Review of Buried Deep, by Naomi Novik

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Buried Deep

And Other Stories

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey, 2024. 428 pages.
Review written February 3, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I don’t read a lot of short story collections, because I have a hard time getting through them. It’s so easy to stop after finishing a story. But once I started this one, I knew I wanted to read every single story.

There are thirteen stories, of various lengths, with at least one from the worlds of Temeraire, the Scholomance, and Spinning Silver – that story was actually the original version of the book – but a different negotiation on the part of the miller’s daughter keeps it to story length.

My favorite was definitely the one in the world of Temeraire that retells Pride and Prejudice with Elizabeth Bennet the captain of a Longwing dragon. But this is not a proper occupation for a gentleman’s daughter. I love the way Naomi Novik works key scenes from Pride and Prejudice into that situation. And I love how Captain Bennet has learned to wield authority!

The title story is about the Minotaur and his sister Ariadne. The final story is in the world of an upcoming novel, currently titled Folly. I can’t wait!

Another favorite took place in the Scholomance after the events of the trilogy, so supposedly students are safer there – as long as their roommate doesn’t try to kill them.

Many of the stories are simply from some other fantasy world out of the mind of Naomi Novik – and she’s good at intriguing world-building. I loved the one about the woman who was a talented sculptor and who gets the commission to work with the magical clay – that tends to kill the sculptors who are permitted to work with it. (And there’s way more to it than that, which she skillfully communicates while telling you a fascinating story.)

This might be a good introduction to Naomi Novik’s magical writing, but it’s also a great way to keep her devoted fans patient while waiting for the next novel. Whichever you fall under, if you like fantasy at all, read this book!

naominovik.com

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Review of On the Bright Side, by Anna Sortino

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

On the Bright Side

by Anna Sortino
read by Jesse Inocalla and Elizabeth Robbins

Listening Library, 2024. 8 hours, 41 minutes.
Review written January 17, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 CYBILS Award Finalist, Young Adult Fiction
2025 Schneider Family Honor Book, Teens

This is now the third Young Adult Fiction CYBILS Finalist I’ve read and oh my goodness, the second-round judges are going to have a difficult decision. I read Anna Sortino’s first book, Give Me a Sign, in 2023 for the Morris Award, and although it wasn’t a Finalist, let’s just say that I remembered it and wouldn’t have guessed it was a debut if I hadn’t been specifically reading debut novels.

That first one was about a group of deaf kids. This one features one deaf girl, Ellie, and begins when her boarding school that had immersive American Sign Language is being shut down – right before her Senior year of high school.

Ellie had gone to that school since she was twelve, and she’d been dating her boyfriend since then. But now he’s moving to the other side of the state, and he doesn’t want to try to keep things going long distance. So Ellie has to go to a school with hearing kids, and she’s been torn away from everything she’s used to.

And her home isn’t a refuge. Ellie has a hearing aid and cochlear implants and she reads lips, so her parents never bothered to learn sign language. Her hearing sister is heading off to college, so her parents are stuck with her, and it feels to Ellie like they’re obviously settling for the less preferred daughter. So she’s got a lot she’s not happy about that first day of high school.

Our other narrator is Jackson. He was on the soccer team last year, and just as he was about to kick the ball and win the state championship, his leg went numb and crumpled on him. He was fine afterward, so everyone thought he just choked. But more and more weird things happen to him. His parents are both health nuts who urge him to work through anything.

And he’s a nice guy, involved in lots of things at the high school. So the guidance counselor asks him to help make the new deaf student comfortable and give her a tour of the school.

The book is about their budding relationship, but meanwhile, Jackson is having more and more weird things going on with his body – numbness, vertigo, fatigue, and more. On a day that he’d planned to go to a museum with Ellie for extra credit, he ends up with severe vertigo and vomiting. His parents take him to Urgent Care, where he’s given a CT scan, which is normal. By the time the doctor sees him, the vertigo has passed. So they tell him it’s probably benign positional vertigo and give him some exercises to do.

My goodness I wasn’t prepared for how hard that scene would hit me! The thing is – back in 2011, when I was 47, I had severe vertigo and vomiting – and the E.R. did a CT scan, but by the time I saw the doctor, I felt better. They told me my migraines had changed and sent me home – and it turned out to have been a stroke, which we learned when I had another worse one a couple days later. So I was just cringing for Jackson when I heard this scene. No! Don’t send him home!

And Jackson continues to have strange symptoms – and in the present day, I’ve been having a set of strange symptoms – not exactly like Jackson’s, but including vertigo – and that part just built tension in me. Especially with his parents urging him to “shake it off” and not be lazy.

I won’t tell you his diagnosis, but it’s all described so vividly that I wasn’t surprised when the author said in a note at the end that this is a condition she shares.

The book is an excellent story about two teens getting to know each other and dealing with some hard things – but it’s also a great look at disability and how it’s not obvious when you’re looking at someone that they have a disability. And it’s also not their fault. Sometimes life throws hard things at a person, but you keep your identity. Ellie is good at giving Jackson perspective on his new disability, and it all unfolds in a realistic way as they navigate what it means for their relationship.

annasortino.com

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Review of The Sunbearer Trials, by Aiden Thomas

Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Sunbearer Trials

by Aiden Thomas

Feiwel and Friends, 2022. 405 pages.
Review written October 28, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review

Here’s another wonderful fantasy with a transgender character front and center. As with the outstanding book Cemetery Boys, there is again a gendered element to the magic. In Teo’s case, he’s the son of Quetzal, the goddess of birds, and has wings. Those wings are brown and dull-colored like a female bird, even though he’s been taking testosterone for about a year. So instead of binding his breasts, which he no longer needs to do after top surgery, he binds his wings to hide them.

But that isn’t central to the plot (and we know from the beautiful cover picture that’s going to work out). What the book is mainly about are the Sunbearer Trials.

As a prologue, we get the story of how the gods made humans and the land of Reina del Sol. There’s also a hierarchy of gods, which is explained, with the Gold gods next after Sol and the Jade gods after that. Then there are the Obsidian gods who are selfish and destructive and whom Sol bound in the heavens by sacrificing their life.

Every ten years, there must be a new sacrifice to renew that protection. And to choose the sacrifice, ten children of gods compete in the Sunbearer Trials. The winner becomes the Sunbearer, who goes to the cities of Reina del Sol with the renewed Sol Stone. The loser becomes the new sacrifice.

So it’s a little like the Hunger Games, except only one competitor dies.

With that mythical background, I was surprised to find the story is about a modern civilization with television and internet and posts going viral. But gods, dioses, live among humans. Teo is a semidios, one of the children of a god.

The Gold semidioses go to a special Academy to train to be heroes. With the abilities they inherit from their parents, it’s expected that they will spend their lives protecting humans, and they train for the Sunbearer Trials along the way. Teo’s mother Quetzal is a Jade goddess, so Jade has to go to public school with mortals. The only ability he inherited, besides his wings, is the ability to talk with birds.

Normally, all the competitors in the Sunbearer Trials are Gold semidioses. But this year, Teo is chosen, and so is thirteen-year-old Xio, the son of the god of Bad Luck. It doesn’t seem at all fair, since neither Teo nor Xio has been trained for the trials, so Teo is determined to help Xio not be the sacrifice, as well as trying to avoid it himself.

Warning: This book ends with the words To Be Continued. But the book itself tells about the Sunbearer Trials, which take place in five different cities of Reino Del Sol. So you learn much about that world along the way.

Teo isn’t the only queer character in the book, and nonbinary characters and people with two dads (for example) are considered completely normal, which is all lovely and refreshing. And one of the semidioses competing was Teo’s best friend when they were much younger, but ever since he started at the Academy, he treats Teo as if all that meant nothing.

This book reminded me very much of Rick Riordan books, since, after all, it involves half-gods. There’s also witty banter and smart aleck remarks between the characters. Which all is not necessarily my favorite kind of fantasy, but kids do like it, and I did love the inclusion of multiple genders as a matter of course. There were some details about the world that made me wonder, but it was so much fun hearing about the different gods’ cities, I didn’t let that bother me as much as I might have if I weren’t as invested in the story.

And yes, I will want to find out what happens next.

aiden-thomas.com
fiercereads.com

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Review of Strong Like the Sea, by Wendy S. Swore

Children's Fiction Review, Contemporary, Starred Review 0

Strong Like the Sea

by Wendy S. Swore

Shadow Mountain, 2021. 295 pages.
Review written September 26, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review

Set in Hawaii on the island of Oahu, this is the story of 12-year-old Alexis, who loves to do puzzles and wants to win her school’s history project competition, but who is currently afraid of the ocean because of a bad experience. Alexis’s dad teaches diving lessons, but her mother is a codebreaker who’s currently deployed on a submarine somewhere far away. But Mom has left intriguing puzzles and codes for Alexis, leading to a prize.

The fun of this book is that there are some truly cool puzzles for Alexis to follow. There’s also a cipher in the book for the reader to solve (with the code spelled out in the back). Alexis does her history project on Mavis Batey, a codebreaker from World War II, which ties in with the other puzzles.

Along the way, Alexis must deal with her father’s schedules (will there be enough time to make an awesome project *and* solve Mom’s puzzles?) and her own fear of the ocean. And then there’s a typhoon in the Pacific and Mom doesn’t connect for their weekly call.

This is a fun book for budding code breakers and puzzle solvers, with a nice taste of Oahu thrown in.

wendyswore.com

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Review of Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence, by Derald Wing Sue

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence

Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race

by Derald Wing Sue

Wiley, 2015. 282 pages.
Review written January 22, 2022, from my own copy, purchased via amazon.com
Starred Review

I read this book for a Racial Reconciliation Book Discussion Group hosted by my church, but never got a link to the zoom meeting. Still, I’m glad I read the book, and only wish I had gotten to see the leaders try to model the principles found here.

It’s hard to talk about race in America. This book explores the many reasons why that is so, with different reasons for white people and people of color, and lots of misunderstandings coming into play. And because misunderstandings come up and because we don’t want to appear racist, the end result is that we avoid talking about race at all — and so eliminate hope of learning to overcome those misunderstandings.

This book was written well before all the manufactured outrage about “critical race theory,” but the principles found here shed light on why that’s become such a hot button issue.

A lot of the book explores why it’s so hard to talk about race and the different perspectives and cultural expectations from white people, Black people, and other people of color. Each chapter starts with examples where someone needed to talk about race and it was difficult.

The end of the book gives strategies for teachers and facilitators to help people through this difficult topic. A lot of it involves addressing the emotions underlying words so that people feel heard, but aren’t allowed to sidetrack the discussion. The author had some pertinent examples where arguing the content of someone’s remarks only got things more heated, but inquiring about their emotions helped them feel heard and then more equipped to consider the feelings of others.

All the same, I’m not sure I absorbed this well enough just reading about it. I’d like to see it modeled. This would be a good book to use in a workshop. And even as I say this, if the book discussion group had happened, I admit I was hoping to listen and learn more than to participate, because Race Talk is difficult.

But even apart from the helpful tips at the end for putting into practice, this book gives a good overview of issues that come up in discussions about race and how they look different for different groups. So reading the book will help you gain understanding and empathy for those other perspectives, which is a good place to start.

This was written for college professors, and the tone is academic. But it’s packed with helpful information to go beyond being afraid to talk about race.

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Review of Shut Up, This Is Serious, by Carolina Ixta, read by

Award Winners, Contemporary, Teen Fiction Review 0

Shut Up, This Is Serious

by Carolina Ixta
read by Frankie Corzo

Quill Tree Books, 2024. 10 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written January 22, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
2025 Morris Award Finalist
2025 Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Award

Shut Up, This Is Serious is about a high school senior named Belén whose life seems like it’s falling apart. Her best friend Leti is pregnant, and Leti’s going to love that baby – but she hasn’t yet dared to tell her racist parents that her boyfriend, the baby’s father, is Black.

As for Belén – she stopped caring about classes last year when her father left them and took her mom’s savings. Belén feels like no one even sees her anymore. So when she finds a college guy who’s willing to have sex with her, she doesn’t let herself notice all the things that are wrong with that, because it makes the heaviness lift for a little while.

But when she learns she has to complete one major English assignment in order to save her grade and graduate, she’s also paired with a partner whose hopes of going to the college of his choice are riding on it, too.

And that description doesn’t do justice to all the ways the pressures on Belén are portrayed and interwoven. She does lots of coping in bad ways, but let me say that the story does end with a hopeful note, and it’s an earned hope through the novel.

I was on the Morris Award committee a year ago, so it’s fun to see what they’ve discovered this year. I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite read – a little too painful to read about the ways she wasn’t coping well. But wearing my committee hat, I do want to say that this is an outstanding debut novel, with nuanced characters and situations, and I hope the first of many more to come from this author.

carolinaixta.com

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Review of The Kitchen Pantry Scientist Math for Kids, by Rebecca Rapoport and Allanna Chung

Children's Nonfiction Review, Mathematical, Starred Review 0

The Kitchen Pantry Scientist

Math for Kids

Fun Math Games and Activities Inspired by Awesome Mathematicians, Past and Present

by Rebecca Rapoport and Allanna Chung

Quarto Publishing, 2022. 128 pages.
Review written January 8, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, Ages 8-10

Oh, this book is wonderful!

A lot of general books about math for kids have the same old stuff you’ve heard before, presented in a fairly random order.

This book is organized around twenty-two biographies of distinguished mathematicians, and then has a hands-on game or activity (some using templates found at the back of the book or on the accompanying website). The activities are very cool! I think I am going to print out the templates for the hexaflexagons. Some of the other activities include making a car with square wheels, a mancala game, a binary bracelet, and an alien city.

The activities are illustrated with clear photographs and have step-by-step instructions. The biographies take up one page, with a full-page illustration of the mathematician and symbols around them representing their work.

I loved that I hadn’t heard of a majority of the mathematicians presented, even though I’ve read a lot of books like this. I also loved that most were women and/or people of color. Because there are a lot of white men in math, and it was exciting to me to hear about others. And everyone chosen had done important work.

A really wonderful book about math that will make the reader want to explore and make and do.

dailyepsilon.com
Quarto.com

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Review of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 8, by Beth Brower

Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion

Volume 8

by Beth Brower

Rhysdon Press, 2024. 339 pages.
Review written January 22, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

Hooray! The next volume of Emma Lion’s journals is out! This is the first volume I had to wait for – having received the first three volumes as a birthday present from my sister after seven volumes had already been published. I did manage to resist reading it until I finished reading for the CYBILS and Mathical Awards, but it was the first book I picked up after that.

And it’s all one story – so go back and read Volume One. And if you have already read Volume One, you will already know if you want to read on, so I won’t say a whole lot about this volume.

This book telling the story of Emma M. Lion, a twenty-one-year-old woman, from May to June 1884. She lives in London, owning her own home after the death of her parents. But she needs to find a way to make more money, and her wealthy aunt is requiring that she be a foil for her beautiful cousin Arabella, as Arabella navigates The Season and finds a man to marry.

This volume is taken up with Emma’s adventures trying to appease her aunt – but more so with the happy month of June, when she gets to spend time in the countryside with the three men she has developed a deep friendship with.

And it’s a truly lovely group friendship! That’s one of the things I love about this book – a lovely and deep friendship with three single men, with each one being unique. In this volume, we learn some deeper secrets about two of them. And I honestly think some seeds are being planted that she may not end up marrying the one that we and now she expect her to end up with. But the friendships between the four of them are rich and each interaction unique, and it’s just a lovely thing to read.

And I’m being vague purposely because, as aforesaid, you need to start at the beginning. And then just watch if you’re not eagerly waiting for the next volume, too.

bethbrower.com

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Review of The Darkness Outside Us, by Eliot Schrefer, read by James Fouhey

Audiobooks, Science Fiction, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Darkness Outside Us

by Eliot Schrefer
read by James Fouhey

HarperAudio, 2021. 9 hours, 49 minutes.
Review written January 10, 2025, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

Wow! I’d be very sorry I missed reading this book in its publication year – except for the lovely fact that I have the sequel in my Holds queue already. This is powerful space travel science fiction, with a side of a sweet love story between two young men.

The book is narrated by Ambrose Cusk, the son of the powerful owner of the Cusk Space Travel Corporation and the DNA of Alexander the Great. He’s been training for space travel, and he wakes up on a spaceship on a planned mission to rescue his sister Minerva, who sent out a distress beacon from Titan.

Funny thing, though – he doesn’t remember the launch. The ship’s operating system, which has his mother’s voice, tells him he was in a coma for two weeks. Next he discovers that his ship has been joined to a ship from the one other country on earth, Demokratea, and there is a space traveler on the other side of the ship, named Kodiak. Both of them have been assigned maintenance tasks that the O.S. tells them are urgent to accomplish before they arrive on Titan.

Ambrose works little by little on earning Kodiak’s trust. Unfortunately, at the same time, they lose trust in the operating system. It won’t explain to them why neither of them remembers the launch. Or why some other details don’t add up. And then Ambrose finds some blood and hair with DNA that matches his own, but no memory of such an injury.

Well, solving this mystery is by no means the end of the book. Dealing with what they learn is what makes the book so interesting. And the ins and outs are expertly crafted. I have to say that I can get extremely nitpicky about science fiction, and easily skeptical as to whether things described could actually work. In this case, there was nothing in the book that triggered my skepticism at all, and I loved the way the author thought of repercussions and reactions to what was happening that seemed realistic when they happened – but hadn’t crossed my mind at all. (I hope that’s vague enough to be intriguing without giving anything away!)

This was also a lovely exploration of love during extreme circumstances. Ambrose and Kodiak don’t have anyone else to love, but the book beautifully showed how their love and appreciation for each other grows under duress.

And there’s so much more I wish I could say! In couched terms, I will also say that this is a book that could have gotten repetitive, and I loved the way the author kept the reader guessing and expanded on the ideas in surprising ways. He also had the two teens acting consistently with their characters – but still surprising us and making us think about the emotional and psychological turmoil they were going through – and how we might react in such a case.

Okay, I’ve probably said enough. If you like science fiction at all, read this book!

eliotschrefer.com

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Review of Give Me a Sign, by Anna Sortino, read by Elizabeth Robbins

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Give Me a Sign

by Anna Sortino
read by Elizabeth Robbins

Listening Library, 2023. 9 hours, 21 minutes.
Review written September 23, 2023, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Give Me a Sign is a story about Lilah, a 17-year-old who’s hard of hearing and looking to find her place in both Hearing culture and Deaf culture. Her school friends seem to get tired of repeating themselves when Lilah doesn’t understand, but they also aren’t careful about letting her see their lips when they talk so she can use lip-reading to help. When Lilah lands a summer job at a camp for the Deaf and Blind that she once attended as a camper, she looks forward to increasing her American Sign Language fluency – but when she arrives, she wishes she could pick it up more quickly.

There’s not a whole lot of plot to this book, but there’s enough to keep it going. Will the potential summer romance with that cute Deaf counselor work out? Will the camp get enough funding to continue, or will this be its last year of existence?

What drives the book, though, is Lilah’s interactions with the world around her. And that window into her world is fascinating enough to make this book a great read (or listen). She has some hearing, so she struggles whether she’s even “allowed” to call herself Deaf. And her family never taught her to sign, so can she learn, or should she continue to just try to fit in with the hearing folks around her?

Lilah encounters people from many different backgrounds in this book, and there’s a strong message that people have different responses to their own hearing loss, and each person should get to make their own choice about how they want to live in the world, whether hearing aids or cochlear implants or sign language, or some combination of all of the above. She also learns to speak up for herself and not be ashamed of being Deaf and to tell her friends what she needs.

And all of this is wrapped up in a fun story of summer camp, so its strong message doesn’t feel like medicine, but like an interesting window into someone else’s world. I also imagine that for many Deaf teens out there, it may provide the delightful experience of seeing someone like themselves as a protagonist. The author reminds us at the end that Lilah’s experience isn’t representative of every Deaf person’s experience. But the book itself does a lovely job reminding us that we are all individuals and we should all be able to make our own choices.

annasortino.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but 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.

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