May 9, 2013

Books I need someone else to write for me. Preferably yesterday.

I am the veritable master of the hot-button topic. I don’t have a problem writing about them, heaven knows I’ll share my opinions on them, and there’s not a subject I’ve come across that’s prompted me to set down a book because it’s just “too much.”

In the last couple years of really examining the YA market as I decide where my own work could best fit, I feel like I’ve run the gamut: stockholm syndrom, rape, transphobia, cult activity, pray-the-gay-away movements, terrorism, suicide, the list goes on. Early on in this journey, I remember stumbling across a novel on the incestuous relationship of a brother and sister and thinking, “Good for this, being so popular! This is about as taboo as it gets.”

Apparently not, because there’s a pretty obvious gap in my list.

Where are all the abortion books?

Scratch that. Let me try again: Where are all the focused, recognized abortion books?

I can plug “YA books dealing with abortion” into Google, and there will be results. I can get the self-published one and the ones nobody’s heard of. I can get that one that’s really well-known, but further investigation reveals the pregnancy and subsequent termination are symptoms of the plot, not root themes. I can get that one that’s sort of popular because it’s told from the boyfriend’s POV (And don’t even get me started on what I think of that).

And oh, sweet, holy Batman knows I can find dystopians on where abortion laws are headed.

There’s the abortion story fake-out, where we find out towards the end of the book that a character elected to have one some time in the past, and of course there are so many books on teenage pregnancy which don’t go the abortion route that I could spend all night linking to them.

There’s no shortage of books which mention abortion, just those that are about or even really include it. It’s a subject which the entire industry seems to have deemed off-the-page story action.

And isn’t that just a quaint, little reflection of reality. Even in the most tolerant of communities, there’s not much room for a woman to own a decision like this. There may be general agreement that abortion is an option, but go, get it done, and move on with your life. Keep it off the page.

What I keep scrolling through list after list hoping to stumble upon is the novel that I would want to turn to as a holy shit completely terrified nervous, probably somewhat confused teenage girl. Where is it? Where’s the book that follows this journey from conception through to the clinic? The one where a we see a character drowning in those tumultuous feelings of guilt and shame and relief—you know, those same emotions thousands of young adults out there are experiencing? And then they have to go back to school and the one person they confided in accidentally let it slip, and the whole school knows. The whole town knows. The whole world seems to know and ostracize them for being a “baby killer.”

Where are the books for those girls? Chances are they really need them.

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February 26, 2013

Dualed by Elsie Chapman

The city of Kersh is a safe haven, but the price of safety is high. Everyone has a genetic Alternate—a twin raised by another family—and citizens must prove their worth by eliminating their Alts before their twentieth birthday. Survival means advanced schooling, a good job, marriage—life.

Fifteen-year-old West Grayer has trained as a fighter, preparing for the day when her assignment arrives and she will have one month to hunt down and kill her Alt. But then a tragic misstep shakes West’s confidence. Stricken with grief and guilt, she’s no longer certain that she’s the best version of herself, the version worthy of a future. If she is to have any chance of winning, she must stop running not only from her Alt, but also from love . . . though both have the power to destroy her.

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“I don’t want to have to save your life,’ Chord says softly. ‘Not when you can do it.”

For all the high-intensity action and moral ambiguity of the premise in Elsie Chapman’s Dualed, this book sort of just . . . exists. And that’s all there is to it. I hated nothing, but I couldn’t find a thread of connection either, and by the end I was left trying to grasp the point of telling such a  story.

In a war-torn America, the north-western colony of Kersh has become a sanctuary. Society can’t afford to further the weak and wasteful in such tempestuous times, and so each individual must prove themselves, a sentiment echoed by their government in various media campaigns:

Be the one. Be worthy.

In the ultimate test, each member of Kersh has an Alternate—an individual born with the same DNA as them—that they grow up training to battle to the death. Upon winning, one matures into a complete member of society and is granted full privileges previously forbidden to them.

Whether or not the science of splicing genes from four parents to create two individuals that are “alternates” of one another is feasible, the logic behind this world doesn’t seem to be. Living in Kersh is supposed to be preferable to the outright war of the rest of America, and yet killing’s not only encouraged by the government, but arranged? I think I might take my chances elsewhere. Not much is actually known about the wars outside the walls of the city, but the Darwinian games within don’t exactly promote an aura of safety. 

Our protagonist, West Grayer, knows this. She’s lost her entire family to these barbaric practices, and yet still manages to defend the policies. Stricken by grief after the tragic death of her last brother, West goes looking for further information on how to defeat her own Alt when the time comes and is subsequently recommended to a group of for-hire assassins known as “strikers.”

This is a transition I didn’t fully understand, and I wish Chapman had expanded upon West’s thought processes. Yes, human beings are known for taking reckless chances in the throes of grief, but how did West rationalize the choice to herself? By her own admission, she’s worried she’s not well enough prepared for her own assignment, but she thinks she can handle killing those that aren’t even her problem?

Which leads me into further issues with the ethics/laws of the society. West’s brother dies because he is unable to defend himself without shooting  a friend’s Alternate—a practice known as an “assisted kill” that is not only frowned upon, but can lead to grave repercussions. As far as I can understand it, completing a mission as a striker is a type of assisted kill, but while still unseemly, society just sort of looks the other way. Why? The ring of strikers seems to be well-known and not really difficult to contact, so why aren’t the police busting down West’s door?

This book did keep me turning pages, though. The action was well-paced and intense, whether in the general sense of plot or the arc of a fight scene. However, because of West’s choice to be a striker, there was little more than action. It was easy to identify with her fears and choices  to procrastinate, but I still never really connected with her on a level that had me worried about the outcome of the book. I’m sad about this, because I liked West, and I think with some character exploration I could have become really involved with her story.

I vaguely realized that this was the first in a series going into Dualed, but was forced to double-check upon its conclusion. This is a series, I’m just not sure what it’s about. The ending is pretty definite, with not only no loose threads, but no real growth in any certain direction. The characters know nothing more about themselves or their world at the end than they did at the start, and while that certainly leaves Chapman a plethora of options, I can’t help but feel wary as a reader continuing into the next installment with perhaps less information than I started with.

A copy of this title was provided for review by the publisher (via NetGalley).

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February 22, 2013

Reached by Ally Condie

STATUS: ON HOLD

So what are we talking about here? The Giver as performed by the cast of Twilight. No one sparkles.

Sounds sort of interesting! What’s the problem? Meh, I say. Meh! The construction of the resistance movement in these books interests me and I’m excited for the final rebellion, but we’d have to, you know, get to it. I just don’t have the patience to drudge through, and that’s more an issue with me than with Reached. I’m skipping around on novels a lot right now, looking for something that demands my attention.

How far did you make it? <100 pages.

Any chance you’ll pick it up again? Eventually, yes. I didn’t read the first two books to not know how it ends. A slow day will come, and I’ll push through to the fun, page-turning stuff.

Well, should others give it a try? Oh, I’m certain there are enough readers out there dying to know which boy  Cassia will choose that I needn’t bother convincing too many to pick this one up, but science fiction fans should take caution with this series. The references amuse me and I can take a joke, but this is by no means The Giver. There’s a lot of pointless romance and teenage angst, and it sometimes gets a little heavy even for me.

Did-Not-Finish Fridays are a weekly post highlighting books I couldn’t complete because of time constraints, personal tastes, or for various other reasons. Inclusion in this series is not in itself a bad review or meant to reflect poorly on the work, nor will it prevent me from writing a full review at a later date.

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February 21, 2013

Asunder by Jodi Meadows

Ana has always been the only one. Asunder. Apart. But after Templedark, when many residents of Heart were lost forever, some hold Ana responsible for the darksouls–and the newsouls who may be born in their place.

Many are afraid of Ana’s presence, a constant reminder of unstoppable changes and the unknown. When sylph begin behaving differently toward her and people turn violent, Ana must learn to stand up not only for herself but for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

Ana was told that nosouls can’t love. But newsouls? More than anything, she wants to live and love as an equal among the citizens of Heart, but even when Sam professes his deepest feelings, it seems impossible to overcome a lifetime of rejection.

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This review contains spoilers for Incarnate, the first book in this trilogy; you can find my review of that here.

There was something off about Janan. Inside the temple, he’d called me a mistake, which implied that he had a plan. He’d also said I was “of no consequence,” which implied that he didn’t view me as a threat.

I aimed to be a threat.

Ana, girl, you and I need to have a little chat. Ready?

We are done with the self-pity. We were done yesterday.

After kicking ass and taking names at the end of Incarnate, I thought we had arrived. Ana found the strength in herself to face dragons, deities, and even her parents. She saved Sam’s life. She rescued a great number of the citizens of Heart. Now, it didn’t surprise me that certain townspeople continued to be ignorant and fear-mongering, and of course Ana should have self-doubts that lingered. These aren’t the types of problems you see disappear overnight. What I was hoping to see in Asunder?

A new storyline. Because this novel followed the same basic outline as it’s predecessor: Ana is presented with a mystery. Ana gets distracted. Ana hates herself. Romantic quandary! ALL THE CLUES A GIRL COULD ASK FOR. Nope, don’t care; romantic quandary! Self-hatred! Oh, better check up on that mystery. Holy smokes, look at all this information just lying around! Maybe I could—PERSONAL CRISIS. Annnd look at the entire mystery unfold. How coincidental.

Yes, plenty of these are tropes seen in many a novel. There aren’t many great stories without a dash of coincidence and misdirection, but the problem here is that Ana’s devolved from a character with an obvious hamartia into a simple unreliable narrator. She’s so busy concerning herself with her status as a newsoul that her perception of her world suffers, and the reader is left frustrated by her inability to pick up on the obvious. I wasn’t only aggravated by her inattention to plot points (The sylph! Menehem’s research! You can’t devote the entire opening to a subject and then not have the main character look into it), but was confused as to whether I’m even supposed to sympathize with her anymore. Her treatment of Sam throughout Asunder was, to be plain, pathetic.

It’s made clear from the first chapter that Sam will be the same patient, devoted love interest he was constructed as in Incarnate.

“I have to get out,” I told Sam. “I need to get away? Will you go with me?”

“Anywhere,” he said, and kissed me.

While he has his own pressures to deal with, he always puts Ana first. Such a big deal is made about the fact that Ana can’t reply when he first tells her he loves her, but he can wait for her to be ready.  I assumed it was because he could see that Ana loved him, and so in the wisdom of his 5000 years wasn’t going to perish without the assurance (And because he’s just a genuinely sweet guy), but if love was there, I didn’t see it. Instead only Ana’s perceptions counted, and so it was nothing her to callously disregard his opinions and even his presence.

Boy, I know this is a female-dominated genre and you’re supposed to be all about the girl, but you don’t have to put up with that. Kick her to the curb.

I praised author Jodi Meadows characterizations so highly in my previous review that the lack of growth here astounded me. Secondaries that were more well-rounded before actually seemed to regress in this sequel. Steph, in particular, while obviously still in love with Dossam and jealous of Ana throughout Incarnate, let those feelings manifest as a protective but slightly aloof nature. Her role’s now been reduced to little more than that of the jealous harpy after Ana’s man. A new character brought into the mix, Cris, is presented as an obvious important addition to the story, but we go on to really only dance around his history and witness surface interactions before his duty as a plot vehicle becomes evident.

Still, I continue to be intrigued by the concepts behind this series and  how Meadows is sure to explore not only the ramifications of immortality on the souls themselves, but the universe as a whole. When things did begin to happen, I was constantly surprised by the directions the story took and the elaborate histories of the world. Even so, I’ll be going into this trilogy’s conclusion frustrated and all too wary of how I might be left wanting.

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February 20, 2013

I wrote something. (Week 4)

750 Words words written every single day. One post a week, unedited. 

If I write only crap, I’ll have to post crap. 

This will end so very badly.

She was her daddy’s little bubblegum girl—soft, sweet, sixteen. She’d grown up some, of course, with the rock band posters and the dark purple eye shadow, but she still kept her earrings in the ballerina music box he brought back from a business trip ten years before. She’d still hum “My Only Sunshine” under her breath as she floated down the stairs each morning on her way to breakfast.

She was still one hundred percent sure she’ll never be as pretty as Mama. Mama, with her strawberry waves cascading down her back, singing “Addicted to Love” into a wooden spoon that should have been stirring oatmeal. Mama and her gypsy hips—gypsy blood—swaying around the kitchen, just begging Daddy to sweep into the room, sweep her into his arms and dance.

“Hey, sugar-sugar,” her mother sang each morning, no matter what the day looked like. No matter how bleak the night before might have been.

And when she hit thirteen, there were many bleak days and nights. She wondered for awhile if someone had come overnight and stripped all the pink from the world—maybe the Tooth Fairy?—but no, it was there. Just blurred. Peaches and peppermints and salmons. And the pink she wanted wasn’t just pink anymore; it was bubblegum.

Bubblegum was childish.

And she didn’t want to be that. She wanted to be grown-up pretty like Mama, with gypsy blood that sparked bright like sea glass and ink.

She didn’t like to admit it, but the problem was that purple scared her. Purple was the colour of fading twilight and a wasted day, of flowers that bled when pressed between pages.

Of Mama’s blood blossoming beneath the surface of her skin.

“Hey, sugar-sugar,” Mama would say, and it was the wrong sort of pretty in her voice. The pretty of raging forest fires and the blackened path following a volcanic eruption. She was devastated beauty. Mama’d place the oatmeal before her, but she’d do it without the twirl across the kitchen from the stove, without the flourish.

And Daddy would sweep in without fail on days like this, his briefcase swinging, the opening snatches of “Addicted to Love” coming from somewhere (But not from him, never him. Daddy didn’t sing).

He’d twirl Mama around the kitchen with her head tucked under his chin, and he’d weave words like flowers into her hair. He’d promise to bring spring back to Mama’s smile.

He never did though. The seasons shifted on their own, and when he left for work, Mama’s irises were still tidal blue, still swimming in the sea of purple skin around her eye.

Purple was the colour of drowning.

The colour of a woman.

So the little girl dusted just a bit above her eyes, violet drawing out cobalt blues and making her hair so dusty-darling blonde she was almost like a doll. Some days she even rosed her cheeks for the added effect.

Mama thought it was lovely. She’d greet her “Hey, sugar-sugar” before she looked up and wish her a “Good day, pretty lady,” by breakfast’s end.

Daddy told her to wash that paint off before she set foot outside his house. On good days, Mama’s laugh tinkled like a sugar-plum fairy and Daddy scowled good-naturedly. “Our little girl’s becoming a lady, Ivan,” she’d say, and then her father wouldn’t look so good-natured. He’d purse his lips. He’d mumble.

Little mumblings that made gypsy Mama laugh all the harder until Daddy wasn’t smiling.

When things were bleak, her mother bit out a “What for?” and Daddy did smile. Daddy said little more than “You know where I’m coming from, Luce,” as he cupped her cheek in his hand. He’d say “Take care, my lovelies” and kiss Mama on the forehead, and then he was gone.

Those were the days that Daddy would let her leave the house with all the purple she wanted, but she never did. She went upstairs and found her daisy dress, the one with the buttons down the back. She went upstairs and found all her bubblegum pink and put it on like a shield before she went back down.

Then Mama cried, but only then.

And she’d come home from school to find the purple dusted along Mama’s own skin, all the bleak of the day branded onto her. All the purple she couldn’t carry on her own, Mama held for them both.

Mama would give her more time to be Daddy’s little bubblegum girl.

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February 18, 2013

Boundless by Cynthia Hand

Since discovering the special role she plays among the other angel-bloods, Clara has been determined to protect Tucker Avery from the evil that follows her . . . even if it means breaking both their hearts. Leaving town seems like the best option, so she’s headed back to California – and so is Christian Prescott, the irresistible boy from the vision that started her on this journey in the first place.

As Clara makes her way in a world that is frighteningly new, she discovers that the fallen angel who attacked her is watching her every move. And he’s not the only one. . . . With the battle against the Black Wings looming, Clara knows she must finally fulfill her destiny. But it won’t come without sacrifices and betrayal.

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This review may contain spoilers for Unearthly and Hallowed, the first two books of this trilogy. You can find my review of Hallowed here.

“We are all connected, everything that lives and breathes in this world, and glory is what binds.”

Next thing he’ll be talking about the Force, I know it.

Oh, boy. This was good. This was well-written, well-paced, and obviously plotted with care right from the very beginning of Unearthly.

I wish I could be happier with it.

It started out strong, as always, with Christian and Clara’s arrival at Stanford and their preparation for the battle to come against the Black Wings. This part I always trust Cynthia Hand to know how to do. Clara’s not one to wait around for action to come to her; she’s training, she’s snooping, she’s pestering anyone she can think of for some answers. This series is not one that believes in standstills.

I’d been a bit worried at the end of Hallowed about the loss of Meg, Clara’s mother—her opinions and influence were a large part of the narrative—but, although no substitute, the introduction of Michael and his subsequent appearances in Clara’s life did well in allowing her the parental figure she still needed (He had that “I love you, but I can’t tell you anything” thing down just as well as her mom ever did). As an added bonus, Michael and Samjeeza’s knowledge of Meg’s mind and history kept her a part of the story and provided both Clara and the reader with an insight we’d never of had otherwise.

Oh, yes: Samjeeza. Ms. Hand’s bringing the whole gang back.

And the character development was immense in this conclusion. We finally see Jeffrey and Angela really enter the plot as their roles in the battle not only become clear, but make it known they were there all along. Even if I was a bit disappointed that neither got as active a part as I’d have liked, I couldn’t deny that Hand wove them in with such finesse I was awed. It’s still unfathomable to me how I didn’t pick up on some sort of foreshadowing in the preceding books.

That was the first 65% of this novel: suspense and intrigue and a delicacy of detail that had me reveling in every reveal.

Then came—are you ready?—the love triangle.

I mentioned when I reviewed Hallowed that I had great hopes for where this might go. Cynthia Hand acknowledges the stereotypes surrounding this dynamic, and moreover, she made Clara do the same. I’d hoped with such self-awareness we could avoid the basic pitfalls so many paranormal romances succumb to. Apparently not.

One boy gets everything, and the other isn’t even permitted a denouement for his poor, broken heart.

Further than that, the circumstances which allowed Clara to finally make her choice were  somewhat . . . contrived. So much so that it’s seemingly pushing that destiny—that God—had always willed it to end so, which rang a bit preachy to me and was infuriating after three novels struggling along with a character for some free will.

(Highlight for spoiler:)
In addition, the entire way in which Angela’s pregnancy was handled was infuriating. Here is a girl who has little desire to be a mother, a strong drive to not end up trapped, and she goes through with a pregnancy because God wants her to.

I won’t lie. I considered putting the book down.

In the end, though, I am satisfied. Boundless had its low points, but what Hand did right she was sure to do very right. Was I blown away? No, but this was a conclusion that threaded its loose ends, and what wasn’t stitched up, I’m perfectly capable of making up my own mind about.

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February 16, 2013

Just One Day by Gayle Forman

When sheltered American good girl Allyson “LuLu” Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England, there’s an undeniable spark. After just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left. Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines.

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“Are you coming down with something?” Mom asks.

And just for the tiniest of seconds, I wonder what would happen if I told them the truth. That school is nothing like I imagined it would be. That I’m not the girl in the catalog at all. I’m not a Happy College Student. I don’t know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don’t want to be her anymore.

Gayle Forman can string prose like pearls. She can build up a three-dimensional character that I’m rooting for, that I’m hoping is granted their heart’s desire . . . that is, just as soon as I’m given the gratification of someone slapping some much needed sense into them. She writes honest stories about what it is to flirt with decisions and responsibilities as an adult, and as someone still straddling that line in the sand, I applaud her. Young people—we—need these books.

That doesn’t mean I have to be a fan. Honestly, I had a feeling before I even started Just One Day that I wouldn’t be. That’s okay. You know who might absolutely love this? You.

As far as I can figure, I’m the anomaly here. Without spoiling Forman’s previous works for the uninitiated, you know all those scenes in If I Stay that had you sobbing like your favorite Ben&Jerry’s flavor had just been discontinued? Yeah, I didn’t cry. And during Where She Went when your nerves were set on the edge of going supernova? I maybe skimmed a bit. It was never because Forman isn’t able to convey the emotion (She definitely is) or because the characters don’t embody every gut-clenching aspect of heartache and joy (They most certainly do).

The fact is, I don’t want to read about how a girl discovered herself in the throes of young love when I know an author can do better without even including the boy (Or vice versa). And Forman’s got this down.

Allyson Healey is not that much of a good girl—yes, she maintains her grades, and yes, she calls her mother when she’s supposed to, but she can be spontaneous. She can have a drink. She can even, if the mood strikes, convince her best friend to skip out on a parent-chosen, tour-approved performance by The Royal Shakespeare Company to follow a boy’s smile. Allyson just knows who she is, and she doesn’t need to be bothered pretending to be something she’s not.

But she’s in Europe of all places, and come fall she’ll have every opportunity to get on with reality at college, so what’s one day? One day to be anyone and anything she can think of, with no strings, no consequences.

So she gets on a train with a boy that doesn’t even know her name one morning, and she wakes up the next heartbroken.  Everything goes so spectacularly wrong, but she sort of knew it would, and she has a life waiting for her back home—a real life for the real her.

And this is where I wish Day had begun, because while that “real life” is most definitely there, and the outlines of the “real her” are still something she could fit into, Allyson’s suddenly tired of it all. She’s tired of motions and words, tired of acting a part she doesn’t even like because that role is supposedly her. Any concerns about a boy seemed so trivial in comparison to this, to the character’s realization of herself and her potential, that when the book switched gears again and tuned back in to the romantic element, I was . . . disappointed.

To be blunt, I really didn’t care.

So I can’t tell you if Willem is certifiably h4wt, and my opinions on the ending of this book are . . . not positive, but I’m far from a romantic. I’ll still be telling many an eighteen-year-old to pick it up, because whether this was a “swoony” read or not, the meat of this story appeals to the hearts of girls, and if I can get up on my pedestal, maybe to a more important part of their hearts—the part just for them.

The part that boy at your side or no, you discover and keep for yourself. That’s always worth reading about.

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January 4, 2013

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

STATUS: ABANDONED

So what are we talking about here? In fair Verona where we lay our scene . . . Okay, not exactly, but family grudges and star-crossed love are in no short supply here. Celia and Marco have been brought up knowing it’s their destiny to destroy the other in a fierce display of sorcery and illusion, and step right up, ladies and gents. It’s going to be a magical show.

Sounds sort of interesting! What’s the problem? This is the book darling of 2011 that I gave myself an entire year to try and push through. It’s not going to happen. Pretty words are nice and all, but they do eventually need to go somewhere.

How far did you make it? <150 pages.

Any chance you’ll pick it up again? Nope. I’m chalking this one up as all hype and moving right along.

Well, should others give it a try? For a certain reader, The Night Circus might be a fantastical tale. The prose is  ripe with imagery and sorcery. There were entire passages that I enjoyed just rolling around on my tongue. But go into this one with your eyes open: there is little action here, practically no intrigue, and you will read more about the appearance of a circus tent than you will about character motivation.

Did-Not-Finish Fridays are a weekly post highlighting books I couldn’t complete because of time constraints, personal tastes, or for various other reasons. Inclusion in this series is not in itself a bad review or meant to reflect poorly on the work, nor will it prevent me from writing a full review at a later date.

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January 3, 2013

The Assassin’s Curse by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Ananna of the Tanarau abandons ship when her parents try to marry her off to an allying pirate clan: she wants to captain her own boat, not serve as second-in-command to her handsome yet clueless fiance. But her escape has dire consequences when she learns the scorned clan has sent an assassin after her. 

And when the assassin, Naji, finally catches up with her, things get even worse. Ananna inadvertently triggers a nasty curse — with a life-altering result. Now Ananna and Naji are forced to become uneasy allies as they work together to break the curse and return their lives back to normal. Or at least as normal as the lives of a pirate and an assassin can be.

Buy It Now: U.S. | Canada | International

Sometimes you got to trust the one one person you don’t want to trust.
Avoid lying whenever possible.
Know how to sneak.
Escaping’s always easy. Staying escaped is the hard part.
Never trust beautiful people.

I’m worried I’m being overly harsh on this one, but from the first line, The Assassin’s Curse and I had a problem with one another.

Pirates? Assassins? Blood magic? Oh, heck yes.

Intrigue, action, adventure? Unfortunately, not so much. As fun as the premise is, I was left somewhat disappointed by this book. It was a quick read and some brain candy, but far from satisfying in any way, and I know exactly where it fell flat for me.

Ananna was raised on the sea, knows how to pick a pocket, and will press a knife to your throat before you can even touch her. She’s also one of the most self-involved protagonists I’ve ever come across. Now, I’m all for characters having real faults, and it’s refreshing when authors are willing to let their female characters be less than savory, because let’s face it, YA has a problem with making girls a little too compassionate and sweet and just nice. The thing is Ananna isn’t meant to be viewed as inherently flawed, but more of a free spirit, an independent thinker in a world where she’s to be traded off to some man or another.

Let me be straight: this girl may be a bit of a feminist, but she’s also a prejudiced, hypocritical little thing. Case in point, her reaction to her arranged fiancé upon their first meeting.

Tarrin of the Hariri looked just like one of those paintings. Golden skin and huge black eyes and this smile that probably worked on every girl from here to the ice-islands. I hated him on sight.

Ananna doesn’t trust attractive people and is insulted that Tarrin thinks so little of her clan, even as she has disparaging thoughts about his own. So she leaves, and in breaking her contract of betrothal sets the assassin Naji on her trail.

When she comes face to face with Naji, Ananna accidentally saves his life, activating an ancient curse and indebting him to her. There’s quick agreement that neither of them is interested in his following her around for the rest of their lives, so they’ll work together, if begrudgingly, to find a way to lift the curse, and from here it’s two hundred pages of wandering about and bickering and both characters needing to just take two seconds and consider one another’s points of view, but of course that doesn’t happen. Ananna continues to make rash decisions in the name of being independent that nearly kill both of them on several occasions. Naji hoards information for the sake of being mysterious and broody.

No one learns anything, and we end on a cliffhanger that’s not a cliffhanger, just the book cutting off pretty much mid-scene.

There are of course commendable aspects to Curse. The characters are snarky and far from perfect, the settings lush with intrigue and magic, and the plot—if slightly hollow—is at least well-paced. It’s not a book I’ll be dissuading anyone from picking up. Everything that drove me nuts about these characters very well may ring true with another reader, but when I’m promised bloodthirsty pirates and sorcery, I don’t want to be distracted away from that.

I won’t be picking up the sequel to this one, but I do hope to see more YA books in this vein that perhaps are drawn-out just a bit better. Give me your pirates, cowgirls, trained assassins, and female characters that aren’t all sugar and spice, but as with any character, make them more.

And this isn’t allowed to affect my rating, but . . . Ananna? As in pineapple in French? Okay then.

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January 2, 2013

I wrote something. (Week 3)

750 Words words written every single day. One post a week, unedited. 

If I write only crap, I’ll have to post crap. 

This will end so very badly.

In Granville, young boys didn’t believe in things like blood pacts and witches in the old house by the side of the lake. A boy got to be a man through a series of tests, and that’s all they were called. Not tribunals. Not initiation rights. Just tests, and they were a freely acknowledged phenomenon.

Jamie Glenns got assigned his first task at the tender age of nine: he had to kill his own pet frog. He gave it too much time, too much devotion, and a real man knew better. A real man could prioritize his life, could slot where his emotions fit in most neatly. Jamie would soon know there was no room for a frog of all things.

So he did it, and he far from thought of crying. It was the middle of the night, because even if everyone in town knew what was going on, no one wants to see a boy pinning his best friend to the ground and slowly peeling his skin off like long ropes of fruit roll-up. The ditch by the side of the highway smelled like gasoline—he couldn’t kill Frogger in his own backyard, he just couldn’t—and even if there were no flames, Jamie thought of it as his pet’s very own viking funeral. He reached between the folds of flesh and skeleton wire to grasp the amphibian heart, still and silent and ghost thump-thump-thumping in his palm. It was the proof Kaleb Walter so vehemently demanded, and Frogger was a warrior now, Jamie thought. He was a martyr.

They left him alone for a long time after that night, when he deposited his sacrifice in Walter’s outstretched hand and let them all watch as he neatly secured the braided rope of frog skin to his backpack. If you weren’t there to see him do it, you’d never know why boys in the hallways at school nodded at him as he passed and told the younger maggots not to bother fucking with Jamie Glenns. With so little information being circulated, he couldn’t be a legend really, just a mystery.

It was manly, he assumed.

He couldn’t be let be forever, however, and it didn’t shock him when his name was offered up over the summer of his fifteenth for the annual game of chicken. The rails the four boys who’d become contestants followed were iron, no rickety wood in sight, but Jamie didn’t feel better. Their stage was set at the drop-off of a steep hill, where track became beamed bridge, and they wouldn’t be able to run or throw themselves into grassy banks to avoid the trains headlights. They would jump. They would probably injure themselves.

Bonus points for a broken limb, he thought.

Jamie didn’t break a limb, and he didn’t emerge victorious either. But he was next to last still on the tracks, after Randy bolted and Lee tripped William, causing him to roll with a sickening crunch-crunch-crunch down the dirty, grass-stripped hill-face. Second place was a respectable standing, especially with the reputation he already had, and even if Lee was fearless, Jamie was sensible. Jamie did what had to be done and he didn’t fuck around.

Boys feared that. Men respected that.

Granville didn’t ask much more of James H. Glenns. He got a job, he married a girl, he slotted his emotions. There was an appropriate amount of affection for the wife, enough hatred for the job, and all the pride in his town he could muster. James was a man who controlled his emotions. He was everything Granville raised him to be, and when he had to go to the battlefront, he didn’t give one hot damn about thrusting a bayonet up under the ribcages of those Jap fuckers. He watched what little pallor they had drain from their skin, and he saved no sentiments for them. He gave them no viking funerals.

The army doctors worried a bit, the candy-asses that they were. Some used words like “suppression.” Others liked “sociopath.”

The General was a Granville man, and he told them all to go to hell with their theories and prodding and poking. Glenns was a good soldier, a better man.

So James went home and he took his medals and he gave them to the wife to do what she would with them. She kept them in the closet, brought them out for company. They always came down from the top shelf already spit-shine bright, though, and he once or twice spared a thought for how often she must clean them. She pulled them out of storage for good when James Jr. was born, and she placed the damn things in his son’s room, a framed homage above the little boy’s bed.

Jamie bought the boy a frog.

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January 1, 2013

2012 In Review: Books I didn’t talk about that you should read anyway.

Happy New Year! And please, dear sky-lords/Batman, let this one be better than the last.

This past year was not great for me reading, writing, pretty much everything-wise (There are some 2013 resolutions floating around my head on this subject, but I’m loathe to write them down here or really anywhere and then be depressed come December) . There was moving and broken bones and a good dash of laziness to contend with, but I think there was maybe even a bit more to it than that. A sort of reader’s block or disenfranchisement, perhaps, and with the state of publishing being what it is right now, it’s seeming more and more difficult to locate that wonder in the written word I pray I still possess.

Still, while this year didn’t yield as many as I’d have liked, there are always the works above the cut, ones that manage to dig deep. Here are a few that I forgot to mention in 2012:

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone
A too-small town,  its stagnant population, and the big, exciting world that’s everything we want and everything we’re not quite sure we can handle—I remember thinking like this, being one of these girls, and so I’ll be purchasing this book for many a high school grad this year. Even if you’re not exactly an idealistic adolescent anymore, Amelia is a wrenching and true reminder of the time we may need to allow ourselves to mourn lost parts of our selves. More importantly, it’s a reminder of how to move on without those pieces.

Tiger Lily
I don’t even know what to say about this one so just go read my friend Kate’s review right this very second. This book was poetic and plain and everything I wish someone had taken the time to be with me when I was on the cusp of womanhood. It’s everything I would want to write for my theoretical daughter, it’s a retelling of Peter Pan, and you should read it. Now.

Are You My Mother?
Although not as breathtaking as her debut, Alison Bechdel’s latest work is still the poignant mixture of heartbreak and humor that made Fun Home such a literary phenomenon. This is the book for the artists with jaded parents, for the children of the types too consumed by their own creativity, and after my third reread I still don’t think I’ve grasped everything Bechdel was trying to say about her feelings toward her mother. Then again, I’m not so sure Bechdel understands them all, either.

Of course there are a few more I read over the year that weren’t published in 2012 and I still loved; you can find them on my GoodReads shelf.

Here’s to a year of good books and maybe some decent words written. I’m going to go curl up in my bed and ignore every single one of those resolutions I mentioned above.

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December 31, 2012

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Four decades of peace have done little to ease the mistrust between humans and dragons in the kingdom of Goredd. Folding themselves into human shape, dragons attend court as ambassadors, and lend their rational, mathematical minds to universities as scholars and teachers. As the treaty’s anniversary draws near, however, tensions are high.

Seraphina Dombegh has reason to fear both sides. An unusually gifted musician, she joins the court just as a member of the royal family is murdered—in suspiciously draconian fashion. Seraphina is drawn into the investigation, partnering with the captain of the Queen’s Guard, the dangerously perceptive Prince Lucian Kiggs. While they begin to uncover hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace, Seraphina struggles to protect her own secret, the secret behind her musical gift, one so terrible that its discovery could mean her very life.

Buy It Now: U.S. | Canada | International

. . . we study art. We fly over it from every direction, from a sane, safe distance. Someday we will comprehend its power. We will put it in ard. We will learn to hatch it, and why it’s worth hatching.

Seraphina Dombegh understands art. As assistant to the court composer and a talented musician herself, she knows what a well-timed note can do, what an empty beat can say. Even as she masters how to speak through her music, she knows better how to weave the near-invisible silvery threads of melody that stitch a piece together.

After all, you could call her existence one of those threads.

Torn between two opposing sides of a cold war that’s rapidly heating, Seraphina prides herself on being invisible to both human and dragonkind. She’s a halfbreed, a freak of nature, and more than that she’s a little bit, well, strange. It’s not enough to be the product of an unholy union—she also has visions of grotesque creatures that reside somewhere in the recesses of her head.

But with outright war fast-approaching, anonymity isn’t really an option, and Serpahina may need to raise her own voice, even if it means baring the scaly underbelly of her soul to those around her.

My goal in life is now to write like Rachel Hartman. I want to go and sit at her feet and absorb something, anything she’s willing to give me, because this woman can do it all: world-building, plot, pacing, theme, spot-on characterizations, you name it. It’s not that everything is treated with equal and specific attention—though, of course, it is—but more that each facet of her storytelling so fluidly melds with the next.

She’s not a writer, but a composer. I kind of hate her, and I will buy anything she chooses to pen.

Seraphina is by no means a new story, with its timeless themes and close inpsections of prejudices at every political and personal level of life, but Hartman’s audience can’t help but turn page after page. All of her characters, secondaries included, are careful studies in human contradiction: silent and strong-willed, gentle and fierce, ignorant but shrewd. Even the draconian members of the cast—stereotyped at the beginning of the book as emotionless, scholarly, Vulcan-like creatures—prove to be more, each struggling with what they perceive as the weak and volatile, almost human elements of their souls.

We’re told none of this. Each character is shaped by how the reader perceives their actions, and I love this. I love that I’ve seen a bevy of reactions to Seraphina and Prince Kiggs’s relationship, to how Seraphina chooses to interact with his fiancée, Princess Glisselda, because it becomes obvious that Hartman has allowed her readers to bring their own experiences to her story, to her world, and  maybe learn something about their own prejudices.

There is something of a plot hole in Seraphina’s visions of the grotesques. Even as it becomes understood that her half-breed nature allows her certain abilities, the question of why that should be is never really approached. I’m perfectly willing to wait until the sequel for an answer, but that Seraphina herself never pondered that she was dabbling in magic not known to either of her familial races chaffed me a bit, considering her inquisitive nature.

Still, this book made me laugh and made me cry and maybe made me consider jumping on the ferry and heading over to Vancouver to beg Ms. Hartman for a preview of just one sentence from the sequel. Because while Seraphina was all intrigue and exquisite, heartbreaking emotion, I know there’s so much more to come.

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