Review of This Wicked Fate, by Kalynn Bayron

Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

This Wicked Fate

by Kalynn Bayron

Bloomsbury, 2022. 310 pages.
Review written November 13, 2022, from a library book

This Wicked Fate is the second book about Briseis, a descendant of Hecate, one of the Greek gods. In the course of her battle in the first book with descendants of Jason, one of her two mothers was killed. By the same descendant of Jason who years ago killed her birth mother, the descendant of the goddess.

But Hecate can keep her mother safe for one cycle of the moon. So in this book, Bri and her allies and relatives are working to complete an impossible task — collect the last piece of the Heart of Absyrtus.

If that sounds like the plot of a Rick Riordan book, it did to me, too. I think it’s safe to say that if you enjoy the Rick Riordan books, you’ll enjoy this one, too. The main difference being these characters are older teens, most of them are black, and the romances are between women.

Although there are life-or-death stakes, the story reads as light-hearted and fun. I like Briseis powers — she can command plants, make them grow, and is unaffected by any poisonous plant. Two of her allies have become immortal from previous encounters with the Heart.

But they face many obstacles learning where the remaining piece of the Heart is, getting there, and bringing the pieces together. And of course there’s a deadline with the cycle of the moon, and others who want to get there first.

I wasn’t tremendously invested in the characters, which might be simply because I hadn’t read the first book. But I did enjoy reading the story and liked seeing a brainy Black girl triumph in an action-packed adventure tale.

kalynnbayron.com
bloomsbury.com

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Review of The Spellshop, by Sarah Beth Durst

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Spellshop

by Sarah Beth Durst
read by Caitlin Davies

Macmillan Audio, 2024. 12 hours, 12 minutes.
Review written September 27, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Spellshop is a novel for adults that reads like a sweet middle grade story (and I mean that in all the best ways). Yes, our main character is an adult, who’s been working for many years at the Great Library of Alyssium, but years of staying away from other people, happy with her books and with the sentient plant who serves as her assistant, has left Kiela good-hearted and somewhat naive.

As the book opens, the great capital city has been through a revolution – and a mob has started burning the library. Fortunately, Kiela had prepared by packing up some of the most important spell books in crates on a library boat, so she is able to escape with the books and with her plant assistant Kaz. She heads to one of the outer islands, to the cottage where she was born, but which her parents left when she was a child.

In the Empire, it was illegal for someone not a sorcerer to cast spells, but Kiela’s not entirely sure who’s in charge now, and there’s a need for magic on the island, as the imperial sorcerers have been neglecting it for years. And she has those spell books….

It begins as she tries to figure out how to make a living and casts a spell that makes raspberry bushes grow. She has her family recipe book for jam, and she decides to open a jam shop – and sell some “remedies” on the side. Maybe she can help the islanders with the plants that are failing and the springs that have dried up. Maybe she can help her handsome and helpful neighbor Loren with his mer-horses.

It all seems to be going well until a terrible magical storm hits the island and Loren rescues a woman whose ship is destroyed in the storm. She says she’s an imperial inspector. How will Kiela hide her magic?

This is a feel-good magic story. Yes, there’s romance, but the only physical affection is kissing. Yes, there’s real danger, but everyone is revealed to have a good heart. (Well, except one guy, and he’s dealt with in a gentle way.) It’s a story about Kiela finding a place and a home and making friends and helping those friends, and I just know they’re all going to live happily ever after, and I so enjoyed spending time with them.

This is a perfect dose of charm if you have had enough of sex, darkness, and death with your fantasy. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy that, too! But this was a sweet change and a well-written story that leaves you feeling happy.

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Review of My Two Border Towns, by David Bowles, illustrated by Erika Meza

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

My Two Border Towns

by David Bowles
illustrated by Erika Meza

Kokila (Penguin Random House), 2021. 36 pages.
Review written September 30, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Here’s a joyful and brightly-colored picture book about a boy who lives in Texas not far from the border with Mexico and goes back and forth between the towns on either side of the river with his father often. I’ve heard the award-winning author speak at library conferences and award celebrations about growing up near the border and about liminal spaces.

This book tells about the boy and his father getting up early, getting a list from his mother, and spending a day on the Other Side.

This town’s a twin of the one where I live, with Spanish spoken everywhere just the same,
but English mostly missing till it pops up like grains of sugar on a chili pepper.

The have an errand at the boy’s aunt and uncle’s jewelry shop, and he plays with his cousins while his dad takes care of that. The boy had brought a special bag with things for his “friends,” and when they work on the shopping list and prescriptions for Mamá, they pick up more things for them.

On the way back over the border, the line is long, but Dad pulls over to the side.

A line of people camp along the edge, entire families from the Caribbean and Central America.

Refugees, Dad calls them. Stuck between two countries.

The U.S. says there’s no room, and Mexico says it can hardly look after its own gente.

Élder sees me and rushes over. His hair is longer than when we first met, almost six months back.

They share their special handshake and the boy shows him the stuff he brought. They have medicine for Élder’s mother, too.

He wishes Élder and his family could go back and forth across the border like they do with their passports.

“Soon, m’ijo,” Dad says. “It’s unfair to make him wait, since our country has room for his family right now.

“But when they get their chance at last, we’ll welcome him with open arms.”

All the way home I imagine a wonderful day,
when all my friends from the Other Side
can go back and forth
between my two
border towns,
just like me.

This book tackles a tough topic, but leaves the reader with an entirely happy message. It gives me a window — I don’t really know anything about what life is like near the border. But it also leaves me in awe of this family who matter-of-factly care for those who need it and don’t see it as doing the needy a favor, but as joyfully sharing with friends.

davidbowles.us
penguin.com/kids

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Review of Echoes of Grace, by Guadalupe García McCall

Paranormal, Teen Fiction Review 0

Echoes of Grace

by Guadalupe García McCall

Tu Books (Lee & Low), 2022. 375 pages.
Review written November 5, 2022, from a library book

This was a hard book to read, yet a lyrical and powerful one.

Grace and her sister Mercy live near the border in Texas with their father, their abuela, and Mercy’s little boy Alexander. But right at the beginning, when Grace is supposed to be watching Alexander, he runs out into traffic and is killed.

But Grace keeps on seeing him. He follows her around as she goes about her day, as he did before. And this goes with the Echoes that Grace sees, strange visions and otherworldly people. Her mother and grandmother had visions like that, but her family isn’t very patient about them, and her sister hates her because of Alexander’s death.

And while Grace is coping with everything life is throwing at her, she also remembers what happened three years earlier, when she went to Mexico and stayed with her mother’s mother. This was after her mother was killed nine years before that. The chapters alternate, leading up to an awful event.

But why did her mother never tell them that their grandmother was alive? And why is Grace only now remembering what happened? And how does it relate to the visions of her mother that keep popping up in disturbing ways?

This book is not about sweetness and light. But it is about love and power and carrying on.

ggmccall.com
leeandlow.com

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Review of Time and Time Again, by Chatham Greenfield

Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Time and Time Again

by Chatham Greenfield

Bloomsbury, 2024. 327 pages.
Review written November 6, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is a time loop novel. Instead of taking us through how Phoebe figures out she’s in a time loop, this book starts on Version 26 of her August 6th. She has the same breakfast with her mom, walks to her dad’s house, plays Scrabble and eats his chicken parmesan and then goes to sleep with her Irritable Bowel Syndrome acting up, because the time she told her dad she couldn’t eat it, she hurt his feelings and it wasn’t worth it.

But every day on the way to her dad’s house, she sees her childhood best friend Jess drive by, and they exchange a look. Phoebe analyzes the look, but doesn’t know what to make of it, and starts thinking of that as the brightest spot of her (repeated) day.

And then one of the repeated days, she’s not paying attention and walks in front of Jess’s car. Jess hits Phoebe, and comes out of her car, very much alarmed. Phoebe isn’t hurt, but it’s a dramatic change from the other days. And then the next day, Jess remembers that it happened! Before long, it becomes apparent that Jess has been pulled into the time loop, too. Jess is appalled that Phoebe has been doing the same thing every day, so she decides to show Phoebe how to have fun.

And then the two girls fall in love – or rather both realize that they already had a crush on each other. It’s beautifully done, since they have all the time in the world. But we see the progression of shared moments and plans to brighten each other’s days.

Now, in any speculative fiction novel, I’m picky about how the magic (or “science”) works. But I do tend to suspend my criticism for time loop novels, because it’s such a fun story idea. However, I have to say the biggest challenge is how they come out of the loop and what the repercussions are. And does it help the whole thing make any sense? For me, that was where this novel fell short and I didn’t really buy how it worked at the end. That said, I still loved reading this – it’s a charming romance between a fat girl with IBS and a girl who is disabled. Because no, those aren’t the most important things about either one. And I love the way their romance builds on their childhood friendship and how each one fills in encouragement when the other one needs it. So no matter how you feel about the time loop, this is a delightful romance.

chatgreenfield.com

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Review of The Lost Dreamer, by Lizz Huerta, read by Elisa Melendez and Inés del Castillo

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Lost Dreamer

by Lizz Huerta
read by Elisa Melendez and Inés del Castillo

Macmillan Audio, 2022. 10 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written November 5, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

The Lost Dreamer says on Amazon that it’s book one of a duology, so fair warning that there’s not much resolution at the end of this book — it feels like half of a story.

But what we do have is full of rich world-building. Chapters alternate between two different teenage girls. Both of them are dreamers — at night, they experience “The Dream,” a world inhabited by spirits, where they learn truths about the waking world. When someone dies, they say they “returned to the Dream.”

Indir, the first featured character, is part of a family of Dreamers, and she serves at the Temple of Night in the capital city. But after she dreams to answer a question for the king on his deathbed, her ability to enter the Dream disappears. Is she still a Dreamer? And then when the new king brings fire warriors to the city and seems hostile to Dreamers, they all fear that he’s ushering in chaos.

Our alternating featured character is Saya. Nobody knows she’s a dreamer, because her mother won’t allow her to tell anyone. In fact, her mother uses Saya’s gift to act as a seer in the villages where they travel. But Saya begins to want to come into her own.

Both of the girls’ stories increase in danger. The way they come together toward the end of the book surprised me.

The Dream is fantastical, and both characters spend plenty of time there. The author does a good job conveying how the Dream and the world about it works. As well as making us worry about what’s coming to that world.

lizzhuerta.com

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Review of May the Best Player Win, by Kyla Zhao

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

May the Best Player Win

by Kyla Zhao

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2024. 225 pages.
Review written October 28, 2024, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
Starred Review

May the Best Player Win is about a middle school student named May who loves playing chess. As the book opens, she wins a trophy for being the top girl player at the State Middle School competition.

That gets her lots of attention from her school, and even from the media – but also prompts some jealousy from her competition on her own team. She thought Ralph was her friend, and they tied at the competition, but he tells her she’s not really that good and is only getting the attention because she’s a girl. So that starts a bet between them over which one will be named team captain when they compete at Nationals.

Meanwhile, her school’s doing a publicity campaign, and they pair May up with Mario, a soccer star, who turns out to be nice as well as athletic. But May needs to keep working on her chess game, and her friend Becca (who’s also on the team) wants time with her, and the school schedules picture-taking with Mario. When May starts telling little white lies to keep her schedule straight, Becca feels hurt.

This book does a great job of portraying middle school concerns and middle school pressures. We’re with May in her struggles to prioritize it all. And I like the natural way she gets to thinking about regaining her joy in playing chess that she had when she started playing at six years old, when she wasn’t thinking so much about winning.

The book gives each chapter a title that’s a chess term, with its definition, and they all fit remarkably well. It does a nice job of giving us the feel of what goes into being a serious chess player without getting lost in the details. It also felt like a genuine explanation of the game without hand-waving or magical abilities that just make the player “good” – I suspect because the author reveals at the back that she learned to play chess at six years old, like May – but later dropped out after encountering discrimination and criticism of girls and feeling pressured to win. I love that she’s got May facing those same obstacles and overcoming. May this be true for more and more girls today.

I love her letter to the reader at the back of the book (and the story is strong enough to carry it), which ends like this:

I hope May’s adventures inspire you to hold on to the joy of playing – in chess or in any activity you choose. Don’t let the weight of expectations dim the sparkle of your love for the game. Don’t let others tell you whether you are or aren’t good enough, because the only thing that should matter is your passion and determination. So, keep playing, keep dreaming, and most importantly, enjoy every moment on and off the chessboard.

KylaZhao.com

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Review of The Lost Wonderland Diaries, by J. Scott Savage

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

The Lost Wonderland Diaries

by J. Scott Savage

Shadow Mountain, 2020. 344 pages.
Review written September 6, 2022, from a library book

The Lost Wonderland Diaries is a wonderful tribute to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a great-great-niece of Lewis Carroll discovers his lost diaries and gets pulled into Wonderland with her friend.

And it turns out that Wonderland is in trouble! They’ve been expecting an “Alice” to come and put it to rights. Celia is very sure she’s not the one. Her friend Tyrus, though, is an avid reader, and would love to be the hero of a story.

I probably should have remembered that I’m not really a fan of Alice in Wonderland before I picked up this book. The chaotic way the magic works, and Alice’s seemingly random progression through the story never made much sense to me, and this book is similar in that.

Now, there are some fun mathematical puzzles sprinkled through the books. I really liked Celia and Tyrus — even though they represent one of my pet peeves — the idea that “numbers people” and “books people” are wholly separate things.

Though in Celia’s case, she’s dyslexic, so it seemed fair that she’d have trouble with words and reading. (I wonder if she has trouble telling apart 9s and 6s.) I appreciated that she was shown to be intelligent despite her dyslexia. And Tyrus’s love for books and references to great children’s books was a lot of fun. I appreciated that both of them solved some of the puzzles with their own strengths.

But a little more problematic for me was the idea that the Queen of Hearts is all about logic and the King of Hearts all about imagination — as if those two things are opposites. I don’t buy it. Yes, the story showed that you need both, but I just don’t think they’re as fundamentally opposed as this book implies.

I suppose it’s all because two of my biggest passions are math and reading. And I actually think those things go together.

All that said, this was a well-written book and a good story. And yes, we need both imagination and logic! Fans of Lewis Carroll will especially enjoy it.

shadowmountain.com

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Review of The Wood Between the Worlds, by Brian Zahnd

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Wood Between the Worlds

A Poetic Theology of the Cross

by Brian Zahnd

InterVarsity Press, 2024. 206 pages.
Review written October 21, 2024, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

Here’s another book about the theology of the cross. This one, as seen in the title, takes a poetic approach. Here’s how he puts it in the first chapter, as he tells about a walking trip in Spain where he entered every church along the way and paid attention to the crucifixes:

For six weeks I saw different crucifixes every day, and as I walked, I meditated on what it meant that when the Son of God came into the world he was nailed to a tree. I heeded the Spirit’s admonition to resist a quick answer. This is the bane of tidy atonement theories. The idea that we can sum up the meaning of the crucifixion in a sentence or two borders on the blasphemous. Atonement theories have an unfortunate tendency to reduce the crucifixion to a single meaning. This is an enormous mistake. If you’re going to dabble in atonement theories, at least keep it plural. Reducing the cross to a single meaning quarantines the cross so it doesn’t touch too many areas of our lives.

So this book is more of a meditation on the cross than it is an explanation of the cross. There is an inset of color pictures of crucifixes from all over the world and from many different time periods.

Here’s another way he puts that thought:

The meaning of the cross is not singular, but kaleidoscopic. Each turn of a kaleidoscope reveals a new geometric image. This is how we must approach our interpretation of the cross – through the eyepiece of a theological kaleidoscope. That the word kaleidoscope is a Greek word meaning “beautiful form” makes this all the more apropos. I believe it is safe to assume there are an infinite number of ways of viewing the cross of Christ as the beautiful form that saves the world. In this book I seek to share some of the beautiful forms I see as I gaze upon the cross through my theological kaleidoscope.

But one thing you will not find here is any teaching that Jesus saves us from God.

The cross is not what God inflicts in order to forgive; the cross is what God in Christ endures as he forgives. This is an essential and enormous clarification! At the cross the Son does not act as an agent of change upon the Father. Orthodox theology has always insisted that God is not subject to change or mutation. Rather, God is immutable. Thus the cross is not where Jesus changes God but where Jesus reveals God. On Good Friday Jesus does not save us from God; Jesus reveals God as Savior! We don’t have to imagine the Son pacifying an angry Father in order to understand Good Friday as the epicenter of forgiveness.

Instead, Jesus shows us what God is like.

What do I see when I look upon Christ in death with a pierced side? I see that a soldier’s spear has opened a window into the heart of God. As I gaze into the heart of God I discover that there is no wrath, no malice, no threat, no vengeance; only compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mt 12:34). Jesus dies, not with a curse upon his lips, but with a plea for pardon. To see Christ upon the cross is to see into the very depths of the heart of God. Where once in our distant pagan past we imagined there lurked monstrous intent threatening harm, we now discover there is only tender compassion. On the cross we encounter a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. When we look through the riven side of Christ into the heart of God, we gaze upon a vast cosmos filled with galaxies of grace.

I like the way he also reaches for poetry, literature, music, and art to help us understand the centrality of the cross – as you can see in the title from C. S. Lewis.

The cross of Christ is the wood between the worlds – the world that was and the world to come.

Or you can see it in the chapter using images from Tolkien’s writings.

Just as Middle-earth could not be saved, only enslaved, by the Ring of Power, so Christianity cannot save the world by political power; it can only be corrupted by it. Jesus Christ crucified is the everlasting indictment on those who forsake the way of the cross to reach for the ring of political power. The power we are promised by our Lord is the power of the Holy Spirit – the power to love, forgive, and heal. If we try to wield the Ring of Power (or Caesar’s sword), it will only corrupt us.

There’s lots more in this book. I think I’m giving up on summarizing it and will be content that the quotations I’ve pulled out will give you an idea of what’s here. I recommend this book as an aid to meditating on the cross of Christ, the wood between the worlds.

brianzahnd.com
ivpress.com

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Review of Isla to Island, by Alexis Castellanos

Children's Fiction Review, Graphic Novel, Historical, Starred Review 0

Isla to Island

by Alexis Castellanos

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2022. 192 pages.
Review written September 20, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Isla to Island is a historical graphic novel about a young Cuban girl named Marisol who gets sent to New York City as part of Operation Peter Pan in 1960, an operation to rescue children of Cubans who feared they would be imprisoned under Castro for their political beliefs, and their children with them.

The graphic novel story is mostly done with pictures, and it’s beautifully done. Scenes of Marisol in Cuba with her family are bright and colorful. The only text (and there’s not a lot) is in Spanish, including a rooster that crows, “Qui qui ri qui.” Already in Cuba, we see that Marisol loves flowers and books.

When she says a sad good-by to her parents, she lands in a New York City that is cold and gray and in the middle of winter. Her caretakers there are kind, but the colors are gone. At school, people laugh at her, and she doesn’t understand what the teacher is saying and gets failing grades.

But then she discovers the library. Books are the first things that are full of color, so much so that streams of color waft from them. And through the books she chooses, her caretakers discover her love of flowers and bring her to the greenhouse in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, where she sees familiar flowers from Cuba.

The graphic novel is great at visually representing Marisol’s dawning hope. An Author’s Note at the back explains about Operation Peter Pan and the author’s family connections to Marisol’s story.

This is a quick read with so much presented visually, so a short time spent gives you a lovely and uplifting story.

alexiscastellanos.com
simonandschuster.com/kids

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