Fire and Heist by Sarah Beth Durst

This is a heist novel about humans who can shapeshift into dragons (wyverns), so it’s basically everything I ever wanted in a book. Durst borrows from and builds upon traditional dragon lore by giving her wyvern characters hoards: their goal is to accumulate treasure, and they steal from other wyverns to do so. Stealing isn’t punished; only getting caught is. Sky, determined to prove herself as she approaches adulthood, embarks upon a daring and ambitious heist alongside an interesting crew of sidekicks with their own motivations for helping out.

I’m not yet finished with this one, but it takes an interesting and unexpected turn about halfway through, deepening the dragon lore and expanding the story in scope. Durst’s books are hit or miss for me. I really love some of her work (Vessel), but have found others pretty mediocre. This is shaping up to be one that really resonates with me. It’s a lot of fun and I’m excited to share it with other readers when it publishes in December.

 

Gilded Cage by Vic James

This was originally published on Wattpad and is geared for the adult market, though two of its main characters are teenagers. There’s strong crossover into YA readership here, and it’s got a great hook: in modern England, common people (those without magic) must spend ten years of their lives serving the aristocratic Equals (those with magic). But this is not your everyday servitude that you might think of from Downton Abbey. These ten years are officially referred to as “Slave Days,” and once the ten year term begins, the slaves are the property of the state, no longer considered people. The Hadleys – mom, dad, brother Luke, sister Abi, and youngest sister Daisy – apply for a term at the Kyneston estate in order to complete their years of required service together, but at the last moment, Luke is reassigned to Millmoor, a slave town in Manchester that is widely regarded as the worst place to complete your slave days. From there, the story follows the separated family as Luke learns to live within Millmoor and the other Hadleys get caught up in the machinations of the wealthy Kynestons.

I’m reading this one on audio, and the narrator does a fantastic job with the accents: Manchester for the Hadleys and the stereotypical upper-crust for the Equals. Even though I’m not very far in, I I have a good feel for the world James has created and my heart has already broken once for Luke. I’m curious to see how the premise holds up and where James takes it, since it has so many possibilities.

 

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.

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.