Review of No Crystal Stair, by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

Award Winners, Biography, Historical, Teen Fiction Review, True Stories 0

No Crystal Stair

A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller

by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
Artwork by R. Gregory Christie

CarolRhoda Lab, Minneapolis, 2012. 188 pages.
2012 Boston-Globe Horn Book Award Winner for Fiction
2013 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book

This is a “Documentary Novel.” In the Author’s Note at the back, Vaunda Micheaux Nelson tells us, “Researching this family history was exciting and challenging, though nonexistent and conflicting information complicated the project. I did my best to tell Lewis’s story using facts where I could, filling gaps with informed speculation, making this a work of fiction. My goal was to leave readers with the essence of the man, an understanding of what shaped him, and a picture of how he and his National Memorial African Bookstore influenced a community.”

I think she admirably achieved this goal. The book reads like a work of nonfiction, so will be more interesting to kids who like nonfiction. It doesn’t read quite like a novel, but the absorbing information may be all the more interesting because it really happened. The author includes photographs and documents and even a copy of the FBI files on Lewis Michaux.

The story is inspiring. Lewis started out as something of the family troublemaker, growing up in his brother the preacher’s shadow. And it took awhile for him to find his own calling. Here’s where Vaunda Micheaux Nelson has him realizing what he should do:

I keep coming back to the same thing. Knowledge. Our people need to continue on the climb Douglass started. They need to read. I’m talking about books you don’t find in just any bookstore. Books for black people, books by black people, books about black people here and all around the world. The so-called Negro needs to hear and learn from the voices of black men and women.

This office would be perfect for a bookstore. My bookstore.

The author takes voices from people all around Lewis Michaux to show how he changed people’s lives. Through books.

lernerbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/no_crystal_stair.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 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 Shadowfell, by Juliet Marillier

Fantasy, Romance, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Shadowfell

by Juliet Marillier

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2012.
Starred Review

Juliet Marillier’s writing is wonderful. She evokes ancient Celtic magic, and her heroines must face formidable odds with courage, wrestling over what’s right, and then holding onto that. This book reminded me greatly of her Sevenwaters books for adults, and that’s high praise.

At the start of the book, Neryn has been unable to keep her father from gambling away their last coins, and then he decides to use her as his stake. She’s won by a quiet stranger who gets her off the chancy-boat in time to see it destroyed by the king’s Enforcers, meaning her father’s certain death. The man doesn’t harm her. He asks her to travel with him:

“Listen,” Flint said, not meeting my eye now but stirring the fire with a stick, making sparks rise into the night. “You know, and I know, how hard it is to make a journey like that alone. Summer’s over and the Cull’s under way. You should be safe enough here for a day or so; this spot’s well off the known tracks. Tomorrow I have to attend to some other business, but I can be back before dark. It happens that I’m going north too. Travel with me until our paths part ways and you’ll have protection on the road.” He sounded diffident.

He had been kind tonight, in his brusque fashion. But everything in me rejected this suggestion. “I don’t know you,” I said. “I’d be a fool to trust you.”

“You’d be still more of a fool,” Flint said, “to go on alone. I said before, I want nothing from you. This is a simple offer of help. You need help.”

“Thank you, but I’ll do well enough on my own.”

Neryn does go on on her own, but the reader isn’t too surprised when Flint turns up again. We are surprised when we find out all the reasons Neryn has not to trust him.

Neryn has a “canny gift.” She can see and hear the Good Folk. But canny gifts are forbidden in Alban under the reign of King Keldec. Only those in the king’s close personal circle are allowed to use them. Others are killed, or their minds bent to serve the king. Neryn’s own Granny had her mind destroyed when the Enforcers attempted this on her.

But she’s heard of a place in the north, Shadowfell, where things are different, where Keldec’s arm doesn’t reach and canny gifts are welcome. However, to get there requires a long journey.

Along the way, Neryn learns that her own gift may be far more important, and far more powerful, than she realized. She also must wrestle with whom she can trust.

Now, in some ways Juliet Marillier’s romances follow a formula. There’s a very capable, strong man who’s a sinister stranger, but somehow the heroine gets in his power, and he proves to be gentle and kind, takes care of her when she’s sick, and doesn’t take advantage of the situation. Come to think of it, Sherwood Smith’s books also tend to follow this pattern, though in her books the stranger usually kidnapped or captured the heroine for some reason, but still ends up being kind and nurturing. I’m a little ashamed of myself that I inevitably find these books incredibly romantic, but what can I say? I really do. The heroine’s in a vulnerable position, at the mercy of someone who’s rough around the edges, but really good at what he does. But what he does is apparently at odds with everything the heroine holds dear. Should she trust him?

Summarized like that, I know I’m not expressing the magic of these books. Her language pulls you right into ancient Alban. Here are the first two paragraphs. See how quickly she weaves her spell and sets the stage!

As we came down to the shore of Darkwater, the wind sliced cold right to my bones. My heels stung with blisters. Dusk was falling, and my head was muzzy from the weariness of another long day’s walk. Birds cried out overhead, winging to nighttime roosts. They were as eager as I was to get out of the chill.

We’d heard there was a settlement not far along the loch shore, a place where we might perhaps buy shelter with our fast-shrinking store of coppers. I allowed myself to imagine a bed, a proper one with a straw mattress and a woolen coverlet. Oh, how my limbs ached for warmth and comfort! Foolish hope. The way things were in Alban, people didn’t open their doors to strangers. Especially not to disheveled vagrants, and that was what we had become. I was a fool to believe, even for a moment, that our money would buy us time by someone’s hearth fire and a real bed. Never mind that. A heap of old sacks in a net-mending shed or a pile of straw in a barn would do fine. Anyplace out of this wind. Anyplace out of sight.

The worst thing about the book is also the best thing. It’s the first book of a new trilogy. The story comes to a good stopping place, but it’s by no means finished at the end of this book. So I will snap up the next book as soon as it’s published, but I simply hate having to wait.

JulietMarillier.com
randomhouse.com/teens

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/shadowfell.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 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!

2012 Sonderbooks Stand-outs – Teen Fiction

Stand-outs, Teen Fiction Review 0

Last night I announced the 2012 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.

Now I’m going to feature the different categories I split the books into. I decided to start with Teen Fiction, because my favorite book of the year was Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein.

Usually I break Teen Fiction into Fantasy and non-Fantasy, but this year there simply weren’t enough of my favorites (except *the* favorite) in the non-fantasy category. The books at the top of this list are all books I know I will read again and treasure each time I do. I don’t use criteria for making this list, but I can tell you simply that all of these are books I loved.

You’ll see two books on the list, Palace of Stone and The Last Dragonslayer, that were under consideration for the Cybils Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy shortlist. I tend to put books with teen protagonists, especially if they’re thinking about marriage, in the Teens category. But when the writing appeals to younger teens, they tend to be put in the Middle Grade category rather than Young Adult. You’ll find the rest of the books I read for the Cybils in the Children’s Fiction category.

Here’s my list of my 2012 Sonderbooks Stand-outs in Teen Fiction:

1. Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein
2. For Darkness Shows the Stars, by Diana Peterfreund
3. Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers
4. Cinder, by Marissa Meyer
5. Shadowfell, by Juliet Marillier
6. Palace of Stone, by Shannon Hale
7. Keeping the Castle, by Patrice Kindl
8. A Confusion of Princes, by Garth Nix
9. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
10. The Last Dragonslayer, by Jasper Fforde

Now, my next job will be to post the reviews of the Stand-outs I haven’t posted yet. I currently have 80 reviews I’ve written but haven’t posted, and 10 books I’ve read but haven’t reviewed. As well, I want to modify all the review pages of the Stand-outs to add the Sonderbooks Stand-outs seal. So I’m going to try for one category at a time, but may have to settle for one more review at a time.

But while I’m doing all that, you can read these books!

And what about you? What were your favorite Young Adult books that you read in 2012? Is there any overlap with my favorites? I’d love to see links to other people’s lists in the comments, or just lists themselves. What did I miss that I should try to catch? (And there were some that came out at the end of the year which I didn’t get to read because I was reading for the Cybils. I plan to make up for that very quickly!)

Review of Audiobook Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein

Adventure, Audiobooks, Historical, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

Code Name Verity

by Elizabeth Wein
read by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell

Bolinda Audio, 2012. Unabridged. 10 hours 9 minutes on 9 compact discs.
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out, #1 Teen Fiction
Starred Review

In my mind, Code Name Verity is easily the best book written in 2012. It’s not a pleasant story. It’s not even a happy story. But Wow! It blows you away.

I’m already thinking about how to booktalk the book. Spies. The Resistance. A British pilot stranded in France during World War II. Nazi interrogators. Think that will do it? It’s also a book about friendship.

I already reviewed the print version of the book, which I devoured as soon as it arrived via Amazon. But as soon as I finished, I knew I’d want to read it again. There are lots of things in the second part referred to in the beginning part, and I wanted to see if I would have a new perspective having already finished the book. Besides, I wanted to enjoy it again! So when the audio version was nominated for Capitol Choices, that seemed like a good excuse to reread the book in a different format.

And, Wow! Okay, I realize I’m not being even slightly eloquent. Let me simply say that this is an outstanding audio production of an outstanding story. They got someone from Scotland to read Julie’s parts, and someone from England to read Maddie’s. And they were magnificent. It felt like I was really listening to the two friends talking about their wartime service and their friendship.

I still love this passage. I almost burst out crying in the car when it came up in the audiobook:

Then she hitched up her hair to its two-inch above-the-collar regulation point, swabbed her own tears and the grease and the concrete dust and the gunner’s blood from her cheeks with the back of her hand, and she was off running again, like the Red Queen.

It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.

I wouldn’t have thought there was a way to improve this book. But listening to Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell made me feel like I was listening to Julie and Maddie tell me their thoughts.

Now, I suppose I should add that there’s torture that happens in this book. It’s set during wartime, and it isn’t pretty. Julie and Maddie are adults, young ones, yes, but adults serving during wartime. So although Code Name Verity is published as a young adult book, “old” adults won’t feel the least bit like the book is too young for them. And this isn’t a YA book I’d want to give to the youngest teens, because the subject matter is deadly serious. This audiobook is wonderful for listening in the car, but I wouldn’t call it a “family” audiobook if there are young kids around.

But Wow. Code Name Verity is a story of wartime, yes, but it’s a beautiful one. The story of the friendship, of these amazing young women, far outshines the ugly details of wartime.

elizabethwein.com
bolinda.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/code_name_verity_audio.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 Dying to Know You, by Aidan Chambers

Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Dying to Know You

by Aidan Chambers

Abrams, New York, 2012. 275 pages.
Starred Review

In Dying to Know You, Aidan Chambers writes a young adult novel from the perspective of a 75-year-old writer with writer’s block, and accomplishes the surprising feat of pulling it off.

I had meant to return this book along with several others that I just wasn’t getting around to reading. But when I looked inside to get a grasp of what it was about, I was pulled in, took it back home, and couldn’t stop reading until I finished.

The writer who tells the story is approached by Karl Williamson, a young man who doesn’t read. His girlfriend Fiorella insists that Karl must write about himself if they are to continue their relationship. Now, Karl has dyslexia, and he doesn’t want Fiorella to know it. So he approaches Fiorella’s favorite writer, figuring that he can write something that will satisfy her.

Why, exactly, the writer agrees to help Karl is something we don’t fully understand at first. But no, the novel is not all about how Fiorella is deceived and finds out much later what’s going on. No, Fiorella, finds out fairly early on and isn’t happy about it. Along the way, the writer comes to care about Karl and his mother. They form a friendship that provides insights into both of them and their vocations.

In fact, this book is about much more than one boy and his relationship with a girl. There’s a lot here — vocation, love, friendship, adversity, expressing feelings, and art.

Here’s a small taste, not about a major point, just a little thought along the way:

It seems to me there are two kinds of people. There are those who prefer everything to be spelt out, clear and direct, nothing left to doubt. The others are people who prefer to read between the lines, who don’t want every i to be dotted, every t to be crossed. They need room to decide for themsleves what you mean.

I have to confess that by nature I belong to the spellers-out. But I was learning that Karl belonged to the understaters, the ambiguists.

Sometimes the spellers-out need to restrain themselves, and sometimes the understaters need to be given a hint, a clue to help them.

This book is a good story in the spelled-out sense with a whole lot under the surface to please any ambiguist.

amuletbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/dying_to_know_you.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 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 Froi of the Exiles, by Melina Marchetta

Adventure, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Froi of the Exiles

by Melina Marchetta

Candlewick Press, 2012. 593 pages. First published in Australia in 2011.
Starred Review

Wow. This is an epic, detailed, and complicated world, and Melina Marchetta takes you on a journey through it.

Finnikin of the Rock does stand alone nicely. It didn’t necessarily need a sequel. But you really should read it before reading Froi of the Exiles, and there had better be another book coming, because the story is decidedly not finished in this book.

We met Froi as a scruffy thief in Finnikin of the Rock. In the three years since then, he’s been trained by the elite of Lumatere in many things, including the special skills of an assassin. Now they’re sending him into neighboring Charyn to get revenge on the invasion of Lumatere by killing the king of Charyn. He’s supposed to kill the king and get out. But things do not turn out to be so easy. And it’s not because of the difficulty of the task, but because of the people Froi meets along the way.

This book is richly detailed and finely textured. I’ve noticed that Melina Marchetta rarely introduces you to characters as someone likable. I’d almost go so far as to say that the more unflattering the description, the more important that character is going to be. The amazing part is that she pulls it off. You end up truly caring for these people, despite their apparent flaws. Here’s where Froi meets Quintana:

Beside their own balconette was another that belonged to the room next door. After a moment, the girl with the mass of awful hair stepped out onto it. She peered at Froi, almost within touching distance. Up close she was even stranger looking, and it was with an unabashed manner that she studied him now, and with great curiosity, her brow furrowed. A cleft on her chin was so pronounced, it was as if someone had spent their life pointing out her strangeness. Her hair was a filthy mess almost reaching her waist. It was strawlike in texture, and Froi imagined that if it were washed, it might be described as a darker shade of fair. But for now, it looked dirty, its color almost indescribable.

She squinted at his appraisal. Froi squinted back.

Gargarin appeared beside him and the girl disappeared.

“I’m presuming that was the princess,” Froi said. “She’s plain enough. What is it with all the twitching? Is she possessed by demons?”

It turns out that all of Charyn is cursed with the inability to bear or father Charyn, but Quintana is the key to breaking the curse. This is not a comfortable role.

Meanwhile, back in Lumatere, they are dealing with a band of Charynite refugees who are staying in a valley next to Lumatere. And the new rulers are still trying to rebuild the country. When Froi doesn’t come back, they have to make some choices. Meanwhile, Froi finds out surprising things about himself and his quest gets far more complicated.

Another hallmark of this series is that a lot of people lie. Even good people. Slowly, along with Froi, we get to figure out what is true and what is false and who Froi really is and whether Quintana can truly break the curse and what will they do next?

I love what Melina Marchetta says about the book on the back flap: “It explores nature versus nurture and blood bonds versus friendships, but ultimately it’s a love story between a whole lot of people who should have given up on each other long ago — yet still find it in themselves to hope again.”

The worst part of this book? It ends without finishing the story. I will very eagerly be waiting for the next installment.

candlewick.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/froi_of_the_exiles.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 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 Silver Phoenix, by Cindy Pon

Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Silver Phoenix

by Cindy Pon

Greenwillow Books, 2009. 338 pages.

I’d been meaning to read this book for ages, and never quite got around to it until this summer, when I found out I might have a chance to meet Cindy Pon at ALA Annual Conference. Well, I did get the book read just before the conference, but I didn’t end up getting to meet Cindy Pon. However, I was happy to read Silver Phoenix and am looking forward to reading the sequel, which I own a copy of (having gotten it at another ALA conference).

Silver Phoenix is a fantasy novel refreshingly different from so many that I’ve read, since this time instead of coming from a western fairy-tale medieval sort of background, the story has a Chinese traditional setting. In the author’s acknowledgements in the back, she mentions doing research in a book, A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas, edited and translated by Richard E. Strassberg. This made the book fascinating and different from any other fantasy novel I’ve read.

Ai Ling’s father is taking a mysterious journey to the Emperor’s Palace. Before he goes, he gives her a pendant.

“It was given to me by a monk, years ago. Before I met your mother.” He took the jade piece between his fingers. “I helped him transcribe a book of religious text in exchange for board at his temple.”

He ran a fingertip over the raised character, his face pensive. “Before I left, he gave me this. He told me to give it to my daughter, if I should ever leave her side for long.” A small smile touched at the corners of his mouth. “But when I said I had no daughter, he merely waved me away.”

When Ai Ling’s father doesn’t return, a vile but powerful merchant tells her mother that he was owed money and will only forgive the debt if Ai Ling becomes his additional wife. In order to escape this fate, Ai Ling sets off to the Palace to find her father. She knows something must have happened, or he would have returned.

On the way to the Palace, Ai Ling seems to attract demons. But her pendant protects her. She gains companions along the way and learns to use the pendant which ultimately helps her in a showdown with evil and some revelations about why these things have happened to her.

Now, there were a few too many coincidences in this book for my taste. Ai Ling blunders along, and eventually gets to where she needs to go. The people she meet end up being the right companions for her.

However — this is a good story and did keep me reading, and I liked the way the ending worked out. It made up for little things I didn’t like about getting there. The demons that attack her are fascinating in their variety. Cindy Pon put that bestiary to good use!

I did like it that everything wasn’t tied up nicely in the end. Besides that this way I can read on, that would have been just too much coincidence. There is more to be revealed, and I like that it didn’t all come out at once. I have a feeling that I’m going to appreciate this story more as I read on.

cindypon.com
harperteen.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/silver_phoenix.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 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 Vessel, by Sarah Beth Durst

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Vessel

by Sarah Beth Durst

Margaret K. McElderry Books (Simon & Schuster), 2012. 424 pages.
Starred Review

This book has a striking beginning:

On the day she was to die, Liyana walked out of her family’s tent to see the dawn.

Liyana’s dreamwalk has shown that she is to be a vessel, a vessel for the goddess Bayla to come among her people, the Goat Clan, and restore their oases and keep them alive.

Liyana has kept her body ready for Bayla, and she’s ready to dance and let the goddess take her body and send her own soul to the Dreaming. She thinks she does everything right. She dances all night. But Bayla does not come.

The tribal elders decide Liyana must be unworthy. They must travel on and leave her behind. If somehow they are wrong, Bayla will find her body and join them.

So Liyana stays in the desert and tries to survive a sandstorm on her own. Then a young man walks to her through the sand. He claims to be Korbyn, the trickster god. He was summoned five nights ago, and has come to find her.

“Me? But . . .” All calmness fled, and her voice squeaked. “Your clan! Your clan needs you!”

“All the clans need me,” he said. “And I need you.”

She understood the words he was saying, but the order of them made no sense. “You left your clan to find me?”

“Deities are missing. Five in total. They were summoned from the Dreaming, but their souls never filled their clans’ vessels.”

Liyana felt as if she had been dropped back inside the sandstorm. “Bayla . . .”

“I believe their souls were stolen. And I intend for us to steal them back.”

So begins a quest, a quest to find all the other vessels and then find who stole the gods.

I confess, I read this book in one stretch on a Sunday afternoon. I think I might enjoyed it more if I had spread it out and treasured the details more. We’ve got many clans of desert people living beside a great empire. The desert has many fantastical dangers, such as sand wolves and sandworms. And every hundred years or so, the gods choose vessels and come from the Dreaming to visit their people.

I don’t think I was completely happy with the ending, but I’m not sure I could have figured out any other satisfying way to end it. The world is wonderfully built, and I think I should have lingered longer.

sarahbethdurst.com
TEEN.SimonandSchuster.com

Buy from Amazon.com

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

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/drowned_cities.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 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 Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers

Fantasy, Historical, Paranormal, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 2

Grave Mercy

His Fair Assassin, Book I

by Robin LaFevers

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2012. 509 pages.
Starred Review

Wow. This book reminded me of The Canterbury Papers, full of medieval palace intrigue, but this had supernatural powers thrown in.

The book is set in Brittany, beginning in 1485. Ismae has been told from birth that the scar she was born with, from the midwife’s poison failing, marks her as the daughter of Death himself, an ancient Breton god now called St. Mortain. When the man her father sold her to sees the scar, he is going to have her burned, but she is rescued by strangers and sent to the convent of St. Mortain.

At the convent, Ismae learns the special powers she has as the daughter of St. Mortain. She can see a mark on a person who is going to die. Poison does not harm her. She can see a person’s soul when it leaves his body. Also at the convent, they train her to be an assassin.

“If you choose to stay, you will be trained in His arts. You will learn more ways to kill a man than you imagined possible. We will train you in stealth and cunning and all manner of skills that will ensure no man is ever again a threat to you.”

Three years later, Ismae is ready for her first assignments. But now there is political trouble, and Brittany is in danger of being swallowed up by France. Ismae is sent to the court of the duchess herself, ordered to pose as the mistress of Duval, the duchess’s half-brother.

But at court, things don’t turn out as Ismae has been led to believe they will. Those she was told to be suspicious of seem kind and seem to have the Duchess’s best interests at heart. Those she is supposed to trust seem suspicious. What is right?

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of action and adventure. There are surprise attacks and deaths that Ismae had nothing to do with. And the duchess must marry soon, preferably to someone who can bring an army to her cause. Along the way, slowly and exquisitely, we see Ismae’s heart being won by a good man.

Here’s the situation as it’s laid out before Ismae leaves the convent:

Crunard spreads his hands. “Then you know it is true. The circling vultures grow bold. The regent of France has forbidden that Anne be crowned duchess. It is our enemies’ wish to make her France’s ward so that they may claim Brittany for their own. They also claim the right to determine who she will marry.”

Duval begins pacing. “Spies are everywhere. We can scarce keep track of them all. The French have set up a permanent entourage within our court, which has made some of the border nations uneasy.”

Crunard adds, “Not to mention that their presence makes it impossible to see Anne anointed as our duchess without their knowledge. But until we place that coronet upon her head before her people and the Church, we are vulnerable.”

I cannot help but feel sympathy for our poor duchess. “Surely there is some way out of this mess?”

I have addressed my question to the abbess, but it is Duval who answers. “I will forge one with my bare hands, if need be,” he says. “I vow that I will see her duchess, and I will see her safely wed. But I need information against our enemies if I am to accomplish this.”

The room falls so silent that I fear they will hear the pounding of my heart. Duval’s vow has moved me, and that he has made it on sacred ground proves he is either very brave or very foolish.

This is one book I was very happy to see called Book One. The story in this book does come to a satisfying conclusion, but I want to come back to this world. This book would be excellent if it only had the medieval intrigue and romance, but with the paranormal elements added in, there’s extra satisfaction seeing Ismae’s power far beyond what you’d normally expect of a woman in the fifteenth century.

robinlafevers.com
hmhbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/grave_mercy.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 ALA conference and checked against 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!