Review of The False Prince, by Jennifer A. Nielsen

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

The False Prince

by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Scholastic Press, New York, 2012. 342 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Stand-out #1 Fantasy and Science Fiction for Children

So, funny thing. I read this book earlier in the year, as an Advance Reader Copy, and although I enjoyed it, I decided there were too many flaws, and I didn’t want to review it. I read it afresh at the end of 2012, as part of my reading for the Cybils, and this time I loved it.

What was the difference? I believe that both times I read it in one sitting, into the small hours of the morning, so I certainly found it a page turner both times.

I think the first time, it reminded me so much of The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. That’s an unfair comparison for almost any book, so when I figured out the big reveal fairly easily, I held it against the author and thought she should have done the revealing differently. The second time I read it, I knew what I knew (and some other reviewers thought she intended us to figure it out), so I didn’t worry about that. I firmly did not compare it to The Thief, and this time I loved it.

The book opens with an orphan named Sage stealing a roast for the orphanage and then being captured and bought by a nobleman. Conner, the nobleman, gets three other orphan boys and tells them one of them is going to replace the prince who’s been missing for four years. The rest of the royal family is dead, and the country will find out in two weeks’ time. If one of the boys can get everything right in two weeks, he will be the new king and live in luxury the rest of his life. Of course, it’s pretty clear that whichever boys are not chosen will need to be killed to keep the secret.

Sage isn’t one to capitulate to Conner’s power, and he clearly has plans of his own. How it all gets worked out is wonderful tale. If the big twists and turns don’t take you by surprise, there are still some little details that will slip through. The book is hard to put down, and the action keeps going. I do have to say that, like Megan Whalen Turner’s books, you do spot more details when you reread the book that you won’t have realized were significant the first time around.

The best thing about this book? It’s “Book One of the Ascendance Trilogy.” The book does stand alone beautifully, and tells a complete story. But I’m definitely looking forward to finding out what happens 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 Sleeping Beauty, by Mercedes Lackey

Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Sleeping Beauty

by Mercedes Lackey

Luna, 2010. 345 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Sonderbooks Standout: #3 Fantasy Fiction

I do so love Mercedes Lackey’s Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms! They are fairy tale variants, but for once they are written for grown-ups. They appeal to the reader’s intelligence, and a vast storehouse of Tradition powers the magic in the tales. It’s so much fun the way she looks at the way the Tradition would affect real people’s lives.

Take the princesses that get awakened from sleep by a prince’s kiss, for example. There’s Snow White. There’s Sleeping Beauty. And who knew, the Siegfried saga involves him waking a sleeping shieldmaiden who’s actually his aunt surrounded by a ring of flaming roses.

Chapter One of The Sleeping Beauty opens with Princess Rosamund fleeing from a Huntsman and mourning her situation.

It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. Why did her mother die? She had been so good; she’d never done anything to deserve to die!

But of course, the part of her mind that was always calculating, always thinking, the part she could never make just stop, said and if it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. You just turned sixteen. You know what that means in the Tradition.

Oh, she knew. Sixteen was bad enough for ordinary girls. For the noble, the wealthy, The Tradition ruthlessly decreed what sort of birthday you would have — if you were pretty, it was the celebration of a lifetime. If you were plain, everyone, literally everyone, would forget it was even your birthday, and you would spend the day miserable and alone. Traditional Paths went from there, decreeing, unless you fought it, just what the rest of your life would be like based on that birthday. For a Princess, it was worse. For the only child who was also a Princess, worse still. Curses or blessings, which might be curses in disguise, descended. Parents died or fell deathly ill. You were taken by a dragon. Evil Knights demanded your hand. Evil Sorcerers kidnapped you to marry you — or worse.

Fortunately, Rosamund’s kingdom, Eltaria, has a powerful fairy godmother who is trying to divert all the magic swirling around Eltaria into less harmful channels. But her task isn’t easy.

To add to the fun, Siegfried wanders into the kingdom. I love the summing up Mercedes Lackey gives of Siegfried’s story. When he drank dragon’s blood as a boy and learned the language of beasts, he picked up a bird as a traveling companion who warned him about The Tradition and the fate planned for him.

At ten years old, Siegfried of Drachenthal learned that he had been a game piece all of his life in the metaphorical hands of The Tradition. That he was supposed to go and wake up a sleeping woman, that they would fall in love, and that this was going to lead to an awful lot of unpleasant things. And that if he didn’t somehow find a way around it, he was Doomed.

At ten, Doom didn’t seem quite as horrid a fate to try to avoid as a Girl was. But it seemed that by avoiding that one particular Girl, in those particular circumstances, who would be the first woman he had ever seen who was not an aunt, he would also avoid the Doom. So he did. He got away from Drachenthal, had the bird scout on ahead so that the first woman he ever saw was not his aunt but someone’s lively old granny, and began searching for a way to have a Happy, rather than Tragically Heroic, ending.

At twenty, the idea of a Girl all his own seemed rather nice, but Doom was definitely to be avoided. He had begun to think about this, rather than just merely avoiding all sleeping women in fire circles wearing armor. Other Heroes ended up with Princesses, castles, happy endings, dozens of beautiful children. Why couldn’t he?

The bird had been of the opinion that he ought to be able to, if he could trick The Tradition into confusing his fate with some other sort of Hero’s. That sounded good to Siegfried. . . .

“So in order to hoodwink The Tradition, all I have to find is someone blond, asleep in a ring of fire and flowers, who is not a Shieldmaiden demigoddess, and wake her up?” he was asking the bird, as he hacked his way through the underbrush with his eversharp, unbreakable sword.

It’s an easy to get an idea where this is going, but you will only get an inkling of how much fun and humor is to be found along the way.

Another thoroughly enjoyable offering from Mercedes Lackey.

LUNA-Books.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 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

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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 Mysterious Howling, by Maryrose Wood

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Historical, Humorous, Starred Review 0

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place

The Mysterious Howling

by Maryrose Wood

Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins), 2010. 267 pages.
Starred Review

I’m so glad I finally read this book! In a way, it’s nice that I took so long, because the final three words are those dreaded ones, “To Be Continued . . .” I can go straight to rushing to read the next two volumes.

I found The Mysterious Howling completely delightful. The story is of Penelope Lumley, a Poor but Deserving young fifteen-year-old girl, penniless and sent away from her boarding school to try her luck at a grand house, Ashton Place, to be the governess.

Her interview with Lady Constance is unusual. Even Penelope, with no experience in such things, finds it surprising how quickly Lady Constance offers her the job and that she won’t speak of the children. She closes the interview like this:

And with that, they both affixed their signatures to the bottom of the letter of terms that Lord Ashton had prepared. Penelope hardly thought this necessary, but Lady Constance assured her that signed, binding contracts were the custom in these parts, a charming formality which she would not dream of omitting.

When Penelope does meet the children, she learns that they were, in fact, raised by wolves, and discovered by the mysterious Lord Ashton in Ashton Forest on one of his hunting parties. Penelope must revise her hopes and dreams of what she can teach the children, but her compassion, and her binding contract, compel her to stay.

The rest of the book concerns itself with Penelope teaching the children, trying to get them not to chase squirrels and teach them enough words to speak politely to people. In fact, when Lady Constance plans a big party on Christmas Day, Lord Ashton particularly wants the children to be there, so Penelope is under deep pressure to teach them proper things to say to the guests, and drill them on how to behave. It’s not her fault if things don’t go as she plans….

Meanwhile, there’s a mystery at Ashton Place. In a tribute to Jane Eyre, besides the mysterious howling from the children before Penelope met them, there’s a sound coming from a room in the attic.

I’m not sure who exactly the audience for this book is, except that I am firmly in it. Definitely those who have read and loved Jane Eyre will find themselves laughing over Penelope Lumley’s expectations of being a governess and the rich contrast with the children she actually teaches. There are obvious sections inserted to delight the adult reader, such as this one:

“My heavens!” Mrs. Clarke exclaimed. “I am sure I have never seen three such extraordinarily handsome and well-turned out children!”

As you may know complimentary remarks of this type are all too often made by well-meaning adults to children who are, to be frank, perfectly ordinary-looking. This practice of overstating the case is called hyperbole. Hyperbole is usually harmless, but in some cases it has been known to precipitate unneccessary wars as well as a painful gaseous condition called stock market bubbles. For safety’s sake, then, hyperbole should be used with restraint and only by those with the proper literary training.

However, the book is written at a child’s reading level, and I do think children will enjoy the story. There is silliness with the children learning how to speak and how to behave, despite a tendency toward howling, and a thread of a mysterious something bigger throughout the story.

Here’s a section shortly after Penelope has learned the nature of her charges. She goes, naturally enough, to the library:

It was chilly and dark, even on a sunny afternoon, with many more books than even the library at Swanburne had contained. The section on animal behavior was exceptionally well stocked. In short, Penelope was in library heaven, and she prepared to start taking notes. She quickly found a book on wolves, which provided many thought-provoking tidbits of information and even shed light on some of the children’s more intriguing habits — the way Alexander, for instance, would occasionally discipline his siblings by knocking them to the ground and rolling them onto their backs. Or the way Beowulf would rise from his bed during the night and gaze out the nursery window, mournfully ahwooing for hours on end. Or Cassiopeia’s tendency to scamper closely after Penelope and sit at her feet the instant she stopped moving.

Of course, I can’t help but think the most ideal audience would be a family read-aloud, or perhaps a classroom read-aloud. I am planning to listen to the second book on CD, so it will be fun to see if that reader does the story justice.

maryrosewood.com
harpercollinschildrens.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 copy, which I purchased at an ALA Conference and had signed by the author.

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 Beswitched, by Kate Saunders

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Historical, Starred Review 0

Beswitched

by Kate Saunders

Delacorte Press, 2011. First published in the United Kingdom in 2010. 244 pages.
Starred Review

I didn’t think I’d like this book at first. A spoiled girl is upset because she has to go to boarding school, but it’s a fancy upscale boarding school, “Penrice Hall — Individual Fulfillment in a Homelike Atmosphere.” Her grandmother broke her hip and is coming to live with their family, and her parents need to go to France to close up the house and bring her back.

But on the train to school, Flora falls asleep, has a strange dream, and wakes up in 1935, on her way to a very different boarding school. She’s in the place of a girl whose parents were in India, so the only part she doesn’t have to pretend about is that it’s her first time living away from her parents.

She makes the mistake starting out of trying to explain she’s from the future, and when the girls from her dorm room find out, they don’t react the way everyone else did. In fact, they were experimenting with a book of spells and tried one to “summon a helpful demon from the future.”

But there’s no spell to send her back.

So Flora must figure out how to get along in the past, at a school much stricter than the one her parents picked out for her.

This is an old-fashioned good-hearted school story with the twist of looking at it with the eyes of someone from our time.

randomhouse.com/kids

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/beswitched.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 Deadweather and Sunrise, by Geoff Rodkey

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

Deadweather and Sunrise

The Chronicles of Egg, Book One

by Geoff Rodkey

G. P. Putnam’s Sons (Penguin), 2012. 295 pages.
Starred Review

This book is only fantasy in that it takes place in an imaginary world, and legendary magic is mentioned, but it is dismissed as a legend and no magic is ever seen. I’d be sorely tempted to classify it as “Historical,” except it’s a totally imaginary history of totally imaginary places.

Egbert is growing up on Deadweather Island. It’s called that because the weather is awful. He lives on a fruit plantation with his father, older brother, and older sister. Their field hands are mainly retired pirates, many of whom don’t actually have two hands. But then his father mysteriously takes the whole family to Sunrise Island — a beautiful island where rich people live, and Egg’s adventures begin.

Egbert’s older brother and sister and their tutor are all horribly mean to him, as a matter of course. And quite a lot of people die, rather callously. Those were things I didn’t like about the book. But overall, it won me over, because Egg has a good heart. And there is adventure, and lots of it.

On Sunrise Island, Egg meets the most powerful man on the island and his daughter, Millicent, who has a mind of her own, and whom Egg immediately falls for. Unfortunately, Millicent’s father apparently wants Egg dead. Trying to escape leads him on a wild series of adventures involving pirates, stowing away, and finding help in very strange places.

Personally, I didn’t like how many different people were downright mean to Egg. But, yes, it’s a rollicking adventure story, with pirates, and I will happily give this to young readers looking for adventure tales. And I definitely want to read the second volume as soon as it’s available.

ChroniclesofEgg.com
penguin.com/youngreaders

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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 an Advance Review Copy I got at an ALA 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.

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

Review of The Burning Bridge, by John Flanagan

Adventure, Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

The Burning Bridge

The Ranger’s Apprentice, Book Two

by John Flanagan
performed by John Keating

Recorded Books, 2006. 7 compact discs. 8.5 hours.

Okay, I’m firmly committed to listening to these popular books by now. The book is rather self-contained, but I definitely don’t want to leave Will in the situation where he’s left at the end of this book. And you will do better reading this book if you’ve read the first one, which in many ways is introductory.

Now, I kind of expected the whole series to be like Harry Potter, and be a grand struggle against the evil Morgarath. But that struggle, which began in the first book, The Ruins of Gorlan, does come to a climax in this second book. So the future books will have different situations and villains.

Now I do have a peeve against the titles. In the first book, at about the sixth CD, they were tracking evil creatures. They said they were probably heading for one place, but that they might possibly try to ambush the trackers at the Ruins of Gorlan. Given the title, I wasn’t even slightly surprised by what happened.

In this book, at about the third CD, they discover a huge, strategic bridge, almost finished. The ropes supporting the bridge are coated with tar. It takes Will an entire CD to think of what to do about that bridge. But I, having read the title, was way, way ahead of him.

However, I didn’t foresee the consequences of that plan, I’ll give the author that. Though the Burning Bridge happened about exactly in the middle of the book (unlike the Ruins of Gorlan, which we saw at the end of its book), things really got interesting and suspenseful after that.

I also wasn’t crazy about the alternating scenes between what was going on with Will (the Ranger’s Apprentice) and what was happening in the rest of the kingdom. There was an entire minor mission with Halt and Alice that I guess was just to provide a little humor? Or to keep us guessing about where Will’s love interest will lie some day?

Still, it’s clear that John Flanagan wrote with the big picture in mind. This book is one part of a series, and he’s showing us a cast of characters in a kingdom we’re coming to care about. I definitely am going to continue on.

Oh, and I’m enjoying the audio version, in particular because of the accents. Now, I’m not sure why this fantasy world corresponds exactly to the British Isles and Europe, with accents that match, but it does make the books fun to listen to.

And I really do want to know what happens to Will next.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/burning_bridge.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 Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities, by Mike Jung

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities

by Mike Jung

Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic), 2012. 305 pages.
Starred Review

A lot of parents would say it’s not productive to know everything last detail about a certain superhero. But for Vincent Wu, the superhero lives in their town and has been keeping their town crime-free and defending it against supervillains for twenty-six years. Unfortunately, his encyclopedic knowledge of Captain Stupendous isn’t appreciated. Only his two best friends are in the Captain Stupendous Fan Club (the real Fan Club) and the people in the Official Captain Stupendous Fan Club still pick on him.

But when something happens to Captain Stupendous and he’s replaced (think The Santa Clause) by a twelve-year-old girl, well Vincent Wu’s encyclopedic knowledge is suddenly very important. Because there’s a new supervillain coming against their town, and the new Captain Stupendous is going to need a lot of help to save the day.

I enjoyed this book tremendously. Yes, there are a whole lot of coincidences. Yes, it’s something of a comic book geek’s fantasy. But it’s definitely a fun fantasy, with lots of cleverness and silliness. And I do like that brawn alone and superpowers alone aren’t enough to save the day.

I like the way, in this world where superheroes are real, every kid in town has Stupendous Alerts on their cell phones.

Every cell phone in the place started ringing at once, which could only mean one thing. I dug my phone out of my pocket, and sure enough, a text from the Copperplate City alert system.

STUPENDOUS ALERT: GIANT ROBOT. 24TH & BYRNE.

“Stupendous Alert!” I yelled. Okay, a bunch of other kids yelled it too, but I yelled it first, even if nobody heard me.

“That’s right around the corner!” George said.

There was a crackly sound from the ceiling, then a voice.

“Attention, Spud’s customers, we are on Stupendous Alert. Please stay in your seats. DON’T GO OUTSIDE. Again, we are on Stupendous Alert. DO NOT GO OUTSIDE.”

“Let’s go outside!” one of the Official Fan Club guys shouted.

Who says a vast knowledge of superhero trivia isn’t an important skill? This book was the one I stayed in bed late on Thanksgiving morning to finish. And I got up smiling. Great fun!

arthuralevinebooks.com
scholastic.com

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

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 Blood Spirits, by Sherwood Smith

Adventure, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Paranormal, Starred Review 0

Blood Spirits

by Sherwood Smith

DAW Books, 2011. 488 pages.
Starred Review

It’s hard to talk about this book without saying too much about its predecessor. Yes, you definitely should read Coronets and Steel before you read Blood Spirits. When we left Kim, she had found out a world of information about her grandmother’s secret life. She’d been kidnapped more than once, she’d met long-lost family, and she’d gotten involved in political intrigue and fallen in love. She’d also discovered that she has the Sight, and she saw some truly strange things in the kingdom of Dobrenica.

But in the end, she decided not to get between the man she loves and his duty to his nation. She fled, expecting him to get married, and wondering if the traditional magic would happen and Dobrenica would disappear from the outside world.

Well, Dobrenica didn’t disappear. But Kim decided to get a teaching job and to try not to think about Dobrenica. But it doesn’t work, and then Kim has a strange vision of Ruli, her look-alike cousin, the woman who married the man she loves. Ruli is begging Kim for help. Kim decides to go to Dobrenica.

Her timing is bad. Ruli has just been found dead, and even Alec considers himself responsible for her death. Kim’s showing up then makes the case against him all the worse.

This story includes political intrigue, a murder mystery, and, yes, blood spirits threatening the kingdom. There’s more sword fighting (Kim is a skilled fencer.) and shifting alliances and even Kim’s grandmother faces her old love.

Here’s Kim talking to a Dobrenican girl and discovering she’s not the only one who sees strange things:

Tania refused to sit down, so I collapsed on the bed, as she said without preamble, “When I was little I talked to ghosts. Many ghosts. I see them all around, though most are silent and like fog. But my family, they thought I lied, to gain attention.”

I sat up again. “You talked to them?”

She brought her chin down in a single nod.

“But no one believed you?” I began to pull off my boots.

“No one but my sisters. Theresa because she loves the stories about ghosts. Anna because she knew I never lied.”…

“First, how do you talk to them, and second, what made you decide to tell me these things?”

“I do not know how I speak to them,” she said, her slender hands open as I reached for the wardrobe door. “It happened more when I was small. Rarely since. No one else could hear them. It was not always about things that made sense to me. As for why I’m telling you this, it is partly because of what you said when you came to the lens maker’s, but also because of this man.” She pointed at the wardrobe.

“What?” I jumped back as if I’d been electrocuted, leaving the wardrobe door ajar. “What man?”

She pointed. “He stands there, with a cigarette.”

Sherwood Smith is a master of the fantasy genre, and this book isn’t quite like any other. More swashbuckling romance. With vampires. And these ones definitely don’t sparkle.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/blood_spirits.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

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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!