Review of A Far Wilder Magic, by Allison Saft

Fantasy, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

A Far Wilder Magic

by Allison Saft
read by Jesse Vilinsky

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2022. 14 hours, 36 minutes.
Review written December 10, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

A Far Wilder Magic is an atmospheric and amazing young adult fantasy novel about a world slightly removed from ours, but not all that different. It’s not a medieval world, but a country from about a hundred years ago, where alchemy is the road to political accomplishments in the country of New Albion.

Margaret lives alone, cutting wood, doing chores, keeping their manor going while her mother is off on a quest for alchemical supplies. She’s been gone months longer than usual, and Margaret’s not sure if she’s coming back. Then at night she sees the magical white fox, the hala, and knows the Hunt will be coming to her small town.

But first, a young man comes to her isolated manor. He’s looking for an alchemical apprenticeship with her mother, and he won’t take No for an answer. This is Wes’s last chance to get a sponsor and make something of himself. He’s not good at studying, but he does have a talent for alchemy, if someone will give him a chance. He’s a hard person to turn away, however much Margaret doesn’t like him.

And then Margaret realizes that Wes might be her only chance to enter the hunt, kill the hala, and win back her mother’s attention. She is a crack shot, but she needs an alchemist. And Wes needs a chance with her mother, too. So they start an uneasy alliance.

But both Wes and Margaret are outsiders, not welcomed into this New Albion tradition. They first must compete to win their place in the top tier, and even that is fraught with danger.

And yes, we’ve got an enemies-to-lovers plot going on. But it’s skillfully done, as we see deeply into the characters of both Wes and Margaret — both their insecurities and their kind hearts. By the time they come together, we’re completely on their sides. The spell is woven gently and believably, and it all builds to danger and difficult decisions at the time of the Hunt.

Fair warning is there are a couple of fairly intense sex scenes. The skillful building of the romance makes the intensity seem right for this book.

A marvelously woven novel about two teens figuring out what they want out of life and how to get there.

allisonsaft.com
wednesdaybooks.com

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Review of Bone Weaver, by Aden Polydoros

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Bone Weaver

by Aden Polydoros

Inkyard Press, 2022. 428 pages.
Review written November 25, 2022, from my own copy, sent to me by the publisher for Cybils judging
Starred Review

Bone Weaver begins with a girl named Toma sewing back the finger of her sister, Galina. Before long, we realize that Galina is not alive. She’s an undead upyr, and she loses body parts if she’s not careful. But when Toma sews them back, using patterns from her mother’s rushnyk, an embroidered cloth she left with Toma — the parts heal back as if they were never lost.

And Toma quickly gets another chance to use her stitches when she finds an injured man in a downed airship. She drags him home and stitches his wound. He’s horrified by her family of upyri — who have been caring for Toma the last six years since she was left traumatized and alone. But it turns out the rescued man is Mikhail the young tsar — and a usurper named Koschei has stolen his magic.

But then some men in another airship come after the tsar — but find Galina and decide to take her to Koschei to win his favor after losing the tsar. Toma cannot let her sister fall into the hands of someone who experiments with the undead, so she sets out after them in the company of the tsar, who wants to find allies to try to win the country back.

Along the way they see examples of terrible things done by those in power — tsarists and rebels alike. Will Mikhail take those things to heart? Will Toma be able to save her sister?

I happened to be reading this book while I was in the middle of listening to another book that dealt with bringing people back from death. In the other book, it was seen as something that can bring no good thing — not so much in this book, but I lean toward that feeling, that death is something it’s probably best not to mess with, especially bringing people back.

But I did like the way this book played off Russian and Slavic folklore, encountering various undead creatures and Toma seeing the humanity remaining in them.

There’s lots of death and undeath in this story, but it’s a compelling tale about a girl with power and heritage she doesn’t even realize. As she helps others, she comes to understand herself better, deals with her own past trauma, and gets ready to face living people again.

AdenPolydoros.com

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Review of This Rebel Heart, by Katherine Locke, read by Kathleen Gati and Steven Jay Cohen

Historical, Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

This Rebel Heart

by Katherine Locke
read by Kathleen Gati and Steven Jay Cohen

Books on Tape, 2022. 11 hours, 34 minutes.
Review written November 20, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

This Rebel Heart is an absorbing, atmospheric look at the Budapest student uprising of 1956, when the Soviets left Hungary for a week. The book is full of supernatural elements, which at first I thought were figurative, but ended up being a fundamental part of the story. For example, since the Soviets came, the city has lost its color. The blue sky was the last to go. People can barely remember the names of colors, and marvel when they begin to come back.

Another example is in the back story of our main character, Csilla. During the war, when the Jews were being rounded up and shot next to the river Duna that runs through Budapest, Csilla’s father led their family into the river, and they lived in its waters for the rest of the war, protected from the Nazis. And now the river constantly talks to Csilla.

As the book begins, Csilla’s parents were recently exonerated and reburied. Csilla’s father had been important in the Communist party, but he was falsely accused of treason and Zionism and executed years before. Now he has been publicly exonerated — but the authorities seem to have used his funeral as a cover to crack down on students at the university.

Csilla has tickets to get out of Hungary with her aunt Ilona — her only surviving relative after the Holocaust. But despite that immanent escape, Csilla gets pulled into the cause of the rebels. She becomes friends with a young man whose lover was recently executed by the secret police for homosexuality. And starts thinking about his cause and all that is wrong with Hungary under the Soviets. And then someone leaves her father’s journals at her doorstep, and she reads about his vision for Hungary. Is it even possible to right the wrongs he committed in support of that vision?

And then Csilla meets a handsome young man who tells her he is an angel of death. He is an angel of death who comes to be with children who are facing death. So why has he been pulled to Budapest?

This is an evocative novel, rich with the atmosphere of Budapest. I visited Budapest years ago, and the words of this book pulled me right back to that beautiful city, dominated by the presence of the Duna River. It was easy for me to believe the river would speak to one of her children.

katherinelockebooks.com
GetUnderlined.com

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Review of Scout’s Honor, by Lily Anderson

Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

Scout’s Honor

by Lily Anderson

Henry Holt, 2022. 403 pages.
Review written October 24, 2022, from a library book
2023 Printz Honor Book

Scout’s Honor is the story of Prudence Perry, a legacy scout with the Ladybirds. The Ladybird Scouts are a secret society that to the world outside appears to be about having tea and serving cookies to students taking the SAT. But in actuality, they are about fighting monsters — specifically, mulligrubs that come from another dimension and feed on people’s emotions. Only legacy scouts and those who drink the Tea of Seeing can see the grubs, but everyone feels the effects. The Ladybird scouts patrol and fight grubs to keep their neighborhoods safe.

Most mulligrubs just zap your energy when they consume your emotions, but if they become carnivorous, they consume people. And three years ago, when Prudence was thirteen, she saw a carnivorous grub do exactly that, when her friend and sister scout died in the jaws of a scranch.

Prue quit the Ladybirds after that. She felt responsible and continued to have PTSD about the incident, which her friends think was a mountain lion attack.

But her mother wasn’t happy about Prue withdrawing from the Ladybirds. And this summer, with two new scouts turning thirteen and ready to be trained, after Prue gets caught sneaking out, the punishment is that she is responsible for training the new recruits.

Right from the start, there’s a fiasco and some of Prue’s other friends drink the Tea of Seeing. But during the summer, Prue learns from her now three new recruits and wonders if there might be a better, gentler, less competitive way to be a Ladybird. Though all along she worries that the babybirds don’t realize how dangerous fighting mulligrubs can be.

The book is entertaining and just a little bit silly, as it portrays the Ladybirds being about all things pink and bloodthirsty fighting techniques. Some of the little details of the world-building didn’t quite work for me, but if you take it as entertainment, with thoughts thrown in about gender roles and responsibilities, it’s an awful lot of fun.

mslilyanderson.com
fiercereads.com

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Review of Bitter, by Akwaeke Emezi, read by Bahni Turpin

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Bitter

by Akwaeke Emezi
read by Bahni Turpin

Listening Library, 2022. 7 hours, 11 minutes.
Review written October 10, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

I heard great things about the author’s National Book Award Finalist last year, Pet, but I never did get it read. Now I am going to get my hands on it. This riveting novel was unusual and powerful. Bitter is a prequel to Pet. It’s set in a time of unrest in a city named Lucille.

Bitter is a queer Black girl who got recruited out of unloving foster care to attend a school for artists called Eucalyptus. Unfortunately, Eucalyptus is right in the city center, and the sounds of protests and violence come into Bitter’s room and fill her with fear. Some of her good friends have ties with Assata, an organization behind the protests, working for justice. Lucille is a place with police brutality based on skin color and where people in power exploit the poor.

Meanwhile, Bitter has a secret skill. She can paint small creatures and make them come to life with a drop of her blood. They don’t last long, but making them helps Bitter feel grounded and less alone.

But when one of Bitter’s friends gets horribly injured at a protest, Bitter gets angry. And she paints something bigger and more terrifying than she ever has before. When this creature comes to life, things start that Bitter doesn’t know how to control.

Something I appreciated in this novel, as opposed to some fantasy novels I read last year — I appreciated that the main characters shrank back from unnecessary violence, even in service to a needed revolution, even against people who had done terrible things. Of course, not everyone felt the same way, and events set in motion aren’t always easy to stop — but I appreciated the value placed on human life — even the life of humans who had done evil things.

akwaeke.com
listeninglibrary.com

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Review of My Throat an Open Grave, by Tori Bovalino

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

My Throat an Open Grave

by Tori Bovalino

Page Street YA, 2024. 301 pages.
Review written December 30, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Based on the cover, not being a horror fan, I honestly didn’t expect to even like this book. I expected I’d give up after about twenty pages, deciding it’s not for me. I did not at all expect to read it avidly and to be sorry I was finished at the end because I loved it. I didn’t expect to recognize shades of my own upbringing in its pages and to have my heart go out to the girl telling the story.

Now, I also don’t like books where religious people are the bad guys – except, well, when they deserve to be. This book portrays a rural village in a forest – where the church is the center of the community and it’s all about purity culture. The girls are given a “Love Waits” ring and told that if they “give themselves” before marriage, they will be broken and worthless.

But they’re also told about the Lord of the Wood. Sometimes he comes into the village and takes babies. And then the villagers send a girl to the Lord of the Wood to get the baby back. Only no babies or girls have ever returned.

And now it’s Leah’s turn. She’s convinced that because she was worn down by her baby brother’s cries and wished for respite – that must be why the Lord of the Wood took him away. And her mother is convinced it’s Leah’s fault, too. So the whole village gathers in the church. Her mother brings her forward, the pastor marks her with a bloody hand print, and together the whole village sends her across the river to the Lord of the Wood.

And then she meets the Lord of the Wood, and he’s not what she expected at all. In fact, that part is what made me love the book. There’s a whole community on the other side of the river. They’re kind, compassionate, and patient with Leah, and she begins to be able to see herself more clearly.

There’s magic in this book, and magic in the Lord of the Wood and the community living in the forest. But it’s not the sinister magic Leah was led to believe in, and the people she meets there win her heart, as well as winning over the reader.

But she also has to reckon with what she learned about her home village. And about herself.

This isn’t so much a book for horror fans as it is a book shining light on the damage that purity culture can do and celebrating self-determination and the beauty of young lives – rising above judgment.

Trust me! It’s a wonderful book!

toribovalino.com

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Review of We Mostly Come Out at Night, edited by Rob Costello

Award Winners, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

We Mostly Come Out at Night

15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures

edited by Rob Costello

Running Press Teens (Hachette Book Group), 2024. 364 pages.
Review written December 30, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review
2024 Cybils Finalist, YA Speculative Fiction

I don’t read a lot of short story collections, because there are too many opportunities to put down the book and move on to something else, but when my fellow Cybils Award panelists had shortlisted this book not long before our discussion was due, I read it all within a couple days, and ended up loving it.

The subtitle tells you what’s going on. We’ve got queer authors writing about magical creatures. In a fun bonus, every story has a “Monster Reflection” afterward, with that author talking about how they feel about monsters.

Something I particularly liked about this anthology was how often the teens featured had been taught to think of themselves as monstrous – and in the story, they get the chance to discover their own beauty. There were a lot of stories where the monsters are the characters you like best.

Here’s a bit from the wonderful Introduction by the editor:

But that’s what stories do. They prepare us to face the unknown. They arm us with possibility. They enable us to apply some semblance of order and meaning to a universe that is otherwise indifferent to our existence. Telling a monster story is a powerful act, not least because such a story gives a shape and limmit to an otherwise amorphous anxiety, making it seem less scary, less immense, less baffling and unconquerable. Stories change our perspective on our own strengths and vulnerabilities. They alter our perception of what threatens us most. They provide us with comfort and reassurance — even in the face of tremendous loss — and in so doing, they offer us the hope that we can conquer our worst fears and take back control of our fate.

There’s a huge amount of variety in this collection. I’m not a monster movie or a monster book fan – but I loved the creativity and insight and imagination in this set of tales. The stories were consistently good, and so many of them get you thinking. I’m proud this is on our Cybils list.

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Review of The Wilderness of Girls, by Madeline Claire Franklin

Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Wilderness of Girls

by Madeline Claire Franklin

Zando Young Readers, 2024. 360 pages.
Review written December 7, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is a story where you’re never quite sure if the magic really happened. I’m going to give the magic the benefit of the doubt and list in in the Paranormal section of my Teen reviews page.

The book opens on the night Eden’s father is arrested for embezzlement. The same night, her stepmother takes off for a tropical resort, and her stepbrother is doing graduate work in Germany – so Eden goes to stay with her Uncle Jimmy in Happy Valley. Even though she hasn’t seen much of Jimmy since her mother died many years ago, since her father kept him away from her.

Eden decides to change her name to Rhi, and adjusts to life in Happy Valley, though she still doesn’t have many friends. But she does some work for the rangers at the wildlife preserve, and one day when she’s walking a trail, she discovers four wild girls accompanied by two wolves – and one of the girls has her leg stuck in a bear trap.

The wolves tell the girls they can trust Rhi before they run off, and Rhi then becomes responsible for getting them help. The girl in the trap would lose her leg if she didn’t, but she feels a bit guilty.

It turns out that the girls have lived in the wilderness for thirteen years, cared for by a man named Mother. They lived in a “castle” – a giant hollow tree. He told them that they were four princesses from another world, Leutheria. And he’d seen a vision that soon after they found their fifth sister, a portal would open to bring them back to Leutheria and save that world.

But after Mother died – not long before Rhi found them – his magic stopped protecting their castle and it toppled. They are not angry with Rhi for taking them from the wild, because they believe she is the fifth princess. And that they’ll all go back to Leutheria together at the next lunar eclipse.

In the process of adjusting to the modern “civilized” world, many things happen to challenge their beliefs in what Mother told them. Was Mother a liar all along? A run-of-the-mill kidnapper? Can his prophecies be trusted? Is the magic real? And through it all, Rhi is walking with the girls, trying to come to terms with her own past.

It’s all very beautifully done, and I love the way the girls, including Rhi, are portrayed as growing strong and figuring out their own destiny rather than necessarily accepting the destiny put upon them. The characters – good and bad – are distinctively drawn and you feel the power of Rhi finding belonging and courage.

madelineclairefranklin.com
zandoprojects.com

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Review of Grief in the Fourth Dimension, by Jennifer Yu

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Grief in the Fourth Dimension

by Jennifer Yu
read by Tim Lounibos and Raechel Wong

Tantor Media, 2024. 8 hours, 46 minutes.
Review written November 26, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Grief in the Fourth Dimension features two dead teens in a white room. Kenny Zhou died months ago when his heart gave out unexpectedly, and Caroline Davison died in a car accident on a rainy day when she was in a hurry and the road was wet – and she got hit by a drunk driver.

Kenny doesn’t know how long he’s been in the room, but it responds to his wishes and thoughts. Furniture has appeared to make him comfortable and there’s a big-screen TV on the wall that shows him his parents and friends mourning at his funeral. Occasionally notes fall from the ceiling, responding to his thoughts.

And then Caroline shows up. It takes her a bit to realize she’s dead. But she quickly goes about making the room more comfortable. Although they went to the same high school, they never talked to each other. Now the TV begins showing her family and friends, too.

Kenny’s parents are worried that business in their restaurant has slumped after their son’s death. Caroline’s mother is looking for justice for the person who hit her daughter. Kenny’s best friend Iris hatches a scheme to do a memorial and fundraiser for his parents’ restaurant, and Caroline’s boyfriend and brother start spending time with each other. And Caroline and Kenny prove to have some things to work through themselves.

But then the two begin to discover limited ways they can reach out, to let their family and friends know they are watching – but with mixed results. They want to help them heal and move on and be happy.

And then it becomes clear that their deaths are much more closely entwined than either one realized, and the stakes become much higher. Can Caroline and Kenny help their loved ones make things right?

I’ve got to give a disclaimer: I don’t believe for a second that the afterlife will be like this for anyone. But it turns out to be a really fun way to tell a story about grief and about how many people are affected by one life. I was completely pulled into this novel from the start and able to grasp more nuances of the situations involved by looking at them from the eyes of Kenny and Caroline.

Oh, and while Caroline does miss her boyfriend, it was oddly refreshing to read a YA novel where kissing isn’t mentioned even once, let alone a novel about recently dead teens whose biggest regret isn’t that they wanted more sex. (Yes, I’ve read more than one novel like that. Not this one!)

A book about death that ends up being about life and about relationships.

byjenniferyu.com

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Review of Otherworldly, by F. T. Lukens

Audiobooks, Paranormal, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Otherworldly

by F. T. Lukens
read by Em Grosland, Kevin R. Free, and Natalie Naudus

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2024. 11 hours, 21 minutes.
Review written November 19, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This one charmed me. The prologue starts a bit creepily, with a witch making a bargain at a crossroads. She intends to bargain with a goddess, but instead three shades show up. The witch bargains away her soul in exchange for the secret of life – the ability to make a potion that will extend her life. When a magical familiar shows up to assist her, it’s not a cat or a bat, but a tall and handsome teenage boy.

Then chapter one of the book begins with Ellery, a teen who’s moved away from her family’s farm because after five years of winter, the farm is failing. Ellery’s impatient with her mother’s continued belief in the goddess, who clearly isn’t listening. Ellery is staying in the city with her cousin Charlie (a girl) and Charlie’s girlfriend Zada, and they’re working in the same diner as Charlie, running the dishwasher. As the book opens, Charlie alerts them that Hot Weird Guy is coming in – and we the readers recognize him as the familiar, Knox, picking up an order for the witch Arabella. Knox is friendly and open and waves at Ellery through the glass. He’s weird because he never wears clothes appropriate for the snowy weather, but he’s also definitely hot.

And then we switch to Knox’s perspective. The witch has a moment of triumph, realizing that Knox’s blood is exactly the ingredient her potion needs – and then the shades come and take her soul.

But Knox doesn’t want to go back to the Otherworld just yet, and he’s worried about how his queen (the goddess) hasn’t been answering his letters. Has she forgotten him? So he takes the potion and flees from the shades – and ends up running into Ellery in the dark behind the diner – and she ends up standing up to the shades, whom she thinks are people trying to kidnap him. Knox uses a last flash of magic and gets rid of them – for now.

Charlie and Zada are very kind people, so when Knox is obviously in trouble, they offer him a place to stay for a few days.

And that’s how Ellery gets embroiled in the otherworldly.

Knox has no magic without an active bargain, so Ellery and Knox make a bargain between themselves – Ellery will help him experience a list of fun things from the human world, and Knox will find out from supernatural sources why the winter has extended for five years.

Of course, that involves encountering more supernatural beings, which involves danger. And the having fun together indeed leads to falling in love – it’s beautiful to see.

But there are definite complications! If Knox goes back to the Otherworld, he will forget everything from the human world, because that’s his nature as a liminal being. And he will almost certainly be punished for running away from the shades. But Ellery’s not the kind of person who will let someone they love be unfairly punished.

I fell in love with the characters in this story, from Ellery the skeptic who’s still working hard to help their family, to sweet Knox, genuinely happy in human things, and to Charlie, who’s joyful chaos in human form. The story maybe sounds complicated when summarizing, but it all made sense as the book took you through it, with each complication leading to the next, and characters you wanted to keep spending time with.

ft-lukens.com

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