Review of Fire, by Kristin Cashore

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

fireFire

by Kristin Cashore

Dial Books, 2009. 461 pages.
Starred Review.
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #2 Fantasy Teen Fiction

Fire is a “companion novel” to the powerful book Graceling. I don’t think it matters which book you read first, but if you read one, you will definitely want to read the other. The books are set in the same world, but the kingdoms of one book are set apart by impassable mountains from the kingdoms of the other. The one thing they have in common is a villain, and he is sinister enough whether you know what his power is or not.

The Kingdom of the Dells does not have Gracelings. Instead, they have monsters — both animal and human.

In the Dells lived colorful, astonishing creatures that the Dellian people called monsters. It was their unusual coloration that identified them as monsters, because in every other physical particular they were like normal Dellian animals. They had the shape of Dellian horses, Dellian turtles, mountain lions, raptors, dragonflies, bears; but they were ranges of fuchsia, turquoise, bronze, iridescent green. A dappled gray horse in the Dells was a horse. A sunset orange horse was a monster.

Larch didn’t understand these monsters. The mouse monsters, the fly and squirrel and fish and sparrow monsters, were harmless; but the bigger monsters, the man-eating monsters, were terribly dangerous, more so than their animal counterparts. They craved human flesh, and for the flesh of other monsters they were positively frantic….

He heard there were one or two monsters of a human shape in the Dells, with brightly colored hair, but he never saw them. It was for the best, because Larch could never remember if the human monsters were friendly or not, and against monsters in general he had no defense. They were too beautiful. Their beauty was so extreme that whenever Larch came face-to-face with one of them, his mind emptied and his body froze, and Immiker and his friends had to defend him.

“It’s what they do, Father,” Immiker explained to him, over and over. “It’s part of their monster power. They stun you with their beauty, and then they overwhelm your mind and make you stupid. You must learn to guard your mind against them, as I have.”

Larch had no doubt Immiker was right, but still he didn’t understand. “What a horrifying notion,” he said. “A creature with the power to take over one’s mind.”

Fire is such a monster. But she’s determined not to use her mind powers on people against their will. She’s determined not to be as monstrous as her father was.

However, she can’t help her overwhelming beauty. She can cover her hair; she can try to hide from the raptor monsters that thirst for her blood; but she can’t change who she is. People are powerfully attracted to her, but they also hate her for it.

Then a stranger comes to their land and shoots Fire by accident, and he in turn is executed by an archer with prodigious skill. The kingdom is at war, so Fire and her boyfriend Lord Archer head toward the queen mother’s stronghold to find out if the strangers are coming from the rebellious lords.

One thing leads to another, and the royal family asks Fire to come to the King’s City to interrogate another stranger. Fire doesn’t want to use her powers against people, but what if the kingdom is at stake? Meanwhile, the king can’t resist her beauty and asks her every night to marry him. His brother is far more restrained, so why is Fire dismayed to see how kind he is?

Fire is a powerful tale of adventure and romance about a young woman who is too beautiful for her own good.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Kristin Cashore has built a world that completely draws you in, just as she did with Graceling. She quickly establishes the “rules” of life in this other world, and gets you mulling along with Fire as to what that means about who she is and what she can be and do.

I was a little dismayed by all the casual sex in a young adult novel. It’s no different than our society today, I suppose, but I found it kind of sad that it’s just taken for granted. There are plenty of illegitimate births, but not too many other repercussions; it’s just treated as the natural way of things, and I found that a little sad. Fire’s boyfriend at the beginning sleeps with plenty of other women, and I suppose that makes you less sorry for him when Fire finds true love elsewhere. Call me a romantic, but I would have been happier for Fire if she had waited a bit for that true love. And the other women are surprisingly calm to find out about each other, too, I might add.

The book isn’t graphic about the sex, but the fact that it’s going on is no secret. As I say, it’s no different from our own culture any more, but ten years ago, I think you would have only seen this sort of thing in a book for adults, not one for teens.

Anyway, the book gives you a wonderful tale of adventure and magic and romance. But I don’t think of it as a children’s book.

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Review of The Marriage Bureau for Rich People, by Farahad Zama

Fiction Review, General, Light Reading, Romance, Starred Review 0

marriage_bureauThe Marriage Bureau for Rich People

by Farahad Zama

Amy Einhorn Books (Putnam’s), 2009. 293 pages.
Starred Review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #7 Fiction

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People is one I will be recommending to many, many library patrons as a pleasant, light-hearted read that will lift your spirits. It also gives you a taste of life in India.

Mr. Ali needs something to do after retirement. His wife tells him,

“After retiring, you’ve been like an unemployed barber who shaves his cat for want of anything better to do. Let’s hope that from today you will be a bit busier and I get some peace.”

Mr. Ali has decided to open a Marriage Bureau for Rich People. And in fact, he gets so much business he can’t handle it all himself. He deals with Muslims, Hindus, and Christians, and people of different castes. Sometimes parents, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles seek his services for their relatives, and sometimes the prospective matches come themselves. He learns much about human nature and has many insights on what leads to happiness.

Mrs. Ali finds her husband an assistant, Aruna, to help with the work load. Aruna has her own sad story, since her father’s recent illness strapped the family finances and destroyed her marriage prospects.

The book tells stories of some of the people they successfully match up, and some with whom they are not so lucky. Through it all, we hear about the Alis’ conflicts with their own son, who is involved in political protests, as well as Aruna’s difficulties. Fortunately, events take a happy turn.

This book introduces you to delightful people, tells interesting stories about them, and gives you a taste of India. Thinking about it still makes me smile. In some ways, this reminded me of The Number One Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith — the same pleasant tone, and the same basic idea: friendly main characters interacting with a wide variety of people, with insights on human nature given along the way. Both give a taste of the country where they are set, with The Marriage Bureau for Rich People in India, instead of Botswana.

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Review of Summer on Blossom Street, by Debbie Macomber

Fiction Review, Light Reading, Romance, Starred Review 0

summer_on_blossom_streetSummer on Blossom Street

by Debbie Macomber

Mira, 2009. 361 pages.
Starred Review

Debbie Macomber’s Blossom Street books are like a refreshing break with friends. The books revolve around Lydia Goetz’s yarn shop in Seattle, A Good Yarn. As in the other books, in Summer on Blossom Street, we hear the stories of a small group of people who have come together for a knitting class — and then find their lives knitting together.

In this fifth book of the series, Lydia is starting a class called “Knit to Quit.” Alix, a friend who’s been with us since the first book, and now a newlywed, is trying to, once again, quit smoking. A new customer signs up — to help herself quit loving her ex-fiance, who was arrested, for the second time, for solicitation. He still wants her back, and is very persuasive. What’s more, her own mother is trying to get her to forgive him and take him back. Also in the class, to make things more interesting, a man signs up, told by his doctor to do activities to lower his blood pressure.

Meanwhile further threads and storylines follow Lydia, who would like to adopt, and Anne Marie Roche, bookstore owner, who recently has adopted. The alternating chapters, telling different people’s storylines, keep you interested. I admit, I found myself most interested in Phoebe’s story, and I got a tiny bit impatient when there were too many other chapters breaking that part up. But mostly all the stories were intriguing enough to hook me.

These books are wholesome, uplifting, and encouraging, with enough problems hitting the characters that we don’t just think they’ve got it too easy — but definitely still stories that end up happy. I have decided I want to go back and read the installment I missed, Twenty Wishes, which is the fourth book. I read the third book, Back on Blossom Street, at a time when I wasn’t getting many books reviewed. You can get away with reading these books out of order, but it’s more fun to read along with the series and watch some of our old friends return, still growing and enjoying life.

Another nice thing about the Blossom Street books is that they each include a knitting pattern, the one the characters knit in the class. I haven’t tried any of them out yet, but it adds to the feeling that reading these books is like being in a knitting circle with friends.

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Review of A Kiss in Time, by Alex Flinn

Contemporary, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

kiss_in_timeA Kiss in Time

by Alex Flinn

HarperTeen, 2009. 371 pages.
Starred Review

On my second day of vacation, I committed the wonderful luxury of staying in bed until noon and reading a novel. A Kiss in Time is the novel I chose.

I loved Alex Flinn’s Beastly, where she sets the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast” in modern-day New York. When I heard she was doing a version of “Sleeping Beauty,” where Sleeping Beauty is woken up by a modern day American teen, I simply had to snap it up.

Now, I’ve got a special interest in Sleeping Beauty tales, because several years ago I attempted to write my own version where Sleeping Beauty was sleeping in a castle in Germany, and is woken by an American military kid whose last name is Prince. Unfortunately, I got bogged down with details. How does she get an ID card? A passport? I couldn’t decide whether she’d get media attention and be a celebrity princess or just adapt to modern life as some sort of refugee. What’s more, in my version, all of her family and her life before were dead, so it got rather depressing.

My own attempt to write the story gives me that much more admiration for Alex Flinn pulling it off so beautifully. Mind you, Orson Scott Card has already done a magnificent job in his book for adults, Enchantment. But with A Kiss in Time, Alex Flinn has written the light-hearted teen fantasy I was shooting for. I was delighted with the way she had the entire kingdom sleeping, as in the original fairy tale, and figured out a way to deal with them waking up in the 21st Century.

Jack is something of a screw-up, and he’s had enough of museums, so he decides to ditch the tour group his parents sent him on and spend a day at the beach. He brings along his friend Travis, but they have some trouble with the directions they’re given and somehow wind up struggling through a thick hedge of thorns. On the other side, there’s a medieval kingdom, where everyone’s asleep. Travis thinks they might as well help themselves to some jewels, but then Jack discovers a gorgeous girl asleep in a room by herself. Something compels him to give her a kiss….

Well, Talia’s father wakes up awfully angry with Talia for having touched a spindle despite all his warnings. He throws Jack in the dungeon, since, after all, a commoner shouldn’t be kissing the princess. Talia’s willing to help Jack escape to Florida, but he seems strangely reluctant to marry her. In Florida, Talia has a lot to learn about the modern world, but it turns out there are things she can teach Jack about dealing with people.

And both teens have a lot to learn about true love.

This is a light-hearted and fun approach to the age-old story, and the question of how have people changed across the centuries. My hat goes off to Alex Flinn for doing such a wonderful job telling this tale.

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Review of Summers at Castle Auburn, by Sharon Shinn

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Romance, Starred Review 0

castle_auburnSummers at Castle Auburn

by Sharon Shinn

Ace Books, New York, 2001. 355 pages.
Starred Review

“The summer I was fourteen, my uncle Jaxon took me with him on an expedition to hunt for aliora. I had only seen the fey, delicate creatures in captivity, and then only when I was visiting Castle Auburn. I was as excited about the trip to the Faelyn River as I had been about anything in my life.”

Corie is the illegitimate daughter of a lord. She has been apprenticed to her grandmother, a village witch. She never met her father, but after his death, her uncle found her and persuaded her grandmother to let her spend summers at Castle Auburn.

“When I learned who my traveling companions were to be, I stopped complaining and began dreaming. Bryan of Auburn was everything a young prince should be: handsome, fiery, reckless, and barely sixteen. Not destined to take the crown for another four years, he still had the charisma, panache, and arrogance of royalty, and not a girl within a hundred miles of the castle did not love him with all her heart. I did, even though I knew he was not for me: He was betrothed to my sister, Elisandra, whom he would wed the year he turned twenty.

“But I would be with him for three whole days, and say clever things, and laugh fetchingly. I expected this trip to be the grandest memory of my life.”

This is the opening of the book Summers at Castle Auburn, and the trip does become an important memory for Corie, but partly because of how much her opinions change over the years.

As she reaches adulthood and Bryan approaches his coronation, Corie begins to think differently about the custom of taking the aliora into captivity, and about her Uncle Jaxon who is so skilled at capturing them.

She begins to think differently about Bryan. We as readers can see from the beginning his petulance and selfishness and pride, but Corie’s eyes get opened more gradually. After that, she begins to see more clearly her sister’s feelings about the upcoming wedding. Or does anyone really know what her sister is thinking?

As for Corie, what place does she have in the castle? Can she do anything about the injustices against the kind aliora? Which of her two lives — in the castle or in the village — will determine her life path?

Our library has this classified in the adult section, but it’s a coming-of-age tale, and completely appropriate for teens, too. I found the story compelling enough for it to keep me going without stopping until the early hours of the morning, much to my annoyance! But it was a good tale, and though I fervently wished at work that day that I had read it in at least two sittings, I was still glad I read it.

There isn’t a lot of magic in the story — the main touch of fantasy is the fairy-people, the aliora and the imaginary herblore. A fine tale of romance and power in a medieval setting.

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Review of Graceling, by Kristin Cashore

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

gracelingGraceling

by Kristin Cashore

Harcourt, Orlando, 2008. 471 pages.
Starred review.
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #5 Fantasy Teen Fiction

Katsa has a Grace. Like every child whose eyes settle into two different colors, Katsa has an extraordinary gift, and was sent to the court of the king, her uncle, until it became clear what her Grace would be and if it would be useful to him.

When she was only eight years old, it became clear that her Grace was killing. She can fight and defeat anyone, with weapons or not. The king did indeed find this gift useful, and from the time that she was ten, he ordered Katsa to do his bullying for him, to punish anyone who displeased him.

Now that she is eighteen, she is finding ways to rebel, ways to use her Grace to help people, to fight injustice instead of causing it. On one mission, she encounters a mystery. Why would anyone want to kidnap the kind old father of the king of Lienid?

Then she meets the old man’s grandson, a prince of Lienid, who is also apparently Graced with fighting, and the first real challenge she’s ever encountered. They begin practicing together, and Katsa is horrified to find herself beginning to trust this man. They decide to tackle the mystery together.

This book has a great story of adventure against impossible odds, with a tremendously likable heroine who can defeat almost anyone or anything. Woven into the story is Katsa’s struggle with who she is. Is she a killing machine for a bully of a king to use for his purposes, or can she choose to be something more?

I found the romance particularly wonderful, as we watch Katsa wrestling with her feelings and her habits of not trusting anyone. I thought that part especially well-written and delightful to read.

Parents, this book isn’t for young teens. Katsa is not interested in marriage, and she and the prince decide to be lovers. Their encounters are described tastefully, even beautifully, but they are described. You might want to discuss your opinion of Katsa’s choice not to marry. To me, it seems consistent with her character and her difficulties with trust. But on the other hand, it’s clear that either one of the lovers would be completely devastated if the other one were to take advantage of the “freedom” they’ve been granted. I like the way Kristin Cashore shows us Katsa talking about being free to leave her lover, but then having tremendous difficulty actually doing it, even when their lives depend on it.

All in all, I thought the romance, with all its ambivalence and wildly fluctuating new feelings for Katsa, was the most beautifully written part of this magnificent book. I’m amazed that it’s a first novel, and am now among those eagerly looking forward to the sequel, Fire, which comes out in October 2009.

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Review of Princess of the Midnight Ball, by Jessica Day George

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

midnight_ballPrincess of the Midnight Ball

by Jessica Day George

Bloomsbury, New York, 2009. 280 pages.
Starred review
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #9 Fantasy Teen Fiction

I do love fairy tale retellings. Princess of the Midnight Ball is a retelling of “Twelve Dancing Princesses,” beautifully carried out.

This fairytale is one that features a hard-working common soldier, and I liked that aspect of the book. The book opens with Galen returning from the war. His father was a soldier before him, and his parents both died in the war. You can’t help but like Galen, and it’s nice to see someone deserving work hard to save the day and win a princess.

The reason the princesses dance every night is more sinister than meets the eye in the fairy tale. Their mother made an ill-advised bargain with the King Under Stone. And now her twelve daughters are paying the price, unable to tell anyone about their suffering.

And Galen is a knitter! He learned to knit his own socks and scarves during the war, and it comes in handy for binding evil. Two knitting patterns are included at the back of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed that bit of the story.

Jessica Day George also does a good job giving the princesses distinct characters — not easy to do when you’re dealing with a family of twelve! She gives Galen some additional obstacles to overcome with the result a thoroughly satisfying tale.

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Review of Perfect You, by Elizabeth Scott

Chick Lit, Contemporary, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

perfect_youPerfect You
by Elizabeth Scott

Simon Pulse, New York, 2008. 282 pages.

After reading The Breakup Bible one night, I read Perfect You the next night. (And, yes, both absorbed me enough that I read them well into the night.) Both are among Fairfax County Public Library’s Summer Reading Program selections. Both involve teen relationships, and both were oddly applicable and comforting to someone going through a midlife divorce.

In The Breakup Bible, a teen deals with the loss of her boyfriend and doesn’t handle it terribly well. In Perfect You, a teen deals with the loss of her long-time best friend, and also has a hard time coping.

In both, the main character had to learn to stop obsessing about the past and focus instead on good things happening without the once-loved one there. In both, they had to learn to actually live their lives now. To choose to be happy.

Meanwhile, I love the absolutely horrendous parents that Elizabeth Scott puts into her novels. If you ever thought your parents were embarrassing, listen to the opening of Perfect You:

“Vitamins had ruined my life.

“Not that there was much left to ruin, but still.

“I know blaming vitamins for my horrible life sounds strange. After all, vitamins are supposed to keep people healthy. Also, they’re inanimate objects. But thanks to them I was stuck in the Jackson Center Mall watching my father run around in a bee costume.

“I sank into the chair by our cash register as Dad walked up to two women. They looked around when he started talking, searching for a way out. They wouldn’t find one. In our section of the mall, there wasn’t much around, which was how we could afford our booth.

“I watched the women smile and step away, an almost dance I’d seen plenty over the few days I’d worked here. After they left, Dad came over to me, grinning, and said, ‘Kate, I think I made a sale! Those two women I talked to said they’d tell their husbands about the reformulated B Buzz! tablets. Isn’t that great? Now I think I’ll fly — get it? — down to the department store and see if I can give samples to people as they walk out.'”

Kate’s Sophomore year is going badly. She lost her best friend, who suddenly changed from a fat girl to one of the popular crowd. Her Dad quit his job to sell vitamins. And she finds herself attracted to a guy with a bad reputation whom she doesn’t even like. Or does she?

Perfect You is a fun and entertaining read, with a surprising amount of wisdom. I’d been missing my husband of twenty years, who was once my best friend, and reading about someone else coping with a lost best friend was surprisingly therapeutic.

As Kate says,

“But things change. Stuff happens. And you know what? Life goes on. In fact, that’s what life is. Who’d have thought Grandma would be right about anything, much less something so important?”

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Review of The Breakup Bible, by Melissa Kantor

Chick Lit, Contemporary, Light Reading, Romance, Teen Fiction Review 0

breakup_bible
The Breakup Bible
by Melissa Kantor

Hyperion Paperbacks, New York, 2007. 265 pages.

High school Junior Jennifer Lewis’s almost-too-good-to-be-true boyfriend suddenly decided to “just be friends.” She is not handling it well.

When her well-meaning grandma gives her a book of advice called The Breakup Bible, Jennifer is ready to throw it in the trash. She continues on, obsessed with Max, analyzing his every word to her, wondering if he’s thinking about getting back together.

Then she finds out the identity of the real reason he broke up with her, and her devastation is complete.

This time, Nana comes over and reads the book aloud:

“‘”So he’s with someone else,”‘ she read. ‘”Yeah, it hurts. Yeah, you miss him. But you know what? You’re not going to miss him for long. Because if you follow my simple steps, you can go from heartache to happiness before you can say, I’m over you!“‘

“Nana was looking up at me, a triumphant expression on her face. ‘See?’ she said. ‘You’re not the only one.’

“‘Nana, you don’t understand,’ I said. ‘That book –‘ I pointed at it. ‘Books like that don’t help.’ Had Nana not observed the obese hordes with their terrible hair and bad jeans crowding the self-help aisles at Barnes & Noble, reading books like Who Moved My Destiny? and You’re Not Weird, You’re Special!

“‘Just how do you know that, Miss Smartypants?’ She pointed at me. ‘You won’t even give it a chance.’ Then her features softened, and she smiled. ‘Give it a chance, darling. For me, for Nana.'”

Jennifer does give it a chance, for her grandma’s sake. It doesn’t, perhaps, go quite like the book’s author intended, but Jennifer does, little by little, make progress in getting over Max.

I’m a little embarrassed by how comforted I was by reading about a teenager getting over a breakup and how oddly similar the principles of recovery are for someone getting over a midlife divorce.

In both cases, it’s helpful to remind yourself that there are some good things about not having him in your life, and to focus on interests you can get excited about for YOU.

It’s also highly therapeutic to read about someone else handling it badly! It’s easy to see in Jennifer’s case where her faithful love is misplaced, but anyone who’s ever been there will feel plenty of compassion. And I never noticed before just how funny a breakup can be.

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Review of Heart and Soul, by Maeve Binchy

Fiction Review, General, Romance, Starred Review 0

heart_and_soul.jpg

Heart and Soul

by Maeve Binchy

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009.  418 pages.

Starred review.

Sonderbooks Stand-out 2010: #4 Fiction

Maeve Binchy’s books are warm, friendly, and cozy.  She specializes in telling stories about a community of people.  In Heart and Soul, the community is a new heart clinic in Dublin.  We look through windows into the lives of the people who come to work at the clinic, the patients, and others touched by them.

To add to the fun, the author brings back old friends who played a part in her earlier books.  You definitely don’t need to have read the earlier books to appreciate Heart and Soul, but it does make you feel that you are catching up with old friends.  I found myself wishing that I had not missed her last book, Whitethorn Woods.  I will definitely have to rectify that.

In Maeve Binchy’s earlier books, there seemed to be a pattern that the more ideal the marriage seemed, the more sure you could be that it was doomed.  These more recent books are gentler.  People still have problems, but personally I’m glad that there are less dirty rotten cheating husbands than in some of her earlier books.  Her characters cope with their problems with courage, compassion and resilience, and it’s delightful to spend time in the company of these people.

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