Review of The Seer of Sevenwaters, by Juliet Marillier

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Romance, Starred Review 0

The Seer of Sevenwaters

by Juliet Marillier

A Roc Book (Penguin), 2010. 432 pages.
Starred Review

Juliet Marillier’s Sevenwaters books are Just. So. Good. I’d been spacing them out, because I know I can’t really get anything else done once I’ve started one. But after reading Shadowfell, I was craving another Sevenwaters book, so I finally read this one I’d purchased some time before. I don’t know how she makes each book so good.

There are some patterns to the books, but this one broke most of them, at least in small ways. Yes, we have a heroine of the Sevenwaters family. Yes, she slowly falls in love with a kind stranger. Yes, the romance is exquisitely drawn-out, so we can see the love slowly blossoming.

But this time, the setting is the island of Inis Eala, where Sibeal’s cousin Johnny trains fighting men. Sibeal has known since childhood that she is called to be a druid. That means she’ll never marry, and she’s never wanted anything else, has always known her path.

Then a ship wrecks on their island, driven there by an uncanny storm. Sibeal finds the kind stranger washed up on shore. He has no memory of who he is or what happened. Once she’s saved him, Sibeal feels compelled to nurse him back to health. But there are mysteries surrounding him and the other shipwreck survivors, particularly the tall and beautiful mute woman who’s said to be crazy with grief from her lost child.

Juliet Marillier’s language is magical. It pulls you into ancient Ireland so thoroughly you may, like me, start feeling cautious about even starting one of her books, knowing you won’t get much else done until you finish it. But the story will stay with you long after.

Here’s where Sibeal sees and hears the shipwreck, just offshore:

My dreams had not shown me this. I had been weary from my long journey. Last night I had slept soundly. Now I wished I had resisted sleep and made use of my scrying bowl. But then, if I had been granted a vision of the storm, the wreck, what could I have done to prevent it? A seer was not a god, only a hapless mortal with her eyes wider open than most. Too wide, sometimes. Even as I stood here beside my sister, there was a cacophony of voices in my mind, folk shouting, screaming, praying to the gods for salvation, crying out as lost children might. It happened sometimes, my seer’s gift spilling over into chaos as the thoughts and feelings of other folk rushed into my mind. It was one of the reasons my mentor, Ciaran, had sent me here to Inis Eala.

julietmarillier.com
penguin.com

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Source: This review is based on my own personal copy, purchased via Amazon.com.

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 Austenland, by Shannon Hale

Austenalia, Chick Lit, Fiction Review, Romance, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Austenland

by Shannon Hale

Bloomsbury, 2007. 197 pages.
Starred Review
2007 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #2 Romance Fiction

I read Austenland when it first came out, but 2007 was a hectic year for me, what with finishing up my MLIS degree and working half-time and desperately needing a full-time job (and eventually finding one). So I didn’t get a lot of books reviewed that year, and never did post a review of this book.

This year, when Midnight in Austenland came out, it was a lovely excuse to reread Austenland and finally remedy that fault. I did not need to reread Austenland at all to enjoy Midnight in Austenland, since they involve different characters. But it did make a lovely excuse to enjoy this one again.

I am an avid and unashamed Jane Austen fan, and this book is one of my favorite take-offs on her work. The idea is simple: A theme park in England where women can pay to spend a few weeks immersed in a Jane Austen novel, to pretend they are really there.

Jane Hayes wasn’t rich enough to go there on her own steam, but her great-aunt Carolyn spots Jane’s hidden DVD of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth, and Aunt Carolyn figures out Jane’s obsession. She has some wise words about figuring out what’s real.

But then Aunt Carolyn goes a little farther. In her will, she gives Jane an all-expenses-paid trip to Austenland. The trip is nonrefundable, so Jane decides to take it. She reflects:

Jane lay back down, but this time placed the throw pillow under her head. Okay, all right, she would go. It would be her last hurrah. Like her friend Becky, who’d taken an all-you-can-eat dinner cruise the night before going in for a stomach stapling. Jane was going to have one last live-it-up and then quit men entirely. She’d play out her fantasy, have a staggering good time, and then bury it all for good. No more Darcy. No more men — period. When she got home she’d become a perfectly normal woman, content to be single, happy with her own self.

She’d even throw away the DVDs.

Well, needless to say, things don’t turn out quite as Jane expects. Along the way, we’ve got all kinds of fun and of course some mistaken first impressions.

This is a light and fluffy book, and so much fun. Clearly, Shannon Hale filled it with love and respect for Jane Austen, and she pulled off an appropriate tribute that’s a wonderful book in its own right.

Now I just wish someone would really create such a place as Austenland, and that I could go!

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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, purchased from Amazon as soon as it was published.

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 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

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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!

Review of The Girl of Fire and Thorns, by Rae Carson

Award Winners, Fantasy, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 4

The Girl of Fire and Thorns

by Rae Carson

Greenwillow Books, 2011. 423 pages.
Starred Review
2012 Morris Award Finalist

This is an impressive debut fantasy novel. The author builds a complex, realistic world, and stands a few fantasy conventions on their heads.

For example, where usually you have the heroine not wanting an arranged marriage because the intended is old and ugly, here’s how this book opens:

“Prayer candles flicker in my bedroom. The Scriptura Sancta lies discarded, pages crumpled, on my bed. Bruises mark my knees from kneeling on the tiles, and the Godstone in my navel throbs. I have been praying — no, begging — that King Alejandro de Vega, my future husband, will be ugly and old and fat.

“Today is the day of my wedding. It is also my sixteenth birthday.”

Elisa is the Chosen One. The whole world knows because of the Godstone in her navel. And her god communicates with her through the Godstone. There are prophecies about her.

One thing I like about this is that no one agrees on what the prophecies actually mean. That seems completely realistic, after all. If there were a prophecy, isn’t it likely that whole factions would have different beliefs about what that prophecy means, about what the Chosen One can do for them?

Elisa’s an unlikely heroine, too. She loves to eat, and is overweight and lazy, at least until circumstances force her to change. This book involves war, state politics, danger, adventure, romance, and even religion.

The biggest thing I didn’t like about this book involved my personal prejudice against present tense novels. Most of the time, the story was able to overcome that so I didn’t notice, but not all the time.

Still, Rae Carson built a fascinating world with this book, and the story is clearly not finished. I will definitely want to read this book again when the sequel comes out and spend more time with these characters.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/girl_of_fire_and_thorns.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 For Darkness Shows the Stars, by Diana Peterfreund

Austenalia, Romance, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

For Darkness Shows the Stars

by Diana Peterfreund

Balzer + Bray, 2012. 407 pages.
Starred Review

Wow. I’ve always loved Jane Austen’s Persuasion. The poignancy runs extra deep since Anne Elliot allowed herself to be persuaded to reject Captain Wentworth’s suit years ago. When he returns, successful and sought after, what can she do?

For Darkness Shows the Stars is a retelling of Persuasion in a science fiction setting. Diana Peterfreund keeps all the poignancy of the romantic situation, but adds layers of complexity involving technology and responsibility.

The story takes place on unknown islands of a post-apocalyptic Earth. Our descendants played with genetic engineering until they met with disaster. The survivors hid for years in caves. They proudly name themselves the Luddites. They did not use technology to play God, and so God allowed them to survive. Now their descendants are the rulers and estate owners. The descendants of the Lost were Reduced — mentally deficient, barely able to speak two words. The Reduced work the land, and the Luddite lords have a responsibility to care for them well.

Eighteen years ago, three babies were born on the same day on the North estate. Elliot North will grow to manage her father’s estate. Ro is Reduced, and loves Elliot and loves color and beauty, but her mental powers are not strong. Then there’s Kai. He’s Post-Reduction. He has full mental powers. But because his grandparents were Reduced, he doesn’t have the rights of the Luddite lords. He works on the estate and becomes friends with Elliot. But he can never be her equal.

Four years ago, Kai left the estate and asked Elliot to join him. But she can’t leave her responsibilities. Her mother died, and her father and sister were only interested in horses and status, not in running the estate and doing what’s best for all the people who live there.

Now Kai has returned. The North family has been forced to rent her grandfather’s boatyard to a prosperous group of Posts who are making a fleet of ships to explore the seas around the islands. They have already met with much success. The group has rejected their background on estates and chosen multisyllabic names for themselves. Admiral Innovation and his wife bring along a promising young captain, Malakai Wentforth. Elliot’s father and sister don’t even recognize that he is Kai returned. But she is all too aware. Kai is back, and he’s angry for being rejected.

Diana Peterfreund did a marvelous job paralleling the plot of Persuasion. And so doing, she keeps all the poignancy of the original, all of Elliot’s pain that she was the one who did the rejecting. And now Captain Wentforth has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, and she’s the one in difficult straits. He is far more interested in the daughter of the neighboring estate. And why shouldn’t he be?

She also adds complexity. The Luddites have strict protocols against overusing technology. But Elliot has been experimenting with better strains of wheat in order to feed the people on her estate. What is right? And then what about the Posts who come stretching the limits of what is acceptable? Are they inviting another apocalypse?

In this book, the somewhat silly accident in the middle of Persuasion takes on whole new significance when it leads to a revelation about the Posts.

Knowing the outline of what was going to happen made the story that much more compelling, and I was all the more surprised by some of the twists the author inserted. They didn’t change the romance, but they did add to the story.

To some Luddites, the Reduced were children, fallen and helpless, but still human. To others, they were beasts of burden, mostly mute and incapable of rational thought. Elliot’s mother had taught her that they were her duty, as they were the duty of all Luddites. Cut off as the population of these two islands had been since the Wars of the Lost, they might be the only people left on the planet. The Luddites, who had kept themselves pure of the taint of Reduction, therefore had the responsibility to be the caretakers not only of all of human history and culture but of humanity itself.

It had been generations since any Luddites had tried to rehabilitate the Reduced. Mere survival had taken precedence. But Ro was more than Elliot’s duty. She’d become Elliot’s friend, and sometimes Elliot even dared wonder what Ro could be — what any Reduced could be — if the Luddites had the resources to try.

The strength of Persuasion lies in the history between the two characters. In For Darkness Shows the Stars, the author plays on the history by inserting letters Elliot and Kai exchanged through the years as children growing up together. Their friendship was never sanctioned, so they placed letters in a knothole in the barn, a knothole Elliot can’t stop checking, even now.

This is a magnificent retelling of a classic romance. A story of lost love and regret and redemption mixed with genetic engineering and tampering with technology and divine right and responsibility to rule. Not a book I could stop reading before I’d finished.

dianapeterfreund.com
epicreads.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.

Review of Keeping the Castle, by Patrice Kindl

Historical, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Keeping the Castle

A Tale of Romance, Riches, and Real Estate

by Patrice Kindl

Viking, 2012. 261 pages.
Starred Review

I was so delighted to discover a new Patrice Kindl book coming out. I love her earlier books without fail. With the title Keeping the Castle, I expected this to be a fantasy novel. However, it turned out to be a straight — but incredibly funny — tribute to Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, with just a touch of Cinderella (two not-so-nice stepsisters).

This is a historical romance, set during the Regency era. Althea needs to marry well in order to keep the castle her great-grandfather built on a cliff by the sea. Her four-year-old brother will inherit the castle, but without money soon, there will be no castle to inherit. The opening scene will give you an idea of the humor in this book:

We were walking in the castle garden. The silvery light of early spring streaked across the grass, transforming the overgrown shrubbery into a place of magic and romance. He had begged me for a few moments of privacy, to “discuss a matter of great importance.” By this I assumed that he meant to offer me his hand in marriage.

“I love you, Althea — you are so beautiful,” murmured the young man into my ear.

Well, I was willing enough. I looked up at him from under my eyelashes. “I love you too,” I confessed. I averted my gaze and added privately, “You are so rich.”

Unfortunately, I apparently said this aloud, if just barely, and his hearing was sharper than one would expect, given his other attributes.

The gentleman in question does withdraw his proposal. But then Lord Boring comes into the neighborhood and promises a ball. Hijinks ensue.

I think my favorite sentence was this one, that shows how she is playing with even the names:

From Lesser Hoo to Hasty, and from Little Snoring to Hoo-Upon-Hill, nearly everyone under the age of ninety was looking forward to the event.

Yes, it’s quite predictable whom Althea will end up with (by whom she doesn’t like; this is a tribute to Pride and Prejudice after all), but getting there is so much fun, and some surprises are definitely included along the way.

patricekindl.com
penguin.com/teens

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/keeping_the_castle.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 a library 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.

Review of North of Beautiful, by Justina Chen Headley

Contemporary, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

North of Beautiful

by Justina Chen Headley

Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009. 373 pages.

I read this book on the flight home from KidLitCon 2011, having just heard the author speak as part of an insightful and thought-provoking panel on diversity, and having gotten the book signed. In the panel, Justina Chen said that she didn’t want to get categorized as a writer who wrote only Chinese characters, so she purposely made this character blonde and classically beautiful — with one exception. Here’s how the book begins:

“Not to brag or anything, but if you saw me from behind, you’d probably think I was perfect. I’m tall, but not too tall, with a ballerina’s long legs and longish neck. My hair is naturally platinum blond, the kind that curls when I want it to and cascades behind my back in one sleek line when I don’t. While my face couldn’t launch a thousand ships, it has the power to make any stranger whip around for a second look. Trust me, this mixture of curiosity and revulsion is nothing Helen of Troy would ever have encountered.

“Please don’t get me wrong; I’ve got all the requisite parts — and in all the right numbers, too: one nose, two eyes, and twenty-four teeth that add up to not a bad smile. But who notices pearly whites when a red-stained birthmark stretches across the broad plain of my right cheek? That’s exactly why I never went anywhere without my usual geologic strata of moisturizer, sunblock, medical concealer, foundation, and powder.”

Terra Rose Cooper is named after mapping terms and has a fascination for maps, like her father, the famous cartographer. She’s got a good-looking boyfriend who’s on the wrestling team, but she’s not sure he even really sees her or cares about her more than for sleeping with her. An interfering visiting professor puts a brochure in her hands about a new technique that could eliminate her birthmark. Should she try it?

Her Dad has said he won’t spend another penny on her face. She’d already tried so many things that didn’t work. She never even gets a chance to talk with her boyfriend about it. She does it during Christmas Break, so no one will see her while she’s healing.

But then, driving back from the first procedure with her mother (without telling her father), her car slides on black ice and she has an accident. She almost hits a boy about her age, dressed all in black. That boy, Jacob, has a scar on his own face. He was born in China with a cleft palate and was adopted by his mother Norah (who owns the car she hit) and brought to America.

Meanwhile, Terra’s applying for early entrance to college. She wants to escape from her family, and her emotionally abusive father, as her older brothers have done. One of them moved to China, and he sends tickets to Terra and her mother, telling them to come visit. Terra doesn’t think her mother would ever be brave enough.

One thing leads to another. After Norah and Jacob drive Terra and her mother home, Norah and Terra’s mother hit it off. So Terra sees more of Jacob. Then Norah talks them into traveling to China together, where Terra’s going to see much more of Jacob. But what about her boyfriend?

This book is full of mapping metaphors and symbolism — almost too many. Terra is an artist, who works with collages and employs many map fragments and symbols. She’s working on a “Beauty Map” about what the world thinks is beautiful. Jacob teaches her to geocache, which of course involves more navigational terms. Her Dad is presented as a famous cartographer whose career was ruined when he supported a map alleged to be by a Chinese navigator who discovered America before Columbus. That map was later proved to be a fraud, and that destroyed her father’s career and is why he moved to a town in the middle of nowhere.

That didn’t ring quite true for me. I wasn’t sure what kind of job a cartographer would even find in an isolated town. And how could something like that mess up his career? But then I was really brought up short by this paragraph:

“Dad’s work was purely high-tech, coding the software for global positioning systems, first for the military back in the eighties and then spinning off to do consulting work for software mapping companies.”

That didn’t ring true for me at all, because my Dad was instrumental in developing software for global positioning systems way before the eighties. And he is no cartographer; he’s an engineer. I’m sure that cartographers use GPS now that it’s been developed, but when my Dad first worked with satellite navigation, they were mostly used on ships, not by mapmakers. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure cartographers didn’t have much to do with developing the software for global positioning systems.

But that’s a piddly detail that I wouldn’t expect anyone else to notice. The author’s story did give us an explanation for why Terra’s Dad was so bitter and resentful and abusive, and especially angry at China. She was pretty vague about what the father actually did, so it felt just a little bit of a clunky way of pulling the map metaphor into the plot.

However, I have to say that the metaphor worked well. After all, Terra was thinking about her life’s path and what constitutes True Beauty.

And by the time I finished, I was impressed by how it was all woven together. It’s tricky to write a good story of someone dealing with emotional abuse, and this one pulled it off well. It’s not only Terra who’s learning to respect herself and stand up for herself; we also see her Mom coming into her own, especially on the China trip with Norah. It happens gradually, in realistic little steps. And it doesn’t end with a neat tie-up. We see that progress has been made, and things could go either way. I thought that whole aspect was masterfully done.

So this is an intriguing read, with lots to think about: true beauty, dealing with subtle emotional abuse, even sibling relationships. And the story is intriguing as well, with nicely done romance.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/north_of_beautiful.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 my own book, purchased at KidLitCon and signed by the author.

Review of The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

Contemporary, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green

Dutton Books, 2012. 318 pages.
Starred Review

I was already a fan of John Green and his books, but he has surpassed himself with this one. I think it’s funny that two books that I hope figure high in next year’s awards feature heroes August (in Wonder, a Newbery contender) and Augustus (in this book, which I would love to see win the Printz).

This is a book about teens who are dealing with cancer, but it’s not a “cancer book.” This is how Hazel, the narrator of this book, defines a “cancer book”, as she describes her favorite book, which is about a girl dealing with cancer:

“Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy. But in AIA, Anna decides that being a person with cancer who starts a charity is a bit narcissistic, so she starts a charity called The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera.”

Hazel meets Augustus at a cancer support group meeting that her mom makes her go to. But they hit it off well enough that she loans him the book and they start a relationship. John Green is good at portraying the clever banter of two nerds falling in love.

Now, Hazel’s favorite book does not end well. She wants nothing more than to find out from the author what happens after the book ends. And Augustus wants to make that happen. Meanwhile, their friend Isaac, who has eye cancer, is about to lose his vision, and his girlfriend breaks up with him right before that happens.

But there’s a whole lot more that happens, and I don’t want to say any more than that. I’ve heard objections that these teens use words that are too big even for adult readers — but those objectors clearly were not nerdy teens themselves. I know some nerdy teens, and dare I say I was one myself, and I remember the delight when you actually found someone who gets you, who lets you spout off your existential angst and crazy philosophizing. This book captures all that.

Now, these are teens dealing with life-threatening illness. Normal adolescence has a good share of drama. You’re figuring out life and love and your emotions and what’s important. Adolescence with a life-threatening illness thrown in has even more at stake. So these are some teens for whom philosophizing is completely appropriate.

I’ll say no more, except that I love the way John Green headed off anyone tracking him down and asking what happens after the book ends. He included an Author’s Note right at the front:

“This is not so much an author’s note as an author’s reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.

“Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.

“I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

This book is brilliant. I only hope there are enough nerds on the Printz committee for it to get the recognition it deserves. Meanwhile, read it!

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/fault_in_our_stars.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 book I purchased at ALA Midwinter Meeting and had signed by the author to my son Tim.

Review of Charles and Emma, by Deborah Heiligman

Award Winners, Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Nonfiction Review, Romance, Science, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Charles and Emma

The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2009. 268 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Winner YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award
2009 National Book Award Finalist
2010 Printz Honor Book

Okay, when this book first came out, I wasn’t too interested. I grew up in a conservative Christian family, and didn’t exactly see Charles Darwin as a hero. Then the book kept winning awards, and got strong comments from the judges in School Library Journal’s Battle of the Books. I thought I really should read it. Then I met Deborah Heiligman at the 2010 ALA Annual Conference. When I found out why she wrote it, I knew I had to read it. I purchased a book and got her signature. However, it still took me until this year, when I was taking a class on the Printz Award, to finally get it read.

Deborah explains in the Acknowledgments at the back of the book how her husband got her interested in the story that would become this book:

“Jon’s been writing about science and evolution since we met. I had just graduated from college with a major in religious studies. We started talking immediately — about science and religion and writing and pretty much everything else — and we haven’t stopped since.

“One day, about seven years ago, Jon said to me, ‘You know, Charles Darwin’s wife was religious.’ I looked at him. He continued, ‘And they loved each other very much. She was afraid he would go to hell and they wouldn’t be together for eternity.'”

Evolution is supposed to be opposed to Christianity, right? So how is it possible that Charles Darwin’s wife was deeply religious — and yet the two were very much in love.

Deborah Heiligman tells the love story of Charles and Emma Darwin beautifully. It’s clearly a work of nonfiction — she relies heavily on letters and journals and notebooks written by the two of them — but it reads like a novel. Of course, in a story book, the marriage probably wouldn’t have worked. I found it especially interesting that Charles’ father advised him not to tell his new wife about his doubts about religion. But Charles couldn’t hide them from her. And she loved him anyway and even edited his books, including The Origin of Species.

This book tells the story of how Charles Darwin’s scientific theories developed, but it especially shows us the man who loved his wife and children very much. And whatever your views, you can’t help but fall for the man presented here, and the wife who provided exactly what he needed to be such a distinguished scientist.

This book is wonderfully presented. I like the quotations at the head of each chapter and the way Deborah Heiligman has arranged the facts in such an interesting manner. This book presents a compelling story that is all the more amazing because it’s true.

“You will be forming theories about me & if I am cross or out of temper you will only consider ‘What does that prove.’ Which will be a very grand & philosophical way of considering it. — Emma to Charles, January 23, 1839”

DeborahHeiligman.com
HenryHoltKids.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/charles_and_emma.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 my own book, purchased at ALA Annual Conference and signed by the author.