Sci Fi Friday Review: Invisible Sun by David Macinnis Gill

Whoa...new look for Blogger...trippy.

But! I'm not back to talk about blog service layouts, I'm back to talk about a new book! Yaaaaaaaay! Invisible Sun by David Macinnis Gill is the sequel to 2010's Black Hole Sun, which was easily one of my top books of the year. The combination of humor and awesome sci-fi action left me begging for more.

Unfortunately, Invisible Sun wasn't what I was hoping for.

The team of Durango and Vienne (and Mimi, the AI in Durango's head) are back, fighting against the crime lord Lyme by keeping sensitive documents out of the man's hands. The book starts with just another day in the life of these dalit Regulators - storm in, blow some stuff up, and escape with guns blazing. Like the most action-packed of escapes, it's always a narrow one, but Durango and Vienne are the best at what they do.

While escaping, Durango and Vienne end up in the neighborhood of where she grew up and Durango, still not entirely sure to do about his feelings for Vienne, is terrified of meeting her family. This bit of domestic comedy is the last lighthearted moment in the book, and we've barely scratched the surface.

After Durango escaped his clutches yet again, Lyme devises a plan using Archibald, his reluctant toady, to capture the pain-in-the-ass Regulator. Archibald, son of a powerful CEO on a planet that is ruled by corporations, doesn't take kindly to being ordered around, but does relish the idea of raining death and destruction down upon the helpless population in hopes of drawing out Durango and Vienne, protectors of the poor and downtrodden of Mars (as seen with the miners in Black Hole Sun).

The plan succeeds.

And this is when the book started to take a nose dive for me.

Because while trying to protect the people Archibald is set on torturing, Durango and Vienne are split up. Durango escapes by making his captors think he's dead, but Vienne has no such luck and is taken prisoner. Where she is sadistically essentially stuffed in a refrigerator in order to give Durango a quest for the rest of the novel.

Vienne was an incredible bad-ass in Black Hole Sun. A big deal was made in both that book and this book about her self-sufficiency, her battle-savvy, and her strength and pride. And here we see her maliciously beaten and tortured (with a weird sexual vibe every once in awhile that made it seem quite rape-y)...with little to no pay off in the end. Black Hole Sun wrapped up its story neatly while leaving lots of room for the sequel. Invisible Sun ends in a big ol' cliffhanger with very few conclusions.

I don't end up buying a lot of books - there just isn't room in my apartment for every book I'd like to read. However, after being gifted an iPad for Christmas, I've been slowly but surely filling it up. I bought Invisible Sun with little hesitation for my iPad because I loved Black Hole Sun so much. I think I'm going to go back to my previous rule that the iPad gets loaded up with books that are old favorites rather than new books, because it's so disappointing to have spent the cash on a book that just fell apart so spectacularly. And with an ebook, I can't even pawn it off on a friend or charity!

Another annoyance that's small in the long run, but should be brought up for anyone that still wants to give this one a chance: there's almost no re-capping of Black Hole Sun here. I've said before I know it's a delicate balance between boring your experienced readers and drawing in the new ones, but every time something about Durango's past was mentioned, I was wracking my brain trying to remember if this was just refreshing something we'd learned in Black Hole Sun, or if this was supposed to be an exciting new revelation.

With two very successful and enjoyable books already in his repertoire, I'm not going to write-off Gill as an author just yet. However, I'll probably skip the eventual third book in this series and wait for Gill to pick up a new story. In the mean time, I highly recommend going back and re-reading Soul Enchilada for a hilarious Faustian tale, or Black Hole Sun for some awesome SF.

Sci Fi Friday Double Review: ANIMORPHS #1 & #2, by K.A. Applegate

I've mentioned a few times before, here and in various blogger profiles I've done for other blogs, that I absolutely loved the Animorphs series when I was younger. It's been just about 14 years since I got my first book - Easter Sunday, 1997, I woke up to find a book tucked in amongst the candy in my Easter basket. A red book with a weird picture on the cover of a girl turning into a cat.

I stuck through the whole series for five years, through the ups and (devastatingly terrible) downs that the 62 book series took. I ran a fan website, wrote tons and tons of fan fiction, and made some of the best friends a girl could ever hope to have, all because of these books.

So even though the books didn't go out on the highest note, I was beyond excited when I heard they were getting re-released, with some small updates to correct mistakes and bring the books into the 21st century. And when Cindy asked me if I wanted to check out the galley copies she had, I about had a heart attack from excitement. I still have all of my original books (including that 14 year old copy of The Visitor...as well as a copy of the second print run version and a copy in German) but I wanted to see what had been changed in these new versions. What I was entirely prepared for was a) the huge wave of nostalgia I felt upon reading the opening lines and b) just how awesome these books still are all these years later! Trust me, there's nothing else like Animorphs out there for this age group right now.

The Invasion introduces us to Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie and Marco - five totally ordinary kids who make the fateful decision to walk home one night by cutting through an abandoned construction site. Their leisurely walk home is interrupted by a crashing space ship - and the kids make contact with their first alien, an Andalite called Prince Elfangor-Sirinal-Shamtul. He warns the group, telling them their planet is already being invaded by the Yeerks, slugs that crawl in through a person's ear before wrapping themselves around the brain and taking complete control of the body. Elfangor gives them the only weapon he can to defend their planet: the power to morph, to acquire the DNA of any animal and then change into that animal.

Jake, serious and responsible, quickly slips into the role of the leader of the group. The others all have strongly defined personalities as well: Rachel is fearless, Cassie compassionate, Marco a wiseass with a tragic past, and Tobias is quiet and shy with a good dose of tragedy of his own. Each book is told from a different character's point of view, so these first two give us the deepest looks into Jake and Rachel. If the other characters don't seem the most complex yet, just you wait.

The Visitor is set a short time later. Just long enough for the group to recover after some of the horrors they experienced in the last book before launching into another mission. This time we follow Rachel as she spends most of her time on reconnaissance missions into enemy territory, sneaking into the home of a friend in order to spy on her parents who are Controllers - people who have been taken over by the Yeerks. It's less action packed than The Invasion, but still filled with tension and drama of a different sort.

If you thought The Hunger Games was a little too violent...well, Animorphs isn't much better. It's not kids killing kids, but it does involve aliens being eaten alive by other aliens on a semi-regular basis. And Applegate doesn't pull away from these darker scenes - they're not gratuitous, but are certainly well-described.

K.A. Applegate absolutely doesn't condescend to her audience or pull any punches. I know the books end up dealing with some really serious moral issues, including war, murder/killing, the nature of evil and so on, but I'd kind of forgotten how outright violent they start. And I love it. The theme of the whole series is about war and its affects on people (much like the culmination of The Hunger Games), and you can't adequately explore that without getting into some bleak moments. Like I said, the descriptions aren't gratuitous - there isn't a grisly scene just for the sake of being edgy or dark - but they are definitely there, and are part of what really set these books apart (they're intended for ages 8-12...I was 12 when the series started. omg, I'm so old, and always have been in this fandom!).

There are also lots of little bits of awesome commentary that slip into these books. I immediately identified with Rachel back in the day (and she remains one of my favorite literary characters of all time), not only because she was tough and fierce and tall like I wanted to be, but she has lots of feminist moments, taking jabs at the boys when she thinks they are being unreasonably protective. There are also two characters of color - Marco is Hispanic and Cassie African-American. Their races are only mentioned in passing (until time travelling starts happening much later in the series), but it's there. There's also a bit of class consciousness - Marco's dad is extremely messed up after the death of Marco's mother a few years ago, meaning that money is short and they don't live in the greatest of neighborhoods. Meanwhile Rachel is the daughter of divorced parents but has her own credit card. It gets a little bit into Five Token Band territory (warning: TVTropes link), but as their distinct personalities develop it doesn't feel like lazy stereotyping.

For a 15 year old series (I got into the game a year late), it holds up surprisingly well. There's nothing here that screams mid-90s, and as someone who read these books obsessively, I can also tell you that the updating is quite minimal. The biggest update was changing a major continuity error in the first book (well, it wasn't a continuity error then, but they made a big deal out of the opposite thing happening in subsequent books). Otherwise it was like changing the name of a specific game system to just say "system." When I read the new Babysitter's Club prequel last summer, the writing felt like it definitely could have fit in with the original books...which wasn't the greatest thing. Those books were kind of clunky - like the template of the second chapter of every book detailing the characters. Nothing about these books feel dated, other than the fact that they are designed to be a monthly science fiction series - a genre you don't see at the book store too often anymore.

The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May. Right now I believe the plans are for the first six books to get re-released over the next two years, so this definitely won't be the snappy pace I got used to back in middle school. Old school Animorph fans won't find much terribly new here - if your original books are still in your parents' basement, you're not missing out on anything if you just stick with those. But if tragedy struck so you don't have them anymore, and now you've got a serious craving for some old school Animorphs, you'll be pleased with these. Though I'm sad the corner morphing flipbook is gone :-( On the other hand: lenticular covers! The original cover style never excited me (that's book #4 to the right), and the new cover style isn't translating well into online images - the background patterns are much richer in real life, and the lenticular action is really quite good!

So, to sum up an incredibly long entry, let me just say this: I am so excited to see these books come back so that a whole new generation can get to know these amazing books.

Reviewed from galley copies. The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May!

Sci Fi Friday Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

OMG, it's been forever since I've done a SF Friday post. Not for lack of wanting - there's just been a ridiculous lack of science fiction the last couple of months. And my TBR list doesn't have much coming up, either. Boo!

As the daughter of a scientist and a military strategist, 17 year old Amy is selected to be one of the people cryogenically frozen for the 300 year journey across the stars as Earth colonizes its first new planet.

250 years later, Amy wakes up. Alone. It's 50 years ahead of schedule, and thanks to the clumsy work of whoever pulled her out of the freezer, she can't go back under.

Amy must now try to make sense of how humanity has evolved aboard the Godspeed - a society where uniformity and peace are prized above all else. Her only allies are those who are different - Elder, who is to inherit the role of leader after the current Eldest's death, and Harley, an artist who lives in a hospital and fed a constant stream of medications to try to control his individualist ways.

But it quickly becomes apparent that waking Amy wasn't an accident. More people are being pulled from their cryo chambers, and being left for dead. Only Amy, Elder and Harley seem to understand the gravity of the situation, and it's up to the three individuals in a sea of uniformity to solve the crimes.

I was pretty much convinced going into this that this was going to be a love story. Lots of reviews are selling this on the merits of the interracial romance and then there's that Spider-Man kiss cover. However, I found this refreshingly light on the romance. Oh there's some romantic angst and questioning, but Amy and Elder are in such different places psychologically that only one of them really has the time/energy to contemplate romantic feelings. And yet the mostly one-sided romance doesn't come across as creepy/stalkery. Kudos there.

As far as the science fiction aspect goes, this definitely isn't hard SF, but it's not totally on the softer side of the spectrum, like a lot of dystopian YA SF has been in the last few years. I'm hardly a science expert, but there was enough science-talk to convince me this was a future society heavily invested in technology, but doesn't devolve into so much technobabble as to scare off SF newbies.

The rest of the story comes out in fits and starts, with lots of dramatic cliff hangers at the end of chapters, drawn out because Amy and Elder alternate narration duties. It's all pretty straight forward, and the forecasting of the bad guy's badness begins pretty early on (really, there wasn't a more subtle example than saying the bad guy views Hitler as one of the good guys?), but it's a nice enough story, more of a mystery than a romance, with some nice SF set dressing.

In closing, I do want to point out to anyone who missed it in December that Across the Universe was the victim of some subtle whitewashing, as pointed out at The Interrobangs. The original ARC cover emphasized Elder's non-Caucasian features subtly, while in the final cover there's nothing that really differentiates him from Amy (other than being a dude). This is a more subtle racefail than other examples (Liar, Magic Under Glass), which I imagine is why I haven't seen it mentioned much outside of The Interrobangs. Like with Magic Under Glass, I imagine part of the lack of controversy stems from the fact that Elder isn't any specific race - the humans of Godspeed have become monoethnic in the centuries between leaving Earth and Amy's awakening, meaning they all share the same olive skin, brown eyes and brown hair. Since we can't say Elder is supposed to look African, Indian or Japanese, and the fact the faces are almost in silhouette, it's easy to explain away/ignore the cover discrepancies. It probably never would have been noted - if Razorbill hadn't initially released the ARC with a more obviously non-Caucasian cover model.

But to end on a slightly more positive note, I'm desperate for some more SF in my life. Next Friday I'll have Julia Karr's XVI as a SF Friday review, but after that my TBR list is sadly light on the SF front. Someone please tell me there's more great SF on the way this year! I'm more excited about the books coming out in 2011 than I ever have been before, but so far it looks like a light year for SF? Say it ain't so! Give me some good news in the comments!

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Girl Who Was on Fire ed. by Leah Wilson

When I got the ARC of this from Smart Pop books, it included a bit of info on the editor - including the name of her degree from Duke University: Culture and Modern Fiction. Um, can I go back to school for that? Seriously, if money (both to go to school and in terms of making a living later) were no option, I would love to get an advanced degree in something like that. Which is probably why the Smart Pop books in general appeal to me so much, as they combine my love of all sorts of bits of popular culture with light academic reading. So when I was asked to look at Smart Pop's April 2011 title, all about The Hunger Games trilogy, I was allllllllllll over it!

13 YA authors tackle The Hunger Games trilogy, looking at topics as varied as the roles of fashion and the media, to politics and PTSD. There is some really serious stuff in here, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone who paid attention to more than the (gag) love triangle in the original books.

I'm clearly going to be partial to any essay titled "Team Katniss" - after all, that's the team I officially supported with a t-shirt at the Mockingjay release party - and Jennifer Lynn Barnes offers an excellent analysis on why Katniss herself is who we should be most concerned with - not being preoccupied with her love life. On a more frivolous level, I really enjoyed Terri Clark's look at Katniss' (and Cinna's) many fashion statements throughout the trilogy, and how Cinna was able to use fashion as a rhetorical device. Reading it made me think that Cinna would have loved to design for Madeleine Albright. Sarah Darer Littman, who is a political columnist when she's not writing novels like Life, After, writes a devastating essay comparing the politics of the trilogy to contemporary US politics - especially some of the rhetoric used during the Bush Administration to justify the war on terror (I can see that essay inspiring a LOT of negative criticism. Littman doesn't pull any punches - but it might be my favorite).

All of the essays here are worthwhile - those are merely my favorites, but each of them has something excellent and worthwhile to add to conversations on The Hunger Games. I wouldn't recommend powering through this book in one sitting, however. Unlike a lot of other Smart Pop books, the authors only had three novels to work with, which leads to some repetitive passages - talking about the bombs in the Capitol in Mockingjay or Katniss' use of the berries in Hunger Games. The essays themselves aren't repetitive, and all of them make unique points from the same set of examples, but reading one essay after another really highlighted for me how little material, in a sense, the authors had to work with in comparison to the Smart Pop book on Harry Potter.

I said in the intro that I consider this "light" academic reading and I want to make it clear that I don't intend that as a slight, but on the other hand only a few of these essays rely upon any sources outside of the three novels. Most of those outside sources are excerpts from interviews Suzanne Collins gave while promoting Mockingjay. This isn't hard hitting collegiate-level literary analysis, but would serve as an excellent introduction and as examples of just how many different ways one book (or set of books) can be analyzed.

The Girl Who Was on Fire goes on sale in April, and I consider it a must-read for any fan of The Hunger Games.

Reviewed from an ARC provided by the publisher




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Great Kid Books. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Sci Fi Friday Review: Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

It's no secret to long-time readers of this blog that I have a thing for Scott Westerfeld's writing. I wrote my senior thesis on the Uglies series, for goodness' sake! So it's probably no surprise, given my history with Westerfeld's work and my feelings about last year's Leviathan, that I enjoyed Behemoth. Just wanted to get that out of the way in case the curiosity was killing you.

When we last left the crew of the British airship Leviathan, they had just picked up several Austrian passengers, including the son of the recently-assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Alek - not that any of the British crew know that. Alek's lone friend among the crew is a young airman Dylan, who is actually a young woman, Deryn, disguising herself so she can serve in the air force - not that anyone knows about that. The airship is carrying some precious cargo and distinguished guests, including the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, who has some very special eggs she wants delivered to the ruler of the Ottoman Empire before a great war can break out among the European nations in response to the murder of Alek's parents.

The Ottoman Empire is at a crossroads when the Leviathan docks. They are technically neutral in the burgeoning conflict, but are being courted by both German and British forces for an alliance. And all is not well within the Empire, as the current sultan has only been in power for a few years and already militants are planning a coup to replace the monarchy with a democratic government. Alek and Deryn know that technically they are on opposite sides in this war - Clanker and Darwinist, royalty and commoner - but discover they will have to work together, along with an eclectic mix of allies, if they ever hope to achieve their mutual goal: stop a world war from beginning.

If you haven't read Leviathan yet, you absolutely need to read it before reading Behemoth. The story picks up mere days after the end of Leviathan, and the action starts within just a few pages, leaving precious little time to catch the reader up on what happened in the last book. I really liked the fact that Westerfeld just goes with the assumption that the reader already knows the back story, because that means each and every page can be devoted to developing what happens next.

This is one wild ride both similar to and very different from Leviathan. In the last book, we followed Alek wandering in the wilderness towards safety with his body guards, and Deryn spent much of her story alone among the crew out of need to protect her secret. In Behemoth, less physical ground is covered, as the story stays focused on Istanbul, and the story becomes more of a political thriller as Alek and Deryn become involved in the resistance movement - which introduces my favorite character, the feisty revolutionary Lilit, who has dreams of bringing women's liberation to Istanbul. She also has a huge crush on one of our dashing heroes. Lilit is a young woman destined for greatness and could probably support a whole novel of her own!

As expected, there are more great beasties and machines this time around. The Ottoman Empire is a Clanker nation, but they're more in touch with nature than the Germans or Austrians, as their mechanics are based on animals. My favorite was probably the spider-like machine that worked the great library. On the Darwinist side, we finally get to see what was in those eggs that were so carefully guarded in Leviathan and, of course, there's the title beastie, the Behemoth. It's awesome, in every sense of the word.

Because I feel like it's becoming my trademark, I do have to comment for a moment on the romance element of the book. Deryn is beginning to develop "feelings" for Alek. Maybe this just annoyed me because I read it shortly after The Education of Bet and A Golden Web, two other novels about young women dressing up as men, but I'm getting quite tired of girls putting all of their other goals at risk because of some boy that literally thinks they're just one of the guys. Deryn keeps a handle on herself better than the protagonists of the other two books, and it's really just a small bit of this otherwise giant story, but it still rankled me a bit. I am certain Goliath won't go the way of Mockingjay in terms of focus on relationships, but I can't deny there's a little bit of worry in the back of my head. Hopefully, averting World War I will remain the focus.

Rot & Ruin Giveaway Reminder: I'm going to draw the winner for the Rot & Ruin giveaway at 12 pm Eastern time today! If you still want a chance to win, enter here!

Reviewed from ARC picked up at ALA 2010.

Sci-Fi Friday Review + Giveaway: Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

Yeah, you read that subject right! To kick off October right, I'm jumping in with a PERSONALIZED, SIGNED copy of Jonathan Maberry's new YA zombie novel Rot & Ruin! Read through my review to find the details at the bottom.

Set 14 years after the dead first began to rise, Benny Imura is 15 and has to choose his career quickly, before the town cuts his ration allowance in half. Benny looks into pretty much every half-decent job in town (and even a couple that are less-than-decent), all hoping to avoid the inevitable: joining the family business and becoming his brother's apprentice. What does his brother do?

Kill zombies.

Benny and his older brother Tom have a complicated relationship - as in Benny does little more than tolerate his older brother, who is totally uncool in comparison to the bad-ass zombie bounty hunters that tell tall tales filled with daring and adventure to entertain the kids. But when Benny runs out of other job options, he reluctantly begins training to join his brother in the field - and learns that there's a lot more to zombie hunting than just whacking zoms.

When Jonathan was talking about the novel at Sunday's Books of Wonder event, he noted that zombie novels are never about the zombies - the zombies are metaphors and catalysts for change. I think rarely has that fact come through as clearly as it does in Rot & Ruin. This is not a book about zombies. This isn't even really a book about zombie hunters. It's a book about brothers, about family, and about what it means to be human. There's lots of philosophy in this book - not the heavy sort that put me to sleep in college, but this is definitely a book that asks readers to think.

That's not to say there isn't any zombie killing action in the story. In fact, there's quite a bit, and Benny is often in the thick of it, even though he's not a trained bounty hunter yet, which adds to the drama - often he's armed with nothing more than a bokken. 


Placing the story within one generation or so of the onset of the zombies was an excellent idea. It's far enough that people realistically have some knowledge of the zombies (what will make a person return, how to kill them, what attracts them), but it still makes sense for some of the history to have to be explained to someone like Benny who was barely a toddler when the outbreak again. While some scenes were heavy on the exposition as older brother Tom explains the ways of the world to Benny, the reason for the exposition never felt forced; it just could have been trimmed a little. Also, Tom spends a bit too much time congratulating Benny for asking great questions; there certainly could have been a little more showing rather than telling.


I also have to give a major shout out for the multi-cultural cast. Tom and Benny are Japanese-American - which explains the affinity for Japanese weaponry (Tom uses a katana when fighting with a blade - remember, blades are quieter and don't need reloading!). A quick rundown of the heritages of other characters is given at one point as well - a doctor born in India, another man from Oaxaca, and Vietnamese and Chinese characters as well. While the zombies are a more-or-less uniform shade of gray, the living characters are vibrant and represent the real diversity found in the contemporary United States.


I know a book, especially a zombie book, is resonating with me when I can't wait to finish it so I can go work on my own novel. I've been toiling for ages on my own zombie novel, and I find my biggest inspiration to get back to writing is to read another great book. In this case, I'm not inspired because I think I have a superior take on zombies - rather I'm just excited about some day adding my own bit of input into this rich genre, and I get excited by what other people are adding along the way.


While you're waiting for the next book in the trilogy to come out (Dust & Decay), I highly recommend you check out Jonathan's website. There's a great interview up right now with Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth and The Dead Tossed Waves) and Alden Bell (The Reapers are the Angels - which I hadn't heard of before! Amazon doesn't list it as a YA novel, but the protagonist is 15, so you can be sure I'm trying to get my hands on it now) giving their thoughts on all things zombie.


GIVEAWAY


This is the part you're waiting for, right?


After my Fall releases post last week, I got a lovely e-mail from Jonathan offering up a signed copy of Rot & Ruin for giveaway here on the blog! After responding that yes, I would love to host a giveaway, he upped the ante on his offer: not only will the book be signed, but he'll personalize the book for the winner! So instead of just his signature, the book will be signed just for you!


The contest is going to run for one week - I'll announce the winner on Friday, October 8th.


How to enter? Leave a comment in this entry with your e-mail address. And just to make this fun, answer the same question I posed to Jonathan and the other panelists last Sunday: do you prefer fast zombies or slow? 


The winner will be chosen randomly - as in my last giveaway the question is just to make the entries more interesting - and I'll send Jonathan the winner's e-mail address so the two of you can work out signing and shipping details. 

Sci Fi Friday Review: Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness

Back when I went to ALA, I knew I was going to meet up with Lynn & Cindy at some point, but probably not until Saturday or Sunday. Yet when I got to the convention hall on Friday evening to register, I saw them across the lobby and snuck up on them like the sneaky person I am. And good thing too - while they were off to do important committee stuff, they clued me in that Candlewick had a few ARCs left of Monsters of Men and I should make that my first stop if I wanted to get my hands on this book before September. I then impressed them when we met up again on Sunday to report that I'd already finished the book!

Monsters of Men is the conclusion to the Chaos Walking trilogy, all of which have had slightly unwieldy names (The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer). When we last left Todd and Viola, they were facing the prospect of all out war, with Mayor President Prentiss' army of men and Mistress Coyle's resistance/terrorist cell of women and cast off men ready to kill each other, if the massive army of rebelling Spackle don't kill all of the humans first. Oh, and Viola's people, her fellow colonists, have reached the planet. Monsters of Men drops us right back into the action, with the adults and the Spackle known as 1017 all itching for war. Todd and Viola are once again caught in the middle, and now 1017 is added to the narrative mix, struggling with many of the same issues as the humans - he wants revenge, and is even willing to go against the nominal leader of his people, The Sky, in his quest. Will cooler heads ever prevail?

First of all, I love how Ness writes the animals in these books. There's Manchee, of course, and his lovable enthusiasm, but Angarath was tugging at my heartstrings throughout the entire book. It's great because these animals retain their essential animal-ness, just now it's easier for them to communicate with the humans around them. It's totally a dream come true for someone like me who would love to know what her cat is thinking (I just gave my cats some catnip, so I'm pretty sure their thoughts right now are I'M SO HIGH, but that's just a guess).

I have to say, I was on the edge of my seat for most of the book, but it was written in such a way that I felt a little manipulated. Every few chapters a new emergency arises or someone blows something up, which is pretty much the sole way the plot moves forward for much of the book. Around page 350 I found myself sighing with each new emergency - and at Mistress Coyle and Mayor Prentiss as they constantly bickered, backstabbed, and manipulated their proteges to get Viola and Todd to follow in their footsteps. After reading Mockingjay, I found myself comparing the two books - Ness moves the plot forward by blowing something up, Collins moves Mockingjay forward by having Katniss suffer a traumatic injury. Both are effective in small doses, but repeatedly in one novel is just...repetitive. The pace picked up again in the last 100 pages or so, but part of that may have been me realizing I was so close to the end and desperate to find out what the payoff would be for the series.

Writing the conclusion to a trilogy has to be super stressful for an author. Undoubtedly, it will be impossible to please everybody (as we saw with Mockingjay last month). While I had a few minor problems with Monsters of Men, it is overall a very satisfying conclusion to this story.

Reviewed from ARC picked up at ALA.


BTW: Last night I attended the awesome Zombies Vs. Unicorns debate! Check back here after 1 PM Eastern to see my re-cap of the event!

Sci Fi Friday Review: Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill

Found via: Bookends

I feel like I can play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with this book, except instead of Kevin Bacon the goal person is Suzanne Collins. I know Cindy Dobrez. Cindy Dobrez reviewed Black Hole Sun for Booklist and her review is on the back cover. Also on the cover? Suzanne Collins. So that puts me one degree away from celebrity, right? (I'm also one degree away from James Earl Jones, but that's another story).


Durango is eight and a half Mars years old (17 Earth years), and the disgraced leader of a ragtag group of mercenaries hired for a fool's errand - to protect a group of poor miners from the cannibalistic draeu. The draeu are the boogeymen of Mars, unfeeling and terrifying cannibals, while the miners are some of the lowest of the low, originally necessary to procure materials to build Mars and then abandoned when the planet was habitable enough. The only people lower on the totem pole than the miners? Dalit Regulators, like Durango and his second-in-command, Vienne. A man of honor, Durango is determined to protect the miners, even when it's clear they're hiding something from him, and the fight against the draeu is taken to a whole new level when the true extent of their abilities, and their leader, is finally revealed.

I've gotten progressively more excited about this book since page one. This is a perfect blend of science fiction, action-adventure, and humor. I finished it on the subway ride home yesterday (right around the time a possible tornado was in the area - I missed the whole storm while underground!), and was satisfied, even happy with the story. But as the evening wore on I found I had more and more I wanted to talk about - conversation about the book ended up dominating my dinner conversation, overshadowing discussion of the storm and my new promotion (I'm very proud of it, thus sneaking it into conversation - or blog posts - whenever possible!). That has to be one of the best signs of a great book, right?

Easily what sets this book apart from other science fiction novels is the humor. Durango and Mimi, his former commander turned artificial intelligence implanted in his brain, have a constantly running sarcastic repartee throughout the book. And then there's Fuse, the explosions expert. And Leroy Jenkins.

Yes, Leroy Jenkins.



Big thumbs up for that, Mr. Gill. I just burst out laughing the first time I saw his full name (usually he's just Jenkins), and he quickly became my favorite character.

There's also some intricate world building here - we're dropped right in the middle of an incredibly complex and class- and honor-conscious society, and there's no hand holding to explain the finer points of Mars etiquette. We learn the necessary details on the go, with enough questions answered to leave the reader satisfied, but so many open possibilities that Gill could easily extend this into a long running series without running out of juicy material. The ending definitely leaves open the possibility for a sequel, but there's no annoying cliffhangers or gimmicks here. This chapter of the story is over, and while I certainly hope to see more of Durango, Mimi and Vienne (and Jenkins, of course), I can't be too disappointed if this is the last we see of them.

This is exquisite science fiction, folks, in a style that hasn't been too common in YA lit to date. Oh there's plenty of YA sci-fi out there, especially with the current dystopian trend, but like the rest of YA lit, the science fiction has tended to focus on relationships with the science in the background - it's just teenagers on a future Earth that has had all kinds of crazy stuff happen. This is a true action-adventure story, set on an alien world. The closest other recent book in terms of setting would probably be Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking trilogy, but even that is much more about Todd and Viola and their struggles with Mayor Prentiss and Mistress Coyle than presenting a hard science fiction story. In Black Hole Sun, there is absolutely no forgetting that we're not in Kansas anymore.

I already loved Gill's writing in last year's Soul Enchilada. With Black Hole Sun he proves he's definitely not a one hit wonder, and has some range to boot. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next! I'll be sure to pick it up on day one.

Sci Fi Friday Review: Girl Parts by John M. Cusick

Found Via: Lynn at Goodreads

When this popped up in my Goodreads friends update e-mail with four stars from Lynn (who reviews over at Bookends), I knew I had to read it. Even without a longer review attached, I've learned to trust Lynn's judgment, especially when it comes to science fiction.

David is athletic and outgoing, the sort of guy that everyone wants to be friends with - unless you're lower on the high school social totem pole. Then he can make your life hell. Charlie is the opposite, quiet and bookish. But both are diagnosed with dissociative disorders that keep them from making real friends and developing healthy relationships. David's obnoxiously rich parents go the high tech therapy route, presenting David with a companion, a female-presenting android carefully calibrated with intimacy protocols to help David understand healthy relationships. Charlie, being less well off and living off the grid with his dad, chooses to skip the companion treatment, even after it's recommended by the school's new psychologist, Dr. Rogers.

When David discovers he can't go as far as he wants with his companion, Rose, he rejects her, sending the poor companion-girl into a depressive spiral. When Charlie discovers her, abandoned and rejected, he's surprised to discover she's the only "person" he can really talk to, and like a good friend he wants to do everything he can to help Rose get over David and become a more fully-realized individual.

This is definitely a light book in more ways than one. Cusick really could have delved a lot deeper into the characters and this whole companion technology. The story holds up fine on its own without more details, but it certainly would have been a richer, and more science fiction-y, experience with more details.

While this is ostensibly a boy book, with most of the story focusing on David and Charlie, my favorite characters were definitely the girls. Is this just because I've never been a high school boy? Perhaps. But Cusick does a great job developing Rose from a stilted robot to something resembling a real girl. And then there's her sudden BFF Rebecca, who gets Rose drunk to help her forget David. It doesn't work so well, but it's a fun bit of friendship. And then May, the black market technician who jailbreaks companions like others jailbreak iPhones. At first I thought she was going to be totally creepy (she overrides the intimacy protocols so boys don't get shocks when they try to go farther with their companions than they should), but May makes it very clear she believes in the girl's right to choose her boundaries - and gives Rose an extra special parting gift. May totally stole the show for me.

This is a great bit of fluffy science fiction that will easily appeal to boys and girls. It's fun satire of intimacy and internet culture, but stays in the shallow end of the pool.

Sci Fi Friday Review: Nomansland by Lesley Hauge

Found via: the Amelia Bloomer Project

Feminist science fiction has long explored matriarchies and woman-only worlds/societies. When I saw one pop up for the YA set, needless to say, I was excited.

Sometime in the future, on the island of Foundland, women have established themselves as dominant, and declared men to be the enemy. Trackers are trained in horse riding and weaponry to protect the windswept island in case any men attempt to invade, as greedy, violent men are wont to do. The newest of these trackers are a cohort of teenage girls, who despite having lived all their lives by the strict rules of Foundland find themselves rebelling in subtle and not-so subtle ways. Laing, the leader of the trainees, is constantly trying to invent fashion fads within the strict dress code, from towel turbans after bathing to rolling up her sleeves just so. Keller, our protagonist, longs for friendship, maybe even a best friend, though such relationships are strictly forbidden.

Then Laing lets her fellow trackers in on a secret. She has discovered an underground room, filled with treasures from the Old People of the Time Before. Such objects are supposed to be reported immediately, but the curious girls keep the find to themselves, exploring the strange powdery paints, angled shoes with spiked heels, and glossy pages filled with pictures of people unlike anyone the girls have ever seen. In a society governed by strict rules, what repercussions will the girls' discovery have?

I had high hopes for this one - it seems like it should hit lots of my buttons, but despite Hauge's citation of feminist works as her inspiration, parts of this book actually came off as more anti-feminist. Looking at the Feminist SF wiki, I think feminism anxiety hits my feelings about this pretty closely - the women of Foundland are humorless, sexually frustrated, and uncreative. And the girls' fascination with the trappings of 21st century womanhood struck me as odd. Curious about these objects they'd never seen? Sure. But all of them immediately embracing them as amazing and beautiful struck me as an example of thinking that femininity is an innate trait, rather than a learned behavior (gender is a social construct).

I also felt the world building was extremely shallow. Not only have the women of Foundland separated themselves from men, but the people outside of their borders (and there are apparently both men and women out there) are apparently suffering from some sort of deformity. Were all men and some women effected and that's why Foundland banished men? Also, the jacket copy focuses a lot on the Trackers and their amazing abilities, making this sound like some sort of action adventure novel - but in fact, we only catch a brief glimpse of fully-fledged Trackers, and spend the rest of the time with the teenage recruits who do little more than ride and take care of their horses.

What is excellently done is Hauge's ability to describe objects that are mundane to a 21st century reader, but are utterly foreign in Keller's world. Here's an example:

My eye wanders, eventually settling on two more contraptions, each with two wheels in direct alignment with each other and held together by metal spars and a central inverted triangle of metal, upon which is a tiny, odd-shaped leather saddle. At one end are a pair of curved metal pipes that look as though they are to be held in some way, and at the apex of the inverted triangle is another mechanism flanked on either side by a small block of something solid that surely must provide some kid of propelling force along cogs and a chain that connects to the wheels. -Nomansland, pages 43-44

Passages like this remind me of the old writing exercise - give step-by-step instructions for an easy task, like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, getting into nitty-gritty questions like baking bread vs. buying a loaf from the store. I thought it was extremely well done.

Sci Fi Friday Book Thoughts: Mockingjay

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, years of excitement and anticipation were finally quenched as Mockingjay made it into the hands of readers. I'm sure everyone that read and loved the original Hunger Games has been waiting anxiously for this book, desperate to know how Katniss' story would conclude.

Mockingjay is such a big event book that I don't think a traditional review is necessary. If you've read Hunger Games and Catching Fire, you're going to read this one. So I decided I would follow the format for my previous two Hunger Games posts and do more of a reflection on the book.

Obviously, that means that from here on out we're entering major spoiler territory. If you're like my two best friends and haven't gotten your copy of Mockingjay yet, clearly you need to turn around and come back later.

Spoiler space

Spoiler space

Spoiler space

Okay, we ready now for some serious Mockingjay discussion?

I'm going to be honest with you guys, because I feel like we're friends here: I was a sobbing mess after I finished my first read of the book on Tuesday morning. The tears started when Buttercup came back. I'm a sucker for animals in the first place, but it was Katniss' description of him in the middle of the night, of him guarding her, that just sent me over the edge. And I never quite pulled myself back together.

I wasn't just distraught over Prim and Buttercup and Katniss, however. I was distraught because...I didn't like the book that much. I felt that throughout the book, the romance that had been content to stay in the background of the first two books had risen to a place of prominence that outshone the story I thought Collins had been trying to tell. I've been fighting proudly for Team Katniss since I first realized people were siding with one boy or the other. And to see so much attention paid to Katniss' romantic choices in the text of the final book was disorienting to say the least. I expected that some sort of tacit choice would be made (and it would be Peeta because we spent two books closely observing their relationship in action and ending up with Gale would have seemed like the romance of the first two books was pointless), but it showed up way more often than I was comfortable with.

What story did I think Hunger Games was about? Survival. Corruption. Identity. Katniss is constantly fighting against a corrupt state, hunting in the forest because of poverty and stepping into the Games for her little sister because it's unfair to ask an innocent 12 year old to participate in their horrors before taking on a more overtly rebellious role, culminating in becoming the face of the rebellion in Mockingjay. She's been a survivor since she figured out how to keep her family alive after her father's death. And like many teenagers, she's constantly struggling with her identity - especially as she must adapt to the many faces that are pressed upon her by adults. Her relationships, familial, friendly and romantic, play a role in each of those themes, but I was expecting them to stay in the background again.

Another major disappointment was just how out of it Katniss is for large chunks of the book. Katniss is no stranger to catastrophic injuries, even injuries that knock her out for days at a time, but the recurring theme of Katniss waking up in a hospital bed after a major revelation got real old, real fast. I'm a fan of unstable narrators, but wasn't there a better way to underscore a dramatic event than having Katniss sent to the hospital? For those of you who've read the conclusion of the Chaos Walking series (Monsters of Men), I felt like Ness and Collins had graduated from the same school of dramatic tension.

Okay, I've gotten my major beefs out of the way. Is there anything redeeming about this book? Of course there is - Collins is too good of a writer to churn out complete crap.

Collins' background in television has definitely played a role in these books since day one, but Mockingjay is when it becomes most obvious, and I thought it was really interesting. Cameras have been ever present, but I know after The Hunger Games there were a lot of questions about how the cameras in the arena operated, since they were never described. Were they embedded in the scenery? Made invisible? In Mockingjay, Katniss has her own dedicated camera crew, and I think Collins is definitely using them and Plutarch to comment on just how much of our news can be easily staged - or at least enhanced to make for better television.

I've seen people saying both Peeta and Gale got the shaft in terms of character development - that hijacking Peeta was lazy and Gale did a 180 to become the bad guy, but I actually really liked both of their characters for once. Peeta's love for Katniss always felt somewhat immature - he was in love with the idea of Katniss, but never had a chance to fall in love with her as the young woman she was growing into. She was constantly on edge and unable to truly process whatever feelings she did have for him, because projecting the image of happy lovers was necessary for their survival. Hijacking Peeta was cruel and blunt, but it wiped the slate clean, and I believe that they did grow to have a deep and true love for each other. If they'd ended up together without some way of starting at square one, in the back of my head I'd always be wondering if they could truly have a healthy relationship. As for Gale, he's always had an edge to him that Katniss lacked at first. He was the first to suggest running away into the woods, and had a habit of railing against the Capitol when they were outside the fence of District 12. He worked in the horrors known as the mines, while Katniss had a relatively carefree six months between the end of her first Hunger Games and the start of her Victory Tour. And of course, he was there when the Capitol destroyed his home. The hardened, cynical, bitter man we met in Mockingjay seemed to be a natural evolution of what little we'd seen of Gale's character.

Most horrifying moment for me: Finnick's revelation that he'd been a sex slave after winning his Games. That just blew my mind and forced me to put the book down for a minute to collect myself. It seemed to come out of nowhere, yet made so much sense, in a terrible and terrifying way. I just wanted to bundle Finnick into a hug then and never let him go.

And then there were the deaths. This book had to be a blood bath. After reading Catching Fire I was sure lots of people were going to die, and when it became obvious this book was to be set in the heart of the war for Panem I knew that no one was safe. Hell, since the books are written in present tense it was possible that even Katniss could die. However, that doesn't mean I think all of the deaths were handled well. Boggs and Messalla each got lengthy descriptions of their demise, but dear Finnick only got a line or two. And Prim's death I absolutely wasn't expecting. In some ways, that's the death that bothers me the most. This whole story was set in motion when Katniss volunteered to save Prim at the reaping. What was the point of all that pain and struggling, the destruction of everything she ever knew, if Prim wasn't there at the end of it all?

I thought District 13 was interesting. I always figured they were going to be less-than warm and fuzzy when we met them. Remember, I thought we were going to discover Katniss' father among the citizens of District 13, and the place would have to be run by assholes if they wouldn't let him contact his family (oh sure, I can think of lots of logical reasons why they'd be kept apart, such as protecting the rebellion in case Katniss couldn't be rescued from the Quell, but whatever). However, it's very good that Katniss killed Coin, because it's clear that she was just going to be another Snow. Need proof? The crazy woman suggested they hold another Hunger Games. Another Hunger Games! And I'll admit, at first I had no idea what was going on when Katniss agreed, because no matter how distraught she was over Prim I didn't see how she could agree to such a travesty. It wasn't until Amy brought it up on the Maw Books spoiler discussion post and I re-read the book at a slower pace that I realized she was playing along with Coin to be in the perfect position to assassinate her.

I was also left with some larger world building questions, though I can see how they couldn't necessarily be addressed in the context of Katniss' story. The biggest one for me perhaps is what is going on in the rest of the world? Does Panem represent the last of humanity? Is Panem the most powerful nation of Earth, inheriting the US's position as a super power? Or alternatively, is Panem so poor and backwards that the rest of the world doesn't care what's going on? Because what is the rest of the world like if no one cares that there's a country out there murdering its children for entertainment?

Another blog asked us to sum up our feelings about Mockingjay in one word. After my first read I said it would be "disappointed." I went back and re-read the book on Wednesday and Thursday (I couldn't handle reading it again immediately on Tuesday) before writing this, determined to come back with a more rational answer. I think I'm still going to go with "disappointed," but not necessarily because it's a bad book - it's just clear that I wasn't on the same page as Suzanne Collins as to what story she was telling. Whose fault is that? I'm not sure. The Hunger Games trilogy has been quite a ride, but perhaps has taught me not to get quite so invested in defending a position (Team Katniss vs. the romance teams) before I know the final outcome.

If you haven't had your fill of Mockingjay talk yet, please chime in in the comments! I love hearing from people with all sorts of opinions, and in fact would love to hear some commentary from people who loved it!

Sci-Fi Friday Review: Jekel Loves Hyde by Beth Fantaskey

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 4/12

I'll admit - sometimes I go out of my way to find a book I'm pretty sure I'm going to have problems with. It's not that I'm a masochist; rather I'm really interested in following certain trends and making sure I don't get too comfortable in my preferred reading corner. The Publisher's Weekly review noted that "Readers may be troubled by the violence intertwined with their growing romance," which caught my attention. "May" be troubled? I wondered. Violence =/= romance in any way, which is why I get disturbed when people go gaga for Alex in Perfect Chemistry since he's totally creepy and borderline abusive. So I was all set to read this and rail against the "violent boys are sexy" trope - and discovered that I think the reviewer was overreacting to the violence. There's so much else going on in here that needs to be critiqued, the violence was the last thing on my mind.

Jill Jekel is the perfect good girl. She's never even questioned her parents' rules - even now, in the aftermath of her father's death, and the revelation that the brilliant scientist was guilty of stealing chemicals from his lab. Now Jill's focused on keeping her mom healthy and sane.

Tristen Hyde is mysterious. Talk, dark, handsome and an excellent student, he shies away from attention and keeps to himself - unless someone violates his space and pushes him over the edge into a violent fit.

When a prestigious chemistry scholarship becomes available, their chemistry teacher suggests they pair up, sure that the combination of their names will garner extra attention - Jekel and Hyde in the chemistry lab once again. What Jill doesn't know, however, is that Tristen believes he really is the descendant of the infamous Mr. Hyde, and when Jill discovers an old box of papers in her father's office containing formulas about changing personalities, they both come to believe she's a descendant of Dr. Jekyll. They agree to work together, partly for the scholarship, but more in an effort to save Tristen's life. For being a descendant of Hyde means hiding a terrible secret - a draw to violence and murder that Tristen isn't sure he can control for much longer.

Is there some violence in this story? Yes. Is it tied in any way to Jill's and Tristen's budding romance? Not really. Tristen describes a vaguely sexual element to his bloodlust, but also states that murder is the release he seeks.

Jill Jekel might be one of the flattest characters I've ever read. Fantaskey picks up on the good girl trope, and pushes it to its limits and beyond. If this were a set up to create a better contrast for Jill embracing her "bad" side eventually I would have had more patience, but despite the jacket copy's emphasis on Jill's bad side, we only see her slipping twice.

The bad sides of Jill and Tristen also had a bizarrely sexist element. When Tristen is wrestling with the beast, he wants to maim and kill. When Jill ingests the formula, she shoplifts a sexy black bra and feels horny - clearly we are talking about two entirely different levels of "bad" and this ends up coming across as extremely moralizing and sexist - after all, only a bad girl would want to have sex with a hot boy in the science lab!

The other characters are just as flat as Jill. The two supporting female characters, best friend Becca and scholastic rival Darcy, are absolutely cartoonish. Becca especially acts inexplicably, and there's never any reason shown for Jill and her to be friends in the first place. Tristen is the only character with an ounce of depth, but I feel at this point that's really damning him with faint praise.

As for the actual story, I found that everyone was way too credulous of the idea that Jill and Tristen were descended from Jekyll and Hyde. No one has ever claimed that Robert Louis Stevenson was writing about something that actually happened, or even exaggerating a real event for dramatic effect. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were firmly rooted in his imagination. I like the idea of playing with them having a basis in reality, but every character seems far too willing to buy Tristen's story, without even hesitating to say "Wait, I thought that was fiction." The overall writing was also unwieldly and I felt that no one actually ever sounded like a teenager - Jill actually worries about "losing her virtue," a phrase totally out of place in a contemporary novel that isn't about promise rings.

Sci-Fi Friday Review: The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June by Robin Benway

Way back in December 2008, when I decided I wanted to start blogging the books I was reading, the very first review I posted was for Robin Benway's Audrey, Wait! I loved that book and was totally unable to put it down, so I was excited when I saw during ALA that Benway had a new book coming out, The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June. Even more exciting? It's definitely a worthy follow up to Audrey, Wait.

April, May and June are sisters that are about as different as can be. April is serious and studious, May is more than a little goth and hates the world, and youngest sister June is bubbly and cheerful and on a mission to be Popular as they start the school year at a new school. It's been four months since their parents divorced, uprooting the girls to move to a new school with their mom while their dad takes off for Houston, Texas.

On the same day that their dad is going to leave, the sisters appear to spontaneously develop extraordinary powers. April can predict the future, May turns invisible, and June can hear people's thoughts. As far as super powers go, not the most exciting - but it's terrifying for April when she starts having visions of June at the site of an accident. And if hot-headed May gets excited or upset, body parts start disappearing at random. Only June seems adept at her power, using the shallow thoughts of teenage girls to turn them against each other and put herself in position to befriend the most popular girl in school.

As Uncle Ben says, with great power comes great responsibility - but to whom? Is it okay to use someone if it means keeping them out of a vision of a horrible accident? Is it immoral to follow your mom invisibly on her first date? What about following your little sister to a party? And just how reliable are these powers, anyway?

Growing up with sisters isn't easy under the best of circumstances - will these new abilities pull them closer together, or drive them apart?

The story alternates between the points of view of the three sisters, and I knew about two lines into May's first chapter that she and I were going to be BFFs. She's delightfully snarky and has maybe a dozen lines in the whole novel that aren't sarcastic. She's also got some serious problems, too, being the one that feels most abandoned by her dad.

I also thought youngest sister June was really interesting. How terrifying for your littlest sister to be the one who can read your mind at will! She's also determined to be popular, something neither of her sisters understand, and probably comes closest to using her powers for evil when she uses the private, catty thoughts of popular-girl Mariah's best friends to turn Mariah against them, leaving the perfect opening for June to take their place. I also really liked June's descriptions of other people's thoughts - an excited girl was glittery, while a stoned guy's brain was too smoky for her to even read. She also ends up improving her vocabulary throughout the novel, thanks to sitting next to someone who mentally practices constantly for the National Spelling Bee.

I had some issues with when and where the girls would discuss their newly found powers. There's an extended conversation in Best Buy when they're first trying to figure everything out - not exactly a secluded place. There were also some frustrating hints about the origins of the girls powers, but I think the frustration was intentional - it's implied that the girls' grandmother and great aunts had powers as well, but since their mom has never mentioned it nor shown any sign of powers herself, they never ask for more information. So the girls don't know any more than we do and since the whole novel wraps up pretty neatly, I doubt there's going to be a sequel where we get an origin story. Unless it's a prequel about the grandmother and her sisters. That'd be awesome.

In-depth, meticulous science fiction this is not, but if you want a family drama with a great trio of sisters at its core with a sprinkling of science fiction/fantasy elements (since it's not explained where the powers come from it could ultimately go either way), The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June is the way to go.


Reviewed from an ARC picked up at ALA. The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June will be released Tuesday, August 3rd!

Sci-Fi Friday Review: For The Win by Cory Doctorow

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 4/19

Image via Wikipedia

Gaming is a Big Deal in my family. As a kid, I loved our Intellivision II, until we finally upgraded to a Super Nintendo (still my favorite gaming system). In high school and college, I matured to playing table top role playing games (if you want to hear a story of the Worst Decision Ever made - like, the sort of decision that gets people killed in horror movies - ask about the first time I went gaming with my new college friends. Note: offer does not apply to my mother - I don't want to give the woman a heart attack). Through the man who's now my husband, I discovered MMORPGs - games like World of Warcraft and Second Life (not that he plays either of those - Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes dominate in our apartment). So when I heard Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother, one of my tops reads of 2008), was combining MMOs with the sort of social justice stuff I also love, I was all over it.

Set in the not-too-distant future, For the Win follows several gamers from around the world, all of whom are employed in different ways in gold farming. They work in sweat shop conditions, mostly in India and China, playing for hours every day in order to collect gold and other in-game valuables that can then be sold for real-world money to first world players too lazy or inept to collect the treasures for themselves. The conditions are deplorable, but a step up from the dangerous factory work these children and young adults would otherwise be forced into.

A young woman who goes by the name Big Sister Nor recognizes that the conditions these gamers work under are dangerous and abusive - slave wages, dark and crowded work environments, and threats to family members are all part of the gold farmers' lives. Nor is determined to unionize these workers across the world, gaining the support of real world unions to help protect local gamer unions. But Nor isn't only working against the systems in the game (as gold farming is clearly against the Terms of Service in any game) - after all, she's taking on whole governments when she tries to organize workers in China, and even the small-time bosses in India don't take kindly to children demanding better treatment. It will take the resources and determination of dozens, even hundreds, of players around the world, to give the new system even a hope for survival.

Doctorow clearly knows his stuff, both when it comes to games and to Marxism. Unfortunately, this didn't always come out in the best way. More than once I had flashbacks to college discussions about the benefits of Marxism and unions and the details of various economic theories as characters sounded just like my professors - or worse, the text books. I was glad some of these topics were being explained, as a lot of readers will lack a working knowledge of at least one subject integral to the story, but the way the information was presented was too heavy-handed.

Editing was also a huge problem for this book. Shortly before I read this, Cindy and Lynn at Bookends posted about "bloated 500+ page books," asking where they'd come from. For the Win definitely could have been much shorter - and needed an editor to go through at least one time with a fine-toothed comb, as this had far more than the average number of typos and several repetitive phrases, including repeated definitions of PvP (made more awkward because alternatives like PvE and role playing servers were never mentioned) and warnings of Terms of Service so dense they retained the right to kick you off at any time for any reason (or no reason at all).

There were also way too many characters in play, few of whom got any real development. The cast is as diverse and multi-cultural as you can get, but the lone white American boy was the closest to getting an actual character arc. Also, while I appreciated the attempt at cultural diversity, a lot of the characters from all around the world felt and sounded essentially the same, making the different countries little more than window dressing and not actually an integral part of the characters' backgrounds. It's almost as though the only reason this wasn't just set in America with a generic cast is because you'd have to go a little farther in the future before we'd really believe the military would come in and kill people over a union trying to organize, but we know that happens in China right now.

So while I found the initial idea to be intriguing, unfortunately it fell apart in the execution for me. However, if you're like me and find your curiosity piqued no matter how many critical reviews you see, know that Doctorow not only talks the talk, but walks the walk when it comes to copyright issues, and the novel is available for free download in multiple e-formats, from plain text to Kindle.

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?

Sci Fi Friday Review: Sons of Liberty by Alexander and Joseph Lagos

Found via: MoCCA Event 6/10

If I were caught up in my blogging, this post would actually have gone up last weekend, since it's more thematically appropriate with the fourth of July rather than the week after... But sometimes, I just can't be that organized (I blame the brain melting heat last week. It wasn't as bad as this week - hello 103 degree Tuesday - but clearly my brain wasn't functioning).

But here we are - finally with my review of the exciting historical super hero graphic novel Sons of Liberty. That combination of adjectives right there is what intrigued me - so much going on! Could it all actually work?

Graham and Brody are young slaves on the run from a cruel master. They've been advised to run north and seek safety with Benjamin Lay - who it turns out is an eccentric abolitionist who lives in a cave. But he is kind and firmly believes in the rights of all humans, and works to ensure the two young men can work as free men and earn a living as printers apprentices.

But all isn't sunshine and happiness along the way. Slave catchers are after Graham and Brody, and then there's the issue of William Franklin - son of the famous Benjamin Franklin. William shares some of his fathers' scientific interests, but is far from an abolitionist. When he comes across Graham and Brody, he attacks them, hoping to "teach a lesson." When the boys awake from their trauma, they discover they've been gifted with extraordinary powers - the ability to leap across a river in a single bound, and to go from being practically illiterate to reading every book Benjamin Lay keeps in his humble cave. The question the young men now face, is what to do with these new abilities? Graham wants to return to Africa, where he was born, but Brody has only ever known life in America - should they fight for the right to stay? Or to go?

This is definitely just the first part of the story - the writers teased so much more during the event last month that in some ways this book felt like a let down to me because I was expecting more. But that's my fault, not the fault of the book, unless you want to fault the entire graphic novel/comic book genre for being hooked on serial stories. So there's lots to be excited for in the next book (or three, since at the moment the series is scheduled to be at least four books long).

I love the idea of super heroes in a historical fiction setting. It's definitely an interesting twist on the superhero genre, and I know from the panel discussion that the writers and artists have put in a ton of research in order to truly bring the Revolutionary War period to life. This part of the story is still firmly in the origin story phase, so we don't get to see much of the actual war (just a teaser at the beginning, showing Brody and Graham facing a troop of Redcoats), but the setting definitely informs the path the story takes so far.

I'm not a big visual person, so it's hard for me to critique the artwork, but I remember at the panel praise was heaped upon Oren Kramek, the colorist, specifically for the way he uses light in this book. Maybe I noticed it because I had essentially been told to look for it, but the lighting definitely stands out. Rays of sunlight shine through windows and doorways with a truly warm glow. There's definitely an organic feeling to the colors, it's all very natural, which is a stark contrast to most graphic novels which are set in our highly artificial modern (or future) world.

I was less enamored with the drawings themselves - specifically the faces. Whenever a character had an extreme reaction (pain, anger, terror...not much happiness in the story so far), the faces were exaggerated almost to the point of being grotesque and unrecognizable as the same character seen in the previous panel. It was a little distracting, especially for someone like me who doesn't read comics/graphic novels all that often anyway.

The story, however, is enough to keep me going, and I definitely plan on checking out the second book in the series when it comes out next spring!

What science fiction have you read this week?