Review of Rebel of the Sands, by Alwyn Hamilton

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

rebel_of_the_sands_largeRebel of the Sands

by Alwyn Hamilton

Viking, 2016. 314 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a debut fantasy novel about finding one’s identity and place in the world.

This is wonderful fantasy, but not your traditional medieval European world – this one involves Djinns, Ghouls, Skinwalkers, Nightmares, and other desert beings. We’ve got an oppressive regime and unjust society, and we start by focusing on someone caught in that injustice.

Amani is an orphan living with her uncle in a world where girls have no rights. Everything she has belongs to her uncle – and will belong to her husband after he marries her off. That event is looking harder and harder to avoid, and Amani is desperate to escape.

When the book opens, Amani is risking all the money she has managed to scrape together over the past three years to enter a shooting contest in Deadshot. If she can win the prize, she’ll be able to buy train passage to the capital city.

Amani has the shooting ability to win – but not the ability to overcome the way the contest is rigged. But during the contest she meets a mysterious foreigner who is also a skilled shooter, and she becomes part of a brawl that sets the whole place on fire.

So the next day, she’s back home in Dustwalk, tending her uncle’s shop, hoping no one recognizes her as the blue-eyed boy at the shoot-out. And who should run into her shop but the foreigner from the night before? And he’s followed by a group of soldiers, but Amani lets him hide behind the counter and covers for him. After all, he saved her life the night before. Then when it turns out he’s been shot, she returns the favor.

But while she’s tending his wounds, she hears the bells that mean a Buraqi has been sighted – a desert horse, made of desert sands. When the horse is captured and forced to stay materialized with iron shoes, the Buraqi provides a way out of Dustwalk for Amani – and the foreigner along with her.

But that’s only the beginning of the saga. She continues in an adventure across the desert. The soldiers are looking for her because she’s been seen with the foreigner. And it turns out, he’s involved with the Rebel Prince, who some say is the rightful ruler of Miraji and wouldn’t give their country over to the Gallans.

Along the way, Amani meets others in the rebellion and learns startling things about who she is and where she belongs.

This is a very satisfying fantasy adventure novel. It ends at a good place, finishing one segment of the story, with no cliffhangers (which is how I like it), but still leaves you hoping to hear more about these people and this world. It’s a debut novel, and is a wonderfully propitious start. I hope there will be many more books about Amani and Jin and desert magic and the struggle for the Rebel Prince.

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Review of Winter, by Marissa Meyer

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

winter_largeWinter

The Lunar Chronicles, Book Four

by Marissa Meyer

Feiwel and Friends, 2015. 827 pages.

Ah! The Lunar Chronicles come to a satisfying end in this book. If you have read this far, I don’t have to say anything to get you to read the final volume, so let me make some comments about the series in general.

What I loved most was the fairy tale parallels. Cinder paralleled “Cinderella,” Scarlet paralleled “Little Red Riding Hood,” Cress paralleled “Rapunzel,” and this final book, Winter, parallels “Snow White.” However, all the characters from each of the previous books are still in the story – and by the final book, elements from Snow White’s story seemed forced. (Whereas in Cinder they arrived in natural and clever ways.) In particular, the part about the poisoned apple seemed totally unnecessary in the overall scheme, and I didn’t really believe that a disease would progress the way this one was portrayed.

But I do like the character of Winter, and even her status as Queen Levana’s stepdaughter worked well. I do like that each of the main characters is very different from the others.

I still didn’t really believe in the wolf-human hybrids, which has been a problem for me since Scarlet. I didn’t particularly like the additional information we got about that in this book – didn’t make it easier to believe.

At first when I opened this book, I thought, okay, we’ve got four couples. Two have matched up with the one they love but have some obstacles between them. Two are in love but haven’t admitted it to each other yet. And I knew all four would get together by the end of the book, and I thought that was a bit much. But I have to hand it to Marissa Meyers – she kept each romance distinct and interesting. All four plotlines are definitely not simple!

In fact, if anything the plot was a bit too convoluted with all those characters to juggle. But that did keep things from being at all boring or predictable and kept you turning pages. She is one of those authors who gives you a lot of interior monologue – which means it takes a little longer for actions to happen. This book is more than 800 pages long, since that’s what it took to tie everything together. In some spots, we were following three different sets of characters in different places, so that slowed things down, too.

However, all that said – in this book pulling all the threads together, Marissa Meyer accomplishes a well-earned Happily Ever After. Though I was able to put down the book and go to sleep, I was never even slightly tempted to set it aside altogether, and I began reading the same day my hold arrived. We’ve got life and death situations and the fate of earth at stake. We’ve got an intrepid band of rebels who go deep into the tyrant’s territory. Can they win the day?

marissameyer.com
thelunarchronicles.com
macteenbooks.com

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Review of To Hold the Bridge, by Garth Nix

Fantasy, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

to_hold_the_bridge_largeTo Hold the Bridge

by Garth Nix

Harper, 2015. 400 pages.
Starred Review

This is a collection of stories by the brilliant Garth Nix. Based on the copyright page, most were published previously, but not necessarily in the United States. (Garth Nix lives in Australia.)

They are uniformly well-written, but there is a tremendous variety of topics. The title story is set in the Old Kingdom world of Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen, Across the Wall, and Clariel. There are also stories set in the world of his other novels A Confusion of Princes and Shade’s Children.

But there are a wide variety of things going on here. His magic always was original. There is a dark twist in a lot of the tales, but this book makes for tremendously enjoyable reading.

I liked the story about the granddaughter of William the Conqueror and the Sword in the Stone. It turns out the magic of the Britons, holly and forest magic, conflicted with the iron magic of the Norman conquerors. This story is an example of Garth Nix’s complicated magical rules which he communicates to the reader through the eyes of his characters who already understand it. He never descends into expository hell, the bane of many fantasy writers. And he can even pull this off in short stories.

Besides revisiting his own worlds, he also goes into the worlds of The Martian Chronicles, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hellboy, and Sherlock Holmes — introducing his brother Sir Magnus Holmes, who is a specialist in occult magic. I especially liked the retelling of Rapunzel, where Rapunzel cleverly exploits the requirements of how a witch must treat a guest. Though the witch does some clever exploitation herself.

There are two vampire stories and a zombie story (which is also a unicorn story) and a story about a witches’ school (another one that’s especially good). I did mention there’s a wide variety in these tales. It took me a long time to read, because each story is so satisfying in itself, it’s easy to stop at the end of a story.

A magnificent collection by a master world-builder who also knows how to show you the hearts of his characters.

garthnix.com
epicreads.com

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Review of The Accidental Highwayman, by Ben Tripp

Fantasy, Historical, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

accidental_highwayman_largeThe Accidental Highwayman

Being the Tale of Kit Bristol, His Horse, Midnight, a Mysterious Princess, and Sundry Magical Persons Besides

by Ben Tripp
read by Steve West

Macmillan Audiobook from Tor, 2014. 10 hours on 9 discs.
Starred Review

I’ve meant to read this since it came out in 2014, and finally got around to it when it came out in audio form. (With thanks to my sister-in-law Laura for encouraging me to do so.) This was just as well, since the narrator is an outstanding reader and has a marvelous British accent, so it was a great listening choice.

As the subtitle tells us, this book tells the story of Kit Bristol, set in the 1700s in England. He’s the only servant of a reclusive aristocrat, and one day his master comes home having been shot. It turns out he was the famed Whistling Jack, and through one thing and another, Kit ends up taking up Whistling Jack’s commitment to help a princess fleeing an arranged marriage.

It turns out the princess is the daughter of the king of Faery, and he is power-hungry and wants to form an alliance with King George III. On top of that, there’s a soulless duchess after Princess Morgana and a vindictive redcoat obsessed with capturing Whistling Jack and seeing him hanged.

Kit and Princess Morgana go through an amazing variety of outlandish adventures. There were times when I couldn’t see how he could possibly survive (even knowing he must, since the story is told in first person).

The only thing wrong with the book? The story doesn’t end at a good place at all. Yes, part of their adventure does come to conclusion, but our two main characters are by no means safe and happy at the end. So that means I’ll be looking eagerly for the sequel.

This book is good for swashbuckling fun with fantasy. The narrator is wonderful, and this would also work for family listening. Kit does get into danger, but it’s young adult reading more because Kit is a young adult than because of any dark subject matter. Ben Tripp is also an illustrator, so having listened to the book it sounds like I missed out on illustrations, though at least I got to enjoy a British accent to make up for it.

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

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Review of Romancing the Dark in the City of Light, by Ann Jacobus

Contemporary, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

romancing_the_dark_in_the_city_of_light_largeRomancing the Dark in the City of Light

by Ann Jacobus

Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin’s Griffin), New York, 2015. 276 pages.
Starred Review

When I saw author Ann Jacobus at the YALSA Symposium, I knew I’d met her at a small conference, where she’d been an organizer. I assumed it was one of the many KidLitCons I’ve been to, but when I had her sign her book and mentioned KidLitCon, she said No.

As soon as I turned away, I remembered, and went right back to her table. I should have known – when, after all, the reason I decided to get a copy of the book was that the Eiffel Tower is on the cover and it’s set in Paris – I met Ann Jacobus at an SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) conference in Paris almost exactly ten years before I saw her in Portland, and she was indeed one of the organizers.

Ann Jacobus did set the book in Paris because of having lived there. (Paris tends to capture people’s hearts.)

Now, I’m not the best reader for a dark book – I don’t tend to enjoy them. This book is dark, and it took me awhile to get it read because of that.

But the book is well-written, and the concept is intriguing. Summer is in Paris staying with her Mom, trying to repeat and finish her senior year of high school, because she keeps getting kicked out of schools in America. She has to finish high school and graduate from college before she turns twenty-two in order to inherit her grandfather’s wealth.

There’s a lot of pressure on her, and Summer doesn’t like it. She thinks a lot about death. She researches burial customs of different cultures on the internet. Her father died years ago. Summer carries his flask with her, filled with vodka to help her get through.

Summer would like to have a romance in Paris, and she meets two people who might fulfill that desire. One is a student at her school, Moony (Munir), who walks with a limp because of a bad car accident when he was younger. Moony is uncommonly kind – and he doesn’t deserve to have Summer’s mess in his life.

Kurt is a handsome man Summer meets at a Paris metro station, just after a woman throws herself onto the tracks in front of a train. Kurt keeps showing up. He seems to know Summer’s thoughts. There’s a smell of decay about him.

I said this book is dark. That darkness, in Summer’s life, is personified in Kurt. Yes, there are some paranormal elements going on. They are done with excellent touches, making me want to reread it now I know all that’s going on – but I don’t want to give it away for other readers. Let’s just say that we watch more and more things in Summer’s life fall apart.

The novel doesn’t end badly, though – and that’s because of Moony. And Ann Jacobus shows us Moony’s character, persistence, and kindness in a way that we believe the ending.

But Moony isn’t perfect. We also see hints that he’s not helping Summer because he doesn’t know anything about despair or problems. And that works into the ending as well.

There’s more I’d like to say, but it gives too much away. (Feel free to talk about the ending in the comments if you’ve read the book!) This is a well-written book about a suicidal teen, set in Paris. (The title is perfect!) There are Suicide Prevention Resources at the back of the book, and it actually ends up a hopeful tale.

annjacobus.com
thomasdunnebooks.com
stmartins.com

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Source: This review is based on my own signed copy, which I got at the 2015 YALSA Symposium in Portland, Oregon.

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.

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Review of Another Day, by David Levithan

Romance, Science Fiction, Teen Fiction Review 0

another_day_largeAnother Day

by David Levithan

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2015. 330 pages.

Another Day is the same story told in Every Day, but this time from the perspective of the girl Rhiannon.

Every Day is an amazing book about someone who calls himself “A” who wakes up in a different body every day of his life. He gets each body for one day and only one day. The person whose body and life he inhabits is the same age as he is, and this has happened to him since he was a baby.

Things change when he inhabits the body of Rhiannon’s boyfriend Justin, has a wonderful day with her, and falls in love.

Rhiannon knows that Justin is different that day, more considerate, kinder, and enjoying her more.

Things go back to normal the next day. But then Rhiannon meets a girl visiting her school with whom she hits it off quickly. Then there’s a new boy at a party. He emails her and wants to meet. Someone totally different shows up and tells her a strange story.

What disappointed me about this book is that it’s exactly the same story and ends at the same place. I was hoping we’d find out more about A and the choices he makes, or maybe about the life Rhiannon lives after A.

It’s been awhile since I read Every Day, and it’s a truly great book, but I came away feeling like you really only need to read one of the two books — and Every Day is the more insightful one, showing you what it’s like to live inside the skins of many different teens.

Sure, it’s fun to think what it would be like to try to have a relationship with someone like A who is never in the same body two days in a row. But this book made me feel worse about how she treated Justin, because I did see a little more why she was dating him in the first place.

He still brilliantly shows you what Rhiannon was missing with Justin by describing what happens when A is in Justin’s body:

He sees me crying and doesn’t make fun of it. He doesn’t get defensive, asking what he did this time. He doesn’t tell me he warned me. He doesn’t tell me to stop. No, he wraps his arms around me and holds me and takes these things that are only words and makes them into something more than words. Comfort. He gives me something I can actually feel — his presence, his hold.

The whole idea behind these books is brilliant. The execution is outstanding. My only complaint with Another Day is that I already heard this story, with a little more punch.

davidlevithan.com
randomhouse.com/teens

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Review of Newt’s Emerald, by Garth Nix

Fantasy, Historical, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

newts_emerald_largeNewt’s Emerald

Magic, Maids, and Masquerades

by Garth Nix

Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins), 2015. 291 pages.
Starred Review

Garth Nix, author of Sabriel and other fantastic books, has written a Regency romance! With magic! (The romance is in a world with magic. I don’t think he actually wrote it with magic.)

Lady Truthful Newington is eighteen years old and soon to be launched into fashionable society in London. But on her birthday, her father gets out the famous Newington Emeralds, which she will inherit when she turns twenty-five, and a storm comes up and they are stolen.

Her father lapses into illness after the loss, blaming her cousins, the Newington-Lacys. Truthful knows they wouldn’t have done such a thing, but she can hardly investigate herself as a young female. However, when you have an aunt skilled with glamours, it’s possible to disguise yourself as a young male relative, who would of course be authorized to search for the emeralds.

Along the way in the search, she encounters a young man also on the trail of the thief. Of course there’s a problem that she’s not who she appears to be.

This book doesn’t have a complicated plot or romance. The magic is mostly light-hearted and about the appearances of things. But it’s definitely a fun story. If you like Regency romances (and who doesn’t enjoy one now and then?), the magic in this one adds some extra spice.

Here’s Truthful worrying about how she’ll do in London:

In London, Truthful felt sure she would be considered plain, particularly as her sorcerous talents did not include any particular skill with the glamours that would enhance her charms. Truthful had the small weather magic that ran in her family; she could raise a gentle breeze, or soothe a drizzle. In addition to this, horses and other animals liked her and would do her bidding. But she had none of the greater arts, and little formal training.

Truthful’s time in London ends up being much more interesting than merely balls, including peril on land and sea. But you can’t have a Regency Romance without balls, and this book is no exception.

garthnix.com
epicreads.com

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

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Review of The Wrath and the Dawn, by Renee Ahdieh

Fantasy, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

wrath_and_the_dawn_largeThe Wrath and the Dawn

by Renee Ahdieh

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2015. 404 pages.

The Wrath and the Dawn is a reimagining of the story of The Arabian Nights, and I’ll warn the reader right up front that it’s only the first volume of that story.

Shahrzad has volunteered to marry the caliph who keeps killing off his wives. She plans to avenge the death of her best friend, Shiva. She begins by telling him a story, a story that she will continue the next night. She is planning to find his weakness and kill him, but things don’t turn out as they expect. And the caliph is not the monster she had thought him. And her childhood sweetheart, planning to rescue her, as well as her father, accessing magic, all do not understand the changes that happen in her.

Let me say first that there are some holes in this story. Given the reason we find out for the caliph’s murders, I have a hard time believing that Shahrzad would really have lasted past even the first night. And then the way magic works is very vague and feelings-oriented (which I never particularly like in a fantasy book). On top of that, we’re told that Shazi is determined and does what she sets out to do – It seems to me she would have had a plan for killing the caliph and would have put it in place the first night, rather than hoping to arouse his curiosity.

But that said, this is an absorbing and fascinating love story. I’m not sure that I *quite* believe, once I think about it, that they would fall in love with each other. But while I was reading it, I didn’t think about it and was wrapped up in the story and longing for them to really see each other.

So, yes, there are some hanging plot threads. But the book is worth it and the story is lovely and I will definitely want to read the next installment. Perhaps not with the urgency that would keep my bride alive if I were an evil murdering caliph, but I’ll definitely be reading the next book soon after it’s published.

reneeahdieh.com
penguin.com/teen/

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

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Review of Rook, by Sharon Cameron

Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

rook_largeRook

by Sharon Cameron

Scholastic Press, New York, 2015. 456 pages.
Starred Review

Like Across a Star Swept Sea, by Diana Peterfreund, Rook, by Sharon Cameron, is a science fiction retelling of Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel. However, unlike Across a Star Swept Sea, Rook is not a scene-by-scene translation of the original, but more of a tribute, a situational equivalent. This meant that I did not know what was going to happen! The suspense and adventure and clever plotting (both on the part of the author and the characters) was all wonderfully done.

Now, neither of the tribute books keeps the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel equivalent secret. In this book “The Red Rook” has been rescuing people from the Upper City of what once was Paris from prison in the Sunken City. She leaves behind a rook feather dipped in blood. She snatches people from execution by the Razor, as the Scarlet Pimpernel rescued victims from the guillotine, using disguises and cleverness.

But the Red Rook is a disguise that Sophia Bellamy of the Commonwealth begins to have difficulty maintaining. For the sake of money, she has become engaged to a Parisian who is cousin to the Ministre of Security, LeBlanc. LeBlanc comes to her engagement party and seems to be hot on her trail.

When her brother is arrested in her place and taken to the Sunken City for execution, Sophia must plan one last caper. And she needs to know: Can she trust her new fiancé? Or will he betray them all to save his own family’s fortunes?

This book is wonderfully written, with sizzling romantic tension, plots within plots, and plenty of narrow escapes. A fitting tribute to a great classic.

sharoncameronbooks.com
thisisteen.com
scholastic.com

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Review of A School for Brides, by Patrice Kindl

Historical, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

school_for_brides_largeA School for Brides

A Story of Maidens, Mystery, and Matrimony

by Patrice Kindl

Viking, 2015. 251 pages.

A School for Brides is a sequel to the delightful Keeping the Castle, but is primarily dealing with totally new characters, so you can feel free to read this book without having read the first.

Like Keeping the Castle, this is a humorous and light-hearted tribute to regency romances. There’s a quotation taken from Jane Austen’s The Watsons at the front. The Watsons was unfinished, but is also the only Jane Austen book I haven’t read, so I don’t know if A School for Brides mirrors the plot of The Watsons the way Keeping the Castle mirrors the plot of Pride and Prejudice.

I read this at an unfortunate time, having recently finished two other girls’ boarding school books: The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, by Julie Berry, and As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, by Alan Bradley. And try as I might, I didn’t get too enthusiastic about yet another book with a large cast of characters and young ladies in a boarding school, so it took me a long time to read it.

But there is fun to be had here. We’re back in the delightfully-named village of Lesser Hoo, this time at a finishing school, the Winthrop Hopkins Female Academy. Girls have been sent there to find husbands. There’s one problem: No eligible men live anywhere near Lesser Hoo.

However, the problem is solved rather quickly when a gentleman suffers an accident near the academy, and must be taken there to recuperate. Of course his friends come to visit him in his convalescence, and couples happily pair off.

There are some surprises and obstacles. A wicked governess tries to interfere with one of the students, and some of the suitors are not so acceptable as one might wish. There is also a mystery, as promised in the subtitle, when a valuable necklace disappears. Is the thief the handsome footman, Robert, who is under suspicion simply because he’s a servant? Well, the reader will suspect not, but how then was the theft carried out?

Here is the beginning of the book:

“Mark my words. If something drastic is not done, none of us shall ever marry. We are doomed to die old maids, banished to the seat farthest from the fire, served with the toughest cuts of meat and the weakest cups of tea, objects of pity and scorn to all we meet. That shall be our fate, so long as we remain in Lesser Hoo,” said Miss Asquith.

Extravagant as Miss Asquith’s mode of expression was, her fellow scholars at the Winthrop Hopkins Female Academy could not help but feel that she had a point. They nodded in solemn agreement, and Miss Victor, who was only twelve, began to cry.

The other young ladies frowned and attempted to turn and regard Miss Victor with disapproval at her outburst. This was rendered difficult by the fact that all eight were bound to backboards, wooden devices that forced their necks and spines into an erect posture. The backboards required them to rotate their entire upper bodies when they wished merely to turn their heads.

This book gives you light-hearted romance, lots of couples, a ball, and missing jewels. Lots of fun.

patricekindl.com
penguin.com/teen

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