What Have I Missed? Review: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

Recommended by: Bob

A Northern Light is one of the books that inspired me to start this challenge. Bob had recommended it to me ages and ages ago, but I never got around to it because I wanted to keep up with all of the new titles coming out. When I started seeing people rave about Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution I knew her name sounded familiar...all because A Northern Light was still in the back of my mind as a book I needed to read! So I decided this needed to be the first book I challenged myself to - and that my reward for getting this challenge under way would be getting to read Revolution next!

In 1906, in a small farming community and summer tourist town, Mattie Gokey dreams of going to New York City to study writing, to share her stories of everyday life with the rest of the world. But realistically, Mattie knows she's never going to leave North Woods. Her mother has recently died, leaving Mattie and her three sisters alone with their father, who can barely bring in enough money to keep food on the table through the winter. Even if she could get a scholarship to cover her tuition, where would she get the money for lodging, clothes and books? And then there's the fact that handsome Royal Loomis has come courting, and Mattie is feeling a surprising impulse to stay at home and settle down.

Taking a summer job at a big tourist hotel to help out her family and put away a little savings for herself, Mattie is implored one day by guest Grace Brown to burn a bundle of letters. Mattie takes the letters, but keeps them hidden, just in case Grace ever asks for them back. Until Grace's drowned body is pulled from the lake, the apparent victim of a boating accident. The young man she was traveling with is nowhere to be found. Mattie begins reading the letters, hoping for a clue as to who Grace was, and maybe for a little guidance from beyond the grave for who Mattie should be.

Donnelly weaves lots of complicated themes into what is on the surface a basic coming of age story with a bit of mystery. Classism is big, ranging from the rich tourists coming in to land that's been settled by poor farmers, to the poor farmers looking down on those who are even poorer. Sexism is the other big one, and all the myriad ways it rears its ugly head. There's the expected views that women shouldn't be educated, but also ideas about what is appropriate for women to be writing about and how to handle sexual harassment. Mattie's best friend is African-American, and she gives us a first hand look at the ugly realities of racism in a Northern state 40 years after the end of th Civil War. Want more? There's also wonderful questions about decency and obscenity, both in people's actions and in literature through the books Mattie's beloved teacher surreptitiously loans her.

My one irritant in this book is the use of Mattie's dictionary word of the day. On the one hand, it's a fun trope and is used well to indicate when a particular chapter is set (the story goes back and forth between the discovery of Grace's body and the months leading up to Mattie taking the position at the hotel). On the other hand, the bit began to wear thin about halfway through the novel as Mattie often would struggle with how the word did or didn't fit how her day was going. I felt that the idea was well established enough at that point that it could have been left to the reader to figure out how a word did or didn't fit thematically, and only have Mattie mention it when it was an important comment on the story.

Huge thanks to Bob for recommending this to me! Next on my list? Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, winner of the Printz in 2005 and recommended by Rachel!

Review: Trash by Andy Mulligan

This one has been getting lots of love from the start - and while it wasn't awarded any serious hardware at the recent ALA awards, Trash does have the honor of being one of the top ten books chosen by the Best Fiction for Young Adults committee, a great honor in itself!

Rafael, Gardo and Jun-Jun, aka Rat, are trash boys. Living among the dump site Behala, the boys spend their days climbing mountains of trash, sorting out what can be re-sold, earning meager pay that is hardly enough to support themselves and their extended families. Most of what they find is shtupp, until one day Rafael pulls a leather bag out of the refuse - a leather bag with an ID card, and over 1,000 pesos inside. It's more money than Rafael has seen in his life - this sort of money represents hope for his family.

But before Rafael can get too comfortable with his newfound luck, the police come to Behala, saying they're looking for a leather bag. Instinctively, Rafael hides his treasure, and with Gardo and Jun-Jun's help, begin their own investigation into the man on the ID card and former owner of the cash. Their search will bring them face to face with some of the darkest secrets of their country, with the ones whom power has corrupted. But the boys hold out hope, that they can solve the mystery, and perhaps bring about some small amount of justice.

The theme of trash comes up in so many ways in this book - there's the actual trash mountains the boys climb every day, and it's where they find the money that jump starts their adventure. But it's also how people treat the boys - as if just because they're poor these boys are worthless. It's also a term that comes to mind to describe the corrupt politicians and other people in power.

The narration jumps between the three boys, with the occasional chapter told by other supporting characters, like the man who runs the Mission School in Behala who befriended Rat. It's never totally clarified who the story is being told to, or how long after the events the story is being relayed. This would be an excellent book to use when writing teachers are talking about audience and first person narration, because these boys are very aware that they are telling a story.

Mulligan does an excellent job describing th downtrodden settings and fast-paced action. He cultivates an excellent sense of danger as the boys are on the run. There's a bone chilling scene where Rafael is taken in for questioning by the police that had my heart in my throat the entire time.

There's a lot of awesomeness going on here. While this one personally wouldn't have made it onto my personal best read in 2010 list (and won't be going on my 2011 list), I can still see why it's garnered a lot of praise, and highly recommend it.

Review: The Dark Game by Paul B. Janeczko

Nominated for the 2011 YALSA award for excellence in nonfiction

I've never been much of a fan of spy/mystery stories. I don't have anything against them, it's just that in the huge number of stories that are published every year, other things pique my interest first. Janeczko says in his introduction that he guesses the reader of the book has an interest in spies that "may run as deeply as [his]." Well that's not the case for me, but I still found this to be an incredibly interesting book.

Janeczko covers spying in America and by Americans from the Revolutionary War through early 2001. He picks out a few individual spies or campaigns for the major wars (plus the cold war) the US has engaged in, as well as highlights some of the evolving technology that's important in spy work (such as cameras, naturally). Some of these stories are absolutely amazing - like the tunnel the US and British dug from West to East Berlin in order to tap into Soviet telegraph cables.

Janeczko definitely has a flair for drama, as often these are tales of agents or governments crossing and double-crossing each other. For example, in the case of the Berlin tunnel, just when you think the story has ended and all is well for the US...Janeczko reveals a major twist in the story, illustrating that even the best laid plans can go awry, and sometimes you won't even know it.

I also have to say I'm really impressed that Janeczko highlights female spies, without ghettoizing them into a "lady spy" section. He covers the glamorous Mata Hari as well as Virginia Hall - a woman with a wooden leg who aided the French Resistance in WWII. Women spies also played important roles in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Janeczko clearly has a deep interest in the technical side of spying. Not only are advances in technology highlighted in each chapter, but he often goes into detail about various codes that spies use. I'll admit a lot of these codes went over my head, but me and numbers just don't get along (and many of these codes rely on number substitutions), so I'm willing to be that's more of a problem on my part. It's still interesting to see the variety of codes used and how they've changed - with a highlight for me being the Choctaw Code Talkers in WWI, who were able to foil the Germans who were evesdropping on US communications by using an utterly foreign language.

This isn't an exhaustive biography of any one spy - rather this is an overview of how spying has affected US policies by looking at a few of the most influential individuals (both those who spied for the US and those who spied against us). I don't know how well known some of the people and events would be to someone who has a hard core interest in spies - I, for example, knew about the women mentioned in the Civil War from my reading on women's roles during that war - but it's certainly an enlightening and entertaining read for someone totally new to the subject.

Review: Free? Stories About Human Rights Ed. by Amnesty International

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 4/19

I'll admit, I'm not the biggest fan of short story collections - I much prefer to let myself get wrapped up in one long narrative. However, I'm always willing to give them a try if the theme of the collection seems interesting. Considering I'm big on social justice and human rights, I thought this one would be safe to try.

The stories are written by a variety of YA authors and touch upon many of the tenets of the UN's 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Just to clarify what rights were enumerated in the story, each one ends with the declaration (or two) it was themed around.

The collection stumbles, however, in the haphazard way some of these declarations are applied. One story, about a kid who stumbles upon a sweatshop of underage children, has someone at the end randomly note that now the kids can get an education - and that's enough for the story to cover the "you have the right to go to school" declaration, as well as one other. Other stories barely qualify as actual stories, being more vignettes - glimpses into someone's life without any actual conflict or action.

A few pieces stand out as legitimately good stories - a poem about the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a group of teens search for food and water in the ruined city stands out, as does another about a family fleeing Zimbabwe in the aftermath of contested elections. These were compelling and riveting stories, which just served to highlight the relative weakness of many others.

Review: Stolen by Lucy Christopher

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 4/12

I think I'm just a contrarian, whether I mean to be or not. It's been a few weeks since I read this and didn't make any notes on it, so now I'm looking at the original Publisher's Weekly review (it's starred even!) that made me get this book, and I an't figure out what drew me to it in the first place, since I found it to be a rather underwhelming read.

Gemma isn't happy with her parents - but that doesn't mean she ever wanted to be drugged and kidnapped from the Bangkok airport in the middle of a trip with her parents and whisked away to the Australian outback by a guy who's been stalking her for 6 years.

Ty first saw Gemma in the park in London when she was ten years old, and has spent his life since then preparing to bring her to the beautiful outback. He's convinced her parents don't actually love her, certainly not the way he loves her, and he's sure she'll come to love the wild outback the same way he has.

Lucy recounts her life in captivity in a diary or letter addressed to Ty, detailing her frustrations, anxieties, and even the occasional moment of exhilaration so far from civilization, even as she desperately want to return home.

While the story itself is solid, I felt the pacing was way off throughout the story, as Gemma's captivity only lasts a couple of months, and we never see the complications in Gemma's emotions that she claims to feel at the end. She's diagnosed with Stockholm syndrome, but while she's in captivity Gemma feels no ambivalence, let alone affection, for Ty. Not to mention her escape from captivity feels like a big deus ex machina, coming out of nowhere even after she and Ty have negotiated terms for bringing her back to civilization. I would much rather have followed the story for six months, which would have allowed Gemma more time with her captor with the promise of release and thus more opportunities for complicated emotions to arise.

Ty was a creepy yet oddly sanitized villain and I never felt I really understood his motivations for kidnapping Gemma in the first place. I say sanitized because let's face it, how many real life kidnappings of teenage girls lack physical or sexual violence. Ty maintains he's a gentleman (despite taking a girl against her will) and even shows embarrassment when he has to see Gemma in a state of undress (she messes herself up a couple of times, requiring changes of clothes or even nudity in order to heal from things like extreme sunburn and dehydration).

There are a few brilliant moments of writing. Gemma's interactions with the camel Ty captures and tries to domesticate are heartbreaking, as she confides in the camel how they're both captives and Ty will try to break both of them. It's an absolutely tragic and apt parallel.

Sci-Fi Friday Review: Pastworld by Ian Beck

Found via: Eating YA Books

In middle school, one of my favorite books was Margaret Peterson Haddix's Running Out of Time. The day that the librarians (Cindy and Lynn) book talked it, someone else grabbed it first, so I begged my parents to buy me a copy.

Yeah, I really wanted that book.

So when I first read Jan's review of Pastworld, I looked past everything that had bothered her and focused on the parts that sounded like a more grown up Running Out of Time - a girl who has grown up in a theme park she believes really is Victorian-era London, living under the terror of a Jack the Ripper style serial killer.

Pastworld is the world's most successful theme park, recreating the darkness and danger of 19th century London in the middle of London in 2048, courtesy of the Buckland Corporation. The rich and powerful pay for the privilege to dress up and become part of the scenery, experiencing life outside of the very sanitized 21st century - often taking grisly delight in the unofficial "murder tours," gawking at the crime scenes of murders committed by the Fantom, a mysterious masked criminal who started as a petty thief, but has escalated to committing heinous murders, decapitating his victims and removing their hearts.

Oblivious to most of this is Eve, who is one of the few who believes that Pastworld is real. Sheltered by her guardian, blind Jack, Eve feels stifled. She gathers her courage one day and runs away to join the circus, where she discovers she has quite the talent for walking the tight rope, and is immediately adopted by the circus folk.

At the same time, Lucius Brown and his son, Caleb, have come to visit Pastworld, summoned by a curious letter from Jack after Eve disappeared. The Fantom sets his sights on Lucius and his old friend, leaving Caleb to fend for himself in the unfamiliar city. Luckily, a petty thief with a heart of gold, Bible J, picks up Caleb, trying to shield him from the Fantom and the authorities.

The ongoing threat of the Fantom soon brings Eve, Bible J and Caleb together, all looking to save themselves, or the ones they love, from the end of his razor, even as the police themselves are closing in in an attempt to solve the mystery of where the Fantom comes from.

This book was a chore to get through most of the time. On Sunday evening I found myself 30 pages from the end, in the middle of the climax, and really not caring about how it ended. I forced myself to finish, but reaching that final page was a relief - it was all over!

The narration was all over the place, which made it hard to connect with any of the characters. Most of the book is told from a third person narrative perspective, with occasional first person insights from Eve's journal. However, each of these parts were so short that it was often hard to keep track of one narrative thread. For the first half of the book I was motivated to keep reading because I really wanted to learn how all of these different characters - an amnesiac girl, a blind man, a petty thief, a spiritualist fraud, a rich scientist and his son, a sergeant and inspector in Scotland Yard, and the criminal Fantom to name, well, most of them - were connected. I figured out some, but others were a mystery until close to the end, and quite frankly I just didn't care after awhile because it became so convoluted.

Eve's character also annoyed me a lot because she was written to be so passive. It turns out there's a reason for that in the end...but the scene in which that revelation is made isn't entirely satisfactory, either. To avoid giving too many spoilers, I'll just say that Eve is continually defined by her relationships with men. There's a short time where she seems to break free of that mold while working in the circus, until her love interest comes along and she is reclaimed.

Caleb, our other protagonist, isn't that well developed, either. He rarely acts, choosing instead to react to the madness around him. This makes sense initially, as he's clearly out of his element in Pastworld, but eventually kept me from ever becoming involved with his character.

Ultimately it became difficult for me to believe that Pastworld would be allowed to continue to exist the way it did. All of the citizens are essentially actors with permits to be allowed to live out their roles. This seems to be common knowledge, yet it's also common knowledge that people are routinely murdered while inside Pastworld. How could that be considered a tourist attraction? I never had a real moral qualm with people visiting the historical village in Running Out of Time because the visitors were told only the youngest children were unaware of the outside world and no one knew  vaccines were purposefully being withheld. Compare this with something like the titular prison in Incarceron, another instance of one society living inside another, unaware or unsure if there's another world outside. It makes sense that the prison exists as a circle of hell because the outside world is willfully ignorant. I'm pretty sure that if there were a serial killer in Colonial Williamsburg, the place would be shut down ASAP until the killer was apprehended. Unless the place is run by the mayor from Jaws.

So while the initial premise excited me, ultimately the story was bogged down by apparent implausibility and too many shallow characters. Also? You're going to have to work really hard to get me to really enjoy a book with only one major female characters, and among the other three, only one gets a regularly used name (the other two are the bearded lady and the cat lady). Was there a reason why everyone else had to be a dude?

Review: The Space Between Trees by Katie Williams

Review copy sent to me by the publisher


I was contacted by Chronicle's marketing manager to review this title - and I'll admit, the snarky part of me responded because the publicity information straight up calls this "A real-world mystery (no vamps or werewolves)." Not that I necessarily dislike vampires or werewolves (in fact, I have a couple of werewolf books to review in the next two weeks), but I'm always amused by backlash against whatever's dominating popular culture at the moment (example: my favorite shirt in middle school was a T-shirt that said "The boat sank. Get over it." For you whippersnappers reading this, that was the Titanic equivalent of saying Buffy should stake Edward).


Evie is the classic definition of a loner. She's on the fringes of the social strata at school, going so far as to sit with a group of girls during lunch, but never really being with them. She still has her paper route, making her one of the oldest paper delivery kids in the area, but she doesn't mind, especially as the job lets her sneak brief moments with Jonah Luks, who collects the dead animals that naturally accumulate in the woods behind a swanky housing development.


Just when Evie is ready to finally start actually talking with Jonah - maybe even acting on her fantasy to start dating him - Jonah makes a terrible discovery in the woods: a dead girl. Evie sees Jonah call for the police, and sees them pull the body out of the woods, but it isn't until later that she learns the girl was Zabet, a classmate and childhood friends. The girls weren't lose anymore, as friendships don't always last through the pains of growing up, but Evie is, to say the least, freaked out.


The tension begins when Evie meets Zabet's father at Zabet's funeral - and Evie lies, saying that she was one of Zabet's friends. The distraught man latches onto Evie and Hadley, Zabet's real best friend, bringing the two girls together in an uneasy alliance as they try to comfort Zabet's dad. Hadley knows Evie lied, but, after a moment of discomfort, goes along with the lie, spinning stories that pull Evie into Zabet's life, and convincing Evie that the two of them need to track down Zabet's murderer - even if it means investigating every man they've ever met.


This is a story that starts out quite slowly. Evie is shy and quiet and spends so much time on the periphery prior to the discovery of Zabet's body that it's hard to picture her as a compelling protagonist. All of that changes, however, once the erratic Hadley enters the story, pulling Evie into one chaotic scheme and conspiracy theory after another. Hadley obviously has some problems, but it's impossible to tell whether they existed before Zabet's death, or if her wild behavior is a symptom of her grief. And poor Evie, desperate for attention and affection from someone, anyone, is at first a willing participant in Hadley's adventures - until she's sucked in so deeply that even if she wanted to extricate herself from the relationship, she doesn't feel she can any more.


Also, I have to highlight how awesome this cover is. It doesn't come across at all in the online images, but the cover is actually laser cut, so the hard cover is just the black silhouettes of the trees, and the title is written on pearlescent purple paper on the cover page. Definitely stunning.

Review: Efrain's Secret by Sofia Quintero

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 3/15

I've been dying to post about this one for almost a week now. I discussed some of it with Ari of Reading in Color on Twitter after she finished, but I wanted to get my Nerds Heart YA decision up first so I could make some comparisons between The World is Mine and this, which I coincidentally read shortly after.

Efrain has one goal in life: to be accepted into an Ivy League school. He knows it's an uphill battle: he has no college fund; he's Latino; and even though he's poised to be Valedictorian at his Bronx high school, does class rank really matter when your school doesn't even offer calculus? But the final nail in the coffin appears to come in the form of his SAT score - 1650, far below the average score for Harvard's incoming Freshmen. With a mother that works around the clock just to keep a roof over his and his little sister's heads and a deadbeat dad who moved in down the street with his mistress, Efrain feels like he's at a dead end. Until his old friend Nestor, a high school drop out and current drug peddler, offers to hook Efrain up with a job like his. It's hard work, long hours, and fraught with danger from the cops and rival dealers, but the cash is tax free and it's all for the noble goal of escaping epidemic poverty, so it's okay, right?

Complicating Efrain's life even more are his relationships with his best friend Chingy and potential girlfriend Candace, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina with an overprotective mother. Efrain knows neither would approve of where he's getting his cash, and chooses to keep both in the dark, hoping to keep his secret until he has enough cash to pay for an SAT prep course, re-take the test, and start paying for college with the help of loans. But once he starts peddling drugs, working up from marijuana to the harder stuff, will it really be that easy to get out?

Oh Efrain, Efrain, Efrain. So many times I just wanted to grab him by the shoulders and tell him that no matter how daunting life seemed, selling drugs just wasn't the way to solve his problems. Of course, then there wouldn't be much of a story, would there? Quintero keeps this from falling into a re-hash of an after-school special with dynamic dialog and engaging characters. Nestor, who paves the way for Efrain to join him in the drug peddling business, is an absolutely terrific character. He's neither a stereotypical street kid nor a thug with a heart of gold - rather he's somewhere realistically in between. He alternates between being goofy and serious, a buddy to Efrain and a no-nonsense dealer. I almost want a book about Nestor's story!

The comparison I wanted to make between this and The World is Mine all comes down to the dialog. There are a lot of differences between these two books, but one major thing they have in common is the use of lots of slang. However, The World is Mine called a lot of attention to the slang by interpreting it for the audience, which drew me out of the story constantly and seemed to make it clear the book wasn't actually intended for anyone who might really speak that way. Efrain's Secret, in contrast, hardly translates anything at all. There are even short bursts of dialog in Spanish that go untranslated for an English-speaking audience. Since I speak about three words of Spanish, I had to rely on the context and character reactions to even have a clue what was going on, but it really added another layer of authenticity to the story. It reminded me of one of the things I loved best about the early seasons of Lost, when parts of Jin and Sun's conversations in Korean would go un-sub-titled. It was a great storytelling device then, and it works just as well in Efrain's Secret.

Efrain's Secret is a solid story that jumps up a notch on the basis of great characters and an engaging and immersive writing style.

Review: Split by Stefan Petrucha

As mentioned yesterday, two very different books titled Split were released in March. While I originally thought I could make a double review out of them, they turned out to be so different I decided to go with a back-to-back approach, so here's the science fiction version of Split.

When Wade's mother dies, he finds himself conflicted with how to move on with his life. Should he re-dedicate himself to his studies and stay on the straight and narrow? Or is life without a mother hardly worth living, so he should drop out and drift?

Fast forward three years later, and in the style of Sliding Doors we get to see the outcomes of both decisions. One Wade has dropped out of school, run away from home where his father has fallen off the wagon, and is now living above the coffee shop called The Rat where he plays music to pay rent and entertains his friend Ant and exasperated girlfriend Denby. He also likes to do small-time cons to entertain himself, which is how he ends up with a stolen diamond studded car - originally Ant was supposed to deliver it to the fence, but through a convoluted series of events, it ends up in Wade's hands.

The other Wade is a straight A student, still living with his dad and encouraging him to attend AA meetings so he stays on the wagon. He's still best friends with Ant - called Anthony here - and has proposed to Denby, though she hasn't agreed to the engagement yet. Instead of working cons, this Wade has thrown himself into writing a computer program to prove that the town's particle accelerator could destroy the world. When Wade shows the results of the computer program to the higher-ups at the accelerator, he discovers that not everyone is as eager to protect the world as he is; they're concerned with destroying the livelihoods of many of the town's citizens (and their own paychecks, of course) if the particle accelerator is shut down. We the readers get to see exactly what happens to the town without the particle accelerator - end of the world fears shut down the accelerator shortly after it was started in the other Wade's world, leading to widespread unemployment and economic depression.

Each Wade has strange dreams, seeing himself as the other Wade. As both of their lives are tumbling out of control, by chance they end up at their mother's grave - and by accidentally exchanging the car and the flash drive with the computer program on it, the two Wade's end up exchanging lives. Finding themselves in a world that is totally different, yet utterly familiar, each version of Wade has to find a way to save himself from the other's problems.

Maybe it's because I was reading this the day after I watched the big Lost finale, but the early chapters were giving me traumatic flashbacks, as each Wade was having flashes of himself in his other life. Definitely reminded me of the flash-sideways we were seeing through season 6, when the characters would get flashes of their island lives. Thankfully the trope was abandoned after a few chapters, because not only didn't I need the Lost thoughts, but it was actually kind of annoying to see the events of the last chapter immediately re-capped.

This is not an in-depth science fiction novel for the hard-core enthusiast. Both Wade's are rather shallowly drawn, and there's such an emphasis on action that it's hard to keep track of either Wade's motivation. I'm still not sure if straitlaced Wade was hoping to find the particle accelerator was dangerous or not. I also would have loved some sort of explanation of why there are two different Wade's - does Petrucha subscribe to the multiverse theory? Or maybe it was caused by the particle accelerator experiments? And why were they able to change places?

The supporting cast is no more well developed than the Wades. Both Wades' attitudes towards the girlfriend, Denby, was extremely annoying. She seemed to exist solely to reflect the two Wades' attitudes towards life. At least Ant/Anthony got to actually take part in both adventures - Denby was just there as an example of how controlling Straightedge Wade was and how careless or manipulative Slacker Wade could be.

If you're looking strictly for a SF-tinged action/adventure story, this is for you - but if you want something with well-rounded characters and development, you'd best look elsewhere.

Review: Split by Swati Avasthi

Two novels titled Split came out this March. Originally I intended to review them together in a Double Review, but these two are soooooooooooo different, it would have been the most disjointed post ever. So instead the reviews are being posted back-to-back; look for my review of Stefan Petrucha's Split tomorrow.

16 year old Jace has grown up with an abusive father - but it wasn't until his older brother Christian moved out that Jace was actually a direct victim. He grew up watching his mother and older brother be beaten viciously - and when he finally stepped in to stop an attack on his mother, he was kicked out. With nowhere else to go, Jace turns to Christian, who has moved out to New Mexico and essentially cut all ties with his family - even changing his name to escape his father.

Christian isn't prepared to be Jace's guardian, but agrees to give it a try, despite living only in a crappy one bedroom apartment and working long hours as a doctoral intern. They're both supported by Christian's girlfriend and next door neighbor, Mirriam. In fits and starts, with plenty of wrong moves by both of them, the brothers re-establish a relationship and try to move forward, even as the violence of their past continues to haunt them and re-emerges in unexpected ways.

This is a totally different look at domestic violence and physical abuse than I've seen in YA novels before. Jace and Christian's father is a total bastard - and yet is a judge and seen as a pillar of the Chicago community outside of the family home. Avasthi doesn't pull any punches, describing the manipulative depths this man goes to, even before he raises a fist. Absolutely chilling.

I also loved that Jace is a complex character. He's not a saint. On the same night that he's kicked out of his house, he smacked around his girlfriend, and even after he's in New Mexico his first reaction in many situations is violence of some kind. It's terrifying to see someone who is in otherways a good kid be so influenced (unwillingly) by a negative force like his dad. Christian also has some great nuances, and it's interesting to see how two kids who grew up in the same household could turn out so differently - and yet also have some very basic similarities.

If I'm being vague, it's only because getting to the hearts of these characters is the real draw of this novel. While both Christian and Jace have girlfriends (or potential girlfriends), the story is about the two of them, and while their relationships with women clearly play a part in defining them, this is about the story of two brothers, and if I explained too much about what makes them tick it would take away from the reading experience!

Review: Gringolandia by Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Found via: the author. Review copy received from the author

Somehow Gringolandia never made it onto my radar last year, even though it made the 2010 BBYA list. It's also now in the running for the Nerds Heart YA tournament (meaning I've now read 10 of the 32 nominated titles, lol). So when Lyn Miller-Lachman contacted me to ask if I wanted to review it (also graciously offering to send a copy to me since she knew my local library had never been able to get it) I was excited and happy to accept!

In October 1980, young Daniel Aguilar wakes up in the middle of the night to the sounds of soldiers - not uncommon in Pinochet's Chile, but this time they're inside his apartment, looking for his father, Marcelo. When they pull his father from hiding, they make Daniel watch as they deliver a bloody beating before carting the man away to prison.

Six years later, Daniel is now a junior in high school in Wisconsin. His mother escaped Chile with him and his sister in tow and have made a new life for themselves in Gringolandia, ironically the country that empowered the dictator responsible for Marcelo's imprisonment. Daniel's new life includes reggae music, playing Latin American songs in church, and dating the pastor's daughter, Courtney. Life is turned upside down, however, with the sudden news that Marcelo's been freed and will be joining his family in the United States.

Six years in prison have left Marcelo a changed man - he was tortured and brutalized in prison, leaving half of his body partially paralyzed. He drinks to excess, alternately ignoring and berating his family. Before his imprisonment he was a great writer, but now every word is a struggle. He desperately wants to continue writing, telling his story and the stories of his fellow prisoners to encourage people to fight to remove Pinochet from power, but his injuries make it nearly impossible - until Courtney steps in. An AP Spanish student preparing to go to college in the fall, she is captivated by Marcelo's story and works tirelessly to re-write his stories and translate them into English. Daniel isn't sure what to think of his girlfriend becoming so involved in his father's life, but if it makes his father happy, Daniel will go along with it, hoping that the work will help heal his father and open up the opportunity for a real relationship again.

Once again, here's an historical fiction novel highlighting an aspect of history I knew next to nothing about. An author's note in the beginning gives the background on the dictator Pinochet's rise to power (Chile's elected president in 1970 was a socialist, which of course the US didn't like, so they supported a coup in '73 that brought in Pinochet) and the novel itself covers some of Marcelo's imprisonment and torture as well as efforts in the United States to free him and other political prisoners before finally giving us a brief look at life in Chile after Pinochet.

I found myself of two minds about this book. The story is absolutely compelling and fascinating and horrifying - but I never connected with Daniel or Courtney (who narrates a portion in the middle). They never really sounded like teenagers, I suppose, though they certainly had the impulsive actions of teenagers.

Also, there was a minor bit about Courtney that came up a couple of times that, as a native of Michigan, drove me up a wall. I have never heard of people in Michigan taking French in high school because we're "so close" to Canada. Michigan borders Ontario, which speaks English - it's when you get closer to Quebec that you have to start thinking of speaking French, and there's roughly 600 miles between Bloomfield Hills, MI (where Courtney is originally from) and Montreal, Quebec. I can't find a comprehensive biography of Miller-Lachmann, so I don't know if she grew up in Michigan and this was how people chose a high school language back when she lived here, or if it was conjecture, or what. But really, that's the only specific criticism I have here - and she gets kudos for realizing that in Wisconsin they drink pop :-)

So while the bit about French was annoying, and the characters weren't the most relateable I've read about, the compelling story kept me going forward and I can definitely appreciate the positive reviews and accolades this has received so far. I'll definitely be interested to see how far this progresses in the Nerds Heart YA tournament!

Tonight I'm planning on seeing Lyn Miller-Lachmann speak with Peter Marion and Andrew Xiu Fukuda at the Battery Park City library where they will be speaking about the real crimes that inspired their books. I can't wait!

Double Review: The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin by Josh Berk and All Unquiet Things by Anna Jarzab by

Hamburger Halpin found via Publisher's Weekly 1/18
All Unquiet Things found via Tea Cozy

On the surface it looks like I'm stretching for this Double Review pairing, but hear me out! While The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin is a dark comedy and All Unquiet Things is a noir-ish murder mystery, at the center of both stories is the murder of a young classmate. How each novel handles that murder, and tracking down the killer, however, couldn't be more different.

In The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, the Will "Hamburger" Halping has decided it's time to ditch "deaf school" and join mainstream classes at the local high school. He's fairly adept at reading lips, but being new, disabled, and overweight all combine to work against Will when it comes to making friends. His only social prospect is perpetual dweeb Devon Smiley. Will does his best to ignore Devon, despite the latter's eager attempts at communication, including learning to finger spell and sign some basic phrases so Will doesn't have to read his lips all the time. The two join forces and forge a friendship in the aftermath of a tragic accident at a coal mine during a school trip where a popular classmate died. Or was it an accident? Will and Devon take it upon themselves, roping in Ebony, Devon's friend from his deaf school days (and who just narrowly avoids falling into the "sassy black friend", to solve the crime, relying on Will's & Ebony's lip reading abilities to surreptitiously gather information. Their investigation takes them through all the rungs of the high school social ladder, uncovering secrets and petty gossip the popular kids would rather remain quiet, until the startling reveal of whodunnit.

All Unquiet Things also has a murder at its center: Carly, Neily's ex-girlfriend and Audrey's cousin. Months after Carly's murder, Neily has come to terms with her death (as well as you can when someone you love has been brutally murdered) - until Audrey shows up in school again after an extended absence, saying that her father - Carly's uncle - wasn't guilty, and she wants Neily's help to uncover the true suspect. Through alternating sections, we see the investigation unfold through Neily's and Audrey's perspectives as the two start sticking their noses where they don't belong, tangling with teenage drug dealers and stalkers, while trying to uncover the motive and the guilty party that snatched Carly from their lives all too soon.

I enjoyed Hamburger Halpin for about 99% of the book - until the murderer and motive was revealed. My dislike of the conclusion was only heightened after reading All Unquiet Things which took a very similar tactic and treated it with seriousness and respect. I'm trying to be circumspect here so as not to spoil the ending for either book, but the murderer and motivation in Hamburger Halpin feels totally out of place in a comedic book. I'm all for dark comedy, but the conclusion comes out of nowhere and the very serious motivation is treated like an afterthought that just totally ruined the end.

All Unquiet Things, on the other hand, builds the mystery slowly over the course of the book, with multiple suspects investigated, so that when the big reveal is finally made it feels like we've really been on the investigation with Neily and Audrey. The final few scenes at the climax are tremendously tense and were everything a person could ask for in a dramatic murder mystery.

In Hamburger Halpin's favor, I did enjoy reading about a deaf protagonist, even if I felt the communication difficulties were overcome rather quickly. Until Devon procures smartphones for text messaging for both of them, a lot of communication is done via notebook paper. Have you ever tried to carry on a conversation by writing everything down? It drives you crazy (I did this in high school during the Day of Silence). Also I thought it was a little convenient that Will rarely missed important words while lip reading. Luckily, Will is a fun character, so I didn't mind spending so much of the book inside of his head with just his observations to carry the story until he and Devon become friends.

Has anyone else read either title? What did you think of the big reveals?

Review: Paper Daughter by Jeanette Ingold

Found via: Reading in Color

I picked this one up because I was interested in the journalism aspect of the story; it's simply coincidence that I'm posting my review during Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month.

In the aftermath of her father's death in a hit-and-run accident, Maggie Chen is helping her mother sort through his things when she starts uncovering startling inconsistencies. His old prep school and fraternity claim they've never heard of him. His notebooks have cryptic messages scribbled in the margins. An aspiring journalist, taking after her father, Maggie vows to delve deeper into the mystery. What she doesn't expect is to stumble upon a major criminal story in the course of her work as a newspaper intern that might just connect to her father's mysteries. But is it simply that her father was onto the same story? Or was the man lying about more than just his origins?

But this isn't just the story of Maggie and her father - this is also the story of Fai-yi Li, a 19th century Chinese immigrant whose story also plays a role in Maggie's life. As his story slowly unfolds, Maggie digs deeper into her father's past, until the stories intersect.

I like to think that I'm fairly well versed in history, but then I stumble across stories like this and I realize just how much there is that I don't know. I know that Chinese immigrants weren't treated well in the 19th century (because Americans really didn't treat any immigrants well at that point), but I didn't know about the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended legal Chinese immigration into the US for decades. The Act gave rise to "Paper Sons," Chinese immigrants who were allowed into the country because a Chinese-American citizen would claim the immigrant as a son (or daughter). Want more information on Asian immigration in this era? My friend Ay-leen the Peacemaker not only has a badass name, but runs the awesome steampunk project Beyond Victoriana and this past week's post was all about Asians in the Americas. (While the general focus of Beyond Victoriana is multi-cultural steampunk, many of Ay-leen's essays provide historical background for non-western cultures in the Victorian-ish era that are fascinating even outside of a steampunk context, hence the link this week)

I found the historical chapters to be a bit of a drag, and once Maggie starts researching the history of Chinese immigrants in Seattle the characters can get a little preachy - it's clear that Ingold did a lot of research and I'm sure it was insanely difficult for her to decide what there was room for in the story and what wasn't. The information she does include is fascinating, but I feel it doesn't roll out smoothly. But the journalistic thriller aspect of the story, as Maggie helps track down leads both about corruption in city hall and her father's secretive past, is fast paced and well done.

This is also an interesting novel on the immigrant experience, in part because that isn't the focus of the story. Many, many stories featuring non-white protagonists are about how the character doesn't fit in to mainstream America society and how different she or he is, but Maggie tells a fellow intern at one point that she doesn't necessarily think of herself as "ethnic" - she is aware of and proud of her Chinese heritage, but her family has been in the US basically "forever" so her primary identity is American. It is through the historical chapters with Fai-yi Li that we see what immigration was like for the Chinese on the Pacific coast.

On a closing note, continuing with my goal to not only shame publishers that white wash covers but to applaud those who accurately portray people of color, Harcourt wins for giving us an unambiguous Chinese model on the cover:

Review: Hoppergrass by Chris Carlton Brown

Found via: BBYA 2010 nominee

I added this to my to-be-read list before the final BBYA list was announced in January. It didn't make the final cut, which I'm pretty sure I agree with.

It's 1969 and Bowser has been sent to the Hill, a Virginia juvenile detention center. While the Hill is ostensibly integrated, the boys incarcerated there strictly adhere to racial divisions; while they might work together as assigned, black boys and white boys don't mix otherwise.

Until Bowser and Nose, one of the leaders of the African American boys, have a face off in the bathroom. To the rest of the Hill, Bowser and Nose act like enemies; privately the two become close friends, sharing stories of how they ended up on the Hill.

Until a white boy, Evan, is killed in an accident while on work duty. Shorty Nub, a sadistic and racist supervisor who has already attempted to beat Nose to a pulp once before, tries to blame Nose for the accident, calling it nothing short of murder. Bowser knows Nose, and doesn't trust Shorty Nub, and becomes obsessed with unveiling just how truly sadistic Shorty Nub is while exonerating his friend.

There's some great things about this book, but it reads as a very shallow story. While there are important and serious themes of friendship and racism, the story never digs very deep into them. The imagery is shallow (like the recurring hoppergrass - grasshoppers that Nose temporarily keeps in glass jars) and feels like it was just stuck on in an attempt to make the story a little deeper.

I did really like Bowser's character - it's absolutely impossible to tell whether he's playing the system or if he really is mentally unstable. We do know when he is telling the truth or not about events that happened, but then he'll do something like eat handfuls of paper and cigarettes. Is he crazy, or just trying to make everyone think he's crazy? Should he be held in a psychiatric hospital or is he fit to rejoin society at the end of his sentence? I really enjoyed that unstable element about him.

Bowser and Nose are about the only fully fleshed out characters in the story. Some of the other boys on Hill are interesting, but then the adults are once again quite shallow. They are all either evil or saints. Mr. Woodrow, one of the saints, is the closest to a well-rounded adult character. Miss Lovitt, the librarian that Bowser works with, is just about the only other decent character in the story, but seems to function as little other than a plot device. The not-so-good characters just get one evil trait after another piled on top of them, as if the author thought we wouldn't really believe they were bad guys unless they were some of the evilest people on the planet.

Review: The Less-Dead by April Lurie

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 1/11

Wow. This book has some heavy stuff - religious bigotry and an apparent serial killer on the loose, targeting some of the most vulnerable kids in Austin, Texas.

Noah Nordstrom has grown up as the son of the Bible Answer Guy, a local evangelical Christian radio personality. Noah has summarily rejected all of his father's beliefs, prefering to almost single-mindedly pursue his dream of breaking into the Austin music scene with his buddy, Carson. While taking a break from playing on the streets in Austin, Noah befriends Will, another student at his school for troubled kids who shares Noah's interest in music and poetry. Will and Noah quickly become friends, before it turns awkward when Noah realizes that not only is Will gay, but he has a crush on the adamantly-straight Noah.

Before Noah can resolve the awkwardness lingering between them, Will is brutally murdered, the third victim of a serial killer who has been targeting gay kids in the foster care system. Only, the killer was supposed to be in jail before Will was murdered - either there's a copy cat on the loose, or they locked up the wrong guy.
At the crime scene, Noah pocketed Will's poetry journal, and is shocked to discover the murderer has apparently left cryptic clues about his next victim. Unsure of who to talk to, or who he can even trust, Noah sets out to investigate on his own. The killer is clearly targeting those who are unimportant, and in some ways are considered "less-dead" than if someone like Noah turned up murdered; Noah is intent on proving that Will's life mattered, and thus his death did, too.

Ugh, like I said, heavy stuff here. But Lurie handles it well for the most part. Occasionally the various characters can start sounding a little preachy (though ironically, I didn't catch the Bible Answer Guy ever sounding that way. Mostly it happened with the kids), or the dialogue just felt stilted. Certainly not enough to dampen my enjoyment.

Lurie includes an extensive author's note at the end of the book, thoroughly debunking the usual Biblical claims against homosexuality. I highly doubt her explanations are going to pursuade anyone who truly believes the Bible is an infallible divine document, but it could be a lot of help to someone who is struggling with their sexuality and their faith.

There's some great supporting characters here. Carson, Noah's friend who's obsessed with girl's and pissing off his super-atheistic father, is a great supporter of Noah who undergoes his own character arc on the sidelines. After Will's death, Noah also begins hanging out with two of Will's homeless friends, Quindlan and Doomsday - a street preacher who holds his faith very dear. There's also the mysterious Hawk, another student at the school who was a friend of Will's and seems to want to help Noah, but Noah isn't sure if he's actually trust worthy.

I highly recommend this one. It's a great story of acceptance and redemption, as well as a bit of a mystery as Noah tries to use the flimsy clues he has to track down the killer before he can strike again.


This title not only falls under the GLBT Challenge banner, but also is part of April's mini-challenge, to read a YA novel.

Review: Spies of Mississippi by Rick Bowers

Found via: Betsy at Fuse #8

Spies of Mississippi would make a gripping spy novel. An insidious organization turning neighbor against neighbor, finding collaborators within target communities, and corruption at all levels of the government. But this isn't fiction - this is the true story of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. Founded in 1956 by "moderate" governor J.P. Coleman (moderate because he wanted blacks and whites to remain segregated but he also wanted peace and quiet as opposed to wide-scale violence against black citizens), the agency was charged with maintaining segregation in Mississippi for almost two decades. The spies went by names like "Agent X" to preserve their anonymity, and involved everything from writing down the license plate numbers and finding the home addresses of freedom riders who came from the north, to convincing prominent members of the African-American community to turn on anti-segregation neighbors so the agency could threaten those who would work against segregation.

The chapters are short, with each one focusing on a small part of the agency's history and strategy. The format works well, as the short chapters give each part of the story a narrow focus. However, because of that narrow focus, there are some details that are lost. Bowers never gives us much biographical information on anyone, giving us just enough to get the gist and move on. While this is okay for the most part, I would really have loved to know more about the African-Americans who worked with the commission. It's easy to see, if not totally understand, why a white person would be eager to join in a pro-segregation crusade, but what would make a victim of segregation laws join forces with those who sought to continue those laws? Was it fear of retribution? A longstanding philosophy that agreed the races should remain separate?

But that's just a minor nitpick in what is otherwise a fascinating book. I knew that in the 1960s the FBI had a rather extensive domestic spying program targeting Vietnam protesters and the like (a fact which is noted in the final chapter, which gives a brief paragraph or two on what became of the major players after the downfall of the Commission), but had absolutely no idea one state had taken it upon itself to create a wide-ranging, publicly funded, spy agency. This is a slim book, which means that while it doesn't get into every detail I might have liked, it's easy to pick up and read in an afternoon - and trust me, you're not going to want to put this one down.


Thanks to Books Together for hosting Nonfiction Monday!

Review: Heist Society by Ally Carter

Found via: Liz B. at Teacozy

Kat Bishop comes from a family of thieves. Her father expects her to continue in the family business, but Kat wants out. So she puts all of her skills to work in order to gain entry to a prestigious boarding school where she can have a nice, normal life.

Until her father gets in trouble, and it's up to Kat to save him.

Kat's father is the only suspect in an elaborate art heist, that has all the earmarks of previous heists he's committed. He has the perfect alibi: if he was doing a small job in Paris that night, how could he have done a big job in Italy? But the Italian billionaire whose paintings were stolen is convinced Kat's dad is guilty, and coerces Kat to convince her father to return them.

Kat believes her father's alibi, but also knows he's in incredible danger unless she can get those paintings back. She has two weeks to figure out where the paintings are hidden, and, if necessary, figure out how to steal them back.

Of course, no heist like this could be pulled off by one person. Kat pulls together a group of young criminals, including several childhood friends who grew up in the con business; her friend Hale, who's been practically adopted into the family; her often-obnoxious cousin Gabrielle; and Nick, the new guy who got Kat's attention by picking her pocket (at the same time that she picked his). As the clock keeps ticking, the pressure keeps mounting as Kat and her team try to pull off what may be the greatest heist in history.

First, I need to get this out of the way: this is a slickly designed book. Check out the cover:


It's big and bold and while I don't think the model quite looks like Kat (she's described often as being hopelessly unfashionable) it captures the mood of the book well. The smirk makes the model look a little cheeky, which is definitely a way to describe Kat. If the movie gets made, the poster's already done, just replace the model here with the actor and you've got a slick poster. It's also so refreshingly different from the covers of Carter's Gallagher Girls series (see the covers of all of Carter's books here), which all chop the face off of the models, which is a trend I just can't stand. Also the book keeps a clear countdown so we know exactly how many days Kat has left to pull off her heist, and where she's at now, as she crisscrosses Europe in her search for the paintings. The countdown pages are filled with old-looking maps and every time I came to one I got the theme from Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? stuck in my head.



However, slick design doesn't make up for the fact that this book hit one of my major pet peeves: seeming to go out of its way to fail the Bechdel Test.

Heist Society has exactly two female characters who get more than a page of screen time: Kat and Gabrielle. There's also a female Interpol agent who is in charge of tracking Kat's father, but we hardly see her, and certainly don't see her talking to Kat or Gabrielle. There are no women in Kat's extended thief family (her mother died years ago for no reason other than to make another character sympathetic towards Kat). No women work in museums or are art historians, or even serve hot chocolate in the Alps. When Kat and Gabrielle talk, they're usually being bitchy to each other (I never figured out if there was an actual reason for this animosity), and often being passive aggressive about a boy.

The point where I got absolutely furious about this, however, is when Kat and Gabrielle go to confront the man who's blackmailing Kat and her father. Gabrielle accompanies Kat as "the muscle" so this guy can't just kidnap Kat or whatever. Gabrielle doesn't say a word for the entire scene. It's all about Kat. What the hell was the point of sending Gabrielle along? It was epically disappointing.

The ending clearly sets this up to be the first in a series (though it's not a ridiculous cliffhanger - the story is 99% self contained, with one major element to be picked up as a plot point in another book), and I might even pick up the second one, but I can't guarantee I'll finish it if the gender disparity continues the way this one did.

Review: Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Winner: 2010 Schneider Family Book Award

I've been hearing wonderful things about Marcelo in the Real World for months. Everyone seems to love it. Lots of people were saying it was going to win the Printz (and then were stunned when it didn't even get an honor). But I held back. Because everyone was describing this as a book about an autistic kid, and that's a touchy subject for me; if you don't get the description of autism right I'll immediately shut the book and walk away. It's a subject that hits too close to home for me so I'm wary about what I'll pick up just to save myself the stress.

It turns out people just need to be a lot more accurate in their descriptions of Marcelo. He is not autistic; he hasn't even been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Instead he's on the autism spectrum in an unidentifiable way. This seemed to me an excellent way to present Marcelo: not only does it highlight the wide variety of ways that autism can present itself, but Stork could describe Marcelo and his disabilities however he wanted, and since Marcelo didn't have a medical label attached to him, there was really no wrong way to go.

In case you've been living under a rock, here's the quick story: it's the summer before Marcelo's last year of high school and he's extremely excited to pick up his summer job working with the ponies at Paterson, his private school for children with disabilities. His father, a powerful lawyer, however, has other plans: Marcelo needs to get out into the real world and interact with other people, because he wants to send Marcelo to the public high school for his senior year. The two make a deal: Marcelo will work in the mail room at the law firm for the summer and if he's successful he will get to go back to Paterson for his senior year. If he fails, then it's off to public school. While going through some routine files, Marcelo uncovers a mysterious photograph: a girl with a horribly scarred face. The picture obviously relates to the case his father is currently defending, but is filed to be thrown out rather than be kept with the rest of the evidence. Marcelo and Jasmine, his boss in the mail room, begin an investigation of their own, giving Marcelo some of his greatest real world lessons in friendship, work and doing the right thing.

The law firm setting is absolutely perfect for exploring ideas of right and wrong and the rules of social interaction that Marcelo is supposed to absorb over his summer. The legal system is murky, and in this case Marcelo's father is defending a company that is accused of making dangerous windshields that crack into dangerous shards rather than tiny little pieces in an accident. The company doesn't want to settle any of its lawsuits out of court, but then Marcelo overhears his father discussing a possible settlement with a high-powered lawyer while absolutely refusing a settlement with another lawyer representing a poor client. It's a confusing set of social mores for the best of us, and especially confusing for someone like Marcelo who is used to seeing the world in relatively black and white terms.

Another great/terrible addition is Wendell, the son of the other major partner in the law firm. Wendell is a slimeball. I felt creepy just reading about him. He is the exact opposite of the kind and open Marcelo and I wanted to punch him in the face several times, an excellent quality in the "villain" of the story. So he's great because he functions exactly how the bad guy should, but terrible because he's so creepy and manipulative.

There's a great bit of narration in the novel that describes Marcelo perfectly, after hearing from Jasmine that his father described him as having a cognitive disorder:

He has always insisted that there's nothing wrong with me. The term "cognitive disorder" implies that there is something wrong with the way I think or with the way I perceive reality. I perceive reality just fine. Sometimes I perceive more of reality than others

It's constantly apparent that there is something different about Marcelo. He'll slip into speaking in the third person. He hears what he calls internal music that no one else can sense. He is almost obsessive over studying religion and has to be reminded not to quote scripture or correct or cite quotations that have slipped into idiomatic usage. But this difference is impossible to define. I can see why people have used autistic or Asperger to describe Marcelo, but neither is quite right. I'm very glad I got over my own hesitations and picked this one up. I'm a terrible judge at what should win the major prizes, but I can definitely see why people would be surprised this one didn't get any major recognitions.

Review: Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

Found via: Read Roger, Jan/Feb Horn Book Starred Reviews

Incarceron is the perfect fantasy story for me: it has a lot of the trappings of fantasy (pseudo-medieval clothing and social system and mystical characters), but it's also set firmly in the future, which means in my mind I can call it science fiction and be totally accurate.

This is how I justified reading The Dragonriders of Pern when I was in high school - so maybe this line of reasoning doesn't have the world's greatest track record (I kid, Pern fans).

Incarceron follows two stories that are eventually interconnected: Finn, a prisoner inside the horrid world of Incarceron, considered to be a starseer by his fellow inmates; and Claudia, the daughter of the warden of Incarceron, betrothed to marry the Queen's son, and chafing under the rules of Protocol. That Protocol is how we get a fantasy setting in a science fiction world: for reasons that are mostly unexplained, it was decided decades (centuries?) ago that humanity would revert to living in medieval style, with kings and queens and serfs and servants and castles and thatched roofs.

Though everyone in Incarceron knows no one has entered or left the prison since it was built, Finn has visions of life outside and believes he once lived outside of the prison. He collects a motley band of fellow inmates who believe him, and are willing to follow him and the mysterious key he has scavenged, a key that matches the mysterious mark on his arm.

Outside of Incarceron, Claudia is determined to learn its secrets, for even though her father is the warden he has never spoken of the prison to her. She doesn't even know where it's located. When she snoops in her father's office one day, she discovers a key to Incarceron - and is startled to discover it is also a way to communicate with inmates inside. Specifically, the inmate holding the matching key: Finn.

As Claudia's arranged marriage is quickly approaching, she spends much of her free time talking with Finn, trying to help him find a way out, and is startled to discover Incarceron isn't the Utopia she'd always been told it would be - that even though it was populated by criminals from before the introduction of Protocol, with proper food and education they would have created a paradise within the prison. As she speaks with Finn, Claudia becomes convinced that he's not just an ordinary prisoner - that in fact he may be a member of the royal family who died under mysterious circumstances several years back. If she can just get him out of the prison and prove who he is, she can avoid her marriage and overthrow the Queen.

Incarceron has all the marks of another great dystopian series (like so many books today, it's the start of a trilogy). There are lots of mysteries left to uncover in the second and third books. At the same time, there are a few hiccups here - a lot of the basic world building goes unexplained, most notably the Sapients. It's pretty clear that they aren't normal humans, and that they are somewhat respected as scholars (both in and out of Incarceron) - but we have absolutely no explanation of anything else about them. No physical description, nor explanation of how another sentient species is living with humans. While I'm fine with some things being left to be explored later in the series, since Sapients play large roles in Claudia's and Finn's lives, I would have liked to have more explanation of who they are.

The lack of background aside, however, this is a great addition to the explosion of dystopian YA we've seen over the last few years, and I'm definitely eagerly awaiting the next installment!

Review: Calamity Jack by Shannon and Dean Hale, illustrated by Nathan Hale

Found via: Maw Books

On the last day of 2008 I posted my review of Rapunzel's Revenge and noted at the end that a sequel was in the works...a sequel which I totally forgot about until I saw Natasha's post at Maw Books about the launch party for Calamity Jack!

Luckily for me, my library shipped this to me right away...as opposed to the two months in transit another book took.

Not that I'm impatient or anything.

Calamity Jack opens with some brief bits of biography of Jack's early life as a budding criminal mastermind, before picking up the story where Rapunzel's Revenge left off. In the first book, Jack was the one who was off balance, as the West was Rapunzel's turf. Now the dynamic duo have returned to Jack's hometown, where he hopes to settle a score with the giants in charge and repair the damage his beanstalk did to his neighborhood and his mother's bakery.

When Jack left, the local giant Blunderboar was a gangster bully who had his hands in several cookie jars. When Jack returns, he finds out that Blunderboar has been busy, gaining city contracts to use his personal giants as a supplementary police force in the face of intermittent attacks from giant Ant People that keep invading the city. He's also holding Jack's mother prisoner as his personal baker (he always requires she use special flour...that's probably made of human bones) and has placed a bounty on Jack's head.

Jack is more determined than ever to make good on his promises to his mother, but it's clear he's going to need more help than just Rapunzel. Jack teams back up with a former colleague, Prudence the pixie (who has a love affair with hats like I have with shoes), and Frederick Sparksmith the Third, a slightly naive newspaper man who ran the last press that dared to oppose Blunderboar until the presses were destroyed in an attack by the Ant People. Everyone has their own skills that will have to be at their sharpest in order to save the day.

I think I enjoyed Rapunzel's Revenge more than Calamity Jack. The first story was much more of a straight-up adventure/quest story - while Calamity Jack has lots of introspection and angst. Also I got a little annoyed with how overprotective Jack was of Rapunzel - sure, she's never been to "the big city" before, but do you really think this woman is incapable of taking care of herself? And I did appreciate how at the first chance she got she was out of the clumsy dress and into sensible pants.

I think I just really wanted another Rapunzel story!

Cover thoughts:
Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack both take place in an Old West-style fantasy world, and as part of that world there are Native American peoples. Jack is clearly intended to be read as a Native American (even if in this world the term 'Native American' doesn't exist - it hasn't ever been said this is America we're in!) and is shown as such on the cover! Interestingly enough - the infamous Bloomsbury is the publisher on this one. I'm sure part of the reason everyone is portrayed accurately on the cover is because the illustrator throughout the text also drew the cover.