Archive for Young Adult Literature
September 3, 2008 at 12:21 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve (Young adult fantasy)
Although this book has some flaws, it’s an excellent first novel, and a solid introduction to the Hungry City Chronicles. The premise of the quartet is that, in a post-apocalyptic world where resources are scarce, cities have become predators. Built on wheels, treads, or runners, cities and towns hunt each other, devouring smaller prey to use their food, metal, and fuel.
Philip Reeve does a marvellous job with the concept, making it both entertaining and believable. I’m a fan of steampunk, and the technology and gadgetry in Mortal Engines has a wonder and magnificence that kept me glued to the pages. (I think my favourite innovation was the word “urbivore”–an eater of cities. Reeve clearly has a good sense of humour, but he keeps it under control; although the book has its funny moments, its tone is serious.)
It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea…
The great traction city London is on the move again. It has been lying low, skulking in the hills to avoid the bigger, faster, hungrier cities loose in the Great Hunting Ground. But now, as its great mountain of metal lumbers along in hot pursuit of its quarry, the sinister plans it has harboured for years can finally start to unfold behind its soaring walls…
When Tom Natsworthy saves the life of his hero, Thaddeus Valentine, he doesn’t expect his reward to be being shoved down a waste chute and left for dead while his city roars away without him. Desperate to get back, he makes a temporary alliance with Hester Shaw, the girl whose thirst for revenge against Valentine led to Tom’s predicament in the first place.
The world-building in Mortal Engines is superb. The idea of traction cities is inventive, original, and just plain fun, and Reeve develops it with lots of detail. Unfortunately, characterization suffers a little as a result. The characters are all interesting and vividly-drawn, but none of them achieve the kind of depth I would have liked to see.
Ideally, I think Mortal Engines should have been much longer, with more time to explore all the places Tom and Hester visit, and to get to know them and all the people they encounter. What this book needed was more exploration of London, Airhaven, Shan Guo, and even Tunbridge Wheels, and more time to focus on Tom, Hester, Katherine, Bevis, and especially Anna Fang, who I would have liked to get to know better. Many events in the book would have made a stronger impact.
Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed Mortal Engines, and I look forward to Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices, and A Darkling Plain.
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Hungry City Chronicles, Philip Reeve
August 29, 2008 at 3:51 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer (Young adult fantasy, Ruritanian romance)
I don’t have much to say about this novel. I enjoyed it, but the plotting was definitely choppy in places, and it gave me an overall sense of…lack of cohesion, I guess. Since I immediately went out and got the sequel and another book set in the same universe (A Scholar of Magics and When the King Comes Home, respectively), you can see that any defects I might have seen in this novel weren’t particularly significant.
Unsurprisingly, given the title, the first part of this book is about learning magic–sort of. The way magic works in this book is a bit different than anything I’ve ever seen before, in a way that I think needed far more exploration than it was given. The magical plot also wasn’t all that well integrated with the main plot, which lessened my enjoyment a little.
Overall, a good young adult novel, but nothing spectacularly new or interesting, and the characters were likable but not exceptional. Witty and entertaining without being brilliant.
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Caroline Stevermer, Galazon
August 29, 2008 at 3:37 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce (Young adult fantasy)
It’s been a while since I read Flora Segunda, but it hasn’t faded from my mind, which is a pretty good sign. It was entertaining enough, but ultimately seemed a little pointless–although the heroine did ultimately grow as a person, it didn’t feel like an important enough development to justify the rest of the story. It should have, because Flora definitely learned things about herself and about the world that she needed to know, but for some reason, it just didn’t have much impact on me. I think there was too much build-up at the beginning, which made it look as though the story was going in something of a different direction than it seemed as though it would at first.
The world-building was pretty neat, with a strange mix of different time periods that worked surprisingly well. I don’t think it would have hung together in a more adult novel, but it was perfect for the light entertainment this book offers. There were a number of bizarre and endearning characters who made the story more interesting–the Dainty Pirate (sort of a Beau Brummell of the high seas) was a hoot, for example.
I wasn’t enthralled by Flora Segunda, but I liked it enough that I’m going to keep my eye out for the sequel, Flora’s Dare, which is due to be released on Monday.
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Tygers of Wrath, Ysabeau S. Wilce
April 18, 2008 at 1:58 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
60. Heart’s Blood by Jane Yolen (Young adult fantasy) 338 p.
You know how I said that the prequel, Dragon’s Blood, had a plot that was a bit too straightforward for a young adult novel, and that the conflicts were resolved too easily? Well, not so in Heart’s Blood. If anything, any faults lie in the opposite direction, with a plot I found a little difficult to follow, because it introduced new antagonists without explaining them very well. To a certain extent, that was okay, because the protagonist doesn’t really know anything about them either, so the viewpoint character, at least, is as confused as the reader. The story could still have benefited from more fleshing-out, though.
Still a fun read, though somewhat more traumatic an experience than the first book. Jakkin, now a master and dragon trainer, hasn’t seen Akki for a year, and doesn’t even know where she is. He’s tried his best not to think of her, but that plan is shattered when he and Akki’s father are approached by a senator, Golden, who informs them that Akki is in danger and Jakkin may be the only one who can help. In order to save her, Jakkin will have to infiltrate a rebel group. Although he cares nothing for politics, Jakkin would do anything for Akki, so he soon finds himself embroiled in various intrigues.
Like I said, this was a decent read, but unless the third book is much better, I don’t think this will ever be one of my favourite series. I still loved the bits about the dragons, though. I also liked the subtle changes to the prologue from one book to the next. Dragon’s Blood begins with an excerpt from vol. 1 of the twenty-ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Galaxiana (AAAL - BASE), the article on Austar IV (the world where the story takes place), and at first I thought that Heart’s Blood began exactly the same way. Some was the same, but some of the facts given were new, and the excerpt turned out to be from vol. 1 of the thirtieth edition (Aaabornia - BASE). I thought that was a very nice touch, and an interesting hint of some of the events later in the novel.
The Pit Dragon Chronicles are entertaining enough, but not as good as they could be, given the quality of Yolen’s writing and world-building.
Pages read: 16,897
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Jane Yolen, Pit Dragon Chronicles
April 17, 2008 at 9:19 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
59. Dragon’s Blood by Jane Yolen (Young adult fantasy) 292 p.
On Austar IV, a former prison planet, where humans breed and train dragons for the fighting pits, a 15-year-old bond servant named Jakkin is determined to be a dragon trainer himself one day. The only way to earn enough gold to buy out his bond and become a trainer is to steal a dragon hatchling and train it to fight in the pits.
This was a really fast read, even taking into account that it’s less than 300 pages long. That’s not a bad thing, since the smooth, easy prose and fast-paced plot are two of the reasons I got through it so quickly, but it could definitely have been made longer with a bit more detail or character development, or a slightly more complex plot. The story was a bit too straightforward for a young adult novel, and the main conflicts were resolved too easily. Those things made the story seem like one intended for a younger audience, though they didn’t diminish my enjoyment.
I loved Jannik’s dragon: watching it grow up, learn, bond with him. And Jannik was a good character, but I like his love interest, Akki, even better. She’s more mature and experienced than Jannik, which is very believable for a 15-year-old girl. And thank goodness, Yolen lets her be independent and stubborn without saying so explicitly, or calling her tough or wild or spunky. (Can you tell I gave up on a bad romance novel right before I started reading this?)
This wasn’t my favourite book ever, but I’m glad I read it, and I look forward to enjoying the rest of the trilogy.
Pages read: 16,559
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Jane Yolen, Pit Dragon Chronicles
April 17, 2008 at 10:42 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Historical Fiction, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
57. The Grand Tour or The Purloined Coronation Regalia by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (Young adult historical fantasy) 469 p.
The sequel to Sorcery and Cecelia, this takes up only a few weeks after that book leaves off. For their honeymoon trip, Kate, Cecy, and their new husbands have decided to go on the Grand Tour, with Kate’s mother-in-law, Lady Silvia, accompanying them across the Channel to Paris. In Calais, however, a package left for Lady Silvia proves to contain an important and valuable artifact. All five know that it must not fall into the wrong hands, but this knowledge does them little good when the artifact is stolen by highwaymen on the road to Paris. The two couples continue their journey, but now in an attempt to foil a sinister plot.
I liked this almost as much as Sorcery and Cecelia, but not quite. It was a good deal longer, partly because the plot was more complex, but partly because the story was slower-paced. I’m also not that fond of watching couples fawn over each other, in real life or in books, because I find it boring and kind of annoying. There wasn’t a lot of it in The Grand Tour, but still too much for me.
The story was marvellously entertaining, though. I’m a little surprised by how much I liked both books, because if there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s a story told entirely through letters or diary entries. Kate and Cecy have such vivid personalities, though, and it comes through in their writing, so instead of being a little dull and removed from the action, their accounts are full of life.
I definitely recommend both books, and I hope I come across a copy of the third book sometime soon!
Pages read: 15,925
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Caroline Stevermer, Chunkster Challenge 2008, Kate and Cecelia, Patricia C. Wrede
April 16, 2008 at 11:22 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Historical Fiction, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
56. Sorcery & Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede & Caroline Stevermer (Young adult historical fantasy) 320 p.
I swear I only went book shopping to look for Xenocide, for the second time this week, but I came home with this and its sequel instead. (In fact, I made a third shopping trip today; still no Xenocide, but five other books, quite cheap.) I’ve always liked Wrede’s Dragons series, and I’d heard many good things about this series, and there were remaindered hardcover copies of The Grand Tour going cheap.
Sorcery & Cecelia is an epistolary novel with a twist: all the letters in the book were actually sent by the authors, to each other, and they didn’t set out to write a novel. They were just playing the Letter Game: two people (they don’t have to be writers) carry on an in-character correspondence. They chose to be two cousins, best friends Kate and Cecelia, living in England in 1817. An England just like the one in our world, except that magic exists, and witches and wizards abound. Early in her Season, Kate is nearly poisoned by a witch who mistakes her for the Mysterious Marquis. Meanwhile, Cecelia finds herself spied on by an elegantly-dressed young man, and her new friend Dorothea begins to have a rather startling effect on the gentlemen of the neighbourhood.
This is a really excellent young adult novel. The writing is quick and clear, and the characters are delightful. The book has a real sense of humour, with delicious absurdities in every letter. The tone, too, is wonderful—the book is dedicated to Austen, Heyer, Tolkien, and Kushner, and their influence (or at least the women’s) definitely shows in this comedy of manners. There’s something so delightfully gothic about the “Mysterious Marquis”, and the same atmosphere pervades the book. Not many modern authors choose to create that kind of atmosphere; the only one I can think of, funnily enough, is Lemony Snicket.
Anyway, if you like Austen, Heyer, or Kushner, as well as young adult novels, you’ll probably enjoy this. Not because it’s a rip-off of those authors, but because it has a similar sensibility. The plot and the characters, however, are all the authors’ own. And the characters, especially, are people I enjoy spending time with. Cecy and Kate are fabulous; intelligent and independent young women, but still believable as Regency ladies. Altogether a very satisfying read!
Pages read: 15,456
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Caroline Stevermer, Fantasy Classics Challenge, Kate and Cecelia, Once Upon a Time II, Patricia C. Wrede
April 15, 2008 at 2:01 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
55. Ironside: A Modern Faery’s Tale by Holly Black (Fantasy) 323 p.
I was going to wait for this to come out in trade paperback to buy it, but I was out looking for Orson Scott Card’s Xenocide last night, and stumbled across a used hardcover copy. It reeks of incense, not surprising if you know Seeker’s Books, the store where I found it, but it didn’t bother me once I got used to it. Better incense fumes than cigarette smoke.
Anyway. Ironside is the direct sequel to Tithe, but also stars one of the characters from Valiant. If you plan to read the series, you probably shouldn’t read this review, because it will inevitably contain spoilers for those first two books. Okay? Okay!
As usual, I found myself a little dragged down by the darkness of the atmosphere at the beginning. And just like the first two books, the story soon drew me in and made me forget why I’d ever been bothered by it. In this book, Kaye is still living with her grandmother in New Jersey, although her mother has an apartment in New York. At Roiben’s coronation, Kaye is goaded into making a declaration of her feelings for him, and is rewarded with an impossible quest: find a faery who can tell and untruth. Until she fulfils the quest, she cannot see Roiben again.
Meanwhile, Queen Silarial of the Bright Court is determined to gain control of the Unseelie throne, but is hampered Roiben’s hatred of her. Kaye and Cornelius do their best to help him, but they each have problems of their own to deal with.
I actually liked this the best of the series so far, although I can’t put my finger on the exact reason. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting more used to Black’s depiction of the faerie courts, so I feel like I have a better grasp of what’s going on. Or maybe the story she’s telling in Ironside just appeals to me more. I loved the shout-out to Emma Bull early in the novel, since the series clearly owes a great deal to War for the Oaks, even though there’s a lot that makes it unique. And as always, Black does a fantastic job of making faeries alien and strange in believable ways.
I really hope Holly Black will write more about these characters, although I’ve heard this will likely be the last book.
Pages read: 15,136
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Holly Black, Modern Faerie Tale, Once Upon a Time II
March 15, 2008 at 8:34 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
31. Valiant by Holly Black (Young Adult Fantasy) 313 p.
Set in the same universe as Tithe, although it isn’t a sequel (that place is reserved for Ironside.) Instead, it introduces a new heroine. When Valerie is betrayed by the people she trusts, she runs away to New York City and falls in with a group of teens who live an abandoned part of the subway system. Through them, she meets and becomes indebted to a troll; one who is luckily as honourable as he is ugly.
This book is, if anything, even darker than Tithe. Val’s new friends are very screwed up, as is Val herself. You watch her digging herself deeper, consoling herself that at least she’s making her own choices, even if they’re bad ones, and just want to shake her.
As well as Val’s personal problems, there are also a series of murders for her to contend with. The troll, and by extension Val and her friends, who have acted as his couriers, are suspected of poisoning some of the medicine he makes for fellow faeries.
I liked this book, but not as much as Tithe. I’m not a fan of drugs, alcohol, or smoking, and I don’t really like reading stories that talk about people using or abusing them. Just a personal thing—her writing about addiction was totally appropriate for the story she was telling, and she did it with tremendous skill. I still enjoyed the book, because she’s a very good storyteller.
Valiant truly felt like an urban fairy tale to me. Val and her friends lead a strange, half-magical, half-terrible existence on the margins of life in New York, and there a few things near the end of the book that cemented the impression for me (namely, the harp strung with hair and the business of the heart.) The atmosphere was perfect, recalling the original reputation of fairies as malicious creatures who often tormented humans for revenge or for sport.
Pages read: 9,141
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Holly Black, Modern Faerie Tale
March 15, 2008 at 7:47 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, Young Adult Literature
30. Tithe by Holly Black (Young Adult Fantasy) 331 p.
Based on this book’s blurb and first hundred or so pages, I was worried it was going to be a young-adult re-telling of War for the Oaks. All the basic elements seemed to be there: a modern American woman connected with a band is drawn into the conflicts among fairies. Luckily, Holly Black takes her characters and her world in a completely different direction.
After some trouble with a fellow band mate, Kaye and her mother move back into her grandmother’s home, in the New Jersey town where Kaye grew up. The same place where she first met faeries. Glad to see her friends again, she agrees to help them with their plan to escape the rule of the Unseelie Court.
I think Tithe is the first time I’ve read about faeries who genuinely seemed both frightening and alien, rather than merely arrogant. Booklist apparently calls it dark and edgy, a description I loathe, but which has the virtue of complete accuracy in this case.
This isn’t a straightforward story of good vs. evil, and Kaye is no perfect heroine. She doesn’t always trust the right people or mke the right choices, and she makes some truly terrible mistakes.
I don’t want to suggest that Tithe doesn’t have a lighter side. For instance, it has one of my favourite coming-out stories ever, from a teenage boy whose mother collects Star Trek memorabilia:
“Yeah, the whole family knows. It’s no big deal. One night at dinner I said, ‘Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.’ It was easier for her to understand that way.”
Pages read: 8,828
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Holly Black, Modern Faerie Tale
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