Review of Scarlet, by Marissa Meyer

Science Fiction, Teen Fiction Review 0

Scarlet

The Lunar Chronicles, Book Two

by Marissa Meyer

Feiwel and Friends, New York, 2013

I have already expressed how delighted I was with Marissa Meyer’s book Cinder, a science fiction retelling of Cinderella, or perhaps I should say a science fiction story with themes taken from Cinderella. So I eagerly awaited the second book, Scarlet, which plays off themes from Red Riding Hood.

Yes, you definitely need to read these books in order. The author makes no effort to make Scarlet a stand-alone story. (So if you haven’t read Cinder yet, stop reading this review. Yes, it’s a good series and is worth starting at the beginning!) I was afraid she was going to zoom to another character and leave Cinder hanging, so I was very glad that didn’t happen.

We last saw Cinder in prison and told she should escape and given something that might help her do so. This book continues a few hours later, as Cinder attempts to make her escape. I was glad that wasn’t left to happen offstage.

Though the main story in this book is Scarlet’s. It’s a Red Riding Hood theme, but follows the fairy tale even more loosely than Cinder followed Cinderella. Scarlet is a redhead who wears a red hoodie. Her grandma has been missing for weeks, and the police have stopped looking. She wants nothing more than to find her grandma.

In Cinder, we heard about an old lady who long ago helped the missing Lunar princess, so we rather expect that has something to do with Scarlet’s grandma. We also saw in Cinder the Lunar queen’s army of mutant wolf-like creatures. This is playing off Red Riding Hood, after all, so there’s no surprise when wolf-like creatures have a lot to do with the story.

That was actually the part I didn’t really like. I can accept that Lunars have mind-control powers. I can accept that humans have the ability to create cyborgs but that they’re second-class citizens. I can accept that Lunars don’t allow cyborgs because they are more difficult to control. But the ability to create wolf-like mutants for an army? That just seemed a little out there.

This book, in keeping with the Red Riding Hood theme had a lot about the wolf-like mutants, which strained believability a bit for me. (Why would they behave so much like wolves, if they’re human?) And there was plenty of distasteful violence. There was a bit of romance, but, honestly, it leaned toward the creepy side.

So, what did I like? Why will I avidly look forward to the next book?

I liked the character of Scarlet. She’s resourceful. She’ll do anything for her grandmother. She cares about fairness, and she grows good food on their farm.

I liked all the parts about Cinder. I was glad she wasn’t left hanging, and I enjoyed the banter with the other convict she picked up in her escape attempt. Her struggle to get free and decide what to do next was compelling and felt believable.

I loved what happened with Iko! And I’m glad she’s back.

Most of all, this book is a great set-up. Mind you, I thought The Lunar Chronicles were destined to be a trilogy, but now see that there are two more books to come, and I’m bummed it won’t all resolve in the next book. But it looks like Cinder is going to be forced into a showdown with the Lunar queen, and that’s something I want to read about very much.

marissameyer.com
thelunarchronicles.com
macteenbooks.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on my own personal copy, purchased from Amazon.com.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Fangbone! Third-Grade Barbarian

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Science Fiction 0

Fangbone!
Third-Grade Barbarian

by Michael Rex

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012. 120 pages.

Fangbone! Third-Grade Barbarian is straight-up silly fun. I do not expect to see it sitting on the shelves for long, or, well, ever.

Fangbone the Barbarian has been sent by his clan to our world to protect the Big Toe of Drool.

Here Fangbone explains the back story to his new third grade class:

Five hundred winters ago, the greatest evil that ever lived ruled over Skullbania. Venomous Drool was his name. He built an army that swept through the lands and almost wiped out the clans.

Many battles were fought, and many great warriors died to keep his evil from spreading.

Finally, Drool was defeated, and cut into many small pieces. . .

The pieces were separated and taken to different lands so that Venomous Drool could never rule again.

But since my birth, a new army of Drool worshipers has been moving through Skullbania, collecting the pieces one by one, and rebuilding Drool.

The only piece that they do not have is his big toe! My clan was put in charge of protecting the big toe because it is the most evil, cursed, wretched part of his body.

I was given the toe and sent into your world. Venomous Drool and his army will never find me here. He will never get his big toe back.

For I am FANGBONE! Protector of the Big Toe of Drool!

Of course, the situation of Fangbone in a normal (well, klutzy) third grade class has all sorts of opportunities for hilarity. I love the way the teacher tells the kids, “Class? Class! Please relax. Fangbone comes from a faraway place. People are different all over the world. We must respect his culture.”

The story of the book? Fangbone helps his class defeat the bullies in the school’s beanball tournament. And his new class helps Fangbone defeat the monstrous creatures the Drool worshipers send against him.

Best of all? This is a graphic novel with pictures that match the silly fun of the words. There are already three volumes in the series and I already anticipate having kids come to the Information Desk again and again asking if we have the next volume (because someone snatches each volume up just as soon as it gets turned in). Everything about this book says kid appeal. Michael Rex is the author of such stellar parodies as Good Night, Goon and Furious George. He put all that clever and insightful humor into this graphic novel series. A win all the way around.

mikerexbooks.blogspot.com/

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/fangbone.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, by Jasper Fforde

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Mystery, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

by Jasper Fforde

Viking, 2011. 362 pages.
Starred Review

I never thought I liked metafiction, where characters enter books. The concept always broke down at some point and just seemed silly. That was before I read Jasper Fforde. While his work is, indubitably, silly, the concepts are inscrutable and flawlessly carried out.

In this volume, we are following a written Thursday Next, a character in a book about Thursday. Thursday Next herself is missing. So is the written Thursday we are following possibly Thursday herself, hidden in the newly rebooted Book World? Whatever is the case, our Thursday has a mystery to solve, and we’re right there with her.

There is so much cleverness in this book! This series is for those who love words and literature and thinking about words and literature. I started marking passages I wanted to share with people, and now the whole book is full of post-it notes. I think I can recite these sections without giving away the plot. The plot is a good one, don’t get me wrong; but you will most enjoy these books if you love the playing the author does with the language and the concepts. For example, here’s a brief scene with some Lost Positives:

I moved quietly to the French windows and stepped out into the garden to release the Lost Positives that the Lady of Shalott had given me. She had a soft spot for the orphaned prefixless words and thought they had more chance to thrive in Fiction than in Poetry. I let the defatigable scamps out of their box. They were kempt and sheveled but their behavior was peccable if not mildly gruntled. They started acting petuously and ran around in circles in a very toward manner.

Our Thursday gets a chance to look for the real Thursday in the Real World, and Professor Plum explains the rigors of being briefly Real:

“It’s highly disorderly,” he explained, “not like here. There is no easily definable plot, and you can run yourself ragged wondering what the significance can be of a chance encounter. You’ll also find that for the most part there is no shorthand to the narrative, so everything happens in a long and painfully drawn-out sequence. Apparently the talk can be confusing — for the most part, people just say the first thing that comes into their heads.”

“Is it as bad as they say it is?”

“I’ve heard it’s worse. Here in the BookWorld, we say what needs to be said for the story to proceed. Out there? Well, you can discount at least eighty percent of chat as just meaningless drivel.”

“I never thought the percentage was that high.”

“In some individuals it can be as high as ninety-two percent. The people to listen to are the ones who don’t say very much.”

“Oh.”

“There are fun things, too,” said Plum, sensing my disappointment. “You’ll get used to it in the end, but if you go out there accepting that seventy-five percent of talk is utter twaddle and eighty-five percent of people’s lives are spent dithering around, you won’t go far wrong. But above all don’t be annoyed or distracted when random things happen for absolutely no purpose.”

“There’s always a purpose,” I said, amused by the notion of utter pointlessness, “even if you don’t understand what it is until much later.”

“That’s the big difference between here and there,” said Plum. “When things happen after a randomly pointless event, all that follows is simply unintended consequences, not a coherent narrative thrust that propels the story forward.”

Much later, I loved the character Thursday discovered involved in the mystery:

“And the name of the driver?”

“Gatsby.”

“The Great Gatsby drives taxis in his spare time?”

“No, his younger and less handsome and intelligent brother — the Mediocre Gatsby. He lives in Parody Valley over in Vanity. Here’s his address.”

When they go to see Mediocre, they meet his brother, Loser Gatsby, at a meeting:

“This is our Siblings of More Famous BookWorld Personalities self-help group,” explained Loser. “That’s Sharon Eyre, the younger and wholly disreputable sister of Jane; Roger Yossarian, the draft dodger and coward; Brian Heep, who despite admonishments from his family continues to wash daily; Rupert Bond, still a virgin and can’t keep a secret; Tracy Capulet, who has slept her way round Verona twice; and Nancy Potter, who is . . . well, let’s just say she’s a term that is subject to several international trademark agreements.”

Along the way, there are choice bits at the start of each chapter quoting from Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion. Here are two I particularly enjoyed:

Although Outlander authors kill, maim, disfigure and eviscerate bookpeople on a regular basis, no author has ever been held to account, although lawyers are working on a test case to deal with serial offenders. The mechanism for transfictional jurisdiction has yet to be finalized, but when it is, some authors may have cause to regret their worst excesses.

Off the coast lies Vanity Island, and off Vanity likes Fan Fiction. Beyond Fan Fiction is School Essays and beyond that Excuses for Not Doing School Essays. The latter is often the most eloquent, constructed as it is in the white-hot heat of panic, necessity and the desire not to get a detention.

Though in most books written with so many jokes and so much cleverness, you wouldn’t expect to find a coherent plot, this book truly does have one, and contributed to making this a thoroughly satisfying read.

But, bottom line, reading the quotations above should give you the idea of what’s going on here. If you find those bits at all humorous, you need to read the Thursday Next books. I normally say to read them in order, but I’m starting to lose track of what has gone before, and I’m not completely sure it matters. In this book, I’m sure you could start fresh and still enjoy it.

jasperfforde.com
penguin.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Search for WondLa, by Tony DiTerlizzi

Adventure, Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction, Starred Review 0

The Search for WondLa

by Tony DiTerlizzi
with illustrations by the author

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2010. 477 pages.
Starred Review

The Search for WondLa is an illustrated adventure tale written in the style of The Wizard of Oz. I had the wonderful opportunity to have dinner with the author at ALA Midwinter Meeting, and he said he wrote The Search for WondLa for his ten-year-old self. He succeeded beautifully.

The story, like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is about the search for Home. Also, like Oz, our heroine meets fantastical beings, both friends and fearsome enemies, along the way. She must journey across a strange and foreign landscape in quest of Home and someone like herself.

Eva Nine has been raised in an underground Sanctuary under the supervision of a kind robot called Muthr (Multi-Utility Task Help Robot). But Eva feels constrained, always protected. She has explored parts of the Sanctuary that she wasn’t supposed to know about. She found something that gives her hope:

When she’d discovered this item more than a year before, Eva had tried to identify it with her Omnipod, but the device had concluded that, “There is insufficient data. Not enough information to make an identification.” Eva had determined that it was likely a small piece of tile or even paneling, possibly a sign of sorts, as it was square shaped. On it was an image (a broken one, since it no longer moved) of a little girl holding hands with a robot and an adult.

The only item in Eva’s secret collection not given to her by Muthr.

The only item in her secret collection not identifiable by her Omnipod.

An item another human had left for her, here, by this sealed door.

Proof.

She couldn’t make out who exactly the adult in the image was. The scorched damage obscured the face in soot. However, she could see two letters on this worn piece of paneling: L and a. There was a second, smaller piece to this puzzle, which she had discovered as well. Eva had glued this missing fragment to the top of the panel. It, too, had fancy letters printed on it: “Wond.”

“WondLa,” Eva had dubbed it. She studied the picture in her hands. The girl was smiling. The robot was smiling. Eva was certain the adult was likely smiling too as they all walked together in unison through a field of flowers. Moving as one. As friends. Exploring the forests above.

But Eva’s robot would not allow her to explore. She wouldn’t even let her leave the Sanctuary.

When Eva’s Sanctuary is breached by a monstrous creature looking for new species, Eva is suddenly thrust out into the outside world. But nothing is as Eva expected it to be. The Omnipod can’t identify anything. And among all the creatures out there, there is none other like her.

As Eva tries to escape the horrible huntsman, she makes friends with other creatures in his clutches. But none of them are like her.

So Eva travels through a strange and wondrous world, looking for a place of safety, looking for Home.

The many detailed pictures make this an enthralling adventure tale all the more ready to lure in readers. And it’s only the first volume, so although this book stands alone well, readers can find out what happens to Eva Nine next.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of The Drowned Cities, by Paolo Bacigalupi

Adventure, Science Fiction, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Drowned Cities

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Little, Brown and Company, 2012. 437 pages.

The Drowned Cities is set in the same world as Ship Breaker, but you definitely don’t need to read Ship Breaker first. The Drowned Cities is an even bleaker vision of the future than the first book. There’s still action and survival, but no love story and few glimpses that anyone in the world has it better than the characters in our story — so can they really hope for escape?

It took me awhile to realize that “The Drowned Cities” got their name as a new meaning for the initials “DC.” This book is set in a future world where global warming has raised sea level and turned the DC suburbs, now that things don’t freeze in the winter, into kudzu-covered jungle and swampland.

Mahlia and her friend mouse live with Doctor Mahfouz in a village in the jungle. It’s also a war zone, fought over by various warlords’ factions.

Doctor Mahfouz liked to say that everyone wanted to be good. They just sometimes needed help finding their way to it. That was when he’d first taken her and Mouse in. He’d said it even as he was sprinkling sulfa powder over Mahlia’s bloody stump of a hand, like he couldn’t see what was happening right in front of him. The Drowned Cities were busy tearing themselves apart once again, but here the doctor was still talking about how people wanted to be kind and good.

Mahlia and Mouse had just looked at each other, and didn’t say anything. If the doctor was fool enough to let them stay, he could babble whatever crazy talk he wanted.

In a nice touch of irony, the author has made Mahlia a daughter of a Chinese peacekeeper and a local woman. And Mahlia and her mother were left behind when the peacekeepers left.

These days, their hospital was wherever Doctor Mahfouz set his medical bag, all that was left of the wonderful hospital that the Chinese had donated, except for a few rehydration packets still stamped with the words WITH WISHES FOR PEACE AND WELL-BEING FROM THE PEOPLE OF BEIJING.

Mahlia could imagine all those Chinese people in their far-off country donating to the war victims of the Drowned Cities. All of them rich enough to send things like rice and clothes and rehydration packets all the way over the pole on fast-sailing clipper ships. All of them rich enough to meddle where they didn’t belong.

Mahlia and Mouse find a genetically engineered half-man out in the swamp who just wrestled an alligator and survived. First, Mahlia’s bargaining with him — Mouse’s life for medical supplies, and then she’s dealing with the war band that is on his trail. In a clever twist, Mahlia manages to get away from them, but her whole village pays the price. And when Mouse gets conscripted, Mahlia will do anything to save him — even if it means relying on the half-man. But even with his help, is there any escape from the Drowned Cities?

This book is far grittier than I usually read for pleasure. It’s a horribly bleak vision of the future, though from his Printz speech, I think Paolo Bacigalupi writes it as a warning. And several things are all too plausible. The factions include the Army of God and the United Patriotic Front and other groups that are like present-day groups taken to the extreme.

I think the fact that I live where the book is set (though many years before) makes it seem all the more real. I have to admit that the day I finished the book, I was driving home from work on the freeway, and thought it’s all way too built up and there’s too much concrete to become jungle for at least a thousand years. However, the following Sunday, I drove the opposite direction to church, and just that much further out in the suburbs, it’s actually easy to imagine jungle taking over. And Paolo Bacigalupi never does say how far out from the Capital they are. It takes awhile to travel to the city, and after all, they’re called “The Drowned Cities,” not “The Drowned City,” so I’m thinking the villages in the jungle may be further out from the Beltway than where I live.

The book does have some redeeming themes. There’s no romantic love, as in Ship Breaker, but there’s strong love and loyalty between Mahlia and Mouse, and they get help from the half-man, Tool, for reasons of his own. It does manage to give a hopeful ending, at least for those who survive to the end. And if you want reasons to think war is not a good thing and it’s better not to vilify other groups, because look where it could end up — This book has plenty of that.

This book might be good for those who love The Hunger Games and don’t mind some grit and gore in their adventure stories, and also don’t mind if there’s no romance. Definitely well-written, but also definitely not pleasant.

www.lb-teens.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of Goliath, by Scott Westerfeld

Adventure, Alternate History, Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 3

Goliath

by Scott Westerfeld
read by Alan Cumming

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2011. 9 CDs, 10 hours, 30 minutes.
Starred Review

I finally read, that is, listened to, the concluding volume of the Leviathan trilogy. Although each book does have a reason to be an individual book and the separate episodes are distinct, this is not a trilogy where you’d want to start anywhere but the beginning. So go back and read Leviathan and then Behemoth!

The narration is well done, and I recognized the voices back from when I listened to the first book. There were times when I did get tired of the breathless pace, but I think that was more a function of the writing and it fitting the style of WWI adventure novels. I’d just take a breather between CDs and then be willing to listen again. And to be fair, once I got more than halfway, I couldn’t wait at all between CDs, but was eagerly popping the next one in immediately.

This trilogy provides an alternate steampunk history of World War I, where the Darwinists, who use genetically modified creatures, are pitted against the Clankers, who use fantastical steam-powered creations. Alek, the Prince in exile of Austria-Hungary, is back aboard the Leviathan, the giant British air beast where Deryn Sharp is serving as a midshipman, disguised as a boy, because she loves to fly.

Each book involves a progressively bigger weapon. The first book, Leviathan, was about the giant air beast itself. Then there was a water weapon called Behemoth. In this book, they pick up Nikolai Tesla in Russia. He claims to have leveled miles of Siberian forest with the power of his electrical weapon, Goliath. With it, he hopes to stop the war.

Alek believes Mr. Tesla, and wants nothing more than to stop the war, too. Deryn is not so sure. But either way, the Leviathan is bound across the Pacific and then across the continent on its way to take Tesla back to his laboratory in New York City. The United States is neutral, so they have to go through Mexico, where they are not completely successful getting past revolutionary generals.

Another thing I like about this series is they way they cover the whole world. Leviathan started in Great Britain and Austria. In Behemoth, they spent most of their time in Istanbul. In Goliath they head through Russia to Siberia and then go on to Tokyo. Then it’s across the Pacific, landing in California, flying across Mexico and then up to New York. So we get to see how all the countries are aligned in this steampunk alternate world Scott Westerfeld has created.

There’s plenty of intrigue, peril, and real historical characters put into somewhat different situations than they actually faced. Of course, best of all is the resolution of the story about Alek and Deryn. They can’t possibly have a future together. Or can they?

scottwesterfeld.com
audio.simonandschuster.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/goliath.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Please use the comments if you’ve read the book and want to discuss spoilers!

Review of What Came From the Stars, by Gary D. Schmidt

Children's Fiction Review, Science Fiction 0

What Came From the Stars

by Gary D. Schmidt

Clarion Books, Boston, September 2012. 293 pages.

Chapter One of this book happens in Outer Space. The title is “The Last Days of the Valorim.” On a distant planet from ours, the Valorim are about to be defeated, but they make a decision:

Let us take all our song, our story, our beloit, gliteloit, all we have made from our hearts, all we have brought against the Silence, and let us forge it together and send it out from us, so that the Art of the Valorim might still be heard and seen and known even when the Valorim are no longer. Then shall the Silence be defeated.

Young Waeglim was able to forge their Art into a Chain and send it on his own Song and Thought across galaxies and finally to a small star and to a single small planet that is blue like its home planet.

It fell, cooling as it went, down toward the sea and the green land and the red brick building, until, with a final tumble, the Chain of the Valorim Art, the Chain that held their Heart, the Chain that was all that was left against the Silence, struck a window ledge, dangled through, skidded across a white plastic table top, fell toward a gray plastic bench, and dropped into the Ace Robotroid Adventure lunch box of Tommy Pepper, sixth-grader, of the class of Mr. Burroughs, of William Bradford Elementary School, of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

It took some time before Tommy noticed.

Now, Tommy, as a sixth-grader, really hates having an Ace Robotroid Adventure lunch box in sixth-grade. But Tommy’s grandmother waited in a long line so she could get one to give to him for his twelfth birthday, and Tommy’s dad insists that he should take it to school. He tries to hide it. He tries to leave it in his lunch box and take just the food out, “but that kind of plan never works.”

Just when it looks like Tommy’s in for the greatest of humiliations, he sees a quick flash of light at the window and his lunch box falls on the ground. Tommy still thinks he’s doomed, but he can’t help but pick up the glowing chain he sees next to his lunch box and put it around his neck. Then. . . something completely astonishing has happened to his lunch box.

And that’s only the first amazing thing that happens. Tommy can cut intricate shapes out of the birthday cake his teacher made. Tommy knows strange words (that seem normal to him) that other people don’t know. When he sings happy birthday with his father and sister, something else strange happens:

And with that wind in his face, and looking at the sea, and feeling the light fall on him from the first star, and with those he loved beside him, and his mother gone, gone, Tommy felt the chain warm, and he began to sing too. He sang of parting and of grief. He sang of friends and loved ones who must leave him. He sang of friends and loved ones who must leave him. He sang of the loneliness of one star without another. He sang in a high keen, as high-pitched as wind, and he felt the melody twine wih the strange starlight, and heard the sound of Hreth rising out of the ocean, and he sang of that too.

And when he finished, he looked at his father and at Patty, who stared at him in amazement and wonder. And he saw in his sister’s eyes that she was a little afraid.

“What?” he said.

Well, the conqueror of the Valorim is mighty upset when he finds that the Art of the Valorim is not in his grasp after all. So alternate chapters deal with him trying to get it back. Meanwhile strange things are happening in Plymouth, Massachusetts, at William Bradford Elementary School, and powerful people are trying to buy their house, the house they lived in with Tommy’s mother, the house that’s been in their family for generations — to build condos in its place.

And there’s evil to confront. Evil on the other planet, but also evil in Plymouth. Can Tommy and his friends overcome this evil? Can the Young Waeglim keep evil Lord Mondus from reaching across the galaxies and recovering the Art of the Valorim?

I did enjoy this book, and I especially enjoyed the parts set in Plymouth, the story of Tommy and his friends, but I’m not sure the overall story of the Valorim really worked for me. It was never clear how sending the Chain to earth really helped, and how they ever thought to recover it (though it turns out it just so happens that they want to recover it by the end of the book). The way Tommy uses another language is supposed to show that something alien is affecting his mind, but it doesn’t really work smoothly. The sections in outer space read like something from imitation Tolkien, and that didn’t quite work for me. I never really understood completely the story of what happened on the other planet, and I don’t really understand why they didn’t just send the chain to another part of their own planet — except that then it wouldn’t have affected an American kid.

Still, this book takes a story of an ordinary boy with tough problems and sets them in an extraordinary context. In the end, ordinary Tommy Pepper figures some things out that the mighty Valorim need to learn.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/what_came_from_the_stars.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on an Advance Reader Copy I got at an American Library Association conference.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of For Darkness Shows the Stars, by Diana Peterfreund

Austenalia, Romance, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

For Darkness Shows the Stars

by Diana Peterfreund

Balzer + Bray, 2012. 407 pages.
Starred Review

Wow. I’ve always loved Jane Austen’s Persuasion. The poignancy runs extra deep since Anne Elliot allowed herself to be persuaded to reject Captain Wentworth’s suit years ago. When he returns, successful and sought after, what can she do?

For Darkness Shows the Stars is a retelling of Persuasion in a science fiction setting. Diana Peterfreund keeps all the poignancy of the romantic situation, but adds layers of complexity involving technology and responsibility.

The story takes place on unknown islands of a post-apocalyptic Earth. Our descendants played with genetic engineering until they met with disaster. The survivors hid for years in caves. They proudly name themselves the Luddites. They did not use technology to play God, and so God allowed them to survive. Now their descendants are the rulers and estate owners. The descendants of the Lost were Reduced — mentally deficient, barely able to speak two words. The Reduced work the land, and the Luddite lords have a responsibility to care for them well.

Eighteen years ago, three babies were born on the same day on the North estate. Elliot North will grow to manage her father’s estate. Ro is Reduced, and loves Elliot and loves color and beauty, but her mental powers are not strong. Then there’s Kai. He’s Post-Reduction. He has full mental powers. But because his grandparents were Reduced, he doesn’t have the rights of the Luddite lords. He works on the estate and becomes friends with Elliot. But he can never be her equal.

Four years ago, Kai left the estate and asked Elliot to join him. But she can’t leave her responsibilities. Her mother died, and her father and sister were only interested in horses and status, not in running the estate and doing what’s best for all the people who live there.

Now Kai has returned. The North family has been forced to rent her grandfather’s boatyard to a prosperous group of Posts who are making a fleet of ships to explore the seas around the islands. They have already met with much success. The group has rejected their background on estates and chosen multisyllabic names for themselves. Admiral Innovation and his wife bring along a promising young captain, Malakai Wentforth. Elliot’s father and sister don’t even recognize that he is Kai returned. But she is all too aware. Kai is back, and he’s angry for being rejected.

Diana Peterfreund did a marvelous job paralleling the plot of Persuasion. And so doing, she keeps all the poignancy of the original, all of Elliot’s pain that she was the one who did the rejecting. And now Captain Wentforth has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, and she’s the one in difficult straits. He is far more interested in the daughter of the neighboring estate. And why shouldn’t he be?

She also adds complexity. The Luddites have strict protocols against overusing technology. But Elliot has been experimenting with better strains of wheat in order to feed the people on her estate. What is right? And then what about the Posts who come stretching the limits of what is acceptable? Are they inviting another apocalypse?

In this book, the somewhat silly accident in the middle of Persuasion takes on whole new significance when it leads to a revelation about the Posts.

Knowing the outline of what was going to happen made the story that much more compelling, and I was all the more surprised by some of the twists the author inserted. They didn’t change the romance, but they did add to the story.

To some Luddites, the Reduced were children, fallen and helpless, but still human. To others, they were beasts of burden, mostly mute and incapable of rational thought. Elliot’s mother had taught her that they were her duty, as they were the duty of all Luddites. Cut off as the population of these two islands had been since the Wars of the Lost, they might be the only people left on the planet. The Luddites, who had kept themselves pure of the taint of Reduction, therefore had the responsibility to be the caretakers not only of all of human history and culture but of humanity itself.

It had been generations since any Luddites had tried to rehabilitate the Reduced. Mere survival had taken precedence. But Ro was more than Elliot’s duty. She’d become Elliot’s friend, and sometimes Elliot even dared wonder what Ro could be — what any Reduced could be — if the Luddites had the resources to try.

The strength of Persuasion lies in the history between the two characters. In For Darkness Shows the Stars, the author plays on the history by inserting letters Elliot and Kai exchanged through the years as children growing up together. Their friendship was never sanctioned, so they placed letters in a knothole in the barn, a knothole Elliot can’t stop checking, even now.

This is a magnificent retelling of a classic romance. A story of lost love and regret and redemption mixed with genetic engineering and tampering with technology and divine right and responsibility to rule. Not a book I could stop reading before I’d finished.

dianapeterfreund.com
epicreads.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of A Confusion of Princes, by Garth Nix

Adventure, Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Confusion of Princes

by Garth Nix
read by Michael Goldstrom

Listening Library, 2012. 9.5 hours on 8 CDs. Unabridged.
Starred Review

This book had me mesmerized as soon as I turned it on. I brought a CD into the house to listen to the next complete disc not once, but twice when I got home from work.

Khemri tells you right from the start that this is the story of his first three deaths. Khemri’s a Prince of the Empire, and Princes are mostly immortal. Of course, the Aspect of the Discerning Hand does not have to choose to bring a Prince back to life. If the Imperial Mind is not witnessing the death, they will not come back. And if a new Prince is killed before they gain their contact with the Imperial Mind, they will not come back. But no one tells the Prince candidates that.

So Khemri’s in for a big surprise when his candidacy is over and he’s an official Prince. He doesn’t get to roam the galaxy in his own ship. Fortunately, he has an excellent Master of Assassins, who can help him survive the initial attacks. You see, others of the millions of Princes hope to advance by eliminating some of the competition. In a mere two years the Emperor is abdicating, and one of those Princes will become the new Emperor.

Much of this book is taken up with a fascinating look at mankind’s future in this world. They have mastered three technologies — MechTech, BiTech, and PsyTech. And Princes are enhanced in all three ways. But Khemri gets into a situation where he needs to learn how to live and work in an unenhanced body. He needs to learn how actual unenhanced humans think. That may be the greatest challenge of all.

Through most of the book, I was afraid I was going to get to the end and then hear, “To Be Continued.” But, no, this book is stand-alone, fantastic, and hugely satisfying.

Part of the brilliance of this book is the elaborate future world created. It all works, all makes sense. As Khemri deals with having and not having his enhanced powers, you come to understand what they are and how they work. Another level is what happens inside Khemri. When he’s acting as a regular human, he encounters people who hate Princes and you see him learn to understand and care about them. You see Khemri change and understand why he’s changing.

I also enjoyed the production. There is plenty of telepathic messaging between the Imperial Mind and the Princes and some of the BiTech engineered machines. Those messages are easily designated with a sound effect on the CDs so you can easily understand what is going on.

This is an outstanding science fiction tale that covers what is most important about being human.

garthnix.com
listeninglibrary.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Cinder, by Marissa Meyer

Fairy Tale Variant, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Cinder

The Lunar Chronicles: Book One

by Marissa Meyer

Feiwel and Friends, New York, 2012. 390 pages.
Starred Review

I’ve always loved fairy-tale retellings, but this science fiction version of Cinderella is even better than most. Once again, I stayed up all night reading to finish the book, even though I know that’s not good for me. But the book was so good! Since I was able to take a nap the next day, I’m afraid my bad behavior was reinforced, and it was totally worth it.

Cinder is set in New Beijing, 126 years after the end of the fourth world war, after which the kingdoms of the earth have been at peace. They’ve been at peace, but not without problems. There’s a plague raging, and even the Emperor of the Eastern Alliance is sick with it.

Linh Cinder is a cyborg, which is why she’s a second-class citizen. She’s 63.72% human, but she has some machine parts, like her left hand and foot, and some brain and sensory enhancements. She doesn’t remember anything from before the accident and fire that burned her when she was eleven years old.

Since her adoptive father died, Cinder’s been the one making a living for her family as a mechanic. She’s a good mechanic, as her cyborg enhancements give her special abilities, but she’s surprised when Prince Kai brings in an old android that needs repair.

Cinder barely heard him above the blankness in her mind. With her heartbeat gathering speed, her retina display scanned his features, so familiar from years spent watching him on the netscreens. He seemed taller in real life and a gray hooded sweatshirt was like none of the fine clothes he usually made appearances in, but still, it took only 2.6 seconds for Cinder’s scanner to measure the points of his face and link his image to the net database. Another second and the display informed her of what she already knew; details scribbled across the bottom of her vision in a stream of green text.

There’s something important about the android, but Prince Kai has many other things to worry about. The evil queen of the Lunar Colony wants to marry an earth emperor. But the people who live on the moon have evolved the ability to control the minds of others. If she marries Kai, she will enslave the people of his country as she has her own. But she can apply powerful pressure.

In the meantime, there is a draft of cyborg “volunteers” to test potential plague antidotes. When Cinder’s stepmother decides it’s time for Cinder to “volunteer,” Cinder learns some surprising new things about herself. But she also runs into the prince again.

This book takes the framework of the fairy tale and plays with it. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that instead of losing a shoe when she leaves the ball, Cinder loses a foot. I admit I was sad that there wasn’t a fairy godmother in this story, because I wanted that for Cinder, but it’s quite amazing what she manages to accomplish herself.

And there’s no Happily Ever After yet for Cinder, but the title page warned that this is Book One, so I didn’t expect it. But at the same time, it tells a satisfying story, following the Cinderella basic framework, yet adding in an intricate plot all its own. The future world is credibly and skilfully built. And the romance between Cinder and the Prince is done well.

I’m going to want to read the next volumes just as soon as they come out. Though I will definitely try to start very early on an evening when I have no other plans.

thelunarchronicles.com
macteenbooks.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/cinder.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a book I got at a library conference.