Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie

Stiefvater, Maggie. Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie. Woodbury, Minn.: Flux - Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Print. A Gathering of Faerie 2.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/8109101]

This review contains no spoilers for Lament, and the book really doesn't either. And yet, this isn't quite a stand-alone book. There are a few things, especially in the stressful climax of the action, that will be a bit confusing if you don't at least have a vague idea of the first book.

Booktalk:

When people said "musician," they never seemed to mean "bagpiper." If I heard the phrase "folk musician" one more time, I was going to hit someone.

p.5

James and Dee, both fully recovered from their summer shenanigans (at least physically), have been recruited by a prestigious music school, miles away from the faeries they're hoping to leave behind. It should be a wonderfully enjoyable, life-changing experience, right? Except it's not. They're both still reeling from the love-proclamation-that-never-was, and neither of them plays the "right" kind of music for their prestigious school. And the faeries have followed them.

You'd think two people as experienced in the practical consequences of faerie lore as James and Dee would have known they'd be surrounded by faeries at a school named Thornking Ash.

Review:
I love James. In fact, I capital "L" Love him. He's funny and snarky and smart and oh-so-flawed. He's also hopelessly stuck in the friend-zone, and the story he tells from way over there is both hilarious and tragic. That's right. This book is all about James. Even the parts of the story that are told from other points of view are all about James. It's great. He deserves it.

Ballad contains some serious faerie shizz. There's a wack-job wielding an iron crowbar, mysterious singing accompanied by a guy with horns growing out of his head (possibly king of something ;) ), teachers who wear iron jewelry, and the return of Eleanor, Lament's faerie queen, but what this book is really about is how James finally figures out that girls like him. At the opening of this book, his heart is continuing to break over Dee. Still, he finally allows himself to revel in the attention of another woman (and though it gets steamy in a few places, it's totally an intellectual romance). He also finally gets to have some guy friends, even if his closest buds consist of Paul, his oboe playing roommate, and Sullivan, his English teacher/dorm parent. Even at Thornking Ash and without Dee (who contributes with text messages never sent between chapters), James figures out how to be happy.

And this is a Stiefvater book. As you can see, this woman knows how to put words on a page. Her characters are all fully-fleshed people, many of whom I would die to eat Chinese take-out with on a Saturday night. They're funny and smart and a little nerdy. This would be a great book for John Green fans who want to ease into fantasy, or vice-versa.

So far, there's no word of another book in this series, but I still want to throw this out there: Stiefvater, if you're listening, the world could use more James.


Book source: Philly Free Library
Book 1: Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

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The Boy from Ilysies

North, Pearl. The Boy from Ilysies. New York: Tor Teen, 2010. Print. Libyrinth 2.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/10545774]

Both Libyrinth and The Boy from Ilysies could be read as stand-alone books, in my opinion. There is nothing mind-blowing in this second book that will ruin the first for you, but if you're planning on reading Libyrinth (and I suggest that you do), you should probably skip this review.

Booktalk:
Culturally, the Libyrinth is a utopia. Libyrarians and Singers, Ilysians and Ayorites all get along and work together. But they're still starving, and there are still growing pains. Po, the only Ilysian male, is feeling the latter acutely. He misses the green, fertile land of his youth, but more than that he misses living in a society where he knows what is expected of him.

Review:
I guess when I read Libyrinth I missed something key about Ilysies. I knew it was a matriarchal society, but I failed to notice that men are greatly outnumbered and treated as second class citizens. Things like that happen, I guess, when you're worrying about the torture of one protag and the budding romance between the other two. It is this second class status that has Po all mixed up in The Boy from Ilysies. Not only is he having problems thinking of Princess, I mean, Libyrarian Selene as just one of the girls and no more than anyone else, but he's also having trouble seeing himself as no less than. He's used to serving women like Selene, not working alongside them, and he's used to being emotionally taken care of, in return, by a matriarchal figure. All of this equality has left him feeling very alone and unsupported.

Much of the book is spent on this dilemma. It's interesting and important and turns gender stereotypes on their heads, but it wasn't what I was looking for in a sequel to the action-packed, literature-rich, POC and LGBTQ-featuring Libyrinth. I wanted more action than intrigue, more of Clauda's brashness and less of Po's confusion, more of the books' wisdom and less erections as feelings, more of the look-how-I've-grown Selene and less of the back-to-the-beginning Selene, more Nod(s), more Haly, and for the love, more Clauda AND Selene. When Po finally left on a quest, along with former Censor Siblea, Selene*, and a few others, I was so happy. I just wish that moment had come before I was halfway through the book.

But that second half of the book was totally worth it for me. The above group sets out for the former Singer headquarters to look for a tool from the legends of every major cultures' folklore that will hopefully make the land around the libyrinth fertile enough to support the community living there. Of course, when they get there, things do not go as planned, but in the course of the search and the fighting, we find out more about the foundations of the Singers' society. Their (former) reasoning behind the fear and demonization of the written word isn't exactly spelled out, but it makes a lot more sense now. Their still present culture of abuse and neglect of women also butts up against Po's sensibilities in a way that makes him take action rather than wallow in confusion and self-pity. The trip is also filled with danger, suspense, a cute but damaged girl for Po, and a cliff-hanger of an ending. I'm re-sucked in to this trilogy (or series?) an eagerly awaiting the as yet untitled Book 3. 


Book source: Philly Free Library



*without Clauda! Have they really never gotten together? Were they together and have since broken up? Are they together but trying to keep things hush-hush? WHO KNOWS? We get to hear (a tiny bit) about Haly and her boyfriend from the first book. Why no follow-up on Clauda and Selene's relationship, North?



Links to Amazon.com may be affiliate links for the Amazon Associates program. If you buy something through this link, I may receive a referral fee.

Under the Green Hill - for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. This week's book is:

Sullivan, Laura. Under the Green Hill. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2010. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/10043234]

Booktalk:

     "It's like in The Lion, the Witch and the Whachamacallit," Silly said, opening the door.
     "Wardrobe," Meg said.
     "Yup, that's it. Look, it's full of furs, too, just like the one in the book. I wonder if there's a passageway to a secret world."
     "We have enough to do here with the fairies without finding another world full of trouble," Meg said testily.

p.123

When a dangerous fever breaks out in the States, the Morgan children: Rowan, Meg, Silly, and James, are sent to England to stay with relatives for the summer. And haughty Finn and allergy-stricken Dickie are going with them. As they head to the Rookery, their great-aunt and -uncle's house, the Morgan children expect to spend a long summer in the company of tiresome elderly people. Finn's more concerned about the lack of electricity and Dickie's worried about all the pollen in those famous English gardens. Needless to say, none of them are excited. But when they get to the Rookery, they find a house of busy people getting ready for a midnight festival and themselves packed off to bed, forbidden to leave the grounds. Nothing is more exiting than that which is forbidden, so the Morgans, Finn, and Dickie sneak out to join the festivities, and what they find will change the course of the summer and possibly their lives.

Review:
As you may have guessed from this blog's title and header, I'm a bit partial to kids in unfamiliar old houses who stumble upon magical worlds. Extra points if that old house is in the English countryside. Extra, extra points if the kids get caught up in an epic war requiring brave heroics. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would love Under the Green Hill.

I want to be so very grown-up and objective and say that what I found so attractive in this book was its own sense of place in and reverence to the tradition of books about kids in unfamiliar old houses, so on and so forth. Or that I loved the allusions to other fairy/faerie stories that I caught but will probably fly over the heads of young readers. Or that I was excited about a middle grade book featuring a position of power passed down through the maternal line, with almost inconsequential (but loved!) husbands marrying into the family to help produce the all important female heir and spare. Or even that I was enchanted by Sullivan's use of language. For example:

Dickie could tell it was extraordinary just from the smell. An odor of knowledge permeated the air, ghosts of arcane secrets wafted about by the breeze the children made when they opened the door. Here were books more rare than any first editions. ... The air seemed stale, as though no one had visited that room in decades. But, oddly, though there was dust on all visible surfaces, the library didn't make Dickie sneeze. Books have their own peculiar kind of dustiness, which didn't catch in his nose the same way cat's hair or thistle pollen might.

p.119

I could say all of that, and it would all be true (especially that last one). But what really made me fall in love with Under the Green Hill was the story, pure and simple. I'm a sucker for a good fantasy adventure, and this one is full of that goodness: a beautiful setting that is recognizable but still full of fantastical elements, betrayal, swamp monsters, life and death stakes, war-training, a wise benefactress who one can only hope will make everything okay, an enemy that isn't so evil that anyone really wants to kill him, a sensible sister who tries to be the voice of reason, and a brother hell-bent on grand acts of heroism. Plus an added bonus (that I'm also a sucker for): a selkie!

So Finn, Dickie, and even youngest brother James are a bit underdeveloped. That's okay; they each serve their purpose in the story, hindering or helping the rest of the Morgans along. There's also a little ambiguity in the beginning about when this story is set. It feels like it should be set in the past, between World Wars perhaps, what with the incurable fever ravaging America's children and names like Finn, Rowan and Dickie, but Finn despairs about the DVDs and video games he brought with him to England but can't use since the Rookery has no electricity. It's also possible that I projected a former time on a book whose time period should be last week. Regardless, time period ceased to matter once all the children reached the Rookery and the real story started.

In case you missed it the first two times I said it, I loved this book and I think you all should read it! More professionally, I think other fantasy adventure readers are sure to enjoy it, and it will be an immediate hit with readers looking for something to read once they've run out of Narnia books.


Under the Green Hill is available now, and its sequel Guardian of the Green Hill will be available this fall!


Book source: Review copy provided by the publisher.


Links to Amazon.com may be affiliate links for the Amazon Associates program. If you buy something through this link, I may receive a referral fee.

Ship Breaker

Bacigalupi, Paolo. Ship Breaker: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print.

[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9160869]

Awards:
Andre Norton Award Finalist (2010)
National Book Award Finalist, Young People's Literature (2010)
ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults (2011)
Printz Award (2011)

Booktalk:
While scavenging in an old ocean tanker, Nailer falls into a vat of oil, still black gold in his world years upon years ahead of ours. In order to survive, he has to watch all of that oil wash into the ocean. Still, he's lucky to be alive. He thinks his luck is going to give him a second chance when he and Pima find a clipper washed up on shore after a city wrecker of a storm. It's full of silver, gold, and other valuables in addition to regular old copper and steel scavenge. It's their own lucky strike. Until the dead swank in one of the clipper's cabins blinks.

Review:
The world in which Nailer lives and works is brutal. He and his friend Pima are on light crew which means they pick light scavenge from old ships, primarily pulling copper wire from small utility ducts. This is opposed to heavy crew, where Pima's mother works pulling steel and other valuable metals from the same ships. These are the only good options in life. The only others are to become professional fighters who moonlight as security (like Nailer's dad), sell of body parts and/or fluids, or become some version of a prostitute. Basically, even though Nailer is doing dangerous and backbreaking work that almost gets him killed, he was lucky even before he survived his dip in the oil. He's also 15. Nailer's background and, really, his entire society make his decision to help Nita (the swank) more amazing. And it's that decision, so contrary to the way he's been taught to survive, that create an adventure story in the middle of a dystopian world.

I think one of the most amazing things about Ship Breaker, for me at least, is they way Bacigalupi accomplishes his world-building. This is a seriously complex world full of swanks, ship breakers, beach rats, half-men, and all the cultural implications these groups carry with them. Bacigalupi manages to explain all of this without ever sitting the reader down and explaining all of it, yet I was amazingly un-lost throughout the story. The world he builds is still our world too. Nailer lives on the Gulf Coast and takes a train that carries him over the drowned city of New Orleans. We can recognize leftovers from our day and age. It's clear that some kind of environmental fall-out has occured (in addition to a severe lack of oil and a submerged New Orleans, traders can sail right over the Arctic Circle), but the details of how we got from here to there are never explained, leaving the reader to put 2 and 2 together. No heavy-handed environmental message required (or present).

Ship Breaker is, at times, a very bleak book portraying a society in which each person is practically required to step over someone else to survive. Getting ahead is a pipe dream. But, like many other dystopian novels, its points of light that make the story. This is the kind of book that can stress you out (in a good way) while reading, and it will be a hit with your dystopia fans. My library is also adding it to our Environmental Justice bibliography for next year's incoming freshmen.


There is talk of a sequel, The Drowned Cities, but it's not showing up yet on the publisher's website, only on GoodReads.


Book source: Philly Free Library


Links to Amazon.com may be affiliate links for the Amazon Associates program. If you buy something through this link, I may receive a referral fee.

Sapphique

Fisher, Catherine. Sapphique. New York: Dial Books - Penguin Group (USA), Inc., 2010. Print. Incarceron 2.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/6159635]


If you haven't yet read Incarceron, what are you waiting for? ;) Also, don't read this. It will spoil it for you.


Booktalk:
The Warden's final little stunt destroyed the portal to Incarceron, trapping not only himself but also Keiro and Attia in its depths. As much as Finn would like every waking moment to be spent working on their release, there are bigger things for he, Jared, and Claudia to worry about. Finn's lack of courtly manners and, you know, memory of his life as Prince Giles is really starting to work against them. And when a young man who is indistinguishable from Finn physically but clearly bred to eat from a silver spoon comes to court claiming to be the long-lost Giles, it could be death of them all, in Incarceron or Out.

Review:
It took more self-control than I knew I had not to tear into this book as soon as I got it. I wanted to reread the first book so I could pick up all the little things that I was sure would pop up again in this sequel. I suggest you all do the same. Fisher writes a very intricate story, and it definitely builds on little clues left behind in the first book. Still, I don't think Sapphique quite lived up to its prequel. Or maybe it just didn't live up to all the hype I'd built up for it in my head. I loved the way I was plopped into the middle of all the characters lives again rather than having the book pick up right where the previous one left off. I really liked that there were so many little clues in the text to lead the reader to what is Really Going On Here. I loved that this book, the end of the Incarceron series (pairing?), was still full of twists right up to the very end. I still loved most of the characters (though not necessarily the same ones I loved in the last book, a fact I also loved). But there was just something missing. I didn't stay up until 4 in the morning to finish Sapphique. I took a leisurely week to read it.

Though the narration still switches between life in the Realm and life in Incarceron, a lot of Sapphique follows Claudia, Finn and Jared in the Realm. Which is what I wanted! I know! But life at court rather than at the Wardenry or with the peasants is pretty boring. And Claudia and Finn both annoyed me. A lot. They're both beyond frustrated at Finn's lack of memory and this frustration manifests itself as doubt on Claudia's part and severe moodiness on Finn's. Neither were the strong and/or sure of themselves leaders that we met in Incarceron. The change in them was totally believable; I just didn't love them as much as I used to.

BUT with all the focus on life Outside, Sapphique does treat us to more insight into living life by Protocol, including a short trip to a peasant village:

She [Claudia] shivered. "You should glass the windows. The draft is terrible."

The old man laughed, pouring out thin ale. "But that wouldn't be Protocol, would it? And we must abide by the Protocol, even as it kills us."

"There are ways around it," Finn said softly.

"Not for us." He pushed the pottery cups toward them. "For the Queen maybe, because them that make the rules can break them, but not for the poor. Era is no pretense for us, no playing at the past with all its edges softened. It's real. We have no skinwands, lad, none of the precious electricity or plastiglas. The picturesque squalor the Queen likes to ride past is where we live. You play at history. We endure it."

p.199*

Throughout the book Claudia is served revelations such as this. It also becomes obvious that though she is kind and more educated than she should be considering Protocol in general and her gender class in it, she has no idea how to interact with people outside of the roles of master and servant, and everyone who is not her master is her potential servant. If Finn gained anything from living in Incarceron (besides his BFF Keiro), it's that he knows what it is to go without, to live a meager existence, to just try to survive. Even as Claudia doubts more and more whether Finn is actually Giles, it becomes clear (to me, not necessarily to the characters) that Finn will be a wonderful king if/when they get rid of the witchy Queen.

Speaking of the witchy Queen, one of the characters that I loved the most was her son Casper. I know, he's horrible in Incarceron and he comes nowhere near making the switch to "good guy" in Sapphique, but I still loved him. He seemed so lost a lot of the time. You can tell that he really grew up living in the dual shadows of his Queenly mother and Princely half-brother. When Giles comes back, whether anyone believes Finn is the real Giles or not, Casper is left being the younger prince again. The spare. I felt so bad for him, still hanging around Claudia throughout this book even though it's always been clear she has no interest in him. He kept trying to win her back with promises of power and safety, things Finn/Giles couldn't offer her, but rather than coming off as evil and manipulative, he seemed like an unpopular rich kid who buys everyone in his class presents so they'll come to his birthday party.

And then there's Keiro and Attia still in Incarceron following yet another legend of Sapphique, looking for a way out. I liked their storyline a lot, but there was little to no character development in it. It was like Fisher knew she needed danger and action to keep readers interested in between all the palace intrigue in the Realm, so she foisted it all on the two of them. But it's the two of them who manage to pull everything together in the end (I'm being generous because I LOVE Keiro; Attia's the real smartypants in this volume).

Sapphique is a must-read if you are a lover of Incarceron. It's not the thrill ride that the first book was, but questions are answered, loose ends are tied up, and maybe, just maybe, things are allowed to change.


Sapphique will be out in hardback on the 28th!
You know, before you blow all your hard-earned Christmas money. ;)

Also, I would be a bad blogger if I didn't point out that last week Taylor Lautner (yes, that Taylor Lautner) was announced as The Guy Who Will Play Finn in the movie adaptation. I just hope Hollywood wises up and listens to the FYA ladies when casting the Warden.


Book source: ARC picked up at ALA

*Quotes and page numbers are from an uncorrected proof and may not match the published copy.

Incarceron

Fisher, Catherine. Incarceron. New York: Dial Books - Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2010. Print. Incarceron 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/2998395]

Awards:
Cybils Finalist - Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction (2007)

Booktalk:
Finn lives in an vast and inescapable prison. All the unwanted riff-raff of society, the murders, thieves, predators, and other criminals, were once permanently locked away. This prison was supposed to be a paradise where the lowest of society could start over and make things right. But things did not work out as planned. The prison, Incarceron, is a sentient hell-hole where fear, treachery, and hunger rein. And its boundaries have been breached. The prisoners live on the hope left by the legends of Sapphique, a man who is said to have escaped, and Finn, who is thought to have been born of the prison rather than of its prisoners, remembers bits and pieces of a life Outside. With the help of a Sapient, a learned man, he hopes to escape back to the life he thinks he remembers. He remembers the stars.

The world Claudia lives in is based on some fond remembering of the Victorian Era. Everything has been altered to artificially represent this bygone and romanticized time when things were simpler, safer, and more ordered, at least from the point of view of the rich. Everyone, privileged or not, is left chaffing in a world that society has long since outgrown. But like most things in her world, underneath her image, Claudia is decidedly non-Era. She's smart, educated, and wants to know more than she's allowed. As she hurtles towards her wedding to the heir of the throne, she snoops on her father, the Warden of Incarceron. And she finds a key.


Review:
I devoured this book. Twice. The pacing, the storyline, the characters, it all fell into place for me. A lot of the time I think that two simultaneous story lines (as opposed to alternating viewpoints of the same action) make it easy for either or both stories to get away with being a bit under-developed. That's not the case here. Both Finn and Claudia's stories are complex, and the points where they come together are intense. The difference between Claudia's life and Finn's is so stark. Claudia and Finn's disbelief at discovering the other (and realizing how the other must live) is genuine. It also allows for a lot of explanation without a lot of info-dumping. And Fisher uses the alternating viewpoints to create a million mini-cliffhangers throughout the text.

Finn's whole storyline is so urgent. His only certainty is that whatever unknown is around the corner is probably life-threatening. He can't even be sure that his memories of Outside, which come to him during seizures, are real or really his. But Finn is surrounded by friends, or at least by people who need him, like his oathbrother Keiro. Finn and Keiro's relationship is one of my favorite parts of his world. It's complicated and not always all that honest, but they clearly care about each other a lot. And even though their circumstances are over-the-top horrible, they manage to maintain a normal-ish friendship: the kind where a searing punch to the gut can mean "I forgive you."

The society that Claudia lives in is based on the Victorian Era, but this is no revisionist history. The people who put Protocol and Era in place are trying to recreate, not re-remember, that time. They aren't creating an idealized version so much as trying to return to the way things were. Exactly as they were: no technology, widespread healthcare, or women in pants. No indoor plumbing. But in reality they should be much more advanced in all of these areas than we are now. Because of this, the spread between the haves and the have-nots, already extreme in Victorian times, is even more obscene. The have-nots must live like their 19th century counterparts; they don't have the means to change anything. People like Claudia, on the other hand, can use a myriad of technologies to make their lives easier ranging from washing machines for their fine silks to laser skinwands for their wrinkles. They just have to look like they're living within Protocol; they have to make a pretense of not wanting to get caught. Even though most of the heart-pounding action happens inside Incarceron, it's Claudia's world that fascinated me. Hopefully the next book, Sapphique (which I'll review next week), will delve deeper into the technology (and lack thereof) and culture of her world.

Incarceron is deeper and more complicated than I expected (and less steampunk-y than the cover would suggest). I highly recommend it!


Also, Incarceron is already being developed as a movie (2013 projected release) and the sequel is coming out at the end of this month.



Book source: I bought it.

The Lost Hero - for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

Riordan, Rick. The Lost Hero. New York: Disney - Hyperion Books for Children, 2010. Print. The Heroes of Olympus 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9822197]

Booktalk:
Camp Half-Blood is packed, even in the winter. With the addition of new cabins for all the minor gods' children and everyone being claimed by the time they're 13, there are a ton more Heroes roaming around. But things still aren't going swimmingly. Zeus has closed Olympus and is not allowing the gods to talk to their mortal children. Artemis, even, is cut off from her huntresses. And Percy's missing. No matter where Rachel's predictions send Annabeth looking, she can't find him.

But this story isn't about all that, not really. It's about Piper, Leo and Jason. Three half-bloods with special gifts: Piper can convince anyone to do just about anything, Leo is amazingly good with his hands and can make an engine out of just about anything, and Jason, well, at the moment Jason can't remember anything. They've been hidden away at a school for delinquents, all unclaimed even though they're well beyond 13, but chosen by the gods since birth for what they must do now.

Review:
The Lost Hero totally fulfilled all my wishes and desires for it. It's still Camp Half-Blood (even if Chiron is especially cranky and unhelpful in this go-round), but it's not just more of the same. We're not so far into the future that Percy and Annabeth are former legends, nor are we so close to the end of the last Percy book that we have to sit around and watch them make out all the time. They're not even main characters in this story, just cameo characters. The addition of the children of all the minor gods makes everything a bit more hectic and crowded and crazy, but the explanations of the various gods and their traits are still there. Not only do we get Piper, Leo and Jason as new characters, but there are a bunch of new potentially important folks back at camp as well. And (this is a bit spoilery, so highlight to read) San Francisco was never really evil! But that last one is probably only important to me.

I couldn't have asked for more, and I doubt other fans of the Percy Jackson books could either.

The Lost Hero is told from the perspectives of Piper, Leo and Jason. While they all kind of sound alike (see my criticism of the alternative viewpoints in Riordan's The Red Pyramid), I never got them mixed up during the story. This may be more because of what is going on in each of their heads rather than distinction of voice. Even though they're all on the same quest and living through the same adventures/dangers, they're not remotely going through the same things. Each of their lives really has been leading up to this quest and they're just now starting to figure out how. Piper is going through all kinds of internal torment because she has been basically told that she'll double-cross the other two (not to mention that all her memories of Jason, who she thought was her boyfriend, are probably a product of some super-potent Mist). Leo is seeing his former babysitter Tia Callida (who encouraged playing with both fire and knives) and is figuring out connections between her, the weird circumstances surrounding his mother's death, and the prophecy he, Piper and Jason are meant to be fulfilling. And poor Jason. He's just trying to grasp hold of his memories: the ones that allow him to be a top-notch fighter, the ones that bring the gods' Roman rather than Greek names to his lips, and the ones that rumble in the back of his mind with every mention of the Titan War.

It's a bit more complicated, a bit more multi-layered, and a bit longer than the Percy books. But then, the characters (and the original Percy fans) are also a bit older. New readers will fare just fine without having read the Percy books (so far), but I have a feeling that won't be the case for much longer. And Percy fans will love the continuation of the Camp Half-Blood story.


Also of note: Leo is Latino and Piper is of Cherokee descent. Leo (very) occasionally uses Spanish words, especially in his memories. Piper reflects on her grandfather's life on the reservation as opposed to the life she's lived in California (her dad's a famous actor). She also bristles at the term "Half-Blood" upon reaching camp (though there is no examination or explanation of why that term bothers her in the text). Riordan doesn't make a big deal about the ethnicities of any of the characters (at least not the mortal half of their ethnicity...), but he still manages to make it matter.


Book source: Philly Free Library where I started out 27th in line for this title a week before its release. :)

River Odyssey - for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

Roy, Philip. River Odyssey. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2010. Print. The Submarine Outlaw Series 3.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/10508116]
 
Booktalk:

If Sheba dreamt about you, you were in for it.
"There was a big storm," she began.
I sat up and listened closely. A big storm was no big deal; I had seen lots of those.
"And there was a sea monster."
Not so good. "What did it look like?"
"I couldn't see it; I just knew it was there. And your submarine was sinking."
Shoot! "Was the monster pulling it down?"
"Yes, I think so. I'm not sure. It's just that..."
"What?"
"Well..."
"What? What is it?"
"I think maybe the saw monster was your father."

p.3

Trusting in Sheba's dreams and intuition, Alfred postpones his trip to the Pacific and decides to sail upriver to Montreal. That's where his grandfather thinks his father ran to when he left Alfred, and that's where Alfred is hoping he can still find him. Sheba is worried that without this trip, Alfred will be left with unfinished business weighing him down for the rest of his life. If that's true, why does Alfred feel more pulled down by dread the closer he gets to his destination?
 
Review:
The Submarine Outlaw is growing up, both the character and the series. Though there is still plenty of information about the working of the sub and, in this installment, the workings of the St. Lawrence River, River Odyssey reads a lot less like narrative non-fiction than the previous books in the series. I think that's because Alfred actually does a lot of growing in this book and deals with a lot of (gasp!) feelings. And he finds out that while he may want to explain everything away logically (see his rationale for the weird happenings over what my be Atlantis in the second book) some things, especially the actions of people and the motives behind them, will always remain inexplicable.

Alfred's mother died giving birth to him, and his father left shortly thereafter. All Alfred knows about either is what he's been told by his grandparents. Most recently, when asked the question, "What was he like?", this has consisted of a tight-lipped response from his grandfather: "He's not like you" (27). For the duration of his trip, Alfred is let trying to figure out what that means. He's not adventurous? Not at home on the water? Not good with animals or without company? As Alfred sails up-river and meets a variety of people along the way (as he is wont to do), he settles on another possibility. What if his father is not good?

Still an adventure story, still a great story about how things work, River Odyssey has something else too that was missing from the other Submarine Outlaw books: emotional (rather than mechanical) conflict and growth. Though Alfred still meets, gets to know, and leaves people on his trip, though he still gets in and out of scrapes along the way (gets a whole lot closer to getting caught than we've ever seen before - it's a lot harder to flit off into international waters when you're in a river), gone is the episodic quality of the first two books. I doubt fans of the series will be missing anything that they loved in the first books and will love seeing a glimpse into the rest of Alfred's life. And I think River Odyssey may have more to offer new readers as well. This doesn't feel like fiction for young readers of non-fiction anymore. The story and the information about ships, subs, and bodies of water are much more balanced, and this book is (finally) about a boy who happens to travel the world by sub rather than about a boy and how built, maintains, and travels by submarine.


River Odyssey came out last month and is now available for purchase!
 
 
Book 1: Submarine Outlaw
Book 2: Journey to Atlantis
Book source: Review copy provided by the publisher

A Different Day A Different Destiny - for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

Laing, Annette. A Different Day, A Different Destiny. Statesboro, Georgia: Confusion Press, 2010. Print. Snipesville Chronicles 2.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/10082476/]

Booktalk:
The Professor, doing what she does, manages to drop her modern calculator somewhere in the past. The changes this creates in the past causes changes that reach forward to our present day where it leaves a rift in time and drags Hannah, Brandon, and Alex back in time to right things. Again. Only this time they're all in 1851; Hannah in Scotland, Brandon in England, and Alex back in Snipesville where all their adventures started in the first place.

Review:
Laing has done it again! She's managed to cram a whole lot of information into an entertaining story (with a bit of actual danger thrown in this time) and created a dizzying web of characters connected to each other, the characters in Don't Know Where, Don't Know When, and Hannah, Brandon, and Alex's present day lives. Some of these connections are pretty obvious (the Gordons that Hannah lives with are the grandparents of the Scottish Mr. Gordon from the first book and a young girl in Balesworth who is the spitting image of Verity turns out to be her great-grandma), but that certainly didn't detract from their stories. And most of the connections I didn't see coming until the series of big reveals toward the end. I think that's the most amazing thing about these books for me: how some of the details all work out so seamlessly without being so obvious that I figured them out halfway through the book.

Hannah, Brandon, and Alex thought they had things bad in WWII England, but their experiences in the last book are nothing compared to what each of them goes through in 1851. Alone. In 1851, all three of them are considered adults, expected to earn a wage and take care of themselves. They each have to deal with this realization and figure out how to make their own ways and survive before they can even begin to think about how to find each other and get back home. The way that the book shifts between their stories was very clear and easy to follow. And for anyone (like me) for whom the year 1851 doesn't ring a bell, they are doing this all in the midst of preparations for Prince Albert's Great Exhibition and a growing disapproval across England and Scotland of the lingering institution of slavery in America.

Alex, still in Snipesville, comes face to face with slavery. As he travels to Savannah looking for work (with the help of a modern calculator he found in a cotton field to boost his mathematical skills), he is accompanied by a slave, Jupe, who is about his age. No matter how he tries to treat Jupe as an equal, Jupe never opens up to him or fully trusts him. Alex does manage to keep Jupe with him by lying about who legally owns him, keeping Jupe from being arrested, punished, or sold because he ran away. The situation with Jupe is complicated by the fact that Alex genuinely likes his employer, even though Mr. Thornhill buys and sells slaves in the course of his land sale transactions. This conflict eventually tears at Alex, and he remains upset and a bit broken at the close of the book. The question of how otherwise good people could participate in or even condone slavery is never answered here, which is probably as it should be.

Hannah and Brandon are free from the emotional and intellectual turmoil that Alex must endure in 1851. They're both left in horrible working and conditions by their trip back in time. Brandon "comes to" already in the pitch black dark of a coal mine (which seemed extraordinarily cruel to me) and eventually makes his way back to Balesworth. On the way he lives in a workhouse, becomes a professional mourner, and is, once again, a novelty to those around him. People assume that Brandon is a former slave, especially after he tells people that he was born in America. England, having recently abolished slavery in their own country, is on a crusade to have the same happen in America. Many people, especially the upper class women, want to know Brandon's thoughts on the subject and want to hear all about his experiences. The fact that he has to fabricate these experiences based on what he learned in history classes doesn't seem to bother anyone.

Hannah, of course, has the most tumultuous time. She's forced to be a piecer in a mill, first cotton and then jute, and earns pennies a week. She's fired twice and almost starves to death in between. She has a lot to complain about, but what Hannah is the most worried about is her lack of shopping opportunities. Her attitude is, once again, off-putting for most of the book, which is a shame as her storyline was the one I was the most interested in. At some point during her ordeal, it seems like Hannah may be learning something from the life she's living. She makes friends and finds herself in a family; she agitates for workers' rights (to hang out in the park) and gives an upper class woman who lives off mill profits the scare of her life by walking her through a tenement neighborhood. Still, as soon as she is rescued by the Professor and given a fancy dress and a bit of pocket money, all those hard-learned lessons fall right out of her head. She can't even be polite to a waiter, and why should she? It's his job to serve her. Ugh. I was really happy when the Professor ditched her again and she had to become a house maid.

Even with my disappointment in Hannah's character development, or lack thereof, I really enjoyed A Different Day, A Different Destiny. I also learned a lot about the working class in the British Empire during the Industrial Revolution and British involvement in the American Abolitionist Movement.


Book 1: Don't Know Where, Don't Know When
Book source: Review copy provided by the author. Thanks!

Journey to Atlantis - for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:
 
Roy, Philip. Journey to Atlantis. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2009. Print. The Submarine Outlaw Series 2.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9545628]

Booktalk:
With a little help from Alfred's grandfather, Ziegrfried has added extra speed, power, and, of course, safety precautions to the sub. It's a good thing, too, as Alfred will need them all as he crosses the Atlantic in search of the lost city of Atlantis.

Review:
I was worried/excited that Journey to Atlantis would break entirely from the precedent set by the first book in the series and suddenly have mermaids, a city suspended under a bubble on the bottom of the ocean, or other such impossibilities. Worried for readers who were drawn to the first book because of it's realistic tone and wealth of information; excited because Atlantis is pretty cool. Turns out, my worry was unnecessary. Magical creatures don't suddenly pop out of the ocean to take Alfred, Hollie, and Seaweed to their underwater palaces; this book is planted firmly in reality. Still, the ocean is still an unfathomable place, exactly why Alfred wants to be free to explore it, and not everything he encounters during his trip across the ocean can be rationalized or explained away.

Alfred studies quite a bit in preparation for this trip, looking especially at accounts of others' search for the lost city. He also studies at sea navigation, international law for water travel, and modern day piracy (in order to avoid, not to practice). All of this studying happens before the opening of the book (luckily), but the knowledge Alfred acquired over the winter shows throughout the novel and, of course, is shared with the reader. What might be considered an information overload in another series, fits well with the Alfred (and Ziegfried) we were introduced to in the previous book.

During his trip, Alfred meets scholars, sailors, world travelers, and many other people during his travels (yes, including pirates!). Though he continues to be brave and good, sacrificing his time and, in some cases, his safety to help others, this book is more about the exploring that Alfred is finally able to do rather than his adventures in the submarine. The descriptions of the Mediterranean, the western coast of Africa, Azores are amazing. Roy practically paints pictures of these locales, in addition to describing the people Alfred gets to meet. Though the story remains a bit episodic, Journey to Atlantis has a clear goal in mind throughout: find the lost city. Alfred retraces the steps of other explorers, circles sonar abnormalities, and most importantly, lets himself believe that there might be something left of Atlantis to find. His eagerness to continue the search ties all of his other encounters together, making this book flow much more smoothly than the last. I can't wait to see how Roy improves on the next book in the series as well.

Again, my "big" complaint is actually a minor one. After the heroism Alfred showed the previous year exploring his own coastline, his grandma and grandpa decide to support his decision not to be a fisherman, which is great! Grandpa expresses his approval by suddenly showing up at the boathouse one day to help Alfred and Ziegfried work on the sub, and Grandma, well, Grandma does this:

The observation window, in the floor of the bow, was also the same, except that Hollie's beloved blanket, rather frayed at the edges, had been replace by a lovely quilt my grandmother had knitted especially for him.

p.6

Does anyone else see the problem? Probably not. And, no, it's not that you should never replace a dog's blankie because they freak out about it (Hollie whines until he gets his old blanket back). The problem is that you quilt a quilt, or maybe sew it. You knit an afghan. Of course, this little sentence is probably not a problem for very many people, just knitter and quilters, and we're really not the intended audience, so I guess it's okay. :-)

This is a great second book in a series. It takes us beyond the premise of the first book, but does not act  ONLY as a bridge to the third book. No Second Book Syndrome here! The third book in the series, River Odyssey, will take Alfred, Hollie and Seaweed up the St. Lawrence River where Alfred hopes to find not only a sunken ocean-liner but his father. It is available for purchase from the publisher's website!


Book 1: Submarine Outlaw
Book source: Review copy from publisher

Infinite Days

Maizel, Rebecca. Infinite Days. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2010. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9793458]

Booktalk:
Lenah's life as a vampire was one full of misery, her own and the misery she inflicted on her thousands of human victims over the centuries. Then, after a century long nap, she wakes up as a human. The torment of the vampire existence is gone, replaced by the range of feelings and senses we humans take for granted. But Rhode, her maker and soul mate, site in front of her dying so that she can live again. A new kind of misery. But Lenah is now human and humans are resilient creatures with much shorter memories than vampires. If Lenah can make a life for herself in the boarding school in which Rhode has left her, maybe she can survive without him and in spite of all the other vampires she has left behind.

Review:
Woohoo! The vampire is scary again! This is not a horror book because Lenah is no longer a vampire, but in her flashbacks to her former un-life, she is eeevil. But Lenah, and her coven of sexy vampire men, still have a few tricks up their sleeves, such as the one that allows Lenah to be human again. I love that Maizel added to vampire lore and myth without completely ignoring traditional vampire tales. This allowed her to focus on what made Lenah and her coven different from traditional vampires without making that the focus of the story. Unfortunately, even though it wasn't the focus of the story, the vampire parts were my favorite parts.

Lenah as a human was not my favorite person. I wouldn't say Lenah as a vampire was my favorite either because she, you know, ate people for fun, but at least she was interesting. I get that having just watched the love of her un-life sacrifice himself for her, Lenah wouldn't be the peppiest person on the quad. I also get that having been unconscious for 100 years, Lenah finds a lot of things weird, offensive, alien, whatevs. I'm fine with all of that. And so is Tony, the cute Japanese-American scholarship student who befriends her. Even though odd things are always coming out of her mouth and she never seems to know what's going on even though she's obviously a smarty-pants, Tony takes Lenah under his wing, shows her around campus, teaches her how to drive (Rhode left Lenah a seriously amazing car, in addition to the steamer trunk full of cash in her PRIVATE APARTMENT on the top floor of her boarding school dorm), and inducts her into the woes of bathing suit shopping. He's the best best friend a girl could ask for, especially a girl in Lenah's situation.

When Tony falls in love with Lenah, she knows about it but doesn't acknowledge it. No problems there. Things like this happen. And it's awkward. Instead, broody Lenah who wears all black, works in the library, and whose biting wit is almost as evil as her former, well, bite, falls in love with The Jock. You know the one. He's the star of everything he touches, all the guys want to be him, all the girls want to do him, and he's dating the hottest girl in school. In his defense, Justin does not fall into the 80s movie stereotype of a jock; he really is a nice guy (except for the fact that he continues dating the hottest girl in the school while he pursues Lenah, right up until the moment when he knows he's won Lenah over and it's safe to dump the girlfriend, but that's a whole different rant). When Lenah and Justin finally get together, it's like everything clicks into place for Lenah. She's no longer a stranger in a strange land. No transition, no learning stuff, she just all of a sudden belongs in a New England boarding school in 2010. It's like magic (barf). But Justin's nowhere near as in tune to Lenah as Tony is, and she ditches Tony for him. She doesn't just choose Justin over Tony romantically, that I would have been fine with as it's almost never a good idea to date your friends. Instead, Lenah pulls an "If you can't immediately and 100% support my true lurv that I just discovered yesterday, even though we both know that you're secretly in love with me and this might be hard for you, then we can't be friends."

Tony, my favorite character in the whole book, the only one besides (dead) Rhode that I really liked, just fell out of the book. And I sort of lost my interest.

But the vampire lore was pretty cool, as were the flashbacks to Lenah's un-life (and don't worry, Maizel is not nearly as dorky as I am and does not refer to it that way). Rhode and Tony are both drool-worthy side characters and make the book worth reading, at least for me. And the ending is really intense. I have no idea how it is a set-up for the start of a series, though. The end seemed pretty definitive to me, but in a world where vampires can return to human form, I guess nothing is really all that permanent.


Book source: Review copy from the publisher through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program

Submarine Outlaw - for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

Roy, Philip. Submarine Outlaw. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2008. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/5509071]

Booktalk:
Alfred lives with his grandparents in Dark Cove, a small town in Newfoundland. All the men of Dark Cove are fishermen, and it looks as though this will be Alfred's destiny as well. But to be a fisherman, looking out at the sea from the relative safeness of a fishing boat, never straying far from the coastline and certainly never going into the water (most of the fishermen cannot swim even though they spend most of their lives on the water), would kill Alfred. He wants to be an explorer and he wants to explore the depths of the sea. This is where Ziegfried comes in. This intimidatingly large and gruff owner of a junkyard happens to be a mechanical genius. He agrees to help Alfred build a submarine for one, allowing Alfred to escape his grandfather's fishy wishes for him pursue fishy dreams of his own.

Review:
Okay, guys, I'll admit it. I was worried about this one. Realistic fiction about a kid who, with the help of a junkyard maven, turns an oil tank into a working submarine? I'm all for fantasy, but huge suspensions of disbelief in a story that is supposed to be realistic, of the kind I thought I was going to have to make right there in the first chapter, are not my forte. But then Ziegfried started, matter of factly, building a submarine out of an oil tank. There are almost 80 pages of the building and testing of this submarine, a lot for a 250 page book. It makes for a slow start to the story, but not a slow start for the book. Ziegfried explains everything he's doing as he goes along, ostensibly so that Alfred will be able to handle minor repairs on his own at sea, but really so that we readers will not have to make that huge jump on our own. It's so interesting to read about all the ways he's making sure things float and sink when you want them too, and it is, to my limited mechanical knowledge, pretty realistic.

Once the submarine is built, Alfred is off! Along the way he picks up a seagull and a dog, meets a lady who lives alone on an island save her own menagerie of furry and feathered companions, rescues a family at sea, finds some treasure, and gets chased by the coastguard, navy, and excited locals. He gets to have the adventure that being a fisherman would have denied him. Looking back, the whole thing is a bit episodic, but while reading, the story is not the least disjointed. The connecting theme is Alfred's realization that the actions of his 14 year old self in his little tiny submarine have consequences, good and bad. Over the course of the novel he learns how to weigh his choices before rushing into a decision, who to trust to help him, and that other people (and a bird and a dog) are counting on him. Basically, during his year at sea, he grows up.

Did I mention that Alfred is 14? The book opens shortly before his 13th birthday, there is a year of simultaneously going to school and building the submarine, and then a year at sea, coming home just before everything freezes. In the beginning, Alfred was a believable 12 year old, and it is clear that the intended audience for this book is also. By the end, he seems a bit older and wiser than 14 at times. I have no doubt, however, that the following books will keep the tweener feel, even as Alfred continues to age and mature.

Also, it's easy to forget that Alfred's still a teenager when he's not going to school. His grandfather was going to make him drop out of school to become a fisherman at 14 anyway, but I wish that there was an option for his life that allowed him to stay in school. Instead, when it is suggested that he return to school, the argument is made that "I was already a man, no longer a boy. What I was learning no school could teach" (219). Until that line, dropping out of school was kind of a side consequence of growing up in Dark Cove, not of being an explorer, and a consequence that was easily forgotten. I wish the author had let me forget it if the issue wasn't actually going to be resolved or changed. Still, this is a small complaint about a book that I really did like reading. The descriptions of how the submarine worked as well as the life at sea and along the coast of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were incredibly interesting and often beautiful. This series will be a hit with readers interested in oceanography, treasure-hunting (but not pirates), and the general way things work. I can't wait to read about Alfred's next adventure, which will take him a bit farther from home and the relative safety of the coast.


If you need another reason to read this book, the paper it is printed on is made of 100% post-consumer waste! It doesn't really have anything to do with the story, clearly, but it's definitely a practice that should be applauded!


I'll be reading and reviewing the second book in this series, Journey to Atlantis, in the next couple of weeks. The third book in the series, River Odyssey will be available from the publisher's website in September and at amazon shortly thereafter!


Book source: Review copy from publisher

Birthmarked

O'Brien, Caragh M. Birthmarked. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2010. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9117047]

Booktalk:
Gaia has just finished her first delivery as a midwife rather than a midwife's assistant. The birth goes well, but Gaia must take the baby. The first three babies delivered by each midwife must be surrendered to the Enclave. Every month. And no matter how badly she feels for the mother who loses her baby, Gaia knows she must do her duty. Besides, everyone knows that advanced children, once surrendered babies, who grow up in the affluence of the Enclave are much better off. They never go hungry or thirsty like children in Wharfton often do. With these thoughts swirling in her head, Gaia heads home, only to find no one there. Her parents have been taken by the Enclave. Unlike the baby Gaia has just advanced, her parents need to be rescued.


Review:
Set on the shores of Unlake Michigan, this dystopian world has me hooked. Following some kind of environmental fallout that resulted in not nearly enough water to go around, the difference between the haves and the have-nots grows much more pronounced. What used to be the northern United States becomes something resembling a feudal city-state. The have-nots in Wharfton, where Gaia lives, depend on the "good people" of the Enclave for water to survive. And a bleak survival it is. Gaia and her parents do alright; there are only three of them and both her parents work, her mother as a midwife and her father as a tailor. Gaia's new status as a full midwife should have brought her family the Wharfton version of luxury: plenty of water and extra passes to the local entertainment center, Tvaltar. The Enclave also could not exist without those in Wharfton. Though there are bakers, tailors, and other services available right inside the wall, the people of Wharfton provide much of the labor and services the Enclave requires.

And the babies. The people of Wharfton also provide Enclave families with babies.

At first I thought this was going to be a situation like that in The Handmaid's Tale where most women become sterile and those who still can are pressed into service as babymakers. That is not the case here, though why the Enclave needs Wharfton babies remains a mystery for most of the book. Many people on both sides of the wall believe, like Gaia herself, that the children sent to the Enclave are simply lucky, even while their parents are left heart-broken; they have a chance at a much easier life. The Protectorat, the ruling class of the Enclave, have a much more complicated need for children born in Wharfton. Luckily (not really) Gaia is caught pretty early on on her attempt to rescue her parents and so gets to meet the key people behind the "advancement" program.

After Gaia is captured in the Enclave, where she has no right to be, she learns so much more about the history of her society and world than she could have imagined. She learns just how the Enclave uses those in Wharfton and the vital part she and her mother play in that relationship as midwives. She learns that her parents, who she trusted implicitly and thought she knew inside and out, hid very important things about themselves and their family from her. She learns what they hid about her own past. And during all of this acquisition of knowledge, she makes some unlikely allies inside the wall and, of course, falls in love with an especially broody, high-ranking member of the military who seems to hate her and yet find her interesting.

It's a lot for one girl to go through. And it's all a set-up. It was an emotional thrill ride the whole way through with an ending just barely satisfying enough to not make me want to tear my hair out.

I can't wait for Book 2.


Book source: Philly Free Library

The Dead-Tossed Waves

Ryan, Carrie. The Dead-Tossed Waves. New York: Delacorte Press - Random House Children's Books, 2010. Print. The Forest of Hands and Teeth 2.

[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/8363459]

Booktalk:
Gabry always follows the rules, does what she's supposed to. She's grown-up watching her mother kill the Mudo that wash onto the beach at every high tide; she knows that the rules are there to keep her safe and she knows the consequences for breaking them. Still, she lets herself be convinced to climb the barrier to hang out under the ruins of a roller coaster with a bunch of other kids. Cira, her best friend is going and so is Catcher, Cira's big brother and the object of Gabry's secret affection. Everything starts out perfection. She even gets some alone time with Catcher, which is why she's so far from the rest of the group and able to escape back to Vista when a Breaker shows up, biting and infecting Gabry's friends.

Review:
I wasn't that big of a fan of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and when this book, its sequel, finally came out, I decided I wasn't going to bother. But there is was, staring at me from the library shelves, and I had to grab it. TFoHaT left me with lost of questions about the Sisterhood, life after the return, and the survival of Mary and crew. And I wanted answers, dammit! The Dead-Tossed Waves held the possibility of answers and a story about the new generation of folks post-return besides. On some level it delivered, but on another, not so much.

All of my leftover questions from TFoHaT were answered, kind of, all in about 5 pages towards the end, and those answered were satisfying. Buuut those answers did not justify the rest of the book for me. There was less monotony and repetition in this book than in the last; really and truly a lot happened. Buuut it still didn't do it for me. A lot of the book was Gabry's reactions to what was going on around her, especially what went on between her and Catcher and her and new guy Elias. And, well, I didn't like being in Gabry's head. There were SO MANY TIMES that I wanted to shake her because she would read a situation as completely opposite of how I read it and/or completely opposite of what was actually going on. It helped to build tensions and intrigue the first couple of times she thought one of the boys was disregarding her or brushing her off when in actuality they were trying to profess their undying love, but when it happened EVERY TIME THEY TALKED, it got a little old.

And I have lingering questions. Again. These questions might convince me to pick up The Dark and Hollow Places when it comes out next March, but little else will.


Book source: Philly Free Library

Don't Know Where Don't Know When for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is: 


Laing, Annette. Don't Know Where Don't Know When. Statesboro, Georgia: Confusion Press, 2007. Print. Snipesville Chronicles 1.
[Book cover credit: Provided by the author. Thanks!]

Booktalk:
When Hannah and Alex are so rudely torn from their happy lives in San Francisco to move to the middle of nowhere Georgia, Hannah expects her entire life to turn into one huge snooze-fest. They're both forced to go to summer camp at Snipesville State College, where Alex manages to make a friend and Hannah manages to find a Starbucks instead of her camp. When Alex and his new friend Brandon spot Hannah ditching, they decide to join her, and they all end up heading to the library. After finding an WWII identity card in a book and having a weird encounter with a professor, all three decide to head back to the Starbucks. Only when they leave the library, they're no longer in Snipesville and Starbucks hasn't yet been invented.

Review:
I'll admit, the opening of this book was a little slow for me. All the time spent with Hannah and Alex before they go back in time (and before they even get to Georgia), didn't really do anything for me. BUT, if you stick it out through Hannah's whining about how unfair her life is (actually, this continues throughout the book), they'll meet up with Brandon and end up in WWII England where things get very cool. In WWII England, Hannah, Alex and Brandon are all evacuees for the London, sent to the English countryside to escape the Blitz (exactly like the Pevensies in The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe!). Hannah and Alex are taken in by an almost welcoming couple. Brandon, who is black, is taken back to London. Though black children were also evacuated during the bombings of London, it was much harder to find people to take them in. Also, black people weren't all that common in England during this time, so Brandon spends the entire book being kind of a novelty. Hannah and Alex are left to get used to the British countryside during the war and desperately try to find out what happened to Brandon in a society that doesn't tell unpleasant things to children. Meanwhile, Brandon runs away from the man who took him back to London and is presumed dead after a bombing.

But he's not dead; he's really in WWI England. He's even in the same town as Hannah and Alex, just 25 years earlier! Brandon manages to find friendly people (with some help) and even a job, but being black is a much rarer thing in 1915 than it was in 1940. And the attitudes toward black people weren't all that great either. In her acknowledgments, Laing states that the past is not particularly politically correct, which is true, and neither is her portrayal of it. The scenes set both in 1915 and in 1940 are rich in historical detail, including the attitudes of the people in them. While Alex seems to go along pretty fine throughout the story, Hannah is constantly bristled by the treatment of children (what she considers a beating, everyone else considers a well-deserved spanking) and Brandon is constantly affected by peoples reactions to him as a "colored" young man. Though Brandon makes it through his time traveling experience suffering from nothing more than hateful words, the black people he meets both during The Great War (WWI) and WWII do not fare as well.

I managed to get completely caught up in this book. There is a story inside a story that needs solving in order for Hannah, Alex and Brandon to make it back to 21st century Georgia, and though they don't understand how or why, it is connected to their present day lives. Also, given that he's in the same town, Brandon's experiences in 1915 England have some really close ties to the people he, Hannah and Alex meet in WWII England. There were so many ways that all of these connections and different-name-same-person instances could have been screwed up or over simplified, but Laing manages to make them all make sense and even manages to make some of them surprising. My only disappointment in this area was Peggy, and it totally wasn't Laing's fault. I simply wanted 1915 Peggy to grow up to be a different person, but not everyone can live up to their full potential (I'm still angry about who she grew up to be, but I don't want to ruin the surprise).

In short, this is a great time travel book. I wasn't so caught up in the logistics of the time traveling that I lost the ability to be caught up in the times where they ended up. It's also a great look at the day-to-day lives of some of the people left behind in England during the fighting of each world war.


Now, about the cover: If you see slightly older reviews of this book around the blogosphere, or even look this book up on amazon (librarything, goodreads, etc.) it has a different cover where the kids are not in silhouette. While I would usually be all for actual kids rather than kid-shaped shadows, especially when one of the main characters is a POC, I really don't like the old cover. It is, to be honest, why it's taken me two months to get around to reading and reviewing this book. The older cover is on the copy I received. It looks so much more like a history book than a time travel history book, and we all know there is a HUGE difference between the two. While Don't Know Where has the potential to be about kids sent to the past to learn all about it, most likely in a school-type setting, that's not what this book ends up being. But that is what the old cover portrays. I don't know why, but the new cover art for the second printing, in addition to matching the cover art on the sequel, gives it more of an adventure or fantasy feel to me. Kid-shaped shadows are a bit cartoon-y, I guess, and apparently that's what I need in order to feel like I haven't been "assigned" a book specifically to learn from it.

And, yes, I've always been a huge fan of historical fiction but hated studying history. How did you know? :)


Book source: Review copy provided by the author. Thanks Annette!

The Dark Divine

Despain, Bree. The Dark Divine. New York: Egmont USA, 2010. Print. Dark Divine 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/8363496]

Booktalk:
This is the epitome of the girl with a big brother experience: your best friend has a crush on your brother, you have a crush on your brother's best friend, and your brother and his bestie have no idea that you or your bestie exist. At least not in that way. Grace's situation is slightly more complicated. Her best friend, April, has a crush on her brother, Jude. Jude, not having a mean bone in his body, knows April exists and makes sure she and Grace get to hang out with him and the other seniors at least some of the time. Other than that, Grace is left completely out of the equation. Then Daniel comes back. Daniel, Jude's ex-best friend. Daniel, the guy Grace has been in love with since she was a little kid. Daniel, the only guy Jude wants no where near his little sister. The only person Jude can't forgive. The only person Jude has ever called a monster.

Review:
I was skeptical about The Dark Divine at first glance. It is a story featuring Grace Divine and her siblings Jude, Charity and James, Pastor's kids all. It seemed like a bit of overkill. And it's a paranormal romance. And when it first came out it inspired nail polish giveaways all over the blogosphere. But it's not cheesy, and it's not overkill. For a book about PKs there is surprisingly little to no religious overtone. Don't get me wrong, religion, the physical location of the church, and Christian mythology are all very important to the story. I really want to tell you why, but the best part about reading this story, for me, was not knowing anything about it, really, in advance. Just trust that Despain does not throw a ton of stuff at you without context. Everything that needs to be explained is, without an obtrusive info dump in sight.

On the surface, Grace is trying to figure out the cause of, and therefore mend, the riff between Daniel and Jude. Whatever happened between them caused Daniel to disappear for years and caused the whole Divine family to pretend he never existed. When he suddenly returns, Grace is drawn to him, and not in the magical "We have a future destiny/past connection with each other" kind of way, but in the "We grew up together and I've had a crush on your since time immemorial and now you're back and broody and angsty and muscle-y" kind of way. I love this about their relationship. The scenes that we've all come to know and love (maybe) in paranormal romances are there. Daniel and Grace have plenty of tense conversations where he tries to convince her that he is too dangerous for her, but these scenes are tempered with flashbacks to their childhood together and the kind of flirty banter girls the world over share with their brothers' friends.

But for all their normalcy, Jude cannot stand Grace around Daniel, and Grace can't resist him. She promises Jude she won't have anything to do with him, and then invites him over for Thanksgiving dinner. The worst part is that if it wouldn't make them total corndogs, Grace's best friend wouldn't be April; her best friend would be Jude. They are so close and Grace knows that she's hurting him by talking to Daniel. Forget the fact that she's falling in love with him. And she doesn't want to hurt Jude. What Grace does not know is what this hurt is really doing to Jude and, in turn, to Daniel. This is where they real story is, and this is what I've probably already hinted at too much. The outcome will not be what you expect.


Book source: Philly Free Library

ETA: The sequel, The Lost Saint, will be released in December!

The Red Pyramid - for Tween Tuesday

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

Riordan, Rick. The Red Pyramid. New York: Disney - Hyperion Books, 2010. Print. The Kane Chronicles 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9277689]

Booktalk:
Carter and Sadie don't see each other often. When their mother died, their mother's parents were granted custody of Sadie, and Carter went with their father. Everywhere. Dr. Julius Kane, Sadie and Carter's father, is an Egyptologist who travels the world doing research and giving lectures. Living with him, Carter has had experiences other kids can only dream about. He's also missed out on some "normal" kid stuff, like learning that it's not cool, or even okay, to wear loafers. Sadie, on the other hand, has had her fill of normalcy and is dying (her hair at least) for a little excitement. When something goes horribly wrong during Carter and their father's annual visit with Sadie, Carter and Sadie must learn to work together and trust each other, an uncle they never knew they had, and a cat in order to save their father from Set, the Egyptian god of the desert. Oh, and the world. They have to save that too.

Review:
Rick Riordan has done it again! He's taken kids who could be normal, personality-wise if not in circumstance this time, linked them up with a deity and set them loose. This time, the kids are not children of gods, but the children of former members of a society (of magicians!) dating back to the time of the Pharaohs that is dedicated to serving/controlling the gods of Egypt. Carter and Sadie are more powerful than most because of their lineage, but there is a Harry Potter-esque it-could-be-anyone thing going on that will open up the rest of the series for a lot of interesting sidekicks. At this point in the series there are only a few kids still training in this society, one of whom is already set up as the girl Carter will embarrassingly and awkwardly crush on for probably the rest of the series, but I'm sure Riordan will bring in a whole cast of interesting kids by the end.

The whole story is told from both Sadie and Carter's points of view in, more or less, alternating chapters. I really liked getting to see the story unfold through both of their eyes. The changing point of view didn't bog down the story, really, since everything was still told in sequence with little to no instances of both characters covering the same event. I did wish, however, that their was a bit more of a difference between their voices. When they're actually talking, there is plenty of difference between proper, nerdy Carter and punky, spunky Sadie, but when they're narrating they're not all that different. Every once in a while Sadie, as narrator, gets riled up about something and it's really clear that she's the one telling the story (the name of the narrator is on every page to help with that as well), but for the most part both of them just sound like Riordan.

Something that is mentioned on multiple occasions but is far from a focal point of the story is that Sadie and Carter's father is black and their mother was white. Both of the kids are biracial, but neither of them looks it. They have that mini-me thing going on with their parents: Sadie looks astonishingly like her mother and Carter looks just like his dad. In the beginning of the book, Sadie talks about how, without her mother there, people question her relationship to Carter and their father because she's so clearly white and they so clearly aren't. She talks about how annoying it is, on the few days a year that they get to spend together, that people question whether or not she belongs in her family. This is, of course, complicated because she doesn't feel like she belongs due to the very limited amount of time they are actually on the same continent. Also near the beginning, Carter expresses his envy of Sadie's normal life with their grandparents. He feels hurt and rejected because his grandparents fought so hard for Sadie and not for him. While I was reading, I wondered about that; why did their grandparents only fight for the grandchild that looks like them? There is a magically influences reason for why they only went to court for custody of Sadie, but I didn't feel like Carter really processed that information when he found out. Maybe because he wasn't thinking about it in the same way that I was, he didn't need the cathartic breakthrough that I was looking for. It was enough, for him, to know that without magical influence his grandparents may have fought just as hard to hold on to their grandson as they did their granddaughter. This is all balanced out by Sadie's feelings of abandonment because she was left with their grandparents rather than being allowed on the road with Carter and their dad, so maybe I'm reading too much into the situation.

Family issues aside (and I'm paying more attention to them here than was paid in the book), I love that Carter and Sadie's race was a non-issue. I do wish that both of them had been presented as biracial characters, or that they even saw themselves that way, rather than one white and one black, but I'm glad that this did not pick up elements of a "problem novel" about a biracial family. It is simply a fantasy book with biracial main characters!


Book source: Philly Free Library

The Brimstone Key

Tween Tuesday was started over at Green Bean Teen Queen as away to highlight awesome books for the 9-12 yr olds or Tweens. Any book highlighted on Tween Tuesday also counts for the In the Middle Reading Challenge! This week's book is:

Benz, Derek and J.S. Lewis. The Brimstone Key. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010. Print. Grey Griffins: The Clockwork Chronicles 1.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/9250799]

Booktalk (for folks new to the Grey Griffins):
Harley, tall and buff, is a whiz engineer, especially considering he's a sixth grader.
Natalia, whose signature long red braids are always trailing behind her, is kind of a whiz in general.
Ernie, or Agent Thunderbolt, is currently part faerie, and the more he uses the power that comes with that, the more faerie and less human he will become. But Ernie's an upbeat kid and has decided to use his powers for good, you know, like Superman.
Max, the leader of the group, is the youngest in a very rich, very powerful family. With that comes certain responsibilities. Luckily he has his friends to help him out.
Together they are the Grey Griffins, and they assist the Templar in their quest to protect the innocent from what is evil in this world.

Booktalk (for Grey Griffin fans):
Iron Bridge Academy is finally about to open, and the Grey Griffins will be attending school with Templar kids like themselves. Though they've never been around other Templar kids, except Brooke of course whose father will be headmaster, the Grey Griffins are excited. Ernie, especially, is looking forward to recruiting more changelings to his super hero team. Before they can all be whisked off to school, they're visited by a clockwork bug that leads them to an underground vault. When they find an old set of Round Table cards (and almost die, of course), things start to get weird, even by the Grey Griffins rather warped standards. One of the characters on the card, The Clockwork King, just walks away.

Review:
The Brimstone Key is a great start to what looks like it will be a promising new direction in the Grey Griffins stories. As someone who has never picked up a Grey Griffins book before, I found this story easy to understand and catch up with. I may go back and read other Grey Griffins books now, while I wait for the next book, but I won't be going back to read them because I felt I was missing something here. That said, I probably did miss some things that devoted Grey Griffin fans will squee about. There were a few characters that were clearly making cameo appearances in this book, I assume from the previous Grey Griffin escapades, but they weren't so central to this story that I minded not really knowing who they were. Of course, there also might be a bit too much information and back story in the beginning of this book for someone who has just devoured the previous Grey Griffins series. Just because I appreciated all of the explanation and introduction of characters doesn't mean that everyone else will. BUT if you are a Grey Griffins fan, or are providing readers' advisory for one, rest assured that there is a lot after those first few chapters that Max, Natalia, Ernie and Harley were surprised about, so I'm sure you (or your reader) will be too.

This book was pitched to me as a steampunk novel for middle grade readers, and I wondered just how the writers were going to pull that off with established characters from a series set in current times. They did it wonderfully and pretty realistically. Well, maybe realistically isn't the best word given that this is a fantasy novel, but the writers did not require any ridiculous suspensions of disbelief of me in order to fit the steampunk elements into the story. The Grey Griffins nemesis is a man who has spent the last century trapped in a Round Table card. When he somehow escapes, he restarts the experiments and projects that got him imprisoned in the first place. And voila! We have clockwork machines running amuck in the modern day (Templar cloaked) world. Fashions at Iron Bridge Academy also run on the steampunk-y style. At first, this was weird to me, but parts of it get explained away pretty understandably:

• The Academy is not actually in Avalon, but in Iron Bridge, a Templar community outside of the "regular" world that has maintained Victorian sensibilities.
• All the kids wear goggles because they can act out their Round Table tournaments with them.
• A lot of the changelings are depressed about their lot in life, and so bring in the sort-of goth element.
• All the grown-ups have weird weapons strapped all over them, especially when things start to get dangerous.

Put all of that together with a bunch of evil clockwork machines and a "subway" restored to its turn of the century glory and you have a good old steampunk costume party at school every day, and because the Grey Griffins are woefully dorky, fashion-wise, all of this gets explained in great detail. And while I'm a fan of the steampunk elements throughout (clearly), I don't think they are overwhelming to the story. Readers who are just looking for a fantasy or just looking for another Grey Griffins book shouldn't be put off by them.

I really enjoyed getting to know all of the Grey Griffins (and a few yet to be named sidekicks, to avoid being spoiler-y). I'm sure that fans of the previous series will enjoy heading off to school with Grey Griffins here, and new readers are sure to be sucked in as well. There is definitely a Harry Potter vibe going on with the addition of Iron Bridge Academy to these kids lives that will appeal to a lot of readers.


The Brimstone Key came out yesterday and is available for purchase!


Book source: Review copy from publisher via the yalsa-bk listserv.