Review: Another Pan by Daniel & Dina Nayeri

I knew going in that this was a sequel of sorts to Another Faust, which I totally missed out on. However, I was interested enough in the Peter Pan aspect to want to give it a shot. Considering that the jacket makes no mention that this is part of a series, I figured I was in the clear. And in a way, I was: only one character returns here from Another Faust, and she seems to stand up well enough on her own. However, when it came to actually enjoying the book...

Another Pan is set at the exclusive Marlowe school in Manhattan, where largely discredited Egyptologist Professor Darling is a teacher who has just scored a great exhibit of Ancient Egyptian artifacts on loan from the British Museum. The artifacts relate to his life's work: uncovering a Death goddess that was an alternative to Anubis, and discovering the truth behind the legends in the Book of Gates - legends that are supposed to hold the key to immortality.

Roped into helping their father set up the exhibit, 16 year old Wendy and 13 year old John would rather be elsewhere - Wendy with her jock boyfriend and John developing his street cred. But when a charismatic new RA by the name of Peter shows up, who has an obsession of his own with the ancient book, Wendy and John eagerly join his quest. Wendy is drawn to the dangerous Peter, despite her boyfriend and her father's disapproval. John craves acceptance, and longs to be seen by Peter as being worthy of joining his Lost Boys gang. As the underworld begins to take hold of Marlowe, and a conniving assistant from the British Museum also closes in on the truth about the books, the two Darlings and Peter are in a race to complete their quest first - to find the secrets to immortality before death catches up with them, permanently.

Lurking at the periphery of most of the story is the new, decrepit school nurse, who was apparently the governess in Another Faust. It's clear that part of her story has been told elsewhere, but the lack of detail didn't seem to impede the story.

What did impede the story? The pacing and the characters. This was a slow, slow book. I wanted to give up several times, but forced myself to keep going, mostly because I have a huge weakness for Ancient Egypt (even though it seems the stories of the Book of Gates are totally new with no relation to myths that are currently known) and also because many of the nods back to Peter Pan were quite clever. The pacing felt off, and the overall writing felt stilted. The third person point of view wasn't used naturally, and there were weird line breaks within the chapters; instead of using a break to indicate a change in place or time, sometimes they would be used to denote a switch in POV character - but other times would be used traditionally. It pulled me out of the story every time.

Most of the characters were extremely flat. Simon Grin was practically a cartoon villain - I kept waiting for him to start muttering how he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. Wendy and John were easily manipulated, though a lot more time was invested in John and his motivations so he was slightly more sympathetic. Really the most intriguing character for me was Peter, and that was probably me trying to fit this slick and handsome young adult into the story of the perpetual child I know.

In any re-telling, I love finding the ties back to the original story, and here many of them were quite clever. There's the obvious Barrie Auditorium (which still gets cleverness points, because Peter Pan was originally a play), but then little things like Peter always hanging out by windows, or checking out his shadow. His Lost Boys gang is also constantly plying Peter with happy thoughts (often things relating to youth or staying young) whenever he starts to get grumpy, though the rationale behind it is never explained.

But ultimately, this was a frustrating read. There was just enough intrigue with the myths and the quest that kept me turning the page, but I was always thinking ahead, hoping the book would finally end so I could move on to something else. While part of me is curious about what connections this had to the previous book, I don't want to have to wade through a similarly tedious book to get there, so I think this is my first and only encounter with the "Another" series.

Double Review: Rampant and Ascendant by Diana Peterfreund

OMG, you guys. You guys, why didn't anyone tell me that books about killer unicorns are FREAKING AWESOME?!

I don't know exactly why I decided to skip on Rampant the first time around. I think I was focusing more on the "unicorn" rather than the "killer" part of the description, plus I'm just generally prejudiced against fantasy. Then I read Peterfreund's contribution to Zombies vs. Unicorns and was intrigued - I was curious about whether the characters were original and just set in her previously established world (like Carrie Ryan's contribution), or if these characters appeared in the series proper. But then I never made an effort to seek out Rampant. Until I was browsing at the library and Rampant was sitting face out on a shelf. On an impulse, I picked it up.

And I'm so glad I did. And I'm also so glad I didn't get Rampant until Ascendant was already out, so I only had to wait a week rather than a year to get more of Astrid's story.

Astrid Llewelyn has grown up listening to her mother's crazy stories about killer unicorns. When the rest of the world believes unicorns are mythical sparkly creatures, what else can a trying-to-be-normal 16 year old do? So when her boyfriend is attacked by a real live killer unicorn during a late night make out session in a forest, Astrid's concept of reality is turned upside down.

Her mother, however, sees this as an opportunity, and doesn't hesitate to ship Astrid off to a nunnery in Rome that is the 21st century reincarnation of the ancient Order of the Lioness - an order of nuns who dedicated their lives to protecting humanity from the unicorn scourge. And it just so happens that Astrid's family line was historically known to be the biggest, baddest hunters out there. With the financial support of a pharmaceutical company hoping to find the mythical Remedy derived from unicorns and said to be able to cure anything, Astrid and an international crew of hunters band together to learn the truth of the unicorn Reemergence and defend humanity from the long-forgotten threat.

Ascendant picks up shortly after Rampant ends. While the world at large is well aware of the unicorn threat, the Cloisters is still falling short in their funding and recruitment goals. As soon as they find a girl capable of being a hunter, she quickly decides to relinquish her eligibility. And the only organization willing to fund the Cloisters is the Vatican, who want to place some strict rules on the young women who've taken over their nunnery. To add more worry to Astrid's plate, her boyfriend is heading back to the US and one of her best friends and fellow hunters is mysteriously losing her hunting powers.

So when Astrid has the chance to escape the Vatican's strict rules, gain funding for the Cloisters, and re-focus on her scientific passions all in one go, she leaps at the chance. It doesn't hurt that she also gets to hang out in the French countryside, too. But being part of Gordian Pharmaceuticals again opens up a host of new questions for Astrid, making her question her loyalties as a hunter and a scientist.

What excited me the most about these two books is just how darn feminist they are. Seriously, these are some of the most feminist books I've read since The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks. Throughout both books there are positive depictions of young women's sexuality, and then especially in Ascendant there's discussions about women (even those who weren't unicorn hunters) who defied traditional notions of femininity to follow their passions in science and medicine. And then yes, there's the idea of a secret group of women who are all that stands between humanity and the unicorn scourge. Women with big swords = awesome.

In Ascendant, Peterfreund also excels where Suzanne Collins failed in Mockingjay to give us an injured protagonist who is a little foggy...yet still manages to keep the story going. Whereas Katniss became half-comatose every time a big plot point comes up, Astrid powers through her injury, acknowledging she's weaker and she can't remember some things sometimes while other things are crystal clear (even if they might be hallucinations...?). Yes, it's a bit confusing, but damn if it doesn't work amazingly. I felt Astrid's frustrations right along with her.

On the other hand, every once in awhile Astrid is a bit...dumb. Even before her catastrophic injury. Her ex-boyfriend disappears right after she tells the pharmaceutical rep that he's the only living person to receive some of the Remedy...and she really believes he just coincidentally ran away? The big biology student can't figure out why a female unicorn may be hugely fat while all of the rest are grotesquely thin? Neither of these require a degree in rocket science to put together a working hypothesis for. Thankfully, Astrid's inability to put two and two together only happens rarely, and doesn't detract from the overall awesomeness of the two stories. My other minor quibble is the lack of description of what's going on in the rest of the world. By Ascendant it's clear that unicorns are known by the general public, but I want to know how on Earth they reacted. Panic in the streets? Mass migrations back into the cities? Inquiring minds want to know! But otherwise, both of these books fall into the "couldn't put it down" category, and they're so richly written that I did find it took me longer to read them than books of similar lengths, because I just didn't want to miss a word.

Peterfreund also does an excellent job in both books of finishing the main story, while leaving a few hooks for the next book to pick up on. This didn't stop me from feeling extremely impatient while waiting to get Ascendant from the library, but that was out of desperately wanting more of Astrid's adventures rather than needing to know how the darn story ends. Of course, there's a big question left unanswered at the end of Ascendant, and I'm certainly desperate to know the answer!

Rampant is actually what really inspired me to put together my What have I missed? personal reading challenge. Technically it doesn't fit into the guidelines I've set for my reading next year, but it got me thinking about all of the similarly awesome books I've missed out on just because I wasn't paying attention to YA when they were published! So please pop into the comments over there and leave more suggestions - and then go pick up Rampant and Ascendant if you haven't already!

Review: Sphinx's Queen by Esther Friesner

I picked this one up in my ARC grab way back at ALA (yes, I'm still working through those books!), solely based on my love of Ancient Egypt. I think Ancient Egypt was the first historical period I became obsessed with and my fascination with the subject hasn't left me yet. So I was very much looking forward to this one, only to be sorely disappointed.

Nefertiti is on the run from the Pharaoh's court, after being accused of a heinous crime she didn't commit. With the help of Amenophis, brother to the crown prince who accused Nefertiti, and Nava, a young Hebrew slave girl, Nefertiti is able to escape Prince Thutmose's clutches and report his treachery to Pharaoh. While Pharaoh and his wife, a power hungry woman determined to see her favored son take the throne one day, are at first disbelieving, Pharaoh agrees that justice must be sought, and grants Nefertiti the chance for a fair judgement before the goddess Bast.

As Nefertiti continues her quest for justice, she finds herself increasingly isolated from her friends and family in the palace. She discovers twists and treacheries that force her to question some of her fundamental beliefs in the gods, but while she knows she may not have all the answers, there is only one just answer to her cause, and she will not rest until the world knows of her innocence - and her love of a certain prince of Egypt...

The biggest problem this novel has is how one dimensional the story and the characters are. While the fundamental plot is strong enough, I found being in Nefertiti's head to be tiring because she was just so. Darn. Good. She never has a selfish thought and is benign and forgiving of all who sin against her. She's so kind and good that she ends up changing the less savory characters in the story with little effort, they're just so charmed by her. She's so perfect that there's really no narrative arc for her - she's essentially a Mary Sue.

The secondary characters are no better. The villains are cartoons until they have the opportunity to really get to know Nefertiti - somehow she inspires them to want to be better people, just for the sake of being good after a lifetime of selfishness. There's also another royal wife who fits almost all aspects of the magical negro stereotype. She's the only character who is highlighted as having exceptionally dark skin (she was originally a Nubian princess before the Pharaoh claimed her as one of his many wives), she's all but forgotten in the palace and prefers to live that way, only suddenly coming out of hiding to help out the fairer-skinned Nefertiti because, again, Nefertiti is such a good person. Her presence is random and really rather jaw dropping.

Amazon tells me this is part of a series - it looks like Friesner tackles the stories of many historical women, and in fact Sphinx's Queen is the sequel to Sphinx's Princess, though this one stands on its own well enough. There's no mention on my ARC version that this is a sequel and there were no glaring holes in the narrative that made me feel like part of the story was missing - unless Sphinx's Princess includes an explanation for why Nefertiti is so perfect. Since I haven't read any of Friesner's other titles, I can't say how this compares to her other works and whether this is a satisfying sequel, but I can say that this gives me no desire to pick up any of her other titles.

Review: Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George

Found via: Bookends

Last year (exactly), I reviewed Princess of the Midnight Ball and was...less than impressed. I knew lots of people who loved it, but I could never get into the story myself. So I had no intention of picking up the companion/sequel Princess of Glass. A woman can only take so much disappointment, right? But people were again raving, and this one picks up my favorite fairy tale so I finally caved and gave it a chance.

After the events of Princess of the Midnight Ball left several (male) heirs to various kingdoms dead and a war was narrowly averted, the monarchs from the neighboring kingdoms have proposed a royal exchange program for their eligible children. Hoping to rebuild alliances and maybe find a royal spouse, the Westfallin princesses are part of the exchange program, too. Poppy has been sent to Bretoner, where she's not the most popular person. but is being hosted by a lovely family with a daughter close to Poppy's age.

After spending every evening of her life dancing, Poppy has no interest in dancing ever again. However, as a gracious guest she still agrees to attend the various balls - usually choosing to play cards with the men who don't dance. Though Prince Christian, another exchange royal, is just handsome and kind enough to make her reconsider her stance - until the mysterious Lady Ella starts showing up at the balls, dressed to outshine royalty in her glass slippers and extravagant gowns and captivating every male eye in the room. Especially Prince Christian.

No stranger to magic, Poppy is sure Ella is using some sort of enchantment, and also recognizes that Ella may not be a willing participant. Teaming up with Roger, a member of Bretoner's gentry who knows a little something about magic himself, the pair set to work to find a way to counter Ella's spell and rescue her from her enchantment before it's more than just her shoes that are spun from glass.

Maybe I had low expectations going into this, but I ended up really enjoying Princess of Glass. I've read dozens of Cinderella re-tellings, but this one still found a way to be fresh and add new twists to the tale. I love the allusions to different versions of the tale (I've always liked the stories where Cinderella has three balls to attend, and sure enough Lady Ella has three balls in which to ensnare the prince), and the explanations for the glass slippers and why a man can lose all of his sense and fall in love at first sight.

Poppy may be one of my favorite princesses ever. I personally would much rather be playing cards and swearing colorfully than dancing. After being cursed to dance, it makes perfect sense that a ball would be hell for her, but instead of sitting aside like a wilting wall flower, she's found a way to entertain herself and still be part of the festivities. Choosing her as the protagonist not only gives a direct tie-in to Princess of the Midnight Ball, but also further separates this story from other versions of Cinderella. The story is told from a third person omniscient perspective, so we do get to see bits and pieces from Eleanora/Ellen/Lady Ella's perspective, but most of the time we're with Poppy. Snarky, (relatively) vulgar, Poppy.

As a bonus, like Princess of the Midnight Ball, knitting patterns are included at the end. I know nothing about knitting (I've always stuck to crochet), but it's an interesting addition!

Review: The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan

Consider this post not just another book review, but an important public service announcement: May is Zombie Awareness Month. Please take the time this month to check on your provisions (remember: knives don't need to be reloaded) and review your escape routes and safety zones with your loved ones.

Thank you.

The Dead-Tossed Waves is the sequel/companion novel to Ryan's Forest of Hands and Teeth, which I didn't review but did summarize a few of my thoughts on here after the Post-Apocalyptic Teen Fiction panel last fall. At this point, I really think my problem with Forest of Hands and Teeth was I wasn't paying attention to the genre: I wanted a straight up horror novel but Ryan was writing post-apocalyptic romance. Since I knew what I was going to get this time around, I found The Dead-Tossed Waves to be much more enjoyable.

The protagonist this time around is Mary's daughter, Gabry, safely living in the town of Vista that Mary stumbled upon at the end of the last novel. Gabry is a bit of a coward, there's no other way to put it. While Mary was constantly wondering what was outside of the chain link fence of her home village, Gabry is terrified to climb over the fence that protects Vista. Unfortunately for Gabry, none of the other teenagers in town feel the same way, and during one excursion over the fence into the abandoned amusement park, tragedy strikes as a Breaker (one of the fast zombies we were introduced to in the first novel) attacks, and Gabry is the only one to escape unscathed before the authorities show up, ready to punish all of the surviving teens for blatantly violating Vista's rules.

Gabry is torn on whether to turn herself in, and her indecision only heightens when she discovers her crush, Catcher, may not have died in the attack after all. Venturing out again on her own, she relies on the help of the mysterious Elias to find her way through the ruins and avoid the suspicions of the authorities who are eager to send the batch of troublemakers off to serve in the army of the Protectorate - a virtual death sentence of zombie fighting. But all the rules and good intentions can't keep Vista safe forever, and before long Gabry finds herself in the same position her mother was in so many years ago: wandering aimlessly through a chain link maze, relying on cryptic letters as a guide, with only the faintest hope that safety lies at the end.

While I did enjoy this more than The Forest of Hands and Teeth, that's not to say this novel is perfect. For one thing, once Gabry and her companions are in the chain link path, I really felt like we'd just been transplanted to the reversed quest from the last book. But the first two thirds of the novel I thought were well done - it's a very introspective novel, and Gabry isn't really a noble protagonist, but it's her imperfections that endeared her to me. She's perfectly fine with the status quo (and while Vista's rules are strict, there are reasons behind them so it doesn't really slide into a Panem-style dystopia, so we don't have to dislike Gabry for not making waves) and she's a little bit of a scaredy cat. But really, when the dead have risen, isn't fear a natural reaction? It's the people who say they aren't afraid that scare me!

I also love, love, love Ryan's compromise between fast and slow zombies. And all of the different names zombies go by. In the last novel they were the Unconsecrated, which made sense considering how religious Mary's village was, and Mary continues to call them by that name (even though everyone thinks she's totally weird for doing so). Normal zombies in Vista are called Mudo, which I don't think is ever actually explained but probably stems from the fact most zombies in the area wash up from the ocean and are thus muddy? (Edit: Sami pointed out in the comments that 'Mudo' was actually explained at the end of the first book - it means speechless.) And then there are the Breakers, which are Ryan's answer to new-school fast zombies versus Romero-style slow zombies. Breakers are a biological evolution in zombies, where an infected person will turn into a Breaker if there aren't enough other zombies around, like how frogs will change their sex if the population isn't appropriately balanced. I thought it was awesome and a great explanation for why, even with a functional government and army in place, they haven't been able to wipe out zombies.

I'm not terribly enamored of the cover on this one, but rather than re-hashing that point, I'm going to direct you to Sami's post at Twisted Quill where her rundown covers most of my objections (and the one objection I had that she didn't list I mention in the comments).

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: Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

Yay, another Scarlett book! I loved Suite Scarlett, so I was checking my library every day after Scarlett Fever was published to make sure I'd get this one ASAP!

Scarlett Fever picks up shortly after Suite Scarlett left off - Hamlet has closed and the set is being struck. Lola is still at her job at the spa. Spencer has signed with newly minted agent (and former Hopewell Hotel guest) Amy Amberson, and Scarlett is her assistant. Melanie is at her Powerkids summer camp, so Scarlett has a few blessed days without her antagonism to wallow in her own self-pity.

Why is Scarlett wallowing? She's still hung up over Eric, the super cute Southern boy who teamed up with Spencer in Hamlet and was a total jerk to Scarlett by seeing her when he already had a girlfriend back home.

Yeah, I wasn't an Eric fan.

School is about to start, and happens to bring big changes to the Martin family. Perhaps the biggest is Spencer's surprise role in Crime and Punishment (an homage to Law and Order) which makes him an overnight celebrity - the kind that attracts semi-creepy people to wander into the hotel and up into the family's living quarters looking for him. Chip, Lola's former boyfriend, is back in the picture with Lola, much to Spencer and Scarlett's disappointment. Oh, and Melanie? Melanie is back from camp and being nice. It totally freaks Scarlett out.

And Scarlett has enough on her plate. Mrs. Amberson is as demanding as ever - she wants to sign a promising young Broadway performer to the agency. Chelsea is 15 and has a beautiful voice, but is stuck in one of the worst Broadway performances in memory. Not to mention she is saddled with a crazy stage mother and a bitter older brother who just so happens to sit next to Scarlett in biology class. Mrs. Amberson has asked Scarlett to "keep an eye" on him on top of her assistant duties, which now include taking a terrified little dog out for daily walks. And to top everything off - Eric is trying to hang around again, ostensibly to get Scarlett's advice on acting, but how is she supposed to get over him if he won't just leave her alone?

I love the Martins. They are a crazy, mixed up, and totally loving family. Even Melanie this time around! (Even though I agree her being nice is really kinda creepy). I also love Johnson's descriptions of New York City. I've been here a year and a half now so I'm really beginning to get the geography. I also cackled with glee when Scarlett took Chelsea to my favorite food place in Manhattan, the Shake Shack.

Johnson also does a great job with the class issues the Martins face, both subtle and overt. The subtle bits are with Scarlett and her relationship with money and her thoughts about her friends who clearly have more money than her (friends who spent the summer in Europe rather than staging plays in their dining rooms). On the one hand it seems like her family should be fabulously wealthy since they own a hotel and all, but since the hotel gets next to no guests and the massive medical bills that piled up during Melanie's cancer, money is tight in the household. More overt bits are with Lola and Chip and his family. Chip comes from money and some of the Martins, Scarlett and Spencer in particular, feel he's a bit ostentatious with it. There are serious questions of why Lola is back with him, so once more I really appreciated a look at life for a family that is neither incredibly rich nor nearly destitute. The Martins get by, but it's no cakewalk.

Two gripes on this book: first of all, it just ends. It's really abrupt and I closed the book thinking "that's it?" The last scene isn't bad (it's actually quite hilarious), but it doesn't feel like a complete ending. There's definitely more Scarlett books to look ahead to, I guess.

Second of all, I feel totally bleh about the cover


It's a golden key on a purple wallpaper background. It feels dull. It's really uninspiring to me.

Suite Scarlett in paperback has been redesigned to have a coordinating cover. I'm not saying the original cover was perfect, but it had a bit more character than the new covers:


I have some nitpicks on this cover - Scarlett's hair is way too perfect for example - but that's so minor and so nitpicky that it doesn't matter. At least it has more character than the new ones.

Cover and ending aside, this is another great Maureen Johnson book. She has her own brand of wit and humor and uses it with ease. Scarlett Fever works excellently as a sequel (right up until that ending), and I can't wait to read the next Scarlett story.

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

Found via: Maw Books

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

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

Not that I'm impatient or anything.

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

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

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

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

I think I just really wanted another Rapunzel story!

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

Review: Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga

Found via: NYC Teen Author Fest

I first heard about this title back in March, when Barry Lyga read bits and pieces of the beginning of the book at the NYC Teen Author Fest. I have half a dozen other books that need to be reviewed, but Goth Girl Rising is jumping to the head of the line because it is awesome.

Goth Girl Rising is the sequel to The Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl, picking up Kyra's story about six months after the end of that book. Kyra has been in a mental hospital for the last six months, covering the entire summer and the beginning of the next school year. It's now November and Kyra is struggling to get back to her old life.

Kyra's top problem is she feels like she was abandoned while she was in the hospital. Her two best friends claim they sent her TONS of e-mails over the summer, but Kyra didn't receive one. But most hurtful is that Fanboy himself seemed to forget about her - no e-mails, no calls, no texts.

Kyra returns to a school where the social hierarchy appears to have been turned upside down while she was away. When she left, Fanboy was easily manipulated, lonely little geek, harboring secret fantasies about a senior girl and translating those into his epic comic book Schemata. Now Fanboy is the toast of the school, after doing some editing on Schemata and publishing it in monthly installments in the school's literary magazine. The way Kyra sees it, first Fanboy forgot her, then he went and got all popular by sharing his masterpiece with the plebes; now Kyra wants revenge on him.

Life isn't any easier at home for Kyra, where she and her dad continue to butt heads over pretty much everything, from Kyra's attitude at school to the way she dresses. Like most 16 year old girls, Kyra is changing and trying to find her place in the world, with her history, though, she just feels she has it harder than anyone else.

The main reason I loved, loved, LOVED this book and tore through it in one day is that in so many ways Kyra is exactly like I was in high school. A lot of the big things are different, sure - my mom didn't die, I never tried to kill myself, when someone hurt me I didn't set out to destroy his life, and my boobs were nowhere near a D cup (though I still disliked their existence) - but so many of Kyra's smaller moments were just like how I was in high school it was a little scary. Kyra's feminism and mine had a lot in common at that stage - lots of anger, convinced that all guys were stupid and out only for sex. Both of those are still mostly true, but my views are a bit more refined by now. I also loved the moment when Kyra is experimenting with her look and, just to try something different, undoes a few buttons on her shirt to show some cleavage and rolls up the waistband of her skirt to make it a little sexier. Despite how much she hates women who use their appearance to gain control, Kyra recognizes that she, too, could pull off the look - and she might even kind of like it! Kyra spends a lot of time trying to be comfortable in her own skin, which is something I think we can all relate to.

I do think the most exciting part, however, was Kyra's explicit musings on feminism. I thought about this a lot last year with The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. It's not so uncommon anymore to read YA books with feminist themes, but how often do characters explicitly identify as feminist? During the spring's teen author fest, I went out of my way to make sure to thank E. Lockhart for making that a positive part of Frankie's character. Since then, I can't recall too many other characters that expressly say "I'm a feminist." Does anyone out there know of any others?

If you haven't read The Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, you need to go out and find yourself a copy immediately - this really isn't a sequel that works well without knowing what went on in the first book. After you read that, Goth Girl Rising should definitely be next on your list.

Review: Cherry Heaven by L.J. Adlington

Book number two of 2009. And another dystopian novel. Remember how I said I love this genre? I think I'm beginning to feel overkill. Or maybe that was just the frustration of realizing part way through the book that I was reading a sequel/companion book without having read the first one. The jacket blares in several places that LJ Adlington also wrote The Diary of Pelly D, but it doesn't say anywhere that this is a sequel and/or companion piece.

Cherry Heaven is told via alternating points of view: one that alternates between third person limited and third person omniscient (most of the book follows Kat, but will jump to someone else's POV whenever it's convenient) while Kat and Tanka J move from the battle-scarred City Five with their foster parents to the peaceful New Frontier, while the other point of view is the first person journey of a girl escaping a brutal factory and journeying across the New Frontier to find her old home and seek revenge against the people who wronged her at the factory.

Yes, it's a little convoluted at times, but over all fairly enjoyable.

Kat and Tanka are orphans who have been raised by their foster parents, though Kat and Tanka call them aunt and uncle. When Aunt Milijue and Uncle Prester are offered prestigious positions in the New Frontier - invited by the leader of the New Frontier Q Essnid himself. The family moves into a homestead called Cherry Heaven - apparently ten years ago or so the cherries raised on this farm were legendary, but then a terrible tragedy befell the family, ending the cherry supply.

Ten years ago, the New Frontier almost fell victim to the violence that was tearing apart the cities on the other side of the planet (the violence that left Kat and Tanka orphans): a madman named Oklear Foster was killing people of the Galrezi gene clan (don't ask me what exactly that means - all I know is there are three gene clans in this world and the Galrezi are pretty much universally despised. And it is apparently possible to be of a different gene clan than your parents, because Kat and Tanka's parents were Galrezi while Kat and Tanka themselves are part of the elite Atsumisi gene clan), and among the people he killed was the family at Cherry Heaven. The house has sat empty since then, though the last cherry harvest has been left untouched in the cryo-freezer.

At the same time Kat and Tanka are moving into Cherry Heaven, Luka has escaped from the Blue Mountain bottled water bottling factory. She's been forced to endure barbaric working conditions at the hands of Director and Bossman for the last ten years. But she is determined to prove that she is not merely Galrezi scum, but is in fact smarter than anyone and hatches an ingenious - and painful - plan to escape. Of course, escaping the factory is just the first step. She has to travel on foot as winter looms, avoiding the security forces that are searching for her and want to put her back into the hellhole of the factory.

Kat and Tanka must adjust to life on the New Frontier as dangers loom around them. Wanted posters around town make Luka seem like a half-crazed maniac, and Kat is sure she keeps seeing a man lurking in the cherry orchard. In the meantime, they must also contend with finding new friends (and boyfriends), and an ongoing contest sponsored by Blue Mountain, where the finder of a marked bottle cap will win a day with the world's biggest movie star.

Overall I had a lot of frustrations with this book. There was so much that wasn't answered for me, and I'm not sure how much of that was because it's a sequel and how much was sloppy writing. Why on earth (well, whatever planet they're actually on - humans destroyed Earth through a multitude of wars long ago and humanity has now migrated to another planet) does everyone have gills? As I asked above, how can children belong to a different gene clan than their parents? I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that gene clan would refer to the genes you inherit from your parents. Did Milijue and Prester fake Kat and Tanka's gene test? And then there's the mystery at the heart of the novel - what happened ten years ago at Cherry Heaven? A satisfactory answer (or even excuse!) is never presented. I have to admit, I'm mildly curious as to how much of this is answered in the previous book, but I don't know if I'm curious enough to actually seek it out, as I fear I would just find more frustration.