Martin is one of the most interesting young adult authors today, and she continues to challenge readers with her strong writing. And man, I give her props for one of the most fun acknowledgment sections in a long time. It certainly set the tune — yes tune — in writing this review.

Previously:
Review of CK Kelly Martin’s My Beating Teenage Heart
Twitterview with CK Kelly Martin
“So You Want to Read YA?” Guest Post by CK Kelly Martin

Review copy received from the publisher. Yesterday will be available September 25. 

Insignia by S. J. Kincaid

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S. J. Kincaid gets my hearty thanks for breaking me out of my reading funk with Insignia, her debut novel. I had heard great things about it for weeks and finally decided to give it a chance to hook me – and I am so glad I did.
Tom Raines has lucked out. Thanks to his virtual reality gaming skills, he’s been recruited to work at the Pentagonal Spire, where he trains to eventually become a combatant in World War III. If he shows he’s up to snuff and gains the sponsorship of one of the twelve multinational corporations, he’ll be fighting for the Indo-Americans in outer space, remotely controlling a spaceship with the help of a computer chip implanted in his brain. 
That premise has the word “cool” written all over it.
The war – which is being fought to secure rights for the corporations to the resources in space – has won overall popular support since no one actually dies. No one even gets hurt – it’s all done remotely, and the only things that are blown up are machines. Things aren’t rosy on earth (huge rates of unemployment and poverty), but people don’t seem to be too fussed about forking over tax dollars so that the sponsoring corporations can make more money.
Tom knew that choosing this way of life wouldn’t be a cakewalk, but he wasn’t quite prepared for just how tough it would be or how many secrets he’d have to keep. All that is offset by the fact that he finally has a chance to make friends and a life for himself after being dragged around the country by his drunk gambler of a father.
I love how huge this story managed to be, incorporating a world war and large-scale political intrigue, not to mention the entire freakin’ solar system. But I also loved how Kincaid concentrated on her characters, Tom in particular – he’s so utterly teen that it hurts to read about sometimes.
The world Kincaid has created is fascinating. At first I was a little hesitant to believe in a culture that wages war using machines in outer space, with no real lives at stake, but she wrote it so convincingly that I believed it. It was not difficult for me to believe in a world controlled by twelve mega-corporations who have essentially bought out the world governments. I loved reading about the computers implanted in the teens’ brains and how it’s possible to actually give them computer viruses, making them baa like sheep – or other, much less innocuous actions. 
I did find myself drawing some comparisons between Insignia and other books I’ve read. I got a little bit of a Harry-Ron-Hermione vibe from Tom-Vik-Wyatt (Tom’s two best friends) for most of the story, and the competitions between the divisions within the Spire reminded me a lot of Rowling’s house competitions as well as Veronica Roth’s faction competitions during training. Additionally, the various training simulations Tom and his classmates undergo brought to mind the war games in Robison Wells’ Variant. And then there’s Blackburn, a teacher at the Spire who I pictured as an amalgam of Snape and Moody.
Still, the main premise of Kincaid’s story is pretty unique, and she tells it wonderfully. Unlike many action/adventure stories, I couldn’t tell where this one was going most of the time. Usually when I read a jacket flap, I have a pretty good idea, but this one threw me for several loops. And everything that happens is believable in Kincaid’s world, which is detailed and always interesting.
I can see Insignia getting some Cybils love. It’s got huge teen appeal, is quite well-written, and addresses some meaty issues (corporate control of government, why we fight wars, the nebulous division between human and machine). It’s a natural readalike for Divergent – the cover blurb from Roth is appropriate – not only because it’s high action, but also because of the emphasis on competition and the protagonist’s struggle to determine if the place in the world that he’s chosen for himself is the right one. Highly recommended.
Book borrowed from my local library.

What I’m Reading Now

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Finishing a book lately has been rough for me. I keep on picking up a title, getting about 50 pages in, setting it down, and not feeling compelled to pick it up again. It’s not that there’s anything really wrong with the book in question. I’m just in a bit of a reading funk, and from what I’ve read from others right now, I’m not the only one.
A few reasons for my lack of desire to read much: it’s blistering hot outside, where I tend to do most of my relaxing reading; I’ve been working until 7pm most nights, which means my evenings are dinner and bed, usually; and I’ve been more interested in working on my puzzle, which is difficult to do while reading. It’s difficult for me to read while tired, too – I always fall asleep, no matter how compelling the book. It makes those 7pm nights particularly bad for reading.
What this means is that I’m currently reading quite a lot of books, although I’m not finishing them (yet). These are books that would normally appeal to me, and I expect to finish most of them at some point – maybe some of you have read them and can speak for how wonderful they are, thereby convincing me to keep at them until the end.
Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough
Kelly loved this one, and it appealed to me before she loved it, so I’m going to keep at it. So far, I’m having a hard time adjusting to some of the dialect used (British slang). Still, I’ve read and enjoyed stories with much tougher dialect than that included here (Knife of Never Letting Go, for example), so I know it will just take time.
Diverse Energies edited by Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti
This is a collection of SF short stories featuring teen protagonists of color. Most of the stories are dystopian in some way, although at least one of them is just straight science fiction. I decided to pick this one up especially hoping it would break me out of
my funk – in 20 pages or so, I can get a beginning, middle, and end,
and I haven’t invested huge gobs of time. The stories have been hit or miss, as expected. My favorite so far is Malinda Lo’s story about a girl hunting for her missing brother in the tunnels below a city where racial purity is mandated by law. It’s one of the better-written stories and also makes sense narratively. A couple of the stories have been more disappointing than usual – I feel like they were too disjointed and hard to follow, not just “eh, not my thing.”
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
This book, which features dragons that can assume human shape, royal intrigue, and lots of delicious secrets, has been highly acclaimed by readers I trust, and it’s just the type of book I usually love. It’s been praised for its originality and its writing, but I haven’t been able to make myself move past a few pages.
Erasing Time by CJ Hill
As a teen, I thought it would be the coolest thing ever to be taken out of my own time period and brought to the distant future. To this day, it’s still a great tragedy in my mind that I won’t be able to see the amazing things the far future will bring. (I love dystopias, but my heart always convinces me to picture a more utopian future.) CJ Hill’s Erasing Time does just what I dreamed about as a teen – it brings two girls from our present day into the distant future for a specific purpose. I’m excited about this book’s premise, but it hasn’t been able to pull me in yet.
Are you in a reading funk? Is there anything in particular you’ve done to get out of prior funks?

Crewel by Gennifer Albin

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Adelice Lewys has been trained from a young age to hide her ability to weave the matter of Arras, the world in which she lives. Those blessed (or cursed) with this talent are taken at age 16 to be Spinsters. Without the Spinsters, Arras would fall apart and people would die. The Spinsters – who are all female – are highly prized for their talent, but they’re also kept virtual prisoners because of it. They’re too valuable to be given free reign, and while they have nominal power, it’s pretty illusory in the intensely patriarchal society of Arras.
Though Adelice is good at hiding her skill, she’s not good enough. At the mandatory test given to recruit Spinsters, she slips and gives herself away. Later at dinner with her family, Adelice knows she will be picked up – there’s no saying “No” when it comes to being a Spinster. Her parents still try and get her away to safety, but they’re unsuccessful, and Adelice is taken to undertake her duties after a violent encounter with Arras’ police force.
At the training house, Adelice finds herself competing with other Spinsters for the small number of spots available that would actually let her weave the matter and time of Arras. She also sees the devastating effects a wrong stitch can cause and uncovers a few nasty secrets about their society. Naturally, rebellion is brewing, and Adelice finds herself caught in the middle of a very big, very deadly mess.
The weaving aspect of the world is complicated, and it doesn’t really start to make sense until much later in the story, when some big secrets are dropped. Though I was a little bewildered most of the time, wondering how Albin could possibly make this world make sense, the payoff is good. Her explanation takes the story from possibly fantasy territory into definite science fiction territory. (I like to call this the McCaffrey Effect.) The SF aspects aren’t terribly credible, but I was able to sufficiently suspend my disbelief and enjoy the story.
Unfortunately, the world-building is the only thing that distinguishes Crewel from the scads of other dystopias out there. The rest of the story is fairly pedestrian: horrible government, love interest, kindly mentor, bitchy rival, and a protagonist who is not just special compared to the people of Arras, but special compared to other Spinsters. 
And personally, I’m tired of reading about societies that oppress women in my fantasy and SF. Given the current climate (and the past, of course), it’s understandable why so many writers would make this a focal point in their stories about a future gone wrong, but I’d prefer to read a dystopia that focuses on something else for a change. (I actually have this complaint about a lot of fantasy in general, and it’s one reason I gave up on Song of Ice and Fire after book three. There’s only so much I can handle, no matter how well-written and intriguing the story.)
Still, the creativity inherent in the world is enough to keep me interested, and I’m very curious to see where Albin takes the story after a pretty well-done ending. That means I’ll be reading the sequel.
Review copy received from the publisher. Crewel will be published October 16.