Nonfiction Monday Review: Frozen Secrets: Antarctica Revealed by Sally M. Walker

Found via: Bookends

Last Monday, the big talk in New York City was how it was colder in Manhattan than it was in parts of Antarctica. Which probably isn't the fairest comparison considering it's summer in Antarctica right now, but the point was made: it was freaking cold here. As we're in a brief lull between snowstorms, and temperatures are thankfully back into the 30s, I thought it was high time to settle in with Frozen Secrets, Sally M. Walker's in-depth look at the mysterious continent.

Walker methodically walks us through numerous aspects of Antarctic exploration, from the first humans to attempt to cross the continent, back to the dinosaurs that once called it home, and looking ahead to what clues Antarctica can give us about Earth's future.

There's a little bit of something for everyone in here - geology and climatology, paleontology and even robotics. Every couple of pages I was coming across new stunning facts and photographs that I just had to share with my husband - who is going to read the book next and use it as research for the survival-horror role playing game he's setting up for our friends that will now be taking place in an Antarctic research station.

Teen readers I'm sure will feel a connection with the middle school scientists featured in the book - their science teacher goes scuba diving with Antarctic research teams, and gave her students the chance to build a robot that was actually used in an Antarctic dive. How cool is that?!

Walker does an excellent job of explaining complex scientific theories and experiments in plain language for the non-Antarctic-expert. The explanations are accompanied by amazing photographs and excellent charts and drawings when applicable, making everything extremely easy to understand, but not feel condescending.

This is also an absolutely stunning book. I can't find a picture of it online, but the cover image that Amazon has isn't the actual cover - the same picture is used, but the title is moved up above the mountains and is in a blue font, while the subtitle is in roughly the same position but faces from yellow to light blue, like the overall photo does. Visually stunning, and I just love the font as well - it comes back for the chapter headings throughout the book. Almost every page has at least one picture, from portraits of research teams to stunning landscapes to historical photographs of early Antarctic explorers. This is absolutely a must-read for any sort of science geek.


This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by The Miss Rumphius Effect. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

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: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 4/19




You all know that I'm a sucker for science fiction, especially when it falls into the dystopian camp. I'm also a huge fan of books that bring in strong and interesting non-white characters (okay, I prefer my white characters to be interesting as well, but characters of color are harder to find!). Ship Breaker is one of the few books that combines both of those passions into an awesome story.

17 year old Nailer has spent his whole life living on the Gulf coast, working on the crews that break down the ancient oil rigs and shipwrecked boats that were abandoned as fossil fuels were exhausted and the climate changed so radically the coast began suffering through Category 6 hurricanes - aka City Killers. It's a rough and tumble life for everyone, but perhaps a little more so for Nailer who lives with his alcoholic father who isn't afraid to re-live his glory days as a wrestler by taking out his frustrations on his son.

Everyone on the crews dreams of making like Lucky Strike, the former crew member who found a secret oil deposit and was able to smuggle enough out to buy his way off the crew and set up a comfortable life for himself. Nailer thinks he's found his shot with the discovery of a modern and swanky clipper ship wrecked on the shore, filled with silver and gold and copper and, unexpectedly, a survivor - a young woman. Nailer and his friends are tempted to kill the girl and claim the boat as salvage, but ultimately Nailer decides to spare Nita after she promises there'll be a handsome reward for her safe return.

What Nita failed to mention is her rich father isn't the only one looking for her. Trouble is brewing in her father's industry, and a former colleague has pursued Nita across the Gulf, hoping to use her as a hostage. Without Nailer's help, she'll never reach safety. With the promise of adventure and a better life for himself and his friends, Nailer agrees to help, setting in motion an adventure that takes him from the ravaged Gulf to the ruins of New Orleans and out onto the ocean as he's always dreamed.

Bacigalupi is a rising star in science fiction right now, having just won the 2010 Nebula Award for his 2009 adult novel. So Ship Breaker continues the trend of adult writers turning towards the YA market, but after reading this one I'm happy to welcome Bacigalupi into the YA field. This is a tightly crafted adventure story, with a setting that feels all the more timely in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill (boo, hiss). I also found an interview with Bacigalupi that's interesting to read in light of the New Yorker article on YA dystopias. The New Yorker notes that a lot of YA dystopias don't truly work as social commentary like 1984 and Brave New World do because teenagers can't do anything to change their place. Bacigalupi, however, takes a different tack, saying "Adult readers nod their heads like a Chihuahua (bobble head) on a dashboard and say, 'Wow, that's really deep.' Then they get in their car and drive to work again. But with young people, they actually still have a chance to make better decisions than we made." Hopefully that means he plans on writing more YA!


The diverse cast is definitely one of the strengths of this novel. Not only are most of the characters not-white (specifically Nailer is Latino and Nita is Indian), but both men and women, boys and girls are part of the action. Nita starts off physically frail, but she's clearly clever and is a fast learner so she can earn the respect of Nailer and his crew who've known nothing but hard labor. Sadna, the leader of Nailer's crew, is a strong and imposing woman who has clawed her way up the ranks. At least in the shanty town, there's no difference between races or gender, it's all about how you can contribute and earn your keep.


When Nita arrives on the scene, class also comes to the forefront of the story as it becomes apparent that the entire world isn't in shambles like the Gulf coast is. Farther inland there are working cities with industries and infrastructure going strong. The only way those cities continue to thrive, however, is by exploiting people like Nailer to salvage every last resource from the wreckage people like us left behind.

Sci-Fi Friday Review: The Line by Teri Hall

Found via: YALit

When I feel like I'm running low on new recommended titles, I head over to the YA Lit site which has a pretty comprehensive listing of all of the recently published and upcoming YA titles. That's how I stumbled across The Line, and decided it was a must-read when I saw one of the editorial reviews was from Booklist - and written by Lynn from Bookends (and one of my awesome librarians dating back to when I was in middle school).

Rachel has lived on The Property for as long as she can remember. Her mother does domestic work for the intimidating Ms. Moore, and the three of them have lived quietly away from civilization and next to the Line ever since Rachel's father was presumed dead in the war,

The Line separates the Unified States from Away - a place where horrible creatures and the Others, people who are no longer even human, live thanks to the weapons used in the last war. Not that Rachel has seen any of this, for while the invisible border runs right behind Ms. Moore's orchid greenhouse, Rachel has never seen any signs of life on the other side of the border. Until one day she receives a mysterious message asking for help, smuggled by an Other across the Line she'd thought was impenetrable. The message inspires Rachel to start asking questions about the Unified States, Away, and just why her mother insists on keeping them as far from the rest of civilization as possible.

 Lynn called this "a good choice for introducing young readers to the science-fiction genre" - and I absolutely agree with that assessment. This is in some ways "dystopia light" - a dystopia more on the level of The Giver rather than The Hunger Games. It's clear that the government of the Unified States isn't all sunshine and lollipops, but Rachel is shielded from a lot of the specifics by her mother and also because she's so young she's not as cynical and jaded as someone like Katniss. This is a solid book for middle grade readers, but more experienced dystopian readers won't find much new here.

Review: Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 2/15

More dystopian fiction! Can we ever get enough of this stuff? I have to admit, that for all my enthusiasm for the genre...my answer is "maybe." The problem when the market becomes saturated with a genre is that new additions have to work so much harder to stand out from the rest of the crowd, and I'm not sure Birthmarked is up to that task.

An accident as an infant condemned Gaia to a life of poverty, hunger...and the love of her birth parents. In Wharfton, every month a certain number of babies must be "advanced" for the good of the Enclave; taken from their birth mothers and given to adoptive families inside who will ensure the child will never want for anything. When Gaia was born, the infants got to live with their parents for their first year before going into a lottery, but after a severe wax burn left Gaia with scars all along the left side of her face she was no longer eligible. Now Gaia is 16 and working as a midwife alongside her mother; the new requirements for advancement call for the first three babies a midwife delivers in a month to be delivered to the Enclave within 90 minutes of their birth.

Gaia has always been unwaveringly loyal to the Enclave - until her parents are arrested in the middle of the night, accused of treason. Gaia narrowly escapes arrest as well, and continues her mother's work outside of the wall, until she hears of her parents' impending execution. Gaia sets out on a nearly impossible rescue attempt, which seems to be thwarted at every turn, but as Gaia is convinced of the rightness of her mission, she refuses to give up.

A lot of life in the Enclave made me think of this as sort of a pre-Handmaiden's Tale. Citizens of the Enclave are increasingly infertile or are carrying debilitating genetic diseases due to generations of inbreeding, leading to the need to take in babies from the outside. I could definitely see the society veering towards Gallahad-ian policies if the birthrate continued to fall - they even already have a class of women who dress exclusively in red! (Though it seems to connote more about their status in society than their fertility)

But even that is a sign of how reductive parts of this book are. There's very little here we haven't seen here before. The bits about inbreeding do add a bit of freshness to the story, as it would be a very real danger for insular societies, but that isn't enough to really keep the momentum of the story going.

I also had a huge, huge problem with the romance. It felt soooooooo forced, like O'Brien got halfway through the book and thought, "Oops, YA books need romance. Quick! Have that boy kiss Gaia!" I exaggerate, but not by terribly much. Authors, I promise you: we don't actually *need* romances in our YA books - sometimes the focus of the story really should remain elsewhere, and you should keep your male and female leads platonic. Those who want/need romance will read sexual tension into the relationship anyway, and sometimes UST can be more satisfying than any on-screen romance (see: X-Files).

I do have to admit, though, I was very excited to realize this was set around the Great Lakes - Wharfton is near Unlake Superior, as the environmental disaster didn't even leave that massive lake unscathed. Whether Wharfton is in present-day Michigan, Wisconsin or Canada isn't revealed, but I like the idea of the upper peninsula becoming a desert wasteland, so I'm going with Michigan ;-)

I suspect this is a great story for those who haven't spent the last year and a half reading every single piece of dystopian literature that's been published. For those of us who are well-versed in the genre, however, there's really nothing substantially new to see here.

Review: This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

I read this one the same day that the volcano started wreaking havoc with travelers around the world. It was a total coincidence, I swear!

Such is just one of the disasters that has happened in Susan Beth Pfeffer's trilogy that started with Life as We Knew It and continued in The Dead and the Gone (both of which were among my favorite books read in 2008). To re-cap briefly: an asteroid hit the moon, knocking it out of its standard orbit and moving it much closer to Earth. Cue instant environmental chaos: tidal waves wipe out coastal cities (in The Dead and the Gone I learned that my neighborhood in Queens would have most likely been wiped out immediately), earthquakes strike and the darn volcanoes start going off constantly. Millions die instantly, and who knows how many thousands more die as electricity, heat, and food are in short supply. Global warming is no longer an issue - with all of the ash in the atmosphere a new ice age settles across the globe, where in the middle of summer in Pennsylvania they're happy for days of a warm 60 degrees Fahrenheit. The first book is told through Miranda's diary entries in Pennsylvania; the second book covers roughly the same period of time, but follows Alex and his two sisters in New York City. This World We Live In is set a year after the asteroid's impact and we're back following Miranda through her diary entries.

A sense of civilization has returned for Miranda, her mom, and her two brothers. They're still getting canned food from city hall. They're getting electricity for a few hours every day, and spring is on the way, which will hopefully mean warmer days. But the quartet expands rapidly, first as her oldest brother brings a girl home along with a big haul of fish, and then as Miranda's dad returns, with his wife and new baby, and three friends from a refugee camp: Charlie and Alex and his little sister Julie, two of the stars of The Dead and the Gone.

It's tough going from a family of four to a group of 11 almost over night. Food rations are increasingly scarce and privacy - already rare when it was just Miranda, her mom and her brothers - is a thing of the past. To make it all the more frustrating, Miranda and Alex can't seem to stand each other. He's quiet and stand-offish, intent on taking Julie to a convent despite her wishes to the contrary. He doesn't want to take Miranda's advice on anything - he doesn't seem to want to be around people at all. But in this new world they live in, Alex and Miranda can't afford to be at each other's throats constantly and learn to first like, and then perhaps even love each other, even as the future is as uncertain as ever, and tragedy lurks around every corner.

I've said before that diary-style stories can really throw me off, but for some reason I had absolutely no problem with the diary entries here. I don't know if this is because Pfeffer has some magic tricks up her sleeve, or if I was just so excited to get back into this devastated world she's created. In books like the Carbon Diaries series, the natural disasters build gradually over time, but here the change is immediate and devastating and reading about the short- and long-term survival of Miranda and her family is just gripping.

The last two books were necessarily light on the romance since the main characters interacted with few people outside of their families (no Flowers in the Attic storylines here!), but the romance got turned up to 11 in this one, first with Matt and then Miranda and Alex falling head over heels in love almost immediately upon laying eyes upon someone of the opposite sex. While I found it totally believable (it's the end of the world, of course you're going to go looking for connections where you can find them!), I was kind of waiting for the adults to butt in and try to get the kids to act rationally. For example, Miranda's mother can be extremely short tempered and clearly treats Miranda differently than her brothers post-asteroid (this was touched on more in The Dead and the Gone than Life as We Knew It, but the streets are dangerous places for girls alone, and as we've seen in post-earthquake Haiti, natural disasters make areas doubly unsafe for women and girls) yet she never has a real problem with Miranda melodramatically declaring her love for Alex. I got annoyed with the two of them talking about their deep and spiritual love; I found it hard to believe Miranda's practical and short-tempered mother having much of a stomach for it, either.

But really? That's my only critique. Even when she's being whiny or melodramatic, I love reading about Miranda and I'm sad this is the conclusion of the trilogy. Pfeffer has created an intensely compelling world, and even if the Earth didn't seem to be in the middle of heightened seismic activity, I would still love reading this. I think this is another early add to my best of 2010 list.

Review: Carbon Diaries 2017 by Saci Lloyd

Sequel to Carbon Diaries 2015

I could have sworn I reviewed Carbon Diaries 2015 somewhere, either here or at Goodreads. Apparently my review was a figment of my imagination. I hate it when that happens.

Carbon Diaries 2017 picks up a year after the first one ended. Carbon rationing has been in place for Great Britain for two years now, and the rest of Europe is planning on following suit. Water riots are breaking out around the world: Africa is still held in the stranglehold of drought, and in the US, states are threatening to dam their rivers so that their precious water won't travel out of state (especially to places like Arizona where it's felt that people have no reason to be living in the middle of the desert).

Laura, our diarist from the first book, is now in college, still dating Adi, and rocking out with the dirty angels with dreams of a European tour about to be realized. While in 2015 the main focus was on survival in a radically altered society, now Laura and her family and friends must deal with the political fallout. A neo-Nazi-esque group the United Front is gaining traction in London, claiming that the foreigners and immigrants are taking the few jobs that are left, leaving the white populace to starve. Fighting against the tide is 2, a radical and potentially terroristic group that is determined to prevent the United Front from gaining any ground. Somewhere in the middle is the government, who will go to any extremes necessary to keep the peace, even if it means severely abridging personal freedoms.

In the last book we got a few glimpses of what the rest of the world was like through e-mails with family members in different countries, but when the dirty angels go on tour we get to see first hand the political unrest caused by the destabilization of the environment.

I vaguely recall that I wasn't a huge fan of the first book, though since I can't find my thoughts on that one ANYWHERE I can't confirm that. Clearly I wasn't put off enough to want to avoid the sequel, which I did mostly enjoy. Books written in diary format often require me to suspend my disbelief a bit, because how likely is a person to be able to accurately recall whole conversations after the fact? Also, it's a paper diary and there's a resource shortage, so is Laura really printing out pictures and texts she receives on her phone to paste into her diary? She's squatting in an abandoned building at one point - I highly doubt there were printers nearby. So while I like the multi-media aspect of the book, it doesn't really make logical sense.

One thing I did enjoy about this one was the wide variety of view points on the political scene afforded to us by the multiple band members. Two band members grow increasingly radical, though not always for the same cause, which brings about some tension. Another band member seems to care about nothing other than music and wants to avoid thinking about anything even slightly political. Laura is still caught in the middle - she recognizes there are a lot of things wrong in the world, but will her contributions to any one cause actually bring about change? Or will it just get her into trouble and further hinder her dreams of punk rock stardom? There are tons of debates in this book; it's certainly not a light read, but it is a good one!

Review: The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman

I think I have a slight addiction to end-of-the-world books. This is another book where the government uses an environmental disaster to impose a dystopian regime upon an unsuspecting populace.

In this particular variation on the theme, the melting of the polar ice caps has led to the world being flooded, leaving only tiny numbered islands to house the human race. Eighteen years ago, Earth Mother (whose description reminds me of a female Mr. Rogers, but with a twisted environmental/dictatorial bent. I think it's the constant references to her kindly eyes and sweater that does it) somehow came to power, and decided to Enclose the polar caps, stabilizing the environment there to better match the environment on the rest of the planet, which seems to be a constant spring. There will be no more snow, no more changing leaves, and polar bears are already extinct (sadface!).

Honor was born in the eighth year of enclosure, and now at age ten she has moved with her parents from the wilds of the Northern Islands (where the Enclosure is happening) to Island 365. Right from the beginning Honor doesn't quite fit in with the other kids. Thanks to her unconventional early childhood, she hardly knows enough to get into the elite Old Colony School and often has trouble keeping up in class. Her mother doesn't work (though, allegedly, not from lack of trying to get an engineering job), her father takes Honor on illegal (or at least discouraged) trips to the ocean to actually touch the water, and, perhaps most obviously, Honor's very name doesn't fit in. Everyone born in the eighth year of enclosure must have a name that starts with H, and while Honor was on the approved list of names, it certainly doesn't fit in with a class filled with Harriets and Helenas.

As Honor adjusts to life on Island 365, her parents start to act stranger. They violate curfew and when Honor's mother becomes pregnant with a second child, she refuses to give him back to the community where he could be raised by a childless couple. After Quintillian, Honor's new little brother, is old enough to go to school (he is the only brother - a terrible insult - in the school, apparently), Honor's mother can return to work, but the only job she can get is in the gift wrapping department of the Central Store, working alongside the anonymous Orderlies who silently perform all of the menial labor required to keep Island 365 running.

After the parents of her friend Helix Disappear - the phenomenon where people seem to literally vanish from their houses or work, or even from the store on Errand Day, Honor knows something is wrong with her parents. They were friends with Helix's parents, and would often break curfew together. Honor begins to rebel, slowly at first, until finally she tells the school administration that she wants to change her name to something more appropriate.

Within days of changing her name, Honor's and Quintillian's parents Disappear. When the school finds out, Honor and Quintillian are forced to live at the school with the Orphans, other children whose parents have Disappeared and now work at the school doing janitorial work in return for shelter and leftover food at night.

Honor is shaken. She knows its her fault her parents were taken (no matter what the pamphlets the school nurse gives her say), and with the help of her fellow Orphan, Helix, she's determined to rescue them from whatever terrible fate they have been sentenced to.

After the end-of-the-world bender I've been on recently, there wasn't very much about this book that was surprising for me. One thing I did enjoy is that the traditional roles were reversed: so often in YA lit, it's the parents who are conformists and the child who is rebelling against an oppressive way of life. Here, Honor is the one who is determined to fit in and be a perfect citizen while her parents are struggling against conformity in every way possible.

Also on the awesome side: little clues left in the book for the observant reader to pick up on and realize how far the government's totalitarian control extends. For example, at one point Honor mentions that she's reading the book The Wizard of Oz - where Dorothy falls asleep and dreams about the land of Oz. At first I was pissed, because as anyone who knows anything about the Oz books knows, that was the ending created for the film. In the books, Dorothy really does travel to Oz. But eventually it's revealed that the book has been censored, because of course Dorothy travels to Oz via tornado, a weather phenomenon that Earth Mother has sought to eliminate. Additionally, the protagonist is not the Dorothy Gale we know and love, but Dorothy Dale, since Earth Mother doesn't want anyone to know about gale-force winds. So Allegra Goodman gets major props for that one from me.

On the other hand, there is a lot that is unanswered in this story. Perhaps part of it is because it's from the point of view of a 10-12 year old. How did Earth Mother come to power? Why on earth does she go by such a silly name? (I can't help but picture her - in addition to being an evil female Mr. Rogers - as the robot Mother from Futurama) How are the Orderlies created? Why are Honor's parents pretty terrible at trying to genuinely reach her and teach her about rebellion?

And that might be my biggest problem with the book (minor spoilers after the jump concerning Honor's parents)

When Honor's parents do something she says is Not Allowed or Unacceptable (the book has a big thing for capitalizing words to make them official), they never explain to her why they are acting the way they are. They tell Honor that the things she's learning in school or this dystopian version of girl scouts are propaganda, but there's never any explanation of what exactly the propaganda is, what it means, or what the truth it.

And perhaps worst of all, after Honor is reunited with her parents and displays a great amount of bravery and ingenuity, they refuse to take her on their next adventure to make a real attempt at overthrowing the government. Okay, granted, a coup isn't necessarily the best place for a child, but they send her back to her terrible school with no explanation other than someone needs to take care of her little brother. Maybe this stems at least partially from my own distaste at the idea of being forced to care for a sibling (I have an autistic brother who will probably require lifetime care to some extent or another, but my parents have always told me they don't expect me to become his caretaker, though they hope I'll have him over for holidays and such), but it seems incredibly callous to send their daughter back into what is essentially an abusive situation without any explanation. Especially since the abuse could easily escalate because Honor was already developing a reputation as a problem child as an Orphan, and brazenly ran away from school in the middle of a typhoon.

Review: Nation by Terry Pratchett

I have a confession to make:

Nation is the first Terry Pratchett book I've ever read.

I don't know why; I've just never felt like picking up any of Pratchett's other works.

And unfortunately, I can't say that Nation is a book that is going to change my mind.

There's nothing inherently bad about this book: it's excellently written, the world is developed wonderfully and it's funny and touching and thought provoking - really everything you could ask from a book, right?

Except for one thing: I found absolutely nothing compelling about the story. It was interesting enough, but I really didn't care whether or not I ever reached the end.

This is the story of Mau and Daphne. At the story's outset, Mau is a boy on a quest to become a man. He sails by himself away from the island of the Nation to spend a night on the Boy's Island. As is the tradition of the Nation, when a boy completes his time on the Boy's Island, he returns to the Nation as a man.

Except while Mau is on the Boy's Island, a terrible wave hits the Nation, destroying everything - and everyone - Mau has ever known.

But brought along with the destruction is a ship that had been sailing across the Great Pelagic ocean, carrying Ermintrude, 138th in line for the English throne (as her grandmother always reminds her, should 137 other people die, Ermintrude would be queen!).

Ermintrude doesn't much care for the idea of being in line for the throne - she doesn't have it in her to wish for 137 other people to die. She considers herself something of a scholar: she has attended lectures at the Royal Society with her father who has encouraged her curious mind as they debate who is a greater scientist, Darwin or Newton. Ermintrude's grandmother thinks this is scandalous, of course, but when Ermintrude's father is named governor of an island in the Great Pelagic ocean, he decrees that his daughter will join him, and that is the end of that!

But it is during this voyage that the great wave that destroyed the Nation also sweeps Ermintrude's ship onto the island, leaving her the only survivor of the wreck. When she meets Mau, she realizes she has a chance to start over, in a way. She tries to Maintain Standards, wearing her proper clothes and inviting Mau to the wreckage of the ship for tea, but she also takes the opportunity to remake herself, by introducing herself to Mau as Daphne (it's a much more suitable name for adventuring than Ermintrude).

Despite the initial language and cultural barriers, Mau and Daphne work together to rebuild the Nation as refugees from other nearby islands come to what remains of the Nation. Among them are women who take Daphne under their wing and teach her how to make beer (a demon drink in Daphne's former life, but she makes the best beer on the island which, the women assure her, will lead to her getting a fine husband!), and a priest who serves as Mau's foil, as the destruction of his home has shaken Mau's previous belief in the gods.

The whole story touches on more themes than can be contained in a single summary. Gender, faith, science, imperialism, identity and family are all integral to the story and are woven in seamlessly. I probably most enjoyed the anti-imperialist sentiment, and Daphne's discovery of the Grandmothers. The Grandfathers - Mau's ancestors - spend most of the book haranguing Mau for not maintaining the old ways in the face of disaster. They yell in Mau's head and generally make him feel miserable for a long time. But as Daphne begins to understand Mau and his culture, slowly and quietly the Grandmothers - for, after all, every grandfather first had a mother and a grandmother who comforted him, fed him and taught him - begin speaking to Daphne, sharing their feminine wisdom with her.

And yet, despite all of these great, interesting tidbits...overall the whole book fell flat for me, which is unfortunate. I wanted to like this book, because I've heard so many good things about Pratchett. Considering I've read reviews on Goodreads from Pratchett fans that say this is among Pratchett's finest books, I probably won't be running out to pick up his other books any time soon.

Review: Exodus by Julie Bertagna

I think it says something about me that I am continually drawn to books about dystopian future societies. Sure, I hope that our future is all sunshine and roses - after all, I don't want to be a Handmaiden like in The Handmaid's Tale or have brain lesions implanted during radical plastic surgery like in Uglies - but when it comes to books, I'll take the end of the world/government is evil scenario over almost any other.

Exodus takes place in the year 2100, after global warming has melted the polar ice caps and apparently drowned all of the land on Earth. As far as Mara Bell is concerned, all that is left of the world is her tiny island, Wing, which is rapidly being swallowed up by the still-rising waters. In order to escape the monotony of being trapped inside her small house during the storm season (a season which seems to get longer every year), Mara uses a piece of antique technology - a cyberwizz - to explore the ruins of a virtual-reality-type internet called the weave. It's while exploring these ruins one day that she makes a startling discovery: the citizens of Wing aren't the only people left alive on earth. After years of exploring weave in solitude, Mara stumbles across another entity, a person who has taken the cyber-form of a fox. He tells Mara he lives in the New World, a city called New Mungo that has been built on stilts high enough to rise above the waters and sturdy enough to support a civilization through the thrashing storms brought on by global warming.

When Mara tells her family and the rest of the community about her discovery, they are hesitant at first, but quickly realize they have no other choice but to try to reach New Mungo. The alternative is drowning with their tiny island.

A traumatic journey across the ocean leads to more trauma: a refugee camp made of boats, an uncountable number of people who are desperate for shelter within the safety of New Mungo, but aren't allowed in - not unless you are chosen during the Picking, a fate which no one is sure is a good or a bad thing.

Mara, wracked by guilt for having led her community into the horror of the refugee camp, makes a desperate attempt to gain entry into the city. She falls short of her goal, but is rescued by a "sea urchin," an orphaned boy who lives a wild life among the support pillars of New Mungo and on small islands that haven't succumbed to the rising ocean. Also living on the islands is a small civilization of Treenesters, people who live in what are possibly the last trees on earth, and believe they will be rescued from the islands when the Face in the Stone appears and can fulfill a prophecy. The Face in the Stone, it turns out, bears an uncanny resemblance to Mara.

Mara's adventure continues as she tries to devise a way to save not only the people of Wing from the boat refugee camp, but the treenesters as well. And when he treenester friend Gorbals, as well as the sea urchin who saved her, are taken by the New Mungo police in a Picking, Mara's quest leads her into the heart of danger: New Mungo itself.

Overall I found this to be a fun book, though there were some small problems with it. There wasn't always a lot of plot development leading up to a major event, so sometimes it felt like catastrophe upon catastrophe was befalling Mara with little reason. Also the beliefs of the treenesters seemed a little forced: the oldest of their clan is a woman who was a scientist before New Mungo was built; why would she suddenly start believing in some prophecy that was apparently made up of whole cloth? Legends and religions generally don't just spring up over night, but that's apparently what happened with the prophecy of the Face in the Stone.

At the end of it all, Exodus covers a lot of ground, but still leaves lots of questions unanswered. I just checked Wikipedia, source of all knowledge, and it says a sequel was published in 2007. Considering Exodus was originally published in 2002 and it just made it to America this year, who knows when we'll get the rest of the story.

The high point of the novel for me had to be when Mara was exploring an abandoned university that hadn't quite been submerged yet. The greatest legends, artists, thinkers and inventors throughout history were written about and depicted on the walls of the university - and there were hardly any women among them. When a woman appeared she was often a legendary figure, like the warrior queen Boudica. Hopefully in whatever future Mara builds for herself in Zenith, she will be remembered as a great and brave person.